So if you have a business trip or vacation approaching, just sign up for the month you’ll be traveling and cancel when you get back. You don’t need to visit a store to get 3G service. You can sign up, check your data usage, manage your account, or cancel your service — all from your iPad.

Thorough “Settings” on the iPad, users can go through the 3G activation process, which displays a simple screen allowing customers to select their desired options.

Once activated, a summary of all the options and costs will be presented to the buyer, including the dates that indicate active service and how much data has been used and how much is available, Apple also mentions that users on the 250 MB plan will receive three separate alerts popping up anywhere in the OS at the 20%, 10% and 0% intervals indicating how much data the user has left on their service plan.

You will also be able to change plans and edit any other information at the end of any service period or change them in the midst of your current active one. Also, users on the 250MB plan can choose to automatically replenish their service with an additional 250MB or go straight to the unlimited plan at the end of the service period or when the have capped their 250MB limit.

AT&T considers iPad customer full AT&T service customers, so users of the iPad who use AT&T exclusive 3G plan will also gain access to the companies 20,000+ Wi-Fi hotspots which include all McDonald and Starbucks locations. All iPads come embedded with 802.11a/b/g/n, which is every standard of Wi-Fi.

“People with a proven track record in predicting Apple’s technological advances tell AppleInsider that the Cupertino-based company has developed a “full-on solution” to multitasking on the iPhone OS but offered no specifics on how the technology would optimize resource conservation and battery life — two of the most critical issues surrounding the matter, alongside security.”

“From a user-facing perspective, Apple plans to deliver a multi-tasking manager that leverages interface technology already bundled with its Mac OS X operating system, according to those same people. It was requested that specifics be withheld at this time, as the iPhone Software 4.0 remains under development and reportedly has a quite ‘way to go’ before it’s ready for prime time.”

A lot of people are not aware of this, but the iPhone already performs background processes for its core applications (Phone, Mail, Messages, Clock, Safari, etc.). Thing is, Apple doesn’t give that privilege to it’s App Store developers mainly to avoid possible over consumption of resources and power like most handsets that enable background processes for their third party developers experience. So, in essence, its not a technical issue like most people have been defining it, but rather a cautious one to prevent an unstable system. (like those Windows Mobile phones with the “task manager”…yeah…)

To remedy the consumers and Apple’s own want for BPs (background processes), they presented the iPhone with Push Notifications (or as some techies call it “Push Noti”). Push Noti allowed for applications to be updated, even when they weren’t active by using cloud computing, by which, plenty have said has been “amazingly responsive and incredibly functional!” The cloud method enables Apple to create a certain type of database service or “cloud” that would collect any information from a given application and “push” it to the users iPhone through a secure open connection from Apple (simple, but that’s what makes it ingenious). Apple’s Push Notification allowed for users content on their devices to stay up-to-date without compromising resource and power of the iPhone, proving to be more beneficial than the traditional methods for BPs that other devices like Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile are using. However, again, according to AppleInsiders proven source, they have devised a way to enable actual background processes while providing the same results for resource and power usage that Push Noti has provided

Anyway, based on the cycle of the Apple’s product pipeline, we are very likely to see iPhone OS 4 along with a new iPhone sometime between late May to mid July.

Penguin Shows iPad Possibilities

Between the developers I spoke to, the consensus was this: Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to ‘app generators’ and templates per se, but in the last month or so it has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards. In short, Apple doesn’t want people using native applications for things that a basic web app could accomplish.

Reading through the rest of the report, some extended input from Medialets CEO Eric Litman presents itself stating that Apple is looking to provide a high-quality experience on the App Store that other devices can’t provide (being that Apple’s iPhone SDK is unique to the iPhone OS and only the iPhone OS).

Apple wants iPhone apps to be superior to Web experiences because they are extremely sticky and drive people specifically to buy the iPhone over competing smartphone platforms. Apps that are too simple or largely indistinguishable from the Web, other apps or particularly other apps on other platforms send the message to end users that the iPhone app ecosystem might not be particularly special.

More specifically, Apple is targeting those applications that appear to be using the mere basic templates to generate a buzz for their products, which much of these applications are nothing more than a re-rendition of Web material that is already available and presents no physical or functional difference and apps from quality providers that do not deliver a unique and gripping experience. For instance, The Bank of America application on the App Store and the web-app presented in Safari has no difference whatsoever other than one can be obtained through the App Store and the other simply by typing bofa.com or bankofamerica.com in the address field in Safari. Or the Wikipedia app on the App Store that, again, has very little contrast to its web-app counterpart which is more responsive than the native one.

Some of the groups who fall under Apple’s recent extermination requirements have began to take the shift in quality. One group in particular, Appmakr, are making the adjustments by annexing the In-App Purchase, offline access and Push Noti services to their apps, providing the fruitful experience that Apple wants associated with the App Store, striving to become a “trusted” developer that could pass the review process of the App Store with flying colors.

International Class 009: Computers; computer software; computer operating system software; computer utility software; computer hardware; computer peripherals; scanners; touchscreens; keyboards; computer mice; trackballs; trackpads; touchpads; light pens; joysticks; game controllers; graphics tablets; digitizers; cables and connectors; flash memory drives; USB drives; solid state storage devices; barcode readers.

Now, its not really crystal clear what the name is being applied to, such as a new, redesigned trackpad for the MacBooks or a separate trackpad device. However, there has been some whispering about a Multi-Touch “trackpad gadget” that Apple is speculatively developing, that is, according to John Gruber. John Gruber is the same guy who accurately predicted the intro to several Apple products ahead of a launch event back in October…except for this trackpad device he was blabbing about. Then the rumor gained traction and took off like a B-19 into the air when the whole iSlate and Magic Slate trademark finding surfaced. Now at that point-in-time, the iPad was being talked about all over the industry (and the Net of course…most definitely the Net!) which, eventually, was later introduced as the iPad (thus, eliminating the whole iSlate theory). With this new finding after the iPad intro back in January, It is looking like Apple is planning to try and wow us again with something. Which, typically, they do very well. They have made it a habit apparently, being all their event are SRO (Standing Room Only, and we are not joking. Apple doesn’t like empty seats).

