File syncing supremo Dropbox has given its mobile web app a lick of paint, thanks to a little help from one of the team's interns. The new web interface has more than a little bit of iOS about it, and it obviously works fine with all mobile platforms, such as, Android and Windows Phone 7.
The first update to the web app in around three years has some new features added to the mix, bringing search functionality and sharing options that don't currently exist in the App Store app...
Oh Google, you so crazy! After leaving us iPhone users out in the cold while our Android-toting brethren run around streaming their music from this thing they like to call 'the cloud' (it's a bit like iCloud, I'm told!) you finally decide to bring the Google Music circus to iOS.
In typical Google fashion, things have been implemented a little differently than how we expected. Google Music for iOS isn't a native app, but rather a web app. And it's pretty darn good one...
Have you tried Apple's official Apple Store app? It's been available for free in the App Store for months, and it's a great tool for browsing Apple's online store and scheduling appointments at your local Apple retail store.
Apparently, Apple is planning to launch a mobile web app for its online store experience. This web app would presumably be based on HTML5, and it's expected to roll out for users next year.
Here's one giant kick in the teeth for Apple and its App Store policies.
Amazon has today launched its new Amazon Kindle Cloud Reader web app, which offers the full Kindle library as an HTML web page, offering the ability to read, and, more importantly, buy books from your browser. That's more important because it means Amazon no longer has to abide by Apple's laws for the selling of content inside an iOS app.
It also means Apple loses out on 30% of the revenue...
Walmart's video streaming service Vudu's got a new app. But don't look for it in the App Store because you won't find it there. Instead, Vudu is a web app that can be accessed directly from your browser.
Being unwilling to play Apple's revenue sharing game, Vudu decided that going the browser way was going to be a better move, allowing them to save that 30% Apple collects from everything sold in the App Store...
Google's Chrome web-based app store received a new entry this week, and believe it or not, it does have a link to the world of iOS.
The newly released appMobi is a web app designed to help developers to code HTML 5 web apps, but it also packs a sucker punch that we didn't see coming. If after writing your HTML 5 app, you decide you'd like to submit it as a native iOS app to Apple's App Store, then appMobi will let you do that, too...
Today, Google updated its mobile web app to fully support Apple's Retina Display, bringing a crisper experience to those of us who use the web app in order to get full support for certain Gmail features, like labels.
The update, which is live for everyone right now, also adds an iOS feature that now seems to be synonymous with the platform: pull to refresh...
Folks who prefer browsing Twitter.com with the iPad instead of using a native Twitter client will be happy to hear that the social networking giant is updating the site to be more compatible with Apple's tablet.
Up until now, navigating Twitter's website from the iPad was unpleasant. You had the choice to view the site in desktop mode, or an upscaled mobile view — neither one is very tablet-friendly. But that's all going to change during the next 7 days...
Apple's new iCloud service has taken another step towards its publish launch, with the combination of a new iCloud website and beta versions of the iOS iWork apps meaning cross-device syncing is almost here.
The new iCloud.com website offers users the chance to download saved documents for offline use, such as printing. And it also gives them the chance to upload your own iWork-compatible content, and then iCloud can push it out to iDevices using the same account.
Oh, and those iDevices? Syncing works from them too...
For those still unfamiliar with TweakWeek, it's an ongoing contest for jailbreak developers to essentially build 7 tweaks in 7 days. Criteria for the competition is that each utility must be free, and produced in 24 hours.
This week's featured TweakWeek developer is Chpwn, the creator of popular jailbreak apps like VoiceActivator and AppSlide. His first entry is a simple utility that allows you to set web clips (and apps) to launch full screen...
Web app performance in iOS 4 has been disappointing. It's been speculated that Apple has been intentionally handicapping web app performance in iOS 4. When websites are launched from the iPhone's homescreen, loading times become much longer than when a site is opened straight from the Mobile Safari app.
In iOS 5, it's been discovered that fullscreen web apps from the homescreen can access the Nitro Javascript engine that sped up Mobile Safari in iOS 4.3. These "dynamic-codesigning" privileges allow for a much faster web app experience in iOS 5.
I have such a conflicting relationship with Google. On one hand, I despise the search giant for being what I believe to be the most evil company in Silicon Valley. On the other hand, I love their idea that the web should be accessable via the browser, not through an application like Apple believes.
This being said, Google updated the way their mobile website looks on iOS devices. If you go to m.google.com from your iPhone, you will now be presented with a landing page similar to the one above. You can obviously search like you normally do, but you can also easily search for restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and more near places you. I gave it a quick try and I have to admit that it is absolutely brilliant...