Use the iPhone as a Remote Touchpad for Your Computer

The Touchpad Pro app for the iPhone developed by Jahanzeb Sherwani will turn your iPhone into a wireless, remote trackpad, which gives you direct access to your computer as if you were using a mouse or touch device for input. The latest native iPhone application Touchpad Pro app is based entirely on VNsea.

You can do just about anything on your iPhone as a wireless touchpad as you could with the touchpad on your computer. You can move the mouse around, click, double-click, and even drag (double click but keep it pressed and then move around). Vertical scrolling is even possible, by click-and-dragging on the right edge of the iPhone screen. You can thus use it to control videos, show pictures, or advance slides in a presentation.

To install the native iPhone Application you will need to jailbreak your iPhone or iPod Touch. Here are instructions on how to to install Touchpad app:

1. First you need to jailbreak your iPhone to allow third-party applications to be installed.
2. Add the repository required to install Touchpad to your Installer.
* Click on the Installer Icon.
* Skip to step 3 to see if you already have Touchpad Pro in your sources. Otherwise follow these steps and click on the “Sources” icon at the bottom.
* Click “Edit”.
* Click “Add”.
* Enter: “http://cnp.qlnk.net/”.
* Click “OK”.
3. Install Touchpad Pro from the Utilities category.
4. Install VNC on the machine you want to control and get your PC’s IP address from the taskbar icon when you finish.
* tightvnc ip address
5. Launch Touchpad Pro
6. On the VNC servers page click the “+” icon
* touchpad pro iphone app
7. Then follow these instructions:
* touchpad pro iphone app
8. The session name (e.g. mediapc) will now be added to the list of VNC servers. Tap it to connect.

www.coderetard.com/2008/06/26/use-the-iphone

G1 trouble in Germany: Patent company sues HTC

google_g1_phone

Tech companies are getting sued for patent infringement regularly, but this recent case of patent litigation might mean serious trouble for HTC, at least in Germany. Munich-based IPCom, which is not your usual insignificant patent troll, says the Taiwanese company is infringing its patents (IPCom doesn’t have a website).

] Google Talk Mobile for the iPhone [

Google recently launched a mobile friendly Google Talk chat web app aimed specifically for iPhone and iPod Touch users, in a nod to its rival Apple in the mobile platform space. You may have heard about Google’s open mobile platform called Android to which as far as anyone is concerned is just vaporware until it actually shows up in phones that consumers will want to buy despite Google’s attempts to attract developers to its platform. Not wanting to lose out on as a player in the mobile chat space, it looks like Google Talk won’t be waiting for Android to mature as users can now chat with friends while on the move simply by pointing their Safari browsers http://www.google.com/talk (to preview in your regular browser, point to http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/m). Google Talk runs entirely on the webpage and requires no external software or downloads just like how Google Talk works in Gmail.



Using Google Talk on the iPhone is simple and intuitive and gives a consistent experience to the full browser version like being able to browse you favorite contacts and multiple conversation support. One drawback, however, is that unless you are surfing the Google Talk mobile page on Safari, you won’t be able to receive any instant messages as you will automatically be put in “Unavailable” status.

How to hack your T-Mobile Dash (HTC Excalibur)

The Dash/Excalibur is a nice little smart phone that runs on Windows Mobile. If you use it a lot you will notice that it inherantly has a few problems with it from the get go. For example, there seems to be a memory leak and the alarm feature is messed up. If you bought one a long time ago and hoped that Windows Mobile 6.1 would fix it, sorry but you are out of luck. Don’t fret though, the guys at xda developers have solved most if not all the Dash’s problems!

This ROM update fixes most if not all the bugs on the phone, and adds new features.