“These actions allow the user to control functions of voicemail review without removing the device from over his ear.” Continuing in the patent, “Furthermore, a user may navigate a document being shown on a display screen of the device by guiding his finger over the camera lens. While viewing the display screen, the user holds the device in the palm of his hand in a supine position. Rather than pressing or sliding directional buttons next to the screen or touching a touch screen to navigate a webpage document or contacts list, the user may move his finger over the camera lens in the direction he wishes to navigate the page.”

The file also goes on to state that the user can choose to customize the controls how they desire. This isn’t the first time Apple has made something like this that made all of us here at MacApper say “damn”, a while back, if you can remember (and if you keep tabs on the big “A” like we do, that is), Apple submitted a patent for a Multi-Touch enabled casing to the iPhone that would operate much like the Magic Mouse. If Apple does plan to push this idea on to the iPhone, the industry is going to have a tough time catching up (as if they aren’t having a hard enough time already…and they are…)

Even though users probably use this program every day, Mail seems to suffer from neglect. Perhaps it’s because there is nothing terribly interesting the programmers in Cupertino can bring to the party. It is, after all, simply an email client. While iPhoto can recognize faces, iTunes can tailor custom Genius playlists, and Garageband will let you buy personal music lessons from Ben Folds, Mail simply lets you send and receive email. Oh, and read RSS feeds. There’s no pizzazz in email.

But there is utility, and this is where Mail falls short for us. There are several features other email clients possess that Mail ignores. Scheduling email should be a no-brainer. Mail works with iCal to send email reminders at a specific date and time based on upcoming appointments. Should you want to schedule a specific time to send an email, Mail can not do this. Mail has templates for sending email, what they refer to as Stationery. Unfortunately you must use their rather limited and somewhat cheesy set of templates. It is possible to save your own, but not with any attachments other than images – a shame if you are spending a lot of time sending out job applications with attached resumes, for example. And even though the saved templates are HTML, there is no easy way to make and save your own html stationery.

There are several things Mail gets right: new account set up is a snap, Quick Look is integrated for attachments, and it plays well with other Mac applications like iCal and iPhoto. Certainly there are work arounds for nearly every situation in which the application falls short, but for many people, “working around” means learning scripting or HTML programming. While other email clients allow for plug-ins to enhance function, Mail is left out in the cold, even though many Mac applications also accept plug-ins and extensions.

Apple has positioned itself, and mostly makes good, on its reputation as the no fuss, no muss platform. Just turn it on, and it works. Mail, in our opinion, works – but not well enough. In the coming weeks we will be reviewing several third party email clients in an effort to find the best of the bunch. We will be looking at ease of set up, customization, integration with other applications, and if it does anything really cool and unexpected. Hopefully we will find the nearly perfect email client for the nearly perfect personal computer.

The moves show how an entire ecosystem of new hardware is ready to spring up around new Apple products. While Apple in recent years has spawned cottage industries of new software businesses — particularly around its iTunes App Store — the accessory business around its gadgets has also thrived and driven the growth of many third-party manufacturers. According to Piper Jaffray & Co. estimates iPod and iPhone accessory sales — including cases, headphones and chargers — totaled about $3.7 billion world-wide in 2009.

Wall Street Journal point to various case manufactures the likes of Griffin and Targus. Griffin stated that they were drawing up cases just a couple hours after the event took place while Targus said that they mapped up some cases before the damn thing was even seen by human eyes (Damn! Talk about first in line!), basing there ideas off rumors and renditions of the device, resulting in them having to make tiny altercations in their designs when they sent he actual thing. Besides cases (which is pretty much an obvious given that they were going to be created), other manufactures are planning to create a whole bunch of stuff including external batteries and docking stations equipped with speakers and woofers (OH YEAH!). However, all that stuff is going to be a little bit after the launch for the iPad being that they are going to need a little more time for that so they can see what kind of market is going to exist.

Apple played their part, showcasing some of their own in-house creations, such as a dock with and without a keyboard, and a book-like case that can be folded into a stand (both the dock and the case/stand are hot). They even showed some docking adapters for digital camera so they can use their photo with the iPad. The accessory selection should be just as crazy as it is for the iPhone, iPod, and Mac. Definitely should be just as crazy…

“Conde is still creating a digital version of its tech magazine for the device, but the influential publisher says it won’t create similar iPad apps for other titles unless Apple and Adobe figure out how to work together.”

Chief Executive of Condé Nast Charles Townsend said that the highly interactive Wired Magazine application demoed was originally a product of Adobe and their technology in Flash. Apple’s latest spawn does not support Flash, because of this, the publisher would have to create “two parallel development tracks”, according to the information that MediaMemo received.

Chuck was later asked if Apple and Adobe could somehow cook up a way to bring Flash support to the iPad, would there be consideration to embrace to format on the iPad. He replied that it would be “an easy yes”

Mentioned earlier, Condé Nast has their content already accessible on the iPhone and iPod touch. GQ, for example, is available on the iPhone OS, but, Charlie explained that the magazine on the iPhone is pretty much a transition from it’s print form to the digital world and doesn’t display all the bells and whistles that Adobe provided for the Wired iPad app.

If some of you out there are saying to yourselves “Since when were Apple and Adobe trading blows?”, it’s actually been for a little while now. With the introduction of HTML5, the new standard presented the ability to play complex content (such as embedded videos and animated websites) right from the browser, eliminating the need for the Adobe Flash plug-in while providing, what experts say, a far more easy and stable experience. The iGod himself, Steve Jobs, was proclaimed being cited stating that the Flash technology was a “CPU hog” and that it is “old technology.” Another report publicized says that Jobs “was quoted” saying that the folks over at Adobe are “lazy”. Experts, including S.J., say that the majority cause for an application crashing is because of Flash (usually conflicting code), which, by the way, has been well documented. Apple is not the only group who agree with doing away with Flash. The great folks over at Google are also with Apple in the “Fight Against Flash”. Google is recently transitioning their content to utilize the new HTML5 initiative, having beginning switching the content on YouTube solely to HTML5 (despite a few of the content). Mozilla, the people who produced probably the most widely used web browser app next to Google Chrome, Apple Safari and Microsoft Internet Explorer with their creation of Firefox, is also planning a cease-&-desist motive in the use of Adobe’s technology by also making the new version of the Firefox web browser HTML5-standard. Despite a lot of major groups who all agree that it’s just that time for Flash, Microsoft is still a believer and probably one of the few major organizations backing Flash, and Microsoft and Adobe are a good duo. Still though, Apple, Google and Mozilla? That’s gonna be a tough lineup to beat given their influence on the industry and what HTML5 has been demonstrated its capable of.

