Though there was plenty of other news at the Macworld Keynote today, iPod Touch users got a little love thrown their way today -- for a price. Steve Jobs announced that effective immediately, there are five new apps available for the Touch: Mail, Stocks, Notes, Weather, and Maps. Oh, and it will set current iTouch owners back $20. Not that bad of a price for five different applications.

* Preview mail before you open it, display grapics and photos inline, and view HTML, PDF, Word, and Exel attachments.

* Stocks, Weather, and Notes all appear as widgets on your home screen.

* Google Maps determines your approximate location if Wi-Fi is on and gives you directions, marks specific locations, and has both hybrid and satellite maps to show you the way.

Labels: free, iphone apps, itouch apps, keynote, new apps, touch update, upgrade

The famous Yellow Pages phone directory, owned by Apple partner AT&T, is now available in a format specifically made for the iPhone and iTouch. Users must navigate to the Yellow Pages website via the Safari browser, where a formatted version of the site appears that allows users to quickly start a search or input a place and category.

The site also provides access to ratings, maps and directions, and in the case of the iPhone, the ability to dial a number directly from a listing.

AT&T says it has also made available an optimized WAP website, a downloadable client for 20 other AT&T phones, and the ability to text a search query to YP411. Conversely, users browsing the website can have results texted to a cellphone, complete with driving directions. +1 for AT&T and Apple.

Labels: ipod touch maps, ipod touch tricks, itouch apps, itouch safari, yellowpages

One of the new features of OSX Leopard is the ability to create a group on your dock and when selected a certain group of icons pops up. For example you can create a stack called 'Daily' and make it all of the programs you use daily and frequently. This provides easy access to your most used programs. So why not make this for the iPhone / iTouch? Well someone has and here is a video of it. Just wait until the SDK is released in February and you will see such outstanding programs. If I do find the link to this app on the net I will post here so check back or subscribe to my RSS feed.

Labels: iphone apps, ipod touch apps, itouch apps, itouch tricks, sdk, stacks

So lets say you are an avid blog reader and you have an iPod Touch and all of a sudden you check your email on your iTouch and see a great article. Well who was time to wait until they get back to their PC to read it. And who wants to read it with all the weird formatting that its trying to create on your phone. Well this will never happen again because of the iTouch Wordpress Plugin. Wordpress is probably the most popular blogging platform out there and most blogs today are run by it, so this plugin is very useful.

What this new plugin, iWPhone, does is reformat posts so they automatically fit for iPhones or the iPod Touch, making it much easier to read. This still allows you to view the page normally while on a computer, though.

This plugin is great for anyone who reads a Wordpress Blog daily or someone who wants to check up on their own blog to see how it would look on here for other prospective readers. I am definitely going to add this to my list of programs / plugins on my iTouch. If you want to find out more about this plugin you can find all the information you want here as well as downloading it: http://iwphone.contentrobot.com/

Also to my readers -- Let me know what kind of topics you are looking for on this blog. Do you want more tips, tricks, articles, product reviews, itouch news, or all of the above?

Labels: ipod touch plugin, itouch apps, itouch plugins, iwphone, wordpress

In an official letter released by Steve Jobs, Apple will finally release an iPhone and iPod Touch dev kit to the public. This means that you won't need to hack your iPhone / iTouch in order to add applications. It will become a very simple process. Although this is coming in February, this is a great idea by Jobs and the rest of the Apple team. Here's a copy of the letter:
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch
[Oct 17, 2007]

So this is great news for every iPhone and iTouch owner alike! Let us all thank Steve Jobs for giving us such great devices. Applications might be sold through iTunes for a jacked up price, but we will have to wait and see.

Labels: apple, dev kit, iphone, ipod touch, itouch, itouch apps, sdk

All you need to turn your iPod Touch (or iPhone) into a 3G phone is an actual phone with Windows Mobile 5 or 6 and this free PHM Registry Editor. This isn't particularly something I would want to do, but I'm sure other people will find good use for this. According to the author, the whole procedure should take only 10-15 minutes.

Please note that this tutorial does not allow the iPod Touch to make voice calls over the 3G network as it does not have a microphone. It is really cool though so definitely check it out. I probably will be trying this out on mine when I hear some success stories.

Good luck!

Labels: 3g, apple, iphone, ipod, ipod touch, ipod touch tricks, itouch, itouch apps, itouch tricks

As of today apple released iPhone Apps that can be accessed through your safari browser that allow for easier navigation and also some useful tools. For example there is a Facebook web app that allows a much easier navigation of Facebook's every-growing website.

There are no reports that the iPod Touch will have these features, but I bet there will be some in the works very soon. iPod Touch sales are growing and will continue to grow well past the holidays. If you look at the iPod Touch screen you can obviously see that there is more room for applications on the home screen. The home screen looks too empty and we know Apple would definitely give us some goodies to go with our iPod Touch!

I have seen iPod Touch hacks development in progress and there is a team that is in the process of trying to hack deeper into the Touch to see what other things can be added and achieved with this device.

Is it worth hacking your iPod touch? I know I am going to. People will tell you not to because of Apple releasing some new firmware that makes your iPod Touch useless, but I have only heard this about unlocked iPhones and no unlocking to be done on the iPod Touch.

Labels: apple, facebook, ipod, ipod touch, ipod touch tricks, itouch apps, web apps