Summary of Key features:


0.Unread Message Alert(every 15 minutes,you can disable it in the sound settings)
1.WindowsLive
2.Office6.1+OneNoteMobile
3.Jbed Java VM(support fullscreen game)
4.Resco Explorer 6.17
5.Dot Net Compact Framework 3.5
6.OMAPClock(can keep Frequency)
7.dbExplorer 2005(it can modify vol database)
8.HTC Flash
9.Orneta Calc
10.Bluetooth FTP
11.LowLight(Touch JOGGER 3 times in 10 seconds will open Lowlight.Attention,this will maybe make your backlight always on if you don’t close it.)
12.CeleTask Special Version
13.WM5torage 1.8
14.Clock On Top (12 or 24 hour style,change is in bottom of clock settings)
15.BaseHue Express
16.SMSDeliveryNotify Fix
17.PDF Reader(Original name is FoxitReader)
18.Real Media Decoder
19.MS Voice Command
20.Orneta Notepad
21.AlReader2
22.Oxios Alarms(put it in the clock&alarm settings,called all alarms)
23.xT9 with 10 kinds of languages support
24.HTC Connection Setup(can setup your network for Operators all over the world)
Here are the Steps to Upgrade/Hack your Dash

!. Download the SDA Application Unlock
2. Reboot your Dash then connect to the computer via USB cord
3. Run the SDA Application Unlock Run with your Dash Plugged in with a USB Cord
4. Reboot your Dash
5. Download Kavana’s Windows Mobile 6.1 ROM
http://www.coderetard.com/noose//RUU_Excalibur_WM61_Kavana_080408_WWE.zip
6. Run the RUU_Excaliber exe with your Dash Plugged in with a USB Cord
7. Follow on screen instructions

Thats it!
Note*: If you have a US version of the Dash, try out the keyboard after install, if the keys are a little out of place you will need to:

1. Download this file: TegiceT9USEnglish.CAB
2. Copy that file onto your Dash
3. Find the file on your dahs and run the install
4. Reset your Dash, and the keyboard should be fixed.

Screen shots from Kavana.

T-Mobile G1 walkthrough videos: maps, browser, Facebook etc

More demo videos of the T-Mobile G1 released. T-Mobile CEO said they will unlock these phones for you 90 days after activation, and will let you tether your phone to a computer as long as its not a major network issue. Another thing is, when you sign the contract, you will be limited to 1gb of data per month before they throttle your d/l spee to 50kbs….not to happy about that…

iPhone Games: Assassin's Creed and Terminator Salvation for iPhone

Gameloft has released the Assassin's Creed: Altair's Chronicles for the iPhone and announced the Terminator Salvation coming soon for the iPhone. Here is more info on these iPhone games:

Gameloft's Assassin's Creed for the iPhone:

Experience all of the stealth, action and puzzle solving excitement of Master Assassin Altair's quest to find the "The Chalice", an object of Immense power that can end the Crusades once and for all. Game features:






- Master the assassin's skills to benefit from a wide range of acrobatic moves and perform impressive combo attacks, mixing sword skills and kicks.

- Choose your fighting tactics based on 6 weapons

- Skill-based mini-games

- Unique 3D cinematic cutscenes and voices

- Collect orbs to upgrade health and weapons.

You can get the game on the iTunes for $9.99.



Gameloft's Terminator Salvation for the iPhone:

Gameloft, a leading developer and publisher of video games for mobile phones and consoles, today announced a licensing agreement with The Halcyon Company to develop, distribute and publish the official mobile game to the first film of the new Terminator trilogy, Terminator Salvation. The game will be available day and date of the film release on May 22, 2009.



In the highly anticipated new installment of The Terminator film franchise, set in post-apocalyptic 2018, Christian Bale stars as John Connor, the man fated to lead the human resistance against Skynet and its army of Terminators. But the future that Connor was raised to believe in is altered in part by the appearance of Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), a stranger whose last memory is of being on death row. Connor must decide whether Marcus has been sent from the future, or rescued from the past. As Skynet prepares its final onslaught, Connor and Marcus both embark on an odyssey that takes them into the heart of Skynet’s operations, where they uncover the terrible secret behind the possible annihilation of mankind.




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Read our PSP game reviews:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/PSP-game-reviews.htm

Read our latest Nintendo DS game reviews:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/Nintendo-DS-game-reviews.htm

Read our latest Windows Mobile game reviews:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/games/index_ppc.htm

Read our latest Palm game reviews:
http://www.mobiletechreview.com/games/index_palm.htm

iPhone News: Quicken Online Mobile Now Available for iPhone

Intuit today made its popular Quicken Online services available to the iPhone users via Quicken Online Mobile. Here is more info on this new iPhone services:

While other apps only give customers static information, Quicken Online Mobile is an interactive app that takes advantage of the mobile context and offers:

· Immediate access to accounts, from checking to credit cards and loans
· Ability to add purchases and track spending on-the-go
· Geolocation of nearby ATMs, saving costly surcharges
· An extra layer of security that goes beyond industry standards





Here is a review of the free iPhone Application for Quicken Online Personal Finance Software or You can download the Quicken Online Mobile app for free from the iTunes

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic

While Nokia has ventured ever-so rarely into touch screen phone territory (we're thinking of the Nokia 7710, the first and last S90 smartphone, dating back to 2005), the iPhone craze seems to have gotten them on their way. Better late than never, as the cliche goes; and the Nokia 5800 is worth the wait. This is Nokia's first S60 5th Edition phone-- 5th Edition is the touch screen version of S60, while 3rd Edition is the non-touch version used on all other current Nokia smartphones such as those in the N and E series. There is no 4th Edition since many high tech companies that market products in Asia avoid the number 4 because in Chinese the word for four sounds the same as the word for death. The flagship Nokia N97 will run 5th Edition as well (due out mid-2009), which makes the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic even more interesting since it gives us a sample of what's to come in that top-of-the-line model and it offers an affordable alternative to the pricey N97.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic NAM

The Nokia 5800 XpressMusic was first available in Europe several months ago and is now available for the US in the NAM (North American) edition. We're reviewing the NAM model which has 3G HSDPA for AT&T's 850/1900MHz bands. The NAM version works on EDGE with T-Mobile US and overseas. The Euro version has Euro 3G (900/2100MHz) rather than US 3G and lacks a US warranty. The Nokia 5800 is a GSM quad band unlocked world phone, and it's sold direct from Nokia's US website and from online retailers like Amazon and Dell.

Priced at $399 list with no contract and available for less from a variety of online retailers, it offers a wealth of features for the money. These include WiFi, GPS with Nokia Maps, a 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera, Bluetooth and Nokia's usual bevy of built-in S60 smartphone applications. The 3.2" resistive touch screen runs at 16:9 widescreen resolution (640 x 360). It has haptic (vibration) feedback and an accelerometer. S60 5th Edition supports both capacitive and resistive touch screens, so why did Nokia go with resistive? To support character input (handwriting recognition), which capacitive can't do. While US buyers might not be in love with handwriting recognition, it's very popular in Asia for character input, and Nokia is a global company.

Touch and Display

The Nokia 5800 requires a slightly firmer press than the iPhone, but it's a light touch compared to other resistive touch screen phones. It's similar to the Samsung Eternity and requires a lighter touch than most Windows Mobile Pro phones and the LG Vu. This is in part due to the large targets (icons and menu items)-- Nokia has optimized S60 to work well with a finger and there's no need for a firm, pinpoint touch on tiny user interface items. It's a pleasure to use the touch screen with fingers, and there's no need for the included stylus that tucks into the back cover, unless you want to use handwriting recognition or sketch with a paint program (Nokia Hong Kong has a paint program available for free download). S60 looks largely the same as it does on other recent N and E series phones, so the learning curve is short for those accustomed to Nokia S60 smartphones.

You can scroll by dragging a screen of icons or a list in the same direction as you'd move the scroll bar (yes, there are scroll bars-- that's so 90's). That feels a little weird since it's the opposite drag direction from touch screen phones like the iPhone and Samsung Touch Wiz feature phones. Finger scrolling works very well in the web browser and image viewer, however. Oddly, in some cases you'll double-tap and in others single-tap to accomplish a task. For example, you single-tap an icon to launch a program, but double tap to select a list item. Perhaps Nokia did this to avoid accidental list item selection when scrolling?

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic NAM

There is no d-pad and the only hardware buttons are call send, call end and the S60 programs button on the front face. There's a camera button, screen lock/unlock slider and volume up/down buttons on the phone's right side and that's it for mechanical buttons. There's a touch sensitive button above the display that brings up shortcuts to the web browser, video player, image viewer, music player and Share Online (Ovi, Flickr, Vox and other services).

How to select a phone profile? You can press the power button briefly to bring up the profile selector or tap the carrier name/date at the top of the homescreen (there's an option to view the calendar too). How to set an alarm or bring up the world clock? Tap the clock on the homescreen. Want to access connectivity settings (Wifi, Bluetooth, cellular)? Tap the display's upper right corner where the Bluetooth and WiFi icons appear when those radios are on.

