This app began as an online web app where you could log into all of your chat clients and your information was stored online, back when online apps were all you could get a lot of.  But now it has evolved into much more…

I have used most if not all of the chat apps out there including but not limited to, MobileChat, Fring, AIM, Meebo, Beejive online, and everything in between.  But every client seemed to be missing something, if one had a special service then it was missing a much needed other service and nothing ever seemed to be complete.  But with this latest app it all seems to be present!

All the features you could ever ask for are present in this app, vibrate and ringer notification, you stay logged in even when app is closed, email notification of new messages, MySpace IM, AIM, Gtalk, MSN, Yahoo!, MobileMe, ICQ, Jabber, and Windows Live.  So if you have push email either through Yahoo! or Mobile Me then you get updates immediatly so you don’t have to keep the app pulled up constantly.  The new app on Cydia called Backgrounder works well with it keeping the program running and activly giving you updates to your messages in real time.  There is also NO lag as there normally is with the online chat apps and even downloadable apps on the phone.

The one con about this app is the price tag.  At a hefty 15.99 on the iTunes Store it does put a dent in your pocketbook as far as apps go but as far as I am concerned it is worth it.  I don’t normally get apps on my phone if they aren’t free but this is one I definitely suggest.  Especially if you utilize push email and chat regularly with people.  Who knows maybe they will have a sale soon so you can get it cheaper!

GOOD NEWS! iTunes is going to remain open. Now that is out of the way, Like Issac Newton, the CRB and National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) felt the force of gravity when Apple dropped on them the clear cut statement of. “You wanna get greedy? We’ll close shop”. This message was read loud and clear by the CRB and NMPA when the largest music retail store rattled its saber.

The CRB decided (most intelligently) to keep rates at 9.1 cents with a mandated 24 cents/ringtone This was an unprecedented move by the board who has never in its history made mechanical rates for digital files.

"We're pleased with the CRB's decision to keep royalty rates stable," said an unnamed Apple spokesman.

A Music industry source stated "Sure it was posturing, I don't think Apple would have gone out of business but a statement like that from the biggest music retailer is going to carry some weight."

It seems the point was driven home and made clear. ‘Nuff said.

Weird things were always missing from the iPhone since release. Full use of the “Accelerometer”. PDA – PDA communication. Voice recognition and dialing…..Well maybe not that last one so much anymore. A Belgian Company by the name of Creaceed, seems to be attacking this issue head on by introducing Vocalia.

Vocalia is an English speech recognition app that will allow for your “mush-mouthed” speech to be interpreted by the phone to then function as it should by voice command, through the use of key activation words. As it stands now the programs ability is very limited. So limited in fact that as it stands right now, all it does is open contacts when you say “names” and will locate a name. And then still you have to tap the screen to open the name for the numbers…..Meh. I know not ground breaking but hey…It’s a start and a good one.

So how well does it do? Test have been said to have scored 98 out of 100 names called up. Now me personally? I’ll take a 98% on any test. (That just makes the cut within the realm of an A+ for all you high school drop outs). And that was all done without Vocalia being trained (good doggy). But it puts those names in a list of 3 of the closest sounding names. In that list the tests confirmed that 83% of the lists contained the correct name right at the top.

Whew….Who would have thought getting a contact would be a multiple choice question test? But with all these percentiles being mentioned? It’s like were back in school anyway. How well this program will work with poor enunciation or English breaking accents is unknown at this time. However with the training ability this commentator is firm in the belief that these issues can be overcome.

So between now and October 18th Vocalia is being sold in the App Store for $3.99. Afterwards the price shoots up to the full price of $7.99.

(It is my opinion due to the such limited use and function, that this item like AirShare, should be free until that date at least, and at best when they actually make the App more functional. But hey, I work for you guys and not Creaceed. So they don’t take my suggestions.)

Recently Apple has threatened the music industry saying that rather than give in to their demands they would close the iTunes Store instead.

The music industry is trying to increase its royalty rights for a songs individual sales. They are aiming at increasing the amount made for each song from 9 to 15 cents. Apple seems to be dead fast in fighting to keep prices the way they are for customers that buy songs through the store and they definitely won't pick up the excess change themselves. Which can definitely be a good thing for us the consumer because we essentially have a big corporation fighting on our side weather they mean to or not.

However the problem lies in weather or not the Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) gives ruling in favor of the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA). If the ruling is in their favor then Apple would rather sacrifice what it would make less, then to keep it open at all. Apple has stated several times over that they are in the business of making money and like any business if they can't make money within the margins they want then they will surely find a new outlet to profit from.

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Ever since the original iPhone came out in 2006, consumers complained about having no Flash support or capabilities. Flash is used all through out the web, in videos, games, advertisements and more! Well well well we found out that Adobe's CEO had Flash running on the iPhone emulator since June. The follow quote confirms that Adobe is working on the iPhone Flash Player:

“Upon a direct question from the audience, Paul Betlem for the first time publicly confirmed that Adobe is actively developing a Flash Player for Apple’s popular phone. He said (not direct quote) ‘My team is working on Flash on the iPhone, but it’s a closed platform.’ He noted that Apple makes all the decisions, so in other words, the ball is in Apple’s yard at this time. If Apple says yes, Adobe will have the player available in a very short time.”

Flash will be supported by an application in the near future. The problems are that it takes up ridiculous amounts of resources and drains battery life. Also Apple is most likely going to reject it from the App Store without even testing it out. Unless Shantanu Narayen (Adobe CEO) and Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) work out some sort of agreement.

	It’s finally here!! Stack has been missing in action since 1.1.3 firmware… For those of you who’ve been jailbreaking since the original iPhone first came out, you’ll remember that it was one of the first on Installer. But mysteriously the loved application disappeared when Apple upgraded their firmware to 1.1.3 and that was back then when people used ZiPhone to jailbreak and unlock. Maybe it wasn’t ported because it was too much of a bother? There was no time? Nobody knows but the developer, Steven Troughton-Smith.
	For those who don’t know what it does, it’s a drop-dead simple application launcher that spreads like a fan from your Button Bar on touch, or if teeming with icons it displays in grid view. Simply drag & hover icons from SpringBoard to add to Stack, and to remove items again just start dragging them in the Stack and they will disappear replete with a puff of smoke. Also supports WinterBoard themes! More than 5 total icons in Stack switches it from Stack mode to Grid mode. See screenshots for examples.
	I thought Stack was gone and lost forever in the jailbreaking world. But after (probably the longest wait) it made the jump all the way to 2.1. A few extra improvements have been added and I sure love it. Things like grid view (as mentioned up above), tap and drag adding/removing, and even Preferences so you can customize it to your needs. You can turn off/on Grid View and turn on/off Curved Stack.
	This originally came with Installer but I guess Cydia is more popular nowadays and Installer is still bugged and useless (sorry Installer!). Go download and install it in Cydia and have fun with it!(It’s under the System section just to let you know.)

There is rumor going around from a fairly source with Verizon that the iPhone might be opening up to use, who it was originally going to be with, Verizon and even Sprint.

This could definitely be a good thing for many people who already have a jailbroken phone on one of these services or who want to get the phone but not go with AT&T. This change is supposed to be announced in 2009 maybe even as early as Macworld 2009.

There were several reasons that 9to5mac.com gave for why this change could be happening...

• Apple has been scouting out EVDO and CDMA Engineers for months in their online iPhone job postings (here, here, here and here). Yes, some of these skills overlap with UTMS and CDMA can also refer to the broad swath of 3G Technologies...but come on...don't put "EVDO" on the job description if it ain't true.. (BTW, WiMax is also littered throughout Apple's Job postings...interesting/digress)
• No matter how big AT&T is and how much range they cover, leaving out Verizon and to a lesser extent Sprint, will be eliminating a broad swath of the US wireless market. If Apple is serious about competing with Blackberry, Symbian and Android, they will have to broaden their carrier footprint. One carrier does not a platform make. Apple will need a way to grow its market after AT&T is saturated.
• LTE technology won't be mature until well into 2010. Apple can't afford to wait that long to broaden its carrier footprint
• Who is happy with Rogers in Canada (*crickets*)? EVDO opens up to new carriers there as well.
• Verizon wireless is a partnership between Verizon communications and Vodafone. Vodafone, you'll recall, has contracts with Apple for iPhones in around 15 markets around the world. Apple has a working relationship with Vodafone (and Tmobile obviously).
• Apple has just started going "Open" in a few markets, including Hong Kong. This will likely increase the number of unlocked 3G iPhones on the world market (South Africa is also open). While this won't benefit Verizon directly, it certainly shows that Apple is considering being more "carrier agnostic."
• Tim Cook, famously said that Apple wasn't married to the one carrier/country model. As Apple expands, it is going more and more open.
• Verizon's iPhone Cheat sheet was weak and their arguments about Stevo getting old were silly. They'd rather play ball with Apple than try to defend itself against it.
• Apple originally wanted to go with Verizon for the iPhone. Some of the original disagreements included "not carrying the iPhone at Best Buy and hardware reliability" - see quote below. AT&T was a second choice. When Verizon balked, Apple went to AT&T...Think Verizon is happy about that decision (no) or willing to reconsider Apple's overtures (yes)?

According to Verizon, Apple CEO Steve Jobs insisted that he have hard control over iPhone distribution.

The problem? While Apple and Verizon stores would have it, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and other Verizon distributors could have been left out. "That would have put our own distribution partners at a disadvantage" to Apple and Verizon stores, Gerace said.

Customer care was another hitch: If an iPhone went haywire, Apple wanted sole discretion over whether to replace or repair the phone. "They would have been stepping in between us and our customers to the point where we would have almost had to take a back seat … on hardware and service support," Gerace says.

Apple has recently changed the way customers can review things inside the App Store. The new system can only be used by those who purchase items themselves...

Apple has decided that giving the people the ability to complain on an app that they have not bought or used is unnecessary. There had been people who were commenting negatively on apps when their complaint had absolutely nothing to do with the app or the iPhone in general. There were random flames or invalid statements to bring the app or the developer down. Well those days are over.

To submit a review on an app you have to log in with your Apple Account and the store then validates weather or not you ever bought the app. If you have purchased it then you are granted access to write a review, if you have not purchased it then it pops up the little window you see above.

Very good idea Apple, get the flamers off developers backs so they can continue to make more excellent apps!

Apple recently released their iTunes 8.0 with "new" features. But what new features? It seems as though pretty much nothing changed. I've scowered through iTunes looking for improvements and things they got rid of. Let's start with the most obvious first.

Many people will have noticed a new way to browse your music called "Grid View." It shows all your music in a grid and displays them by album showing their artwork (as long as you have them).

Apple added a new visualizer that uses 3D gravity & magnetism effects. You can quickly switch to the visualizer by pressing "Ctrl+T."

The new update enables support with 2.1 firmware iPhones, iPod Touch 2G, and the new Nanos.

In the iTunes Store, iTunes 8.0 allows for HD quality TV Shows to be downloaded & bought for just $2.99. More and more of these affordable high quality videos are being added everyday so why don't you go check them out.

Probably the most unique and special feature to hit iTunes, is Genius Playlist Creation and Sidebar. You can get more info on that here.


Lastly the one thing that wasn't mentioned is that they removed the movie convert feature to watch on Apple TVs, iPods, and iPhones. You no longer see a "Convert Selection to Apple TV" or "Convert Selection to iPhone/iPod" when right clicking a movie. Why did they get rid of this feature? Nobody knows... It may be because of the long time it takes for the movie to be converted. Only non-iTunes DRM protected files can be converted into other formats, and probably Apple realized other 3rd party software is best for this (Videora, Crusoft, etc). Apple is getting rid of our rights in the technology world. App Store submissions constantly get rejected, their service agreements and private policies become stricter and stricter... When will it ever end?

And for those of you who haven't already downloaded iTunes 8:

As you all know the Apple iPhone 2.1 software improved a lot of bugs as stated here on the Apple Site. Signal strength seems to have improved for those who have upgraded to the new version. But in reality, it really hasn't... People are still reporting slow 3G & EDGE speeds, delayed SMS's, and etc. On their website it states: "Improved accuracy of the 3G signal strength display." Odd thing is, there's nothing about faster or better signals. So for Apple, that's something they're going to have to look into and hopefully will fix. The most accurate way to get an almost exact signal reading is to dial "*3001#12345#*" in the Phone.app and pressing Call. You should then see the "FieldTest.app" pop-up and your signal bars should be replaced by a number. These are numbers that indicate strongest signal strength: -50, -75, -80, -95, & -113 are all healthy.

Also in this update the huge problem with battery was addressed. Most people do see slightly improved, if not much better, battery life, but some do say that it's become worse. The iPhone is a mobile super computer that revolutionizes how we use technology. Even though people complain about how battery life isn't long enough, where can you find a computer that lasts a day on a single charge?

Genius playlist creation is a new feature built into the new update in both iPhone 2.1 and iTunes 8.0. "Genius" describes itself with it's name: G e n i u s. If you choose a song and when you put it into a Genius playlist, it automatically searches for any other like song in your library. So depending on your mood you can pick a song that fits that mood. And since it's a bother looking for songs you might want to listen to, your iTunes or iPhone does that for you.

Other than that, the 3rd party apps are truly making use of the iPhone's capabilities, features and functions. Apple listened to feedback and fixed the speed of installing apps, faster loading, and now there's barely any hangs while using the applications.

Although this update did improve stability, there still are some problems left for Apple's developers to work out.