Today’s claim to fame is a feature which many iCal users have been looking for for quite a while. It’s a small application that lives in your menu bar, and with a click, brings up a small window displaying today’s (or another day of your choice) events from one, some, or all of your calendars. To-do’s are there, (but called Tasks in Today) as well as your major scheduled events. It’s great for two reasons. One, as I mentioned before, you don’t have to have iCal open all the time. I’d much rather have this little guy open than full-fledged iCal for simply viewing events and tasks. Two, sometimes seeing too much into the future can be counter-productive to your day. This single-day approach; seeing only what you need to be productive TODAY– is a great one for productivity-minded folk like myself.

Another one of Today’s major features is full support for actually creating new events and new tasks. New events and tasks created in Today are automatically added to iCal. There is full support for alarms and even saving new ones for frequent use, however the options for running a script or opening a file at a set time are absent. Today 2.0 also brings with it support for the popular iCal alternative BusyCal, giving you the same experience you get with iCal syncing.

In the settings department, you have a good amount of customization options. Tasks can be sorted by calendar, title, priority, and due date, and you can choose to see only tasks due today, or all tasks due in the next 3, 7, 14, or 30 days. A new feature in this, the second iteration of Today.app, is the ability to display tomorrow’s upcoming events underneath today’s. Window transparency can also be set- useful if you’ve enabled the option to keep Today’s window on top of all other windows.

Something I do yearn for in a future iteration of Today, is the ability to scale down the size of the window to a truly tiny size. In order to actually view all of my upcoming events in the app in one view on my 13″ MBP, the window takes up valuable real estate. That being said, it’s just as easy to close the window and reopen from the menu bar (you can also set keyboard shortcuts), but i’d love to be able to dedicate a smaller portion of my screen to it permanently. Also, it isn’t possible to display To-do’s from a certain calendar while not displaying that calendars events. It’s either all or nothing.

All in all though, the minute I tried Today, they had me. It’s the closest you’ll get to MyDay (Microsoft’s version for it’s software suite), and provides a very rich experience for such a small app. It has the “just works” simplicity you expect from a Mac app, without any overkill. Price sits at just $21.95 for a single user. 5-computer family packs are $34.95, and upgrade licenses start at $11.95. If you’d like to try it out, a complete 14-day trial is available for download along with the full version over at Second Gear Software. Requires Mac OS 10.5+

Tidy Songs is an Adobe Air app that loads to a simple welcome screen which lets you get started pretty quickly. There’s no setup to do. Just click Start and you’re whisked off to the Main Menu where you select from 4 options: Add Album Art, Find Duplicates, Fix Your Songs, and Organize Genres. They’re all pretty self explanatory, so let’s get right into it.

Add Album Art works like a charm. It looks up the songs in a selected playlist (you can choose to scan your entire library as well) and checks them against it’s sources (I’m assuming one of them to be Amazon). When a discrepancy is detected, it presents its findings to you and you can choose to keep the current artwork, add the new artwork, or input your own URL where the correct artwork is located, and it will download it for you.

Find Duplicates worked well in my tests as well. There is the option to automatically delete these duplicates according to bit rate and song length, however this one you’ll probably need to manually approve each change, especially if you have a lot of live albums where song titles are exactly the same.

Fixing songs themselves proved to be a little tricky for me. To test this functionality, I made some changes to my song titles and documented each change. All of my semi-popular music was recognized and fixed without a hitch. However, my problems arose when summoning information on more obscure bands, and if you have a lot of this kind of music, you may have to use the Manual mode here as well. I don’t fault Tidy Songs for this, as I would think this is a problem with the tracklist and information in the public database it is querying. However, if you’ve got a lot of well to semi-well-known artists in your library, Tidy Songs should have no problem clearing up any weird titles and information. Speed-wise, if you’re going to let it do its thing automatically, and depending on how many songs you have, I’d let it go overnight. In my own library of a few thousand songs, it took quite a few hours to complete its scans and fixes. Also, you can’t listen to music through iTunes while it’s cleaning, so either do it while you won’t be home, or fire up Pandora and check out some new music while you wait.

Probably the feature I found the least use for was Organize Genres. It simply allows you to change all of the variations on a genre to one. For example, I have varying genres of Rock in my library such as Alternative-Rock, Alt-punk, Indie, Indie-Pop, Rock/Pop, Indie Rock…you get the picture. It offers to take all of these and combine them into one category of its or your choosing.

While fixing, you can tell Tidy Songs to skip songs with certain words as well, giving you an added “Don’t touch” filter. All in all, the app works great. Compared to TuneUp, my experience was above and beyond what I ever expected it to be, and that experience comes with a price tag. $39 to be exact. Worth it? I’d say yes. Especially if your library is big and in rough shape. You could spend days retagging and reorganizing a large iTunes library- let Tidy Songs do it for you.

Once Things is first launched, the first thing you will notice is different folders to store items to do. The categories are set up for when you think of something you need to do you can just put it right in a category for easy organization, for instance if you need to complete something on a later date you can input that in the scheduled folder. Once something has been completed you simply check it off, Things will move it to the Logbook folder, Things keeps a record of all of your entries in there, they can also be deleted from the log book for privacy.

Planning projects is another plus, adding a project allows sub to-dos to be added, for instance if your planning a wedding you can add “Plan Wedding” to your project list, set a due date when you want it done by, then you can go into the project and add items that need to be completed in there.

On top of all of the organization Things has a sister program for your Mac, called Things as well, which will allow you to sync your To-Do lists back and fourth between your Mac and iPhone over Wi-Fi. The only downside to Things is it does not sync with your calendar, allowing this would put the icing on the cake. Also $9.99 for this app is a bit much when there are dozens of other To-Do lists in the app store. If you don’t mind paying the extremely high price and need to get organized then this App is definitely for you.

