PATERSON, N.J. – The most ancient traditions of Islam are going high-tech, with a slew of modern offerings for those observing the holy month of Ramadan, which begins this week.

Cell phone applications such as "iPray" or "iQuran" offer a beeping reminder of requisite prayer times, while the "Find Mecca" and "mosque finder" programs help the Muslim traveler in an unfamiliar city find the nearest place to pray.

"When I saw these applications for the first time, I thought: this is amazing," said James Otun, who has several Islamic applications on his Apple iPhone and iPad. "Whoever came up with this idea: God bless him or her."

The applications aren’t just for Ramadan; there are Islamic-themed programs that help users find the nearest Costco offering foods prepared according to Islamic dietary rules, learn the correct Arabic pronunciations in a daily prayer, or count how many pages of the Quran they’ve read that day — all on a mobile phone.

There also are applications, or apps, for the holy books of several other religions, from the Catholic Holy Bible to the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu scripture.

The first time Sumeyye Kalyoncu heard the Adhan — or call to prayer — through surround-sound speakers on her iPhone dock, she was overcome with nostalgia for her native Turkey. Such applications are especially popular in the U.S., Kalyoncu said, as U.S. mosques do not broadcast daily calls to prayer from external loudspeakers, as they do in Muslim countries.

"These are traditions and these have been in our lives for ages, like almost 15 centuries, so they seem very old," Kalyoncu said. "I think this is like combining together the technology and the things that we do daily."

Kalyoncu uses an iPhone app called iPray Lite, keeping track of requisite daily prayers with a program that simulates the clicking sound of prayer beads or the turning wheel of a handheld metal counter Muslims use to keep count of prayer repetitions. Using headphones, the 24-year-old says she can now fulfill her daily spiritual obligations by counting prayers on her iPhone on the commuter bus to Manhattan from her Edgewater home.

Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said the company doesn’t track the more than 225,000 apps for its phones by category so she doesn’t know how many are Islamic-themed. The programs aren’t just offered by Apple; Nokia has a Ramadan suite for its cell phones that consolidates everything worshippers need to know to observe Islam’s holiest month, in which Muslims worldwide observe daily daylight fasting.

Some apps are free. Those that are not generally range from about 99 cents to $2.99, although some are more expensive.

The dates of Ramadan still are determined by the lunar calendar, and calculations can differ among Islamic communities around the world. In North America, many Muslims will mark the first day of Ramadan on Wednesday.

But Islam never has been at odds with innovation, said Zinnur Tabakci, who runs an Islamic religious book and gift shop in Paterson, N.J..

"Islam is not against technology. Now you can do it easier, faster," said Tabakci, who recently supplemented the strings of traditional prayer beads and religious texts he sells with a wall of mobile phone accessories to keep up with demand.

"Islam started 1,400 years ago, and at that time, they didn’t have that much technology, but they knew everything," he added.

The mosque Tabakci attends in Paterson, called Ulu Cami, or "Great Mosque," has gone high-tech, too. After 16 cameras were installed for security purposes, one innovative mosque attendee began using them to broadcast services live over the Internet so those too old, sick or otherwise unable to attend could watch daily prayers online from home. Mosque leaders say the live broadcasts have become especially popular among relatives of immigrants who like to tune in from overseas to hear the same prayers as their loved ones in New Jersey.

Otun, a technology aficionado, says the apps he uses on his iPhone and iPad make him a more observant Muslim. From the beeping reminder to stop and pray during his busy schedule running a limo service, to an app that tells him which nearby restaurants serve food prepared within Islamic guidelines, Otun says there’s no longer an excuse to live an unobservant life.

"If you forgot to pray, you might not be responsible, because you’re human; you forget and you can make it up later," said Otun, 35. "But not now that you have those apps, that might change things in God’s level."

Otun’s favorite application, called Find Mecca, is a compass-like program with an electronic indicator that changes from red to green when you’ve reached the requisite prayer angle of 58-degrees, Northeast, to ensure you’re facing Mecca from any location — a requirement of all Muslims when praying.

Otun said he was amazed to see an image of Mecca on his cell phone screen for the first time, and to realize he could carry a library of religious texts with him everywhere.

