Google will today be launching a brand new tool called App Inventor that will enable just about anybody to create apps for Android phones.

App Inventor enables you to create games, draw funny pictures and even make use of the phone’s sensors to move a ball through a maze based on tilting the phone.

The nice thing about App Inventor is you need no coding skills whatsoever, the way App Inventor works is by providing you with a visual interface to design the look of the application and then by adding blocks you can control different behaviors of the components.

This is a smart move by Google to help expand their fast growing Android Market, previously there were kind of similar ways of doing it but nothing that came close to offering app creating with this ease and that was free.

So what is you thoughts on Google App Inventor? Will Android now become the mobile OS of choice when choosing to develop an application?

Imagine this was available before the Word Cup, then anybody could have made a few bucks with a simple Vuvuzela application.

Vodacom is giving all you die hard Apple iPhone fans the chance to be one of the first South Africans to own an Apple iPhone 4.

The new iPhone 4 is the latest smartphone from Apple which sports rear and front facing cameras, runs the new iOS 4 operating system and has the all new Retina Display which ensures for a resolution of 960×640 with 326 pixels per inch.

Despite the fact the new iPhone 4 has a design flaw resulting in it loosing signal when holding it “incorrectly”, many die hard Apple fans still want one.

South Africans can currently import the iPhone 4 from overseas but that will result in its warranty not being valid in South Africa and if something should go wrong with your iPhone 4 you will need to ship it back overseas to get it fixed.

Good news for local Apple iPhone fans is that Vodacom has now opened up pre-orders of the iPhone 4. If you would like to be one of the first people to get your hands on an iPhone 4 that came through the correct channels, you can now pre-order your iPhone 4 here.

You don’t need to be a Vodacom subscriber to make a pre-order. According to Vodacom CEO Pieter Uys, the Apple iPhone 4 is expected in South Africa somewhere near the end of September. MTN subscribers can also look forward to the iPhone 4 from this year.

A new website has silently launched the past week which allows its users to send free SMS messages.

The new site called FSMS allows its users to send free unlimited SMS messages through its web interface and recipients can even reply to the SMS messages and you will receive it in your inbox on the FSMS website.

“There are absolutely no restrictions on the service at the moment, provided you do not abuse it by spamming others or performing otherwise illegal or unethical tasks” said Daniel Schwartzkopff, CEO of LaunchPresence.com

Currently FSMS is not making any money from the service but there are plans to add a small text advertisement at the end of each free SMS sent or inbox SMS received from the service. The free SMS service is currently advertisement free until they reach a 25000 user mark, from there advertisements will be based on user demographic.

FSMS will allow you to send free unlimited SMS messages to any of the South African networks namely MTN, Vodacom, Cell C and Virgin Mobile.

What are you waiting for, register now and start sending free SMS messages to your friends anywhere in South Africa.

Smartphones are currently taking the world by storm and is becoming the norm when it comes to choosing a phone. The only problem is that these phones are relatively expensive, but Vodacom is set to change that soon with the release of the Vodafone 546 smartphone.

Vodacom will be launching the cheapest smartphone available in South Africa soon with a price tag of a mere R400, but don’t expect too much for that price.

The Vodafone 546 features a TFT display with 256K colours running at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. It also has a 2MP camera, FM radio, full QWERTY keyboard and SD card support. Data capabilities include GPRS, EDGE and Bluetooth 2.1 support.

So these features may not look very attractive to you if you are used to a iPhone, Blackberry or Android phone, but for those looking for a cheap phone that can do allot for a next to nothing price, this will be their first choice.

At only R400 this is surely the cheapest smartphone available on the market, not the most attractive, and there are talks about a touch screen version to be launched as well for between R500 and R600.

Leaf is also set to introduce a lower end smartphone to the market by the end of June 2010 called the HTC Wildfire, whether is will be as cheap as the Vodafone 546 I doubt, but it does pack allot more.

Last night twitter was a buzz with Apple news, and one thing every Apple fanatic was waiting for was the announcement of Apple’s latest iPhone, the iPhone 4.

Steve Jobs started his keynote with “Here is something you already seen”, referring to the iPhone 4 that was lost.