Best of all, Wireshark is available for absolutely free, no strings attached. It’s quite amazing the work that goes into this program, and networking aficionados all over the world continue to develop this killer network utility.

One drawback though, for some, is the process of actually getting it running properly in 10.6. I had trouble myself, and felt I needed to share the process I used to get it up and running in Snow Leopard.

Let me just share my setup first of all. I’m running Snow Leopard on a MacBook Pro (late 2009), with a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the standard allotment of 2 GB of RAM. Your individual results may vary if you’re coming at this from a different operating system. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got a different setup and this isn’t working for you, and I’d be glad to help you out as best I can. So without much further ado…

Things you’ll need to get started (with this tutorial):

Administrator privileges on a Mac running OS 10.6
Wireshark (FREE – get it HERE)

The information you’ll need is in this here video. However, I’ve outlined the major steps needed to do it below the video. Again, feel free to leave any variation of “this didn’t work for me.” in the comments.

1.) Download, Mount, Copy Wireshark to Applications folder
2.) Copy CHModBPF folder into StartupItems directory
3.) Show hidden files and folders
4.) Navigate to /usr/local – if no /bin exists, you’ll need to create one…
5.) Enter Terminal and type the line: cd /usr/local
6.) Hit enter and type: sudo mkdir “bin”
7.) From the Command Line folder that is in the disk image, copy all of the binary files themselves into /usr/local/bin
8.) In Terminal, enter the following line and hit enter: cd /Library/StartupItems
9.) Then: sudo chown -R root:wheel ChmodBPF
10.) Open Wireshark and navigate to Edit>Preferences>Name Resolution>SMI (MIB and PIB Paths) and click Edit
11.) Click New and enter: usr/share/snmp/mibs
12.) Click OK, then Apply, then reboot your Mac.

Once your machine comes back up, you should be good to go!

Disclaimer: We do not endorse using Wireshark or any other network monitoring utility for illegal purposes.

Looking forward to the big game this weekend?  So are a handful of iPhone developers, and they’ve decided to slash the prices on 4 major football releases to celebrate.  Make sure to snag them quick — these sale prices are only going to last through the weekend!

Madden 10 – $4.99
Click here to download from iTunes.
Electronic Art’s unstoppable football franchise made it’s first appearance on the iPhone this past fall and met with stellar reviews.  If you’ve been humming and hawing about picking it up because of the price it’s not likely to go any lower than $4.99 — at least not until Madden 11 comes out.

NFL 2010 – $0.99
Click here to download from iTunes
Madden doesn’t see many challengers on other consoles due to NFL exclusivity rights, but on the iPhone?  It’s open game.  And while it may not get the same love that Madden 10 has, Gameloft’s NFL 2010 has been a touchdown in a lot of gamers eyes.

LED Football – Free
Click here to download from iTunes
If you’re as old as me (and god help you if you are), there’s a pretty good chance you remember the original handheld gaming device: Mattel LED Football.  This game may lack the Mattel name, but that doesn’t keep it from being a faithful recreation of an old favorite.

Flick Kick Field Goal – $0.99
Click here to download from iTunes
In the real world, I couldn’t kick a field goal to save my life.  But on the iPhone?  For 99 cents I’m willing to find out.  As an added bonus, the best flick kicker by tomorrow evening will win a $100 iTunes gift card.  For contest details, check out the official Flick Kick Field Goal Football Championship Competition page here.

If you’re new to the GPS game, let me assure you that the Magellan Roadmate 2010 app offers all the bells and whistles that you’d find if you were to buy a standalone Magellan Roadmate device.  In fact, the software this is sporting more closely resembles what you’ll see in newer models of the Roadmate rather than the budget priced entry-level devices.  But unlike other GPS devices, this one has the added benefit of playing friendly with other aspects of your iPhone/iPod Touch.  Want to play music?  You can do so from in the app.  Is someone calling?  You can answer it and then go right back to driving.

The problem is that it doesn’t do any of these features incredibly well.  If you want to take a call it kicks you out of the app and then reboots, meaning if you’re on speakerphone while driving and expecting to hear “turn left in 800 metres,” you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  And if you’re expecting the convenience and music browsability that the iPod is known for, here too you’ll find yourself out of luck.  The Magellan app will only play playlists — not individually browsed tracks.  While you can build playlists in the app, the whole experience is miles away from the “OneTouch” mentality that RoadMate is famous for.

Still — everything we’ve mentioned so far is just bells and whistles.  At the end of the day the only thing that matters here is navigation, and here the performance can be a little hit and miss.  Unless your device has an uninterrupted view of the sky the GPS signal is going to drop in and out on an incredibly regular basis.  If you have a car mount kit, though, you’ll be near enough the front window that you shouldn’t have any problems maintaining a signal.  But if you’re planning on tossing your iPhone in the passenger seat while you drive?  Forget about it.

Performance from that point gets spotty at best.  While the device is almost always good at mapping out the quickest possible routes (we had a few tiny exceptions, but nothing really worth mentioning) it failed to keep up with our actual location and kept notifying us of turns 40 feet after we were supposed to make them.  It was a nightmare.

With an experience this bad, you must be wondering how we could dare describe the navigation as “a little hit and miss.”  What we’ve described so far was the miss.  What we experienced and quickly came to love was the hit.  That hit?  It has a name;  the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

Available as a seperate purchase is Magellan’s Premium Car Kit, a $129 accessory that will boost the iPhone’s GPS signal exponentially, provide an in-car mount for your device, charge it, and provide an enhanced speaker as well.  In terms of turning your iPhone into a fully functional navigation system, this thing is a must-buy.  Our experience with the Magellan RoadMate 2010 before and after using the car kit was as different as night and day.  Once connected there was no doubt in our minds that RoadMate 2010 could easily keep up with the stiff competition from standalone GPS devices.