"iPhone makes you emotional," he said. "I can’t carry 10,000 pages of books, now, you have it in your phone — it’s priceless."

NEW YORK – BlackBerrys still fly off the shelves. They still convey the message that their owners mean business — that they’re people who are important enough to need e-mail access all the time.

But BlackBerrys are now being challenged by phones that say you can have your e-mail, and have fun, too.

Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry, revealed a new phone Tuesday that says the company is still in the game, but it’s doing so by catching up to the competition rather than by breaking new ground.

The Torch will be RIM’s first device with both a touch screen and the BlackBerry’s signature full-alphabet keypad. It hits AT&T stores on Aug. 12 for $199 with a two-year contract.

Meanwhile, RIM is scrambling to deal with suspicion from foreign governments threatened by the very thing that’s made the phones such a success in the corporate market — the assurance that a user’s e-mail is private.

The United Arab Emirates announced over the weekend that it would block BlackBerry e-mail, messaging and Web browsing services starting in October because authorities don’t have enough access to communications from the devices. India is also pressuring the company for more access, but isn’t explicitly threatening a shutdown.

The conflicts pit national security against corporate security, and BlackBerry is caught in the middle. The company is closemouthed about the issue, hoping that quiet negotiations will resolve it, as it has in the past. At the same time, it is reassuring corporate customers that their e-mails are safe from snooping foreign governments.

RIM, which is based in Waterloo, Ontario, sold its 100 millionth BlackBerry this year. It’s still the most popular smart phone in the U.S., ahead of the iPhone. It’s been holding its own against Apple Inc.’s phone, but in the last year, a new challenger has zoomed out of nowhere to put a dent in its market share: Google Inc.’s Android software, used by several phone manufacturers, including HTC Corp. and Motorola Inc.

Research firm Canalys estimates that Android had 34 percent of the U.S. smart phone market in the second quarter, compared with 32 percent for the BlackBerry and 22 percent for the iPhone, which is hamstrung by its exclusive relationship with AT&T Inc. Android and BlackBerry phones are sold by many carriers.

RIM has had success expanding the appeal of the BlackBerry beyond the corporate world to consumers. The question is now whether it can hold on to its core constituents in corporate information-technology departments.

IT people like BlackBerrys because they’re relatively secure and easy to manage. But that also means they’re locked down in ways that frustrate their users, who may not be able to install the third-party applications they want.

Corporate IT departments are now increasingly being swayed by demand for phones that are popular among consumers.

RIM shares have fallen more than 25 percent since April because of fears that the iPhone would take over in the corporate world. Shares fell $1.45, or 2.5 percent, to close Tuesday at $55.53.

The iPhone and Android phones are defined by their touch screens, and that’s an area where BlackBerry has stumbled. It introduced its first touch-screen phone in 2008, more than a year after the iPhone, and took a gamble that it could take the technology further. It gave the BlackBerry Storm a feature the iPhone didn’t have: springs under the screens. The user could push in the whole screen to distinguish a hard press from a light touch.

"The Storm was an exercise in differentiation, but unfortunately, it introduced more challenges than it addressed," said NPD analyst Ross Rubin.

The phone was thick and heavy compared with the iPhone, and it was beset by software problems. Reviews were scathing.

The Torch, by comparison, is quite conventional. It has a large touch screen that isn’t spring-loaded. Its keyboard slides out from underneath the screen, just as it does on the Palm Pre or a few Android phones.

"It’s not particularly flashy, but it should extend the company’s reputation for solid, efficient, reliable products that have good battery life," Rubin said.

The Torch comes with a new version of the BlackBerry operating system, BlackBerry 6, that adds touch-friendly features that are mostly already available on other phones:

• The Web browser should now work faster, render pages better, and respond to iPhone-like maneuvers like spreading two fingers to zoom. It’s based on WebKit, the same underlying software used in the iPhone, Android phones, the Palm Pre and high-end Nokia Corp. phones. (The phone’s name comes from Torch Mobile, a Web browser developer that RIM bought last year.)

• The applications store will come pre-installed on the phone, a first for an AT&T BlackBerry. RIM launched its equivalent of the iPhone’s App Store last year, but users have had a hard time finding it.

• BlackBerry 6 provides for "universal search" — one field to search all the content on the phone. This is a long-standing feature of Palm phones and was adopted by the iPhone last year.