While some third party S60 3rd Edition apps do install and run, they're generally designed for a d-pad and soft keys so there's no way to effectively use them without some hacking. Thankfully, developers are releasing 5th Edition apps (Garmin, MobiSystems OfficeSuite 5, MobileDVD, QuickOffice, themes) quickly; though we still don't have the broad collection of apps that are available for 3rd Edition. Games particularly are lacking right now, though by the end of 2009, I'm sure we'll see a decent selection (keep in mind this isn't an N-Gage phone).

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic NAM

The Nokia 5800 and the iPhone 3G.





Deals and Shopping











The programs key brings up the applications window, just as it would on any other Nokia phone. Press and hold the programs key to bring up the S60 task manager that allows you to switch between running programs. There are two home screen layouts available: the first is similar to the standard active desktop on other S60 phones, with 4 shortcut icons to applications (there are fewer icons since they're larger to be finger-friendly). It shows upcoming appointments, has a link to search the phone or Internet and a music player controller that shows when the music player is playing tunes. Two icons near the bottom link to the phone dialer and contacts. The other home screen layout replaces the 4 application shortcuts with 4 speed dials, each with a photo of the contact. Pressing the call send button brings up call history, while the call end button minimizes the current running program.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic NAM

We love the high resolution, 24 bit color display. At 360 x 640 pixels, it's the highest resolution Nokia phone on the market and it's perfect, when in landscape mode, for viewing web pages and watching movies. The 16:9 widescreen aspect ratio is perfect for films, and Nokia includes a $50 Amazon video on demand gift certificate in the box along with an 8 gig microSD card.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic NAM

We also appreciate the proximity sensor that turns off the display and touch screen when the phone is against the face, but wonder why Nokia forgot to include letters on the on-screen dialer keys for vanity number dialing. There's an accelerometer than handles screen rotation and it's just right: not too twitchy nor too slow.

Hands on with the PDA-killer Sony P800

Handspring's fine Treo communicator had Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street Journal hyperventilating recently, with Walt describing it as the best phone and the best PDA he'd ever used. It probably is.

But when Walt gets to see the Sony Ericsson P800, we recommend that the demonstrators bring along a team of paramedics. Although the Treo and the P800 are functionally similar, our first impressions of the new Ericsonny device leave the Treo looking like Dilbert's secret Elbonian recipe for mud (that's soil and water, by the way).

It's far from perfect, but after several years of looking at smartphones, the P800 has the kind of potential to break out of the geek ghetto, and one that leaves us even more convinced that today's PDAs need to evolve dramatically, and fast. For years they've been a secure little niche: PDAs and have even been fashionable, usually during consumer booms when material excess was in vogue: think of Psion's Organizer in the 80s, and Palm in the late 90s. But the total volume of these units shipped remains miniscule compared to phones.

By way of comparison, one in nine people uses a cellphone, according to the GSM Association. Manufacturers are betting that most smartphones will simply be modelled on today's devices with numeric keypads, and a larger screen: both Nokia's Series 60 UI and The Beast's Smartphone 2002 follow this form factor.

But the P800 - like the Motorola Accompli 008 is a true pen input PDA that is unmistakeably a phone. Phones have now shrunk beyond the point of convenience: I'm using a Motorola V.66 and it's a fine phone, but really too small to be comfortable with. It gets lost in my deep trouser pockets, and the keypad buttons are pretty fiddly. Sony/Ericsson isn't the first phone that grafts PDA functionality into the device without compromising the low mass of a real phone - that goes to last year's Accompli - but it is the richest: a far more capable color device, that just happens to include a camera too.

So what's it like?

It's very light. The blue translucent styling is strongly reminiscent of the original iMac, and this is matched by the user interface effects: click on an icon and it wooshes a little like the Aqua genie. Like Ericsson's well received T68 phone, it's supports color schemes.
The P800 resembles its Symbian predecessor, the R380, sporting an LCD that takes up much of the front of the device, with a flip down keypad that mechanically touches the LCD. The camera is built into the back, but unlike Nokia's 7650 camera phone, there's no lens cover, which could leave the device vulnerable to dirt and dust (or in my case, stray tobacco).

In a nice touch, when you take a picture, the phone gives you audio feedback in the form of a 1958 Leica shutter.

There's no USB connector, but we're told that the Ericsson texting pad - a tiny Alphanumeric keyboard - will work with the device. A combination bluetooth and infra red port is on the left of the device, along with a rocker wheel, and a thin plectrum of a stylus slots uncomfortably onto the right. This is fiddly and will hopefully be fixed when the device goes on sale in the fall. It's the weakest design feature of the phone. On the right side you'll also find the camera button, and a blue button that "connects you directly to the Internet". Strange for an always-on device: we figure this means that when you're out of range of a GPRS cell, it makes a regular GSM call on your behalf.
Polished quartz

The user interface makes for the most interesting comparisons with rivals, however.

It's running on a 320x208 display, which feels cramped compared to PocketPC PDAs but is luxurious compared to PalmOS devices. In terms of UI metaphors, it very closely resembles the Palm UI, applications overlay each other, but with the addition of a tabbed navigation strip at the top of the screen. You can view as icon, or a list view.
Perfecting this UI has been a long and painful process with Ericsson canning projects that used a bulkier 320x240 version. The UI originated at Ronneby in Sweden, in a lab which was spun off into the Symbian operation, and it was formerly announced two years ago as "Quartz". But it's been worth the wait, we reckon. This is a slimmer version of Quartz, called UIQ and gains enormously from the higher pixel density that's now possible. (Both the fatter and the thinner versions of UIQ are available to licensees).

"We had to make it smaller," Ulf Wretling Sony Ericsson's head of third-party programs told us. "Asian consumers are picky on size as well as style, while US consumers are more used to bigger devices, and look for functionality."

The device uses Ericsson's own AU System Browser, which can handle real HTML, cHTML or WAP 2.0 pages, so you don't have to carry two browsers into the shower. There's also been some effort to make download Java midlets easier, with a built-ion AppLoader fetching them directly from the server.

With a huge amount of software rolling out for Symbian phones (Nokia, Motorola, Siemens and Panasonic all have devices in the pipeline), we'd like to see installing apps made as easy: it's absurd, with the Nokia 9210, to be required to use a PC for software installation. Devices should bootstrap themselves.

It's a triband device, so it will work on US networks, and the camera will allow you to store 200 pictures in VGA format. (The screen supports 4,096 colors).

In conclusion, it's probably the most desirable little piece of technology we've seen for a while. It certainly obliges Handspring and Danger to price their Treo and HipTop smartphones low, as the Ericsson is from the outset a much more capable device. But we hope there's room in the market for all three.


Earlier this year we called in on Danger's University Avenue HQ in Palo Alto, and thanks to the splendid Joe Palmer - hardware chief for the HipTop, and designer of the original BeBox - were able to snap a prototype HipTop running your favorite tech news site.

Alas we couldn't provide you with a size comparison of the P800. We'd run out of cigarettes.

How-to: using the new Facebook stream API in a desktop app

Facebook launched a new set of APIs on Monday that allow third-party software to interact with the Facebook activity stream. Developers can use these new APIs to build sophisticated Facebook client applications that give users direct access to the stream from their desktop.

Courtesy of these APIs, rich support for Facebook could soon arrive in your favorite Twitter client and other social networking programs. In this article, I'll give you an inside look at how I used the new APIs to add full support for the Facebook stream in Gwibber, my own open source microblogging client for Linux.

The activity stream includes several kinds of content, including status updates, images, links, videos, and content that is imported from other services, such as Delicious bookmarks and Google Reader shared items. Users can post comments on stream items and can also indicate that they "like" a specific stream item. Facebook now provides programmatic access to all of this data through several different mechanisms. Developers can use a conventional REST method, a FQL query, or an Atom-based feed.
Atom Activity Extensions

The Atom-based feed is, perhaps, the most intriguing aspect of the new open streams system. Atom is a standardized XML-based format for simple syndication that is similar to RSS but is more robust and extensible. Rather than completely inventing its own dialect, Facebook wisely chose to put its weight behind Atom Activity Extensions, an emerging effort to build a standardized set of activity tags that can be used in Atom feeds.

Atom Activity Extensions is still in the draft stage and is not yet a formal standard. The draft is authored by David Recordon and Martin Atkins of Six Apart under the aegis of the DiSo project, a collaborative effort to build open standards for data portability and social networking.

Facebook has become one of the first major adopters of Atom Activity Extensions, a move that will significantly boost the visibility of the nascent standard and help it gain traction. MySpace is also committed to the format and working on an implementation, so it now has the backing of two of the most popular social networking websites. This is a major win for interoperability and it could eventually facilitate development of universal activity stream clients that function in much the same way that desktop news feed readers work today.

Chris Messina, a leading figure in DiSo who is well-known for his work with OAuth and is closely involved with Atom Activity Streams, is enthusiastic about Facebook's adoption of the format. He commented on the implications in a message posted to DiSo's Activity Streams mailing list on Monday following Facebook's announcement.

"This is indeed good news for Facebook and for this community effort," he wrote. "At the very least, I'm excited to see how similar we can get the feeds coming out of MySpace and Facebook and I'm also eager to start looking at how we can replace the current activities API in OpenSocial with the Activity Streams format."

Facebook makes the stream available to third-party software through a URL. In order to access the feed, the program will need to be authenticated and will have to provide as parameters a session key and signature checksum. The following is the URL format:

http://www.facebook.com/activitystreams/feed.php?source_id=&app_id=&session_key=&sig=&v=0.7&read&updated_time=

The significance of each of those attributes is described in greater detail in the official documentation, but those values should all be relatively familiar to developers who have worked with the Facebook API.

Although the Atom-based feed will be very useful for developers who are building generalized stream clients, Facebook's native APIs are more practical for client applications that will integrate tightly with the service. In Gwibber, I chose to use the new activity stream REST API methods.
Implementing Facebook activity streams in Gwibber

I originally created Gwibber in 2007 with the goal of building a social networking application for the GNOME desktop environment. It brings together comprehensive support for several popular microblogging services in a single program with a unified message stream. It is written in the Python programming language and is distributed under the terms of the General Public License (GPL). The actual content stream is drawn with an embedded WebKit HTML renderer and the rest of the user interface is built the GTK+ toolkit.

Gwibber's current Facebook functionality is built on top of PyFacebook, a lightweight open source Python library that wraps the Facebook APIs. PyFacebook mitigates a lot of the pain of Facebook client development because it handles all of the authentication, session, and signature hash stuff. It hides those idiosyncrasies under a simple object-oriented interface that is easy for developers to use.

PyFacebook is also very easy to extend when new Facebook API methods are introduced. Each Facebook API method is described in the PyFacebook library using a simple data structure that specifies the method's name and parameter types. PyFacebook does not appear to have been updated to work with the new stream API methods yet, but it was trivially easy for me to do it myself. You can see my simple PyFacebook modifications here. Note that I did not add all of the new methods, just the ones that I'm using in Gwibber.

Each service that is supported in Gwibber is implemented in its own module which exposes its functionality through a set of methods and properties that is consistent across all of the service modules. This makes it possible to wrap the services with a generalized abstraction layer so that the rest of the client application doesn't have to understand the differences between the various services. This abstraction layer is what makes it possible for Gwibber to display a combined stream of the messages from all of the services. To implement support for the activity stream, I rewrote most of Gwibber's Facebook service module.
Obtaining stream data

To add the full Facebook stream to Gwibber, I had to process the stream and extract the values into standard Gwibber message classes. I started by adding support for reading the stream. With my modified version of PyFacebook, this is very easy. I call the stream.get method on a PyFacebook instance. When called, the stream.get method will return the contents of the stream in either XML or JSON, depending on what you have requested.

The only parameter that is required by stream.get (besides the session key and others that are handled automatically by PyFacebook) is the UID of your application's user. There are several optional parameters that you can provide to customize the output. For example, you can provide start_time and end_time parameters which will display stream content that was published between the specified times. This is sort of Facebook's equivalent of Twitter's since_id and max_id values.

There is also a limit parameter (similar to Twitter's count) which allows you to specify how many messages you would like to download. The default if no limit value is explicitly specified is 30 posts. The maximum number that can be retrieved at once isn't documented, so I did some experimentation to see if I could figure it out.

I tried pulling down 400 but only got 312, with the oldest messages dating back seven days. This leads me to believe that there is probably not a numerical maximum but that it will only give you access to a week of messages. Unlike Twitter, Facebook's stream API doesn't support the concept of paging, so you can't go back any further than that or iteratively download your entire history.

Week in Apple: WWDC sold out, iPhone/media pad rumors, Apple poaching from ATI

iPhone lites, media pads, and MacBook minis, oh my! The rumor mill is a-churning this week with buzz about a plethora of new products. Apple may also be in talks with Verizon, the company is recruiting talent from ATI, and it's still being sued out the wazoo. Read on for a summary of this week's drama:

Apple readying "media pad" and "iPhone lite" for launch soon? Following rumors that Apple is in talks to launch an iPhone with Verizon in 2010, it appears as if Apple is preparing to launch not one, but two new devices, one of which could be coming as early as this summer. The sources claim that one device is a smaller, cheaper iPhone, while the other is a "media pad" that could let users watch HD video, listen to music, and do other fun, touchscreeny things.

WWDC already sold out for second time in history: Apple's yearly Worldwide Developers Conference has already sold out for 2009. Those attending can check out the session list online, and everyone else will have to wait for the videos to pop up after WWDC is over.

Apple continues its mysterious chip plans with new hire: An updated Linkedin profile reveals that Apple has poached Bob Drebin, the former CTO of the graphics group at AMD/ATI. I think that Apple is getting ready to get its handheld game on.

Apple pulling in more graphics talent from ATI: Hot on the heels of news that Apple scored former ATI CTO Bob Drebin comes word that most recent CTO Raja Koduri may be joining his former colleague at Apple. What these two powerhouses will be up to is anyone's guess, but chances are it will be awesome.

MacBookMini reference found in stats for chat client Adium: The makers of the popular open-source, multi-service chat client Adium maintain a list of stats tracking computer types. In the last week, a computer identified as a "MacBookMini" was recorded using the software, but this may be different than the "media pad" rumor floating around.

Apple sued over legal threats to wiki operator: It's possible to use Apple's iPods and iPhone with third-party software, and BluWiki's users wanted to make sure the world could find out how. Apple, however, was not fond of the situation and threatened BluWiki with legal action if the information was not removed. Now, BluWiki's operators are suing Apple in hopes of protecting the free speech of their users and getting a declaratory judgment that posting information does not violate the DMCA.

Leopard nearing update as Snow Leopard work progresses: The Mac OS X engineering team must be working 90 hours a week and loving it, as the pace of beta seeds for both 10.5.7 and 10.6 is picking up.

Apple to make QuickTime even more consumer-friendly in 10.6: The latest beta of Mac OS X Snow Leopard includes a new YouTube sharing feature as well as screen recording capabilities in QuickTime X Player. These features could add just enough to make people want to use QuickTime again.

Details about iPhone OS 3.0 beta 4 and prerelease iTunes 8.2: The latest beta of iPhone OS 3.0 and its accompanying SDK is out with few changes, but a new, pre-release version of iTunes 8.2 has a few juicy tidbits inside.

Apple found guilty of willful patent infringement: Apple has been found guilty of willfully infringing on a "predictive snooping" patent awarded to Opti Inc. in 2002. The company has been ordered to pay just over $19 million in compensation, despite its attempts to have the patent thrown out.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Rumor: Apple to drop prices on iMac and MacBook lines

Apple is reportedly on a course to offer more affordable Macs during this period of slowed consumer spending. Sources speaking to AppleInsider claim that the company is "tailoring changes" to two of its current offerings that will help drive down prices, but that the company isn't yet planning to launch a netbook (in the traditional sense of the word, anyway).

Cheaper versions of both the iMac and the MacBook are supposedly in the works, "according to people who've proven extremely reliable in predicting Apple's future business directions." (Oh, I see.) The first batch of cheaper Macs is speculated as arriving as early as this spring, though spring is nearly over. There are very few additional details available and there's no information on expected pricing.

If this is true, it will certainly be welcome to potential buyers of the iMac and MacBook. The two machines have proven to be wildly popular among customers, and although they are already quite affordable (compared to other Macs), another hundred or two off couldn't hurt. And, with plateauing Mac sales in the current economic climate, Apple could afford to do anything it can to help boost numbers a bit.