With the kit attached no turns were ever missed, no signal ever lost, and route recalculation would happen the moment I varied from the route.  It was fabulous.  Once we got used to it we quickly delved in to all of the other terrific features the app had to offer.  Entering new addresses is a snap, OneTouch menu options let you easily find the nearest gas stations and other points of interest.  You can even assign favorite locations to the One Touch menu in case you’re looking to make return trips.  RoadMate 2010 is a fully-featured device when compared to standalone units on the market, and with the car kit in place we couldn’t have been happier with the performance.

Still, there were a few things that we couldn’t help but nitpick about when it came to the car kit.  An enhanced speaker is nice, but what this kit really needed was an FM transmitter.  Newer cars might be built to incorporate an external audio source but those of us cruising around in 10 year old cars tend to send our audio across the airwaves.  And then there’s the price.  $129 wouldn’t seem so bad if it included a redemption code for RoadMate 2010, but it doesn’t.  You’ll have to buy both products separately to get them to work together, bringing your grand total to just under $220.  That’s about the price of a standalone mid-range GPS device.

It may sound like we’re dumping on the car kit, but nothing could be further from the truth.  It has a number of great features we’ve yet to mention.  For example, unlike most car mounts this one is designed to fit an iPhone in a protective case.  I keep my iPhone in an OtterBox case and had no problem getting it to fit.  The kit provides options for mounting to dash or window, allows you to pivot the device in any direction or position you might want, but most importantly; it boosts that GPS signal to an incredible degree.

When combined with the Magellan Premium Car Kit, Magellan RoadMate 2010 offers the same top notch performance as Magellan’s standalone RoadMate GPS device.  The two are comparable in price as well.  The only difference here is that Magellan RoadMate 2010 for the iPhone has the added bonus of simply being an iPhone.  It’s one less device to lose, it offers an enhanced speaker should anyone call, and you can play all of your music from inside the app.  It should also be noted that the Car Kit enhances the GPS of the device itself, and not just for RoadMate purposes.  If you need to check out other apps that utilize GPS the Premium Car Kit will make them infinitely more accurate.

While the Magellan RoadMate 2010 app can be purchased independent of the Car Kit, it’s not something we recommend.  On it’s own the app simply isn’t reliable enough to be counted on when trying to find your way in a strange city.  Still, it’s hard to blame Magellan.  The iPhone’s built-in GPS simply isn’t developed well enough to hand this sort of task.  Magellan saw this dilemma and came up with a solution, albeit at a price.

If you’re in the market for a new GPS device and prepared to spend what you’ll need to in the standalone marketplace, you’ll easily find Magellan’s RoadMate 2010 and Premium Car Kit to be a winning combination.  Just don’t expect satisfactory performance if you buy the app alone.

You can download Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America for $79.99 on  iTunes.  Check out magellangps.com for information on how to purchase the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

With features such as Piles and four walls and a floor to throw your stuff around on, BumpTop’s interface is a versatile workspace to organize your files. It isn’t a Finder replacement, but if you like to organize your stuff in plain sight, such as multiple files relating to a project, or a bunch of pictures, you can resize them and place them on any of BumpTop’s surfaces. It’s also easy to quickly jot a note and literally throw it up onto the wall in front of you, sticking there to remind you about your son’s soccer game in two hours.

It’s a nice interface to be sure. It’s pretty, smooth, and is more like a 3D Spaces iteration for the files on your desktop. You can customize the images on each wall, and even double click the background to get a traditional 2D view of your desktop.

There’s two versions, free and paid (obviously). The pro version is the one with the Multitouch Gestures, like pinching to resize items, and swiping through individual items in your Piles. You also get Find-As-You-Type, useful for locating lost items in a crowded desktop. After all, you’ve got 5 surfaces to store stuff on, and if you utilize them, you’ll need this feature for sure. BumpTop also stays out of the way when using Spaces, Exposé, and QuickLook, letting you use these awesome integrated OS X features without a hiccup.

As much as I was impressed with the smoothness of the transitions between surfaces, I found the interface to be a little congested when used on my 13-inch MacBook Pro. Shrinking the files helped, though I liked the preview of photos, and shrinking those too much sort of killed that experience.

Additionally, I’m an avid GeekTool user, and with files in stacks and piles and on walls and such, the text files I display on my desktop with GT are obscured to say the least, if not unreadable and unusable sometimes.

Overall, it’s a great experience for those who love to see their files in front of them and use their mouse or trackpad. Quicksilver lovers will no doubt be unimpressed, but those loving nice graphics and wanting something new to try out against their traditional Mac desktop will be glad they gave it a shot. BumpTop is free to use without the Multitouch and other features, and the all-inclusive Pro version will run you 29 bucks.

In Chinatown Wars you play as Huang Lee, the son of a murdered Triad boss. You arrive in Liberty City to delivery one of your father’s pride possessions, his sword Yu Jian, to your Uncle Kenny. Right when you arrive you get shot and kidnapped, the sword gets stolen, but you escape. Throughout the game you complete missions for Kenny and many other people that you meet while you try to find the sword.

All of the games controls are displayed on screen. While you are walking you can use the joystick to move, and the other three buttons on the right side for actions. The button to the left is your weapon, which you can switch by tapping the pause button in the top right. The button to the right is to roll, and the button above is to kick. Once you get grenades or molatovs, you can just tap your player and drag to throw one. Once you approach a vehicle a button will appear in the lower center of your screen to enter the vehicle. Controls in the car are similar. There are two arrows for turning, a button to shoot your weapon, and buttons for gas and brake. Your GPS is found in the top left of the screen. If you tap the GPS you can view the full map, and place waypoints so your GPS will guide you to that spot. If you tap the small red dot above the GPS you can view your PDA. Here you can do lots of stuff, from viewing emails to ordering weapons online.

I haven’t completed the game on my iPhone yet, but I have finished the story mode on my DS. The story lasted around 15 hours, and the missions are varied. Even after completing the story mode, there is so much more to do. There is the drug trading game, which is a lot like dope wars, but with an occasional police chase. It’s also a great way to make some extra money in the game. There are quite a few side missions, and hidden cameras for you to find and destroy. There are also rampage mini-games. In these you are given one weapon, and get to go on a rampage for a high score.