• Swiping a finger left or right on the home screen reveals favorite and oft-used applications, much like on the iPhone.

RIM said the BlackBerry 6 software is compatible with three previous models, the Bold 9700, Bold 9650 and Pearl 3G. However, it’s up to the carriers to approve the software upgrade for their subscribers.

The Torch is likely to come to other carriers besides AT&T, but as usual when a phone launches with an exclusive carrier, RIM won’t say which carriers or when.

RIM’s been in trouble before, most notably when it was sued by a small patent-holding firm. RIM ended up paying $612 million settlement to avoid a shutdown of its U.S. network. But that lawsuit was a symptom of success: RIM was the target because it was the leader in the industry. Now, it needs to fight the new leaders: iPhones and Android phones.

Matt Robison, an analyst at Wunderlich Securities, said the investors are clearly betting against RIM, as the stock’s value doesn’t reflect its strong earnings — $769 million for the quarter that ended May 29. The Torch could well end up earning RIM some respect, he said, even if people won’t line up outside stores to buy it, as they have with the iPhone.

"I do think that at least thoughtful consumers and corporate IT guys that look at this are going to say ‘Hey, this is a pretty viable alternative,’" Robison said.

WASHINGTON – Owners of the iPhone will be able to legally unlock their devices so they can run software applications that haven’t been approved by Apple Inc., according to new government rules announced Monday.

The decision to allow the practice commonly known as "jailbreaking" is one of a handful of new exemptions from a 1998 federal law that prohibits people from bypassing technical measures that companies put on their products to prevent unauthorized use of copyright-protected material. The Library of Congress, which oversees the Copyright Office, reviews and authorizes exemptions every three years to ensure that the law does not prevent certain non-infringing uses of copyright-protected works.

For iPhone jailbreakers, the new rules effectively legitimize a practice that has been operating in a legal gray area by exempting it from liability. Apple claims that jailbreaking is an unauthorized modification of its software.

Mario Ciabarra, founder of Rock Your Phone, which calls itself an "independent iPhone application store," said the rules mark the first step toward opening the iPhone app market to competition and removing the "handcuffs" that Apple imposes on developers that want to reach users of the wildly popular device.

Unless users unlock their handsets, they can only download apps from Apple’s iTunes store. Software developers must get such apps pre-approved by Apple, which sometimes demands changes or rejects programs for what developers say are vague reasons.

Ciabarra noted that Google Inc. has taken a different approach with its Android operating system, which is emerging as the biggest competitor to the iPhone. Google allows users of Android phones to download applications from outside the Android Market.

Although Apple has never prosecuted anyone for jailbreaking, it does use software upgrades to disable jailbroken phones, and the new government rules won’t put a stop to that. That means owners of such phones might not be able to take advantage of software improvements, and they still run the risk of voiding their warranty.

Apple spokesman Natalie Kerris said Monday that the company is concerned about jailbreaking because the practice can make an iPhone unstable and unreliable.

"Apple’s goal has always been to ensure that our customers have a great experience with their iPhone, and we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the experience," she said.

In addition to jailbreaking, other exemptions announced Monday would:

• allow owners of used cell phones to break access controls on their phones in order to switch wireless carriers.

• allow people to break technical protections on video games to investigate or correct security flaws.

• allow college professors, film students, documentary filmmakers and producers of noncommercial videos to break copy-protection measures on DVDs so they can embed clips for educational purposes, criticism or commentary.

• allow computer owners to bypass the need for external security devices called dongles if the dongle no longer works and cannot be replaced.

• allow blind people to break locks on electronic books so that they can use them with read-aloud software and similar aides.

Although the jailbreaking exemption is new, all the others are similar to the last set of exemptions, which were announced in November 2006. The new rules take effect Tuesday and are expected to last a few years.

The exceptions are a big victory for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which had urged the Library of Congress to legalize several of them, including the two regarding cell phones.

Jennifer Stisa Granick, EFF’s civil liberties director, said the rules are based on an important principle: Consumers should be allowed to use and modify the devices that they purchase the way they want. "If you bought it, you own it," she said.

By Golnar Motevalli

FARNBOROUGH |
Wed Jul 21, 2010 7:55am EDT