The Download Blog

Zoho made some significant changes to a core part of its cloud-based application suite Friday: its online mail application now works offline and with Apple's iPhone, and the beta test is now publicly available.

The offline and mobile features are major areas of development for Web-based applications, and cloud computing advocates including Zoho, Yahoo, and Google are racing to build in those features. Offline access helps ameliorate Web-based applications' limitations when no network is available, and mobile access helps fulfill one of the big promised advantages of Web applications: access your documents any time you do have network access. … Read more

Last.fm is a top-notch music player plug-in for music discovery, sharing, and tracking. Compatible with iTunes, MediaMonkey, Winamp, and many other players, and available for Windows, Mac, and the iPhone, it "scrobbles" your music when you play it, keeping track of what you're listening to. Once you've created an account, you can set your musical likes, favorite bands, and tag tracks as it plays them back to you. The tagging option is customizable, so you can create your own tags on the fly or use the same ones that other users have chosen. When you … Read more

If you're too impatient to wait for Google to release its own iPhone app or Safari-optimized version of Google Analytics you might want to check out myAnalytics. This $1.99 iPhone application (app store link) lets you see a general overview of how your sites are doing, and stores the data locally on your device so you can access it when you're away from a data connection. Considering Google's most recent release of Analytics requires Adobe Flash, this is the easiest way to get it short of getting your hands on a real computer.

While convenient, it … Read more

A 12-year-old who uses his iPhone mostly for texting with his girlfriend has discovered what looks like a new vulnerability with the device.

The unnamed boy, son of blogger Karl Kraft, turns on the passcode lock and disables SMS Preview in order to prevent his parents from seeing any messages, Kraft wrote on his blog.

Those settings block the display of incoming text messages and show an alert saying "New Text Message" if an SMS comes through while the phone is locked. However, if the phone is set to emergency call mode the incoming text messages are previewed.… Read more

Excuse Me Services (creators of Dial Directions) has finally made available its Say Where iPhone application which lets users search several popular Web services using just their voice. The tool was originally shown off at DemoFall back in early September, and it's taken this long to go through Apple's certification process.

Its big feature is that you can search Google Maps, Yellowpages.com, Yelp, and Traffic.com without having to use the iPhone's often times challenging on-screen keyboard. You simply talk into the microphone and it converts your speech into a search query. There's location awareness, … Read more

It appears that sometimes wishes really do come true. Last week I talked about iGolf, hoping that Version 2.0 would include some sort of course to play through. Apparently this was already in the works. With Version 2.0 you can now play through three holes in addition to hitting for distance at the driving range. It still needs some work (putting requires you to perform a full swing making it less-than-ideal), but adding the three playable holes is a nice touch. I should point out that if you don't have a good grip while playing you may … Read more

If you're driving to a meeting and realize you're going to be late, what do you do? Pick up the phone and call ahead, right? But this means, possibly, trying to find the number for the person you're meeting with, which can be dangerous if you're in motion. And possibly illegal.

Mobile app Oops I'm Late does the calling for you. It runs on GPS-equipped Windows smartphones. If you start the app and give it access to your calendar so it knows where and when your next appointment is, it will automatically fire off text … Read more

Here's a thought: instead of wading through dozens of ringtone-making apps to find one suited to your iPhone, why not try--what else?--iTunes for Windows and Mac?

In this Insider Secrets video, CNET Editor Brian Tong gives you the lowdown on producing ringtones for your Apple phone using nothing but Apple's own free music library and player.

TwitterBerry, a popular third-party Twitter application for BlackBerry, has just received an infusion of small, but significant changes that make the application much smoother to work with.

With version 0.7 Beta 4, you can set your friends' timeline to auto-update, a big time saver. You'll also no longer have to leave a timeline to reload it; this new beta lets you refresh the page from the BlackBerry context menu.

TwitterBerry has also grown deeper, now caching up to 200 tweets across the friends timeline, replies timeline, and direct messages. Improvements on the back end give TwitterBerry a boost … Read more