There is a ton of content in Chinatown Wars, probably more than I’ve ever seen in an iPhone game. The graphics are somewhere in between the Nintendo DS and the Sony PSP, but the price is much cheaper. I did encounter a few problems with the iPhone version. It lets you use a custom playlist for listening to music while you are in a vehicle, but the playlist starts with the same song every time you launch the game, and you can’t skip tracks. The controls can also get in the way. This is one iPhone game that you will be playing for a long time, and I think any fan of sandbox games should get this. It’s currently available on iTunes for $9.99.

When the app first starts, a scanned products screen is displayed which contains a database of everything that has been scanned. Items in this database can easily be deleted just like deleting an email. There is also the ability to email the product list to a specified email address. Scanning products is a breeze, when the scan button is pressed the iPhone utilizes its camera, a box will appear with an image in the background; line the image up with the barcode and it will automatically capture it. The best part is it will auto capture it when it gets a good read so there is no need to constantly take pictures over and over trying to get a good read.

On top of taking pictures there is also the ability to manually enter a barcode, which is also useful if a good scan cannot be obtained. When a product list is emailed out it will only display the items and a link to Google Products and Amazon so the prices can be seen there. It will not send the prices in the actual email, which was a bit of a disappointment.

When it comes to barcode scanning Red Laser isn’t always perfect. It will not locate some products, which is understandable. The fact that it only searches Google Products and Amazon is a bit restrictive, Google Products does utilize a lot of websites, but a lot is not enough. When I search for cat food I would expect it to search all of the major pet retailers including Target, Wal-Mart, PetSmart, PetCo and so on but it only searched for the food in PetCo and other various online retailers. When I am buying cat food I am more interested in going down to the store instead of ordering online and paying for shipping. If this could be worked out it would be the perfect barcode app and would be well worth the $1.99. If you don’t mind comparing online prices and ordering off of the internet then this app is well worth it, if you expect it to search all of your major local retailers then you will be disappointed.

The paperless society is an interesting concept.  It’s been around long enough that we’ve all gotten used to it, but in the grand scheme of things it’s still a fairly modern invention.  10 years ago it was commonplace to visit an office that still posted paper memos on a bulletin board in the cafeteria or to have a boss that preferred using a fax machine to sending a quick email.  Those days, it would seem, are far behind us.

With the office conquered, paperless lifestyle choices have quickly invaded our personal lives.  We’ve gotten used to digital purchases on everything from books and music to comics and movies.  It was only a matter of time until someone decided to bring the print magazine boldly into the 21st century.  It turns out that GQ was that someone.

Beginning with the December 2009 issue, GQ now offers an iPhone edition of their monthly men’s magazine that includes every piece of content found in the print version.  In addition to everything you’d see at the newsstand, the iPhone edition of GQ has a number of positive traits going for it;

• exclusive audio, video and photo content not found in the print version
• better price: $2.99 iPhone, $4.50 newsstand
• back issues still available after new issues are published

The flipside, of course, is that unless Apple somehow creates a subscription model, regular readers won’t be able to save by committing to multiple issues with one purchase.  As well, there’s a massive download required once the app is purchased to take the issue around with you offline.

Small complaints aside, there’s a great deal of potential in making magazine’s available as digital downloads for the iPhone.  I can think of half a dozen or so print publications I’d love to buy digital edtions of (Wired, I’m looking in your direction).  What do you think?  Is GQ blazing a trail that other magazine publishers should follow?  Would you pay $2.99 for a digital version of your favorite print mag?  What would you like to see in a magazine app?

1.) Keep Track of Your Work and Responsibilities

If you’re a student, or just have a lot of projects to keep track of, make sure you check out our article on 5 Apps For Staying Productive At School, where you’ll find our recommendations for assignment wrangling. Having one of these apps is invaluable, no one can remember everything all of the time. For a more simplified to-do manager, check out Remember The Milk. It’s an internet-synced to-do manager that will sync with as many computers as you want. Just set up your account, install one of the many services RTM offers, and get organized.

2.) Sync and Organize Your Digital Devices

iTunes is great for the iPods and iPhones in your life, but what about your other devices? You have a few options. Use the junkware that came with them to sync your music, photos, and movies, or take charge with a Mac application that makes its living from picking up where inadequate software leaves off. One answer lies in DoubleTwist (Mac OS X – Free). An open-source project that is still under heavy development, DoubleTwist supports Archos media players, the Palm Pre, Sony PSP, INQ1, G1 and Android phones, select Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson phones, as well as Blackberry, WinMo 5.0 and 6.0, as well as iPod and iPhone models! Just drag and drop for file and playlist transfer to your mobile device. New devices are being supported all the time, and you can request a feature or device in their forums.

3.) Get Access To Your Computers From Anywhere!

An important aspect of being organized is having easy access to all of your information and tools that you need to get things done. Several Mac apps make this idea easy to implement. Start with a solid VNC app for remote control of your computers from any corner of the globe. Try out the free apps JollysFastVNC or Chicken of the VNC, which we featured in our huge list of awesome Mac Freeware from last year (many applications in there are still very relevant today). Both will let you see and control your home or work computers from anywhere with an internet connection.

Also, grab an FTP client for easy transfer of files across your computers. I fully recommend downloading the free Cyberduck or the $28 YummyFTP, both of which work equally well in my own (and others) experiences, for file transfer to your website or personal machines.

4.) Back Up Your Files…twice.

If you aren’t doing this by now, get to it. Like, as soon as you’re done reading this paragraph. I cannot stress the importance of having multiple backups of your stuff. Having another copy of your data off-site (away from home, work, wherever) is equally important, and can save you in the case of a fire, Act of God, or robbery. In addition to Apple’s own Time Machine, there are many online services available, such as Dropbox (2GB Free; plus Paid tiers for more storage) and Mozy(2GB free as well as paid levels with more storage). Both do a great job of running silently from the menu bar, backing your stuff up to their servers as you go. So go get one! I think I hear a tornado coming…

5.) Keep your Mac up-to-date with AppFresh.

Spend less time keeping all your applications updated! Let AppFresh take care of it for you! AppFresh is a free indispensable utility that will index your applications and find their updates, all you have to do is click download and it installs them for you! Just run it once a week or so, and enjoy an quick update experience.

6.) Lock Down Your Finances

Whether or not you choose to do this completely digitally, there is something to be said for a software solution to one of human-kind’s most stressful topics – money. There are standalone apps to help you wrap your head around where you’re spending all that hard-earned dough (that thing you’re typing on, maybe?). For that, I recommend apps like SEE Finance($20), iCash($39.90), and even Quicken 2007($69.99) can help you get ahold of and track your finances. These apps serve their purpose well, and are all worth at the very least a look-see. From simple budgeting to keeping track of interest and investments, they’ll provide a good user experience and some allow you to download transactions from your bank’s website.

If you want to see up the minute updates with your current balances and lines of credit in an easy to see visual environment, I recommend Mint (free). Being able to have everything in front of you is invaluable. Mint provides you with complete breakdown of all your account activity over time, and gives you readouts of where you currently stand, all in a cross-platform web interface. It can’t get much easier than this, folks.

The UI is different, to put it simply. The default display is a CoverFlow-esque view of all your music in alphabetical order by artist then by album, just like in iTunes. To view tracks on a particular album, double click the album, and a track list slides out to the right.

I do appreciate what the developers tried to do with it, but it felt a little counter-intuitive at first. There is a slight learning curve associated with using the app to it’s fullest potential.

Also, there’s no way to view just a tracklist of all your music- your only option is the CoverFlow-like view. So if you rip your music from CD and don’t bother with the artwork, you might end up with something like this:

Full Screen mode could also use some improvement. Now, I realize this is a compact media player, so it’s not supposed to be ripe with features, but there’s a few that should be there to begin with. First of all in Full Screen, there’s no way to navigate your music other than scrolling through the album artwork. No quick-find, no search. If you have a lot of music, you’ll understand where this gets frustrating quickly. Also, within full-screen mode, there’s no way to do anything else, really- save navigating, sorting, playing and pausing. Along with a search box(at minimum), I’d like to see an on-screen volume slider, and a few control buttons: play/pause, forward and previous track.

One of Everplay’s biggest advantages is that it taps right into your iTunes library. No need to organize or reorganize your digital media files. If it’s the way you want it in iTunes, you’re all set. However, this could also be it’s biggest DIS-advantage, as there’s no way to add, delete, or reorganize media whatsoever. You can indeed play your movies and videos in Everplay, but be warned. There is no way to play DRM video content at all. This means any movies or TV shows you have in your iTunes library, you will have to play in iTunes. It’s something iTunes Store lovers will surely be a little disappointed about.

Another major plus in Everplay is its integrated Last.fm features. If you use Last.fm, you’ll be able to scrobble from right within the app, listen to radio, and find similar artists. Also, events from your Last.fm calendar can handily be sent right over to iCal.

Everplay has two modes for playing music, regular track order, and Jukebox Mode. Jukebox mode acts…well like a jukebox. Any track that is double-clicked is put into a queue for immediate play after the currently playing track ends. Great for parties, it’s basically creating an on-the-go playlist, and you can view or clear the upcoming tracks in the Upcoming menu drop-down. Jukebox Mode, however, is Everplay’s only playlist creation tool, and won’t save when you exit the app. To create a new playlist to use in Everplay, you’d have to do it in iTunes.

To sum things up, this app, like most of its competition excluding iTunes, is a great idea, but its execution is lacking nearly everywhere. It’s compact for sure, but there’s just too much missing. Were some of the missing features implemented in further releases, I’d fully recommend this software, but for now, stick with iTunes. Everplay is free to try, and $19.95 for a license from Snarb.tk

Jobs is a very unique iPhone app used to track billable time, clients, client jobs, and invoiced jobs. This app was created by Bjango, and sells on the App Store for $3.99 normally, but is on sale for $1.99. It is very easy to use and is very straightforward. It stores all jobs the user has done within the app and sorts it by month. It shows all active jobs, and can run multiple jobs at the same time.

Each job is tap able, which shows how much each job is being billed out as, how much time the job took, whether the client was invoiced, and it has the option to export the job. Exporting the job will email the job information to a specified email address. When exporting the job there is the option to email in standard text so it will show up in an email, or CSV format which makes it easy to import into applications like excel.

When it comes to time tracking there are a few additional options such as rounding, it will round the bill to the nearest hour, 15 minutes, or whatever the user desires. A default flag-fall can also be added, which starts the timer at an initial fee to the client and adds the time billed on to that. Adding clients is very simple; the clients can even be linked to the contacts within the iPhone. Also tapping on each client shows an each overview for the client, including all of the jobs done for the client.

This app also backs up to the iPhone, when the iPhone is synced with iTunes it stores a back up within that back up. It also has the option to back up to a computer, which is done via email, and restoring is done just the same way. The only problems with this app is the lack of invoicing, there is no way to invoice a client, also when exporting it emails from a Bjango server, it doesn’t send from the user’s email, however this app is perfect for client tracking. It is perfect for an individual contractor or consultant, or someone who is in charge of tracking multiple people out on billable jobs.

Ever since Guitar Hero hit the home console scene back in 2005, music games have been all the rage amongst gamers and music enthusiasts alike.  Tracing the iPhone’s roots back to the music-only iPods of yore, it seems only natural that the genre would eventually make its way to the iTunes App Store.  We take a look at two of this season’s most popular music games for the iPhone and let you know which one we think is the real deal.

Tap Tap Revenge 3: As the leading music game franchise on the iPhone since the platform’s launch, Tap Tap Revenge is the name to beat if you want to get anywhere in iPhone rhythm gaming.  While we’ve seen a number of licensed entries on the market over the past year (Tap Tap Coldplay, Lady Gaga Revenge) TTR3 marks the third real revision to the series formula.  This time out it brings a wealth of new changes while still maintaining everything we know and love about the franchise.

