Yes, the app is simple enough that users can edit photos quickly. The app has replaced my other photo editing apps – but I’m still using ToyCamera for most of my photo purposes.

What I like:

Simple, but effective photo editing options.

I love, love, love the ability to tint my photos – a very cool way to take a simple photo and really make it pop as though it was taken with a color flash.

What I don’t like:

Overall – I really don’t like that Photoshop for iPhone tries to be an all-in-one. Why should Photoshop try to be what it is not? Photoshop for the desktop is used for editing images. The app tries to also be a place for taking photos (but offers nothing beyond the normal camera) and for sharing photos (why go up against all the other sharing apps).

And, just a simple thing, but why does Adobe offer a different icon for the mobile Photoshop – I miss the opportunity to have a beautiful, aqua-styled icon like the feather icon used for desktop app.

In conclusion:

Adobe’s app should be an extension of itself. Why go up against photo-taking apps? Why go up against photo sharing apps? That’s more to worry about. Adobe should focus on what it does best – elegant and complex, yet simple to use image editing.

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1. Mobile apps for journalists: Share and discover

And that’s just one bit of interesting stuff I discovered in this recent Pew report “Social Isolation and New Technology.”

Here’s an excerpt on mobile versus traditional communication:

• Traditional media: The average person sees each member of their core network 210 days of the year, talks to them using a landline telephone on 125 days, and sends each core network member an average of 8 letters or cards.
• ICTs: If they have a mobile phone, the average person talks to each core network member by mobile phone on 195 days. Email users send messages to each core tie on 72 days of the year. If a person uses text messaging (SMS), on average they send text messages to each core network member on 125 days. Those who use instant messaging contact core ties by IM on 55 days of the year. Of those who use social networking services (SNS), SNS are used to message each core tie an average of 39 days each year.

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1. Facebook stealing address books from Apple, Palm, Android, Windows

While companies like Apple have not included social links into address books – Facebook (in its v3.0 app for iPhone) makes it quite easy to call your fellow friends, follow their tweets and see other social activities (which will only develop further given Facebook’s recent acquisition of Friendfeed).

iTunes 9 arrived this week and did not offer as many social features as people were guessing would arrive. While Apple’s address book remains social-less, Palm Pre has a pretty social rolodex.

And, here’s some recent research about social + address books + cell phones:

• Thomas Hussen, a researcher at Forrester, writes more questions than information as he discusses social address books and the connection of those friend lists to mobile phones.

He writes, “It is not clear yet who is best positioned to tap into consumers’ social address books but it is quite clear mobile phones offer a great potential as they are not only communication devices but increasingly consumption and creation tools.”

• Now we have VisionMobile contributor Florent Stroppa also tackling mobile social books.

His premise: “For years, mobile network operators have invested billions of dollars in networks, subsidized phones and targeted marketing campaigns. Yet they have neglected one of the most used applications on the mobile phone: the address book.”

• And, in related social address book news here’s a Wall St. Journal article about Yahoo! adding social features to its e-mail.
• Don’t forget, Google Wave (an attempt at creating a new mode of social connecting and messaging) comes out later this month.

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Why build an app built on news information?

Fluent Mobile has developed proprietary algorithms for organizing, aggregating, and delivering dynamic mobile content.  We chose to initially apply our technology to the news space for several reasons, but one of the key factors is the high volume of users that are already reading news over mobile devices.  A recent Comscore survey found that more than 22 million people in the U.S. access news each day using a mobile device. The same survey found that more than 60 million people in the U.S. access news over mobile on a monthly basis.  Furthermore, the penetration of news over mobile is even larger on “higher-end” mobile devices. Another survey found that nearly 85% of iPhone users read news on their phone.  Fluent Mobile believes that the number of mobile news readers is very likely to significantly increase as well.

How do you feel this app fits in with the future of media?

The numbers above actually speak to an important and exciting shift in how people get their news. We are in the middle of the transition from paper to desktop to mobile.  The transition from paper to desktop has already happened, and we are in the middle of the second step right now.  Fluent News is helping to define that transition. Specifically, Fluent News is the first and only iPhone application to aggregate exclusively made-for-mobile content from the most trusted news sources across the Web into a single, easy-to-read and up-to-the-minute mobile newspaper.

What do you think about the future of newspapers? Of media organizations? Of media?

It is both an exciting and scary time for the newspapers and media organizations.  People are increasingly expecting ubiquitous access to all information, and the dynamic nature of news creates significant such demand in the news industry specifically.  However, this does not mean that people do not care about the quality of the content that they read.  There will always be a place for high quality, professionally sourced and verified content.  As long as media organizations can keep pace with the changes in how news is  delivered, there will be a central role for them.   We think of Fluent Mobile as a partner to the media organizations as they navigate this challenge in response to people’s changing demands and needs for a better mobile experience.

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Here’s Apple’s description of the camera: “iPhone 3G S features a new 3 megapixel autofocus camera that takes amazing pictures and video, making it easier than ever to capture, edit and share those moments instantly with family and friends. The new autofocus camera adjusts focus, exposure, color and contrast for the best possible image and includes an automatic macro focus for extra close up shots. With the new “tap to focus” feature, you simply touch the display to select an object or area of interest and the camera automatically re-adjusts focus and exposure. You can record incredible high-quality video clips and edit them right on your iPhone 3G S by simply trimming the start and stop points. With iPhone 3G S you can send photos and video by email or MMS and post them to MobileMe or YouTube with just one tap.”

During the announcements, Apple said that the iPhone responsible for 3.5 times more picture uploads to flickr.com. Not much of a surprise to some people, the added camera functionality will really make me happy – as I’ve been using the iPhone as my only camera for a photo-a-day project on flickr this year.

I’m betting that the iPhone’s video camera functionality will mean a dark day for the low-cost cameras by Flip (and other brands). iPhone videos will probably lack the quality available with, say, the Flip HD. But, why carry around my Flip Ultra any more once I get the new iPhone? What do you think?

(Photo: I took this photo Feb. 21 of a tree in my backyard using the Toy Camera app on my iPhone.)

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1. Photoshop for iPhone should focus on what it does best – image editing

“Similar to the initial iPhone and Android launches, the software cupboard is bare, with only a dozen apps or so. Smartphones without apps are just expensive feature phones these days, so Palm needs to get the Mojo SDK out the door.”

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2. Apps for iPhone newbies – apps for your first day

Also, nearly half (48 percent) of phone owners report shopping for apps more than once a week. About the same number (49 percent) report using apps on their phone for more than 30 minutes a day.

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Sync & back-up: Make sure to sync your iPhone before updating the software. This way, if there are any problems during the update your computer will have a recent back-up of your iPhone (photos, recent calls and voicemails, text messages, game scores, settings, etc.). Remember that to back-up your photos, you’ll need to open iPhoto while syncing your iPhone and then choose (once it opens) for the program to copy all of your iPhone photos. Here’s Apple’s guide for backing up, restoring and updating your iPhone. (Note, yes iTunes does a an update of your iPhone while installing the new OS — but one time that update did not save properly and I was forced to reinstall from a much earlier backup — not fun at all. Better to be safe than sorry, IMHO.)

Update apps: Make sure before updating to install any updates for your apps. Apple announced a few weeks ago that all apps must be compatible with the new operating system. Be sure to update so all your apps will work with the new system.

Update iTunes: iTunes version 8.2 (that includes OS 3.0 support) came out a week ago. Make sure to update to the latest version of iTunes so you can take full advantage of OS 3.0 straight away. There will likely be high demand for downloading from Apple when OS 3.0 is available, so updating iTunes before that day will mean you can get right down to updating your iPhone.

Save space: This is more of a just-in-case, rather than a have-to. Still, I’d suggest that, if possible, iPhone owners free up about 1.5 gigs of space on the phone just to make sure there is free space for updating the operating system. This will also help as there will likely be new cool apps you’ll want to download that take advantage of OS 3.0.

Save money: The new operating system is sure to be followed by plenty of cool new apps. Sure some will be free, but those apps truly taking advantage of OS 3.0 will mean more development time and, therefore, paid apps. Keep those iTunes gift cards at-the-ready for OS 3.0 day.

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Worldwide Opera is No. 1 with iPhone behind. In the United States and United Kingdom iPhone is No. 1 with iPod Touch second. China has Nokia No. 1 (way ahead of the others) followed by Opera, Sony and iPhone. And, to throw in a really strange stat, in South Korea — 91 percent of mobile web browser use went through iPod Touch, with all the others muddled together in the single digit percentage range.

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The report says, via an AT&T executive, that 50 percent of data traffic on AT&T is used by iPhones. Only a few million of AT&T’s 78 million subscribers are using iPhones.

“Carriers everywhere are increasing the bandwidth on their backhaul networks to handle this exploding IP data traffic,” said Michael Howard, Principal Analyst.

The report expects the number of mobile broadband phone subscribers to increase to 1 billion by 2010.

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1. Mobile users talk, share more often than other people