When it comes to looks , Apple has again done a great job with the iPhone 4. Super slim and super sexy, in fact the iPhone 4 is the slimmest smartphone available on the market coming in at a mere 9.3mm thickness.

Another feature about the iPhone 4 that stood out to me was the Retina display, what this basically does is make the pixel density more allowing for a larger 960 x 640 resolution with crisper and clearer picture.

So its no secret that I am not a big Apple fan, and apart from the long battery life and the Retina display, the iPhone 4 is still just another smartphone.

The 5 Mega-pixel camera with LED flash, is something that is stock standard on most smartphones now a days, even the HTC Wildfire, a lower end smartphone comes with this. Also 720p HD video recording is also the norm on the latest smartphones, what makes the iPhone different here is that Apple developed an app where you can edit your videos on the go, unfortunately this comes at a price as everything with an i attached to it.

Thinking of importing this baby to South Africa? Maybe you should think again, to make space for the large battery in the  small iPhone 4, Apple had to use a micro sim slot. I am not 100% sure what the status are for microsims on South African networks, so maybe you should double check before importing a iPhone 4, on the other hand you can always trim your normal sim to make it fit.

Apart from the few features I pointed out the iPhone 4 is pretty stock standard when you compare it to say the HTC Desire. One think that really annoyed me about Apple and the iPhone 4 is the fact that they trying to introduce video calling on the iPhone 4 as a new technology called FaceTime. Come on Apple my Nokia of 5 years back could have done video calling, and better than the iPhone as FaceTime will currently only work over WiFi.

All in all the new iPhone 4 is really a beautiful device, something Apple gets right every time, but when it comes to features I am not yet convinced to make a switch.

If you are however a die hard Apple fan, the iPhone 4 is expected to ship 24 June.

Mobile and apps are today what the dot-com bubble was back in the late 90′s, and it comes to no surprise that Google knows this and that’s why they are now introducing apps in its search results.

Normally when you are looking for a certain app to do something you would like, you set out to Google it and then read up on it. Great news is that Google now makes it even easier to get your hands on the actual app.

From now on if you visit Google.com from you Android powered device or iPhone and search for an app, Google will now provide you with special links and content at the top of the search results. These links will enable you to go directly to the Android Market or iPhone App Store to download the app.

Some of the application’s basic details will also be listed on the results page like its rating, price and who published it.

Unfortunately us in South Africa will have to wait a bit longer for this feature as it is currently only available for US users, I believe it’s got something to do with the fact that we can’t get paid apps in the Android Market, not sure about IPhone App Store. Hopefully we will see this soon as I see this as a real handy feature.

The HTC Wildfire is HTC’s latest Android phone to hit the South African market. What will make the HTC Wildfire a success? The fact that it is a slimmed down version of the HTC’s high-end Desire smartphone.

Leaf confirmed that HTC Wildfire will be available in South Africa, and that we can expect it at the end of June 2010.

Although HTC introduced it to the market with the latest version of Android Froyo, the HTC Wildfire will instead ship with Android 2.1, same as the HTC Desire is running.

Some things users can expect from the HTC Wildfire include:

-          Android 2.1 Éclair
-          HTC Sense (UI)- 7 Screens and true customization
-          Friendstream- ( aggregates all you Facebook, Twitter and Flickr feeds on one screen )
-          Application Sharing
-          Supports MS Exchange
-          Google maps- with street view.
-          Android Market- 1000’s of applications to download.
-          5MP camera with Flash – photo face tagging & upload
-          528Mhz processor.
-          TFT LCD capacitive touch screen

The HTC Wildfire is aimed at the youth market and are expected to retail for allot less than its bigger brother the HTC Desire. South African can expect the HTC Wildfire end of June 2010.

Just yesterday I told you about Facebook’s new mobile site, Facebook Zero, that allows users to browse Facebook from their mobile phone without being charge for the data they use.

In my post I speculated that MTN may be the first operator to offer this service in South Africa and guess what? This morning upon logging in to my Facebook account I noticed an announcement on the right hand side of the page.

The announcement, captured in the screenshot, clearly states that you can go to http://0.facebook.com to use Facebook Mobile without being charged for the data. It also states that it is currently only available on MTN.