If you’re new to the series, here’s the quick rundown; Tap Tap Revenge is a music game that, like most other music games, is about tapping out notes in rhythm to the music.  Unlike other series, TTR uses a 3-note system that seems to be a perfect fit for the iPhone.  Players can wrap their hands around the device and put two thumbs on the screen, darting one of those over to the middle track when necessary.  The gameplay is easy to pick up and well-suited for the device, but the coolest feature you’re going to find here isn’t in how you play but in how you play with a friend.  Local multiplayer can be tackled via split-screen on the same iPhone, with one player holding the top of the device and one holding the bottom.  Online multiplayer is also available in a cool score-battle mode that pits you against a room full of strangers that you can chat with between rounds.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 changes things up in a few noticeable ways.  A new single player campaign mode exists where you’ll need to level up RPG-style to unlock songs.  The game now offers a customizable avatar, which can be dressed and armed via coins earned during in-game play.  And biggest of all — TTR3 now offers in-game downloads of paid content.  This means that — in addition to the 200 or so free songs available — new content from major artists will be made available for purchase every week.  Duran Duran, LCD Soundsystem, The Killers — it’s astounding the depth and range of content that’s already available.  Everything from Marilyn Manson to New Kids on the Block is in the store.  Many of these purchases have their own skin for the in-game presentation.  Oh — and did we mention you can import songs from previous premium versions of the game?  Yeah, this thing is pretty much made of win.  A+

Rock Band: Bringing a massive 4-instrument multiplayer experience to the iPhone is a hefty concept, and for what it’s worth EA Mobile handled the transition fairly well.  Rock Band has always been about that living room experience, and so long as you’re hanging out with other iPhone rockers you’ll be able to get the band back together flawlessly.  The game supports 4-person local multiplayer over bluetooth and wifi with each iPhone playing a different instrument in sync with the rest of the group.  Online multiplayer exists too, but it comes off feeling pretty pointless.  I challenge anyone to notice a difference between single player and online multi — the experiences are identical.

When playing in single player you’ll have the opportunity to jam on whichever instrument you choose, with each having it’s own individual note tracking just as Harmonix intended.  The gameplay itself isn’t without its flaws, though.  Each instrument offers up four tracks, unlike Tap Tap Revenge’s three.  This makes for tough times for the larger fingered among us, as trying to hit two notes side-by-side can just as easily spill over into the next note column.  It’s not a game-crippling issue, but it becomes pretty apparent that 4 note tracks is just too many for an iPhone music game.

The instruments themselves don’t vary as much as they do in the console version.  Removing concepts like the kick pedal and the whammy bar means that, despite different note tracking, each instrument feels pretty much identical to play.  The biggest disappointment here had to be the vocals, which — instead of offering up SingStar fanatics an opportunity to bust out our karaoke chops — just offered a vertical variation on note tracking.  Going vertical actually made the 4 tracks more user friendly than the other instruments, but I wanted to sing, dammit!  I can understand that requiring the mic to sing would have limited the available market for the game (1st gen Touch’s have no audio input), but it doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us to cripple the experience across the board.

We were also a little bummed to see that Rock Band didn’t take advantage of the franchise’s massive pre-existing music store, instead opting for an iPhone specific store that (as of this writing) offers only 11 downloadable tracks.  At least the 20 included tracks rock the casbah, offering a much better “big name” selection than TTR3.  Besides — any game that offers Freezepop’s Super Sprode as a downloadable track is a winner in my books.  B+

Winner: Tap Tap Revenge 3.

While the general vibe of the franchise is still in tact, there were simply far too many missed opportunities here to whole-heartedly recommend Rock Band over the competition.  Tap Tap has known what it’s doing since day one, and the experience is only getting better.  And to think — we made this decision without even beginning to factor the price disparity between the two into the mix!

Download Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free by clicking here, or buy Rock Band for $6.99 by clicking here.

I have a lot of music in my library. More than 60 GB. And so, I can’t really keep track of what kind of music is what all the time, and Genius does that for me. I recently discovered a new Canadian folk duo, Dala, and decided to hear more music in their vein. I popped one of their songs into the Genius Mix, and was surprised to see, despite their relative obscurity, that I had a nice 50 song list to listen to. And listen to it I did. I heard some Leonard Cohen, some Rufus Wainwright, some New Pornographers, some Sarah McLachlan… I suddenly realized something. Musical genre aside, every performer or band I had heard so far was Canadian. I looked through the rest of the list, and, sure enough, 42 out of the 50 suggested songs were by Canadian artists. Did iTunes think Canada was a genre?

I was at once confused and impressed. How did the program even know the provenance of the band? There isn’t, as far as I’m aware, a “Country of Origin” blank in the mp3 metadata. Assuming that the information is gotten from the iTunes music store, then why would it choose a country over the mood, or the genre? This got me to wondering whether this was intentional or not. Perhaps, apart from being Canadian, all Canadian bands have similar styles. I had to admit that the mix was flowing pretty well.

But what I think I’d like to see here is something like what Pandora does. “We’re playing this song because it shares THIS with your chosen song.” Whether the shared feature is mellow guitar, close harmony, or Canadian citizenship, I’d like to know. It doesn’t simply choose the stated genre (with some exceptions, my brother once had a playlist of poems after selecting a Led Zeppelin song mistakenly labeled as “Spoken Word”), so I’d be interested in knowing its algorithm. iTunes could be much more interesting if it gave a little bit more away about its Genius. After all, you never know when you might actively want to listen to a playlist of purely Scottish bands.

1. Journlr – Mac OS X only- Free/$35

While development of Journlr has ceased, it is almost an essential note-taking app for your college courses. It combines the ability to type notes, record audio, video, and take photos simultaneously. All media can be incorporated into a single page of notes and organized in many ways. Smart folders let you keep track of classes, sections, chapters, or whatever you choose to organize by. Notes can then be exported to email, your blog, your iPod, or iWeb if you so choose. Additionally, audio recordings of lectures or discussions can be exported directly into a Journlr playlist in iTunes. Journlr is available for free, but a license can still be purchased from the website.

2. Schoolhouse 3 –  Mac OS X only – $14

We reviewed Schoolhouse earlier this year, and it only makes sense to feature it here again. Since our last review, it has been upgraded to version 3.1.2 from 2.2 in the last review, and it now features a slightly refined look and feel, as well as MobileMe syncing and an autosave feature. Most useful for keeping track of all your assