Apple iPhone blog

Here is a hands-on review of iPhone 3G.

Smoother Look and Feel
Though I didn’t have a gen one iPhone to compare it to, the iPhone 3G felt lighter and softer in my hand. I was immediately attracted to the white 16GB (apparently because it is more feminine). The white back is glossy and smooth and has a rounded back to it. The front of the phone looks like the original with black edges surrounding the screen. It is confirmed: the headphone jack on the 3G phone is 3.5 mm.

Speedy Browsing
After checking out the new hardware, it was time to put the 3G to the test. It took about two seconds to transition from Wi-Fi to the 3G network. I tested out the speeds on three sites: It took the phone 4 seconds to load www.laptopmag.com, 2 seconds to load cnn.com; 3 seconds to load www.nytimes.com. Pretty damn speedy.

Swift GPS Connection
I couldn’t get the best handle on the GPS here in the convention center. But I was able to bring up a map of the San Fran area. According to an Apple rep, turn-by-turn directions will be available through the Maps program. Above the map was a button to find “current location.”

What else can I report on the iPhone 3G? Apple showed off its new charging cube. It is a small block that can fit into your pocket, just don’t forget to carry your USB cord. Also, the App store icon was front and center on the main menu.

After my 10 minutes were up, the iPhone 3G was taken from my hands and sent back to its charging dock. Until we meet again iPhone 3G…Until we meet again…

via Laptopmag

If the touch interface on the iPhone is not your style when playing games, then here is something for you. The iControlPad enables your iPhone to be in a casing that allows for a PSP feeling. It adds physical buttons to the iPhone for the purpose of playing games. The iControlPad will be providing full SDK support, and also source code so developers can get their games to work with the unit.

The peripheral works by connecting to the iPhone’s dock. According to the designer, support for the iControlPad is already built in to most of the game emulators, and they are sending out more units to try to get more universal support. The device will have to get around one problem though, the SDK does not allow unprejudiced access to the dock connector.

The device as of now is in its prototype stage. They promise that the final version of the unit will be “much more sleek and fitting”. You can check out the website here, where they have a status blog and contact information.

Here is an alternative to the normal texting services offered by your local mobile carrier. This application allows you to purchase credits and use them in place of your phone’s mobile carrier to send SMS messages anywhere in the world.

This third party program called biteSMS for Apple’s iPhone, gives you an option to send your text via biteSMS or your mobile carrier when you select a conversation. There’s even an option to make biteSMS your default text application if you find the rates more reasonable, as well as the ability to reset the counter.

Buying credits from the biteSMS site is based on the currency you will be using for the credits. Payment methods include PayPal, Visa, or Mastercard and cost approximately US 0.10 per text. Once you purchase your credits, you might have to restore your iPhone before it reflects on your mobile phone.

Here is what biteSMS can do:

• Forward text messages by swiping on the text in a SMS Conversation.
• Auto correction visible.
• Improved scrolling of text field when entering or editing a message.
• Support credit voucher SMS delivery to China.
• Changed 3 retries to 2 when sending via biteSMS, and improved information text when offering to switch to Mobile Carrier.

The program can be downloaded from the Ste Packaging community source 

Click Here to View in Full Screen Mode

Here’s a really cool 3D iPhone application  coming soon. (Only the beta version is available for now)

With the iPhone Earth, you can view satellite imagery of the globe in 3D, a bit like on Google Earth, but it is customized for the iPhone so you can rotate it back and forth for control.

“I was particularly impressed when I saw they had used the iPhone accelerometers to allow you to tilt and rotate your view by tilting the iPhone. They weren’t downloading the imagery data over the net, it was all running local with just imagery for the San Francisco area. But, it was still very cool! The application is under development using the Apple iPhone SDK. So, assuming they finish the product, it should run under iPhone 2.0. You would definitely only want to run a real app like this if you had a WiFI connection or 3G - imagery and 3D takes a lot of bandwidth“.

[via techeblog and gearthblog]

Here is a tutorial on how to fit Google’s iPhone version of Reader to your Firefox sidebar. With a few tweaks you can make it really fit well by removing  the header, tone down the fonts, choosing the start page and remove the excerpts to give a nice clean list like this:

Add Google Reader iPhone Edition to the Firefox Sidebar

Right-click anywhere on the bookmarks bar and choose New Bookmark, give it a name (or leave that blank) and put in the following URL:

http://www.google.com/reader/i/

Check the box for “Load this bookmark in the sidebar”.

When you click on the bookmark, you’ll now see that it opens in the sidebar.

Change Bookmark to Open Specific Tag (or page)

When opening the bookmark, all items are viewed by default. To open Reader with the “favorittes” tag instead, adjustments can be made like this:

Navigate in the sidebar to the tag you want. Right-click in an empty area of the page and choose “View Page Info”

Here you see the direct URL to that page, which you can then copy to the clipboard.

You can use a new bookmark, or customize the existing bookmark that you created.

Whenever you click on the bookmark now, you’ll see the page you’d prefer to see.

Remov the Ugly Blue Border

Note: For the rest of the tweaks you’ll need to have the Stylish extension installed, or you can create a file named userContent.css in your Firefox theme directory and put the code there.

For whatever reason, the Google Reader logo has this annoying blue border around it, but it can be removed with a quick Stylish script.

Click on the Stylish icon, choose Write Style and then Blank Style.

Give the style a descriptive name, and then paste in the following text:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/reader/i) {
.logo img {border:0px !important;}
}

You can click the preview button to see the changes right away:

Remove Header Entirely

Instead of just changing the border, you can remove the entire header image section, since it’s not really necessary. Adjust the stylish script to be the following instead:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/reader/i) {
.logo {display:none !important;}
}

Clicking the Preview button will show the new changes…

Adjust the Font Size

The iPhone site is optimized for a tiny touch screen display, so the font is just way too big for my tastes. We can add the following line to the stylish script to make the font slightly smaller:

* {font-size:0.97em !important; }

If you are following along, the full script should now be:

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/reader/i) {
.logo {display:none !important;}
* {font-size:0.97em !important; }
}

Now you’ve got a much more compact view which is easier to read:

Change List to Headlines Only

To show only the headlines, the following can be added to your script:

span.item-snippet {display:none !important;}
span.item-source-title{font-size:0.9em !important}

Now you’ve got a really useful sidebar application:

Full Script

Here’s the final version of this script, with the logo bar removed, font size smaller, and no excerpts.

@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);
@-moz-document url-prefix(http://www.google.com/reader/i) {
   .logo {display:none !important;}
   * {font-size:0.97em !important; }
   span.item-snippet {display:none !important;}
   span.item-source-title{font-size:0.9em !important}
}

Via howtogeek

This kit for Apple iPhone includes wallpapers, sliders, sound effects and over 90 Vista-themed icons. There is also a simulated version of Vista’s Sidebar and familiar Start menu.

Requirements for the installation: A Jailbroken iPhone, SSH access and SummerBoard.

Get full download and instructions at ModMyiFone.

[via Technabob]

There are rumors going on about a possible iPhone Tablet; but apparently, it’s not more than a rumor

Germany-World’s managing director Hannes Schwaderer today confirms what has long been a rumor on the Internet: namely, that there is an iPhone with Intel’s new nuclear-chip type. The device is slightly larger than the current version, Schwaderer. This is not the Intel chip, but to the larger display in the new iPhone is used.

UPDATE: The German blog fsck spoke to Intel’s Mike Cato about this statement. It turns out that it was more speculation thanconfirmation (cleaned up from machine translation):

Intel’s press spokesman Mike Cato made clear to me that the statement made by Hannes Schwaderer so definitely not taken. Rather, Intel has used (and in this case is Mr. Schwaderer) the iPhone as a long time example for the entire category of Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), that the Atom increasingly has to stop. Whether the iPhone, or other device from Apple’s mobile wireless platform will use Atom still remains open.

via Wired

MooCowMusic has recently released a native iPhone application called Band which as the name suggests brings all of various musical applications together into a single application along with a lot of interesting features.

With the native iPhone application Band you can now play and record multiple instruments such as drums, bass, guitars, keyboards into one song. There are also no limits on the instrument interface as it allows for expansion and additional user-created instruments via ‘instrument packs’. You can play these multiple instruments along with your MP3s.

iRinger is a nice application that can practically convert any videos to iPhone ringtones, including YouTube videos. Idea is interesting; might that be another use of YouTube?

iRinger creates free ringtones for your iPhone from virtually any music or video file you own. iRinger exports ringtones to iTunes, so there is no need to “jailbreak” your iPhone. You will be creating ringtones in seconds. It’s that simple.

• FREE.
• Three Steps: Import, Preview then Export. Done.
• Convert virtually any audio format into an iPhone ringtone
• Extracts audio out of video
• Choose which section of the audio you want to hear
• Adjust ringtone length, volume, fade in, fade out and loop gap
• Export to iPhone ringtone format and import right into iTunes
• Export to iPhone using SCP/SFTP and skip using iTunes
• Use audio effects: Delay, Flanger, Boost, Reverse, etc.