As I am on MTN I quickly added my cellphone number and clicked the button to send the link to my phone. It arrived but upon opening up the link I was greeted with a 500 internal server error. Yesterday when I tried it I was redirected to a page telling me Facebook Zero is not supported by my operator.

Clearly something has changed overnight and it is looking positive for South African MTN users, maybe they just need to iron out a few bugs before MTN users can browse Facebook through Facebook Zero without being charged for it.

Are you on MTN? Give it a try and tell us if it is working for you.

In a continent like Africa most of the people use their mobile phones to access the internet, but one problem most of us face is the expensive data charges that goes along with that.

Enter Facebook Zero, Facebook Zero is a new mobile site like m.facebook.com with all the same key features but more optimised for speed.

What makes Facebook Zero so special? The fact that it is free, that’s correct no data charges if you browse Facebook Zero. Initially it will only be available through 50 mobile operators in 45 countries, currently South Africa is not on that list. Good news however is that MTN will most likely be the first to offer it in South Africa due to them already offering it in other countries like Rwanda, Uganda and Sudan.

Two of the fastest growing areas of technology include Mobile and Social Networking, and Facebook with its already large mobile subscriber base is filling this gap even further by speeding up its service and offering it for free to its customers.

Collaborating with operators from around the world, Facebook developed the new Facebook Zero mobile site with two main attributes:

• It’s fast: 0.facebook.com includes all the key features of Facebook’s standard mobile site m.facebook.com. Users can update their status, view their News Feed, like or comment on posts, send and reply to messages, or write on their friends’ Wall just as they do on Facebook.com. Rather than making photos viewable on 0.facebook.com, they have put the photos one click away so they don’t slow down the experience. You can still view any photos on Facebook if you want but your regular data fees will apply.

• It’s free: Thanks to the help of mobile operators Facebook collaborated with, people can access 0.facebook.com without any data charges. Using 0.facebook.com is completely free. People will only pay for data charges when they view photos or when they leave 0.facebook.com to browse other mobile sites. When they click to view a photo or browse another mobile site a notification page will appear to confirm that they will be charged if they want to leave 0.facebook.com

Facebook Zero will initially only be available on the networks in the countries listed below, but there are plans to expand the service to other countries and network operators soon. Vodafone is also in the pipeline so there may also be hope for local Vodacom users.

Has HTC just launched the phone that could make it the leader in the Apple vs Google battle for smartphone domination? I may just think so with HTC’s latest smartphone to hit the market called the HTC Wildfire.

The release of the HTC Wildfire due in July 2010 comes on the heels of the new iPhone rumored to be launched around the same time. The new iPhone however is aimed at the high-end of the smartphone market, and this is where HTC saw the gap.

Android has been making great headway with the release of HTC’s latest smartphone, the HTC Desire, some saying that its better than Google’s own Nexus One. But again this smartphone is aimed at the high-end of the smartphone market.

This is where HTC has now introduced the HTC Wildfire, a almost clone of the HTC Desire but at way less a price. The HTC Wildfire is set to bring smartphones to the masses at a cheaper cost almost like they did with the HTC Tatoo, but the HTC Wildfire should not disappoint.

The HTC Wildfire comes with a 3.2″ touch screen just a tad bit smaller than the HTC Desire’s 3.7″, but maintaining the same 5-megapixel camera that the Desire has. The HTC Wildfire will also ship with a slower CPU than that of the Desire but great news is that it will come with Google’s latest Android Operating system, Android 2.2 also known as Froyo. The new Android Froyo is said to be four times faster than previous versions of the Android OS.

HTC’s main goal with the Wildfire is to bring smartphones to the masses at a cheaper cost, and also giving them tight social networking integration. “HTC Wildfire makes the HTC Sense experience available to young mobile users for the first time. It brings all your communications into one place, whether it’s through Facebook, Twitter, text messages, images or email, ensuring that you are never far away from the conversation and always close to your friends.” said Florian Seiche, Vice President, HTC EMEA.

Something new that the HTC Wildfire will add to Android is the ability for users to recommend applications through social networks, email or text messages through the new app sharing widget.

The HTC Wildfire will be available to the European market by July 2010, whether we will see it in South Africa, I have my hopes seeing as we got the HTC Desire almost immediately after it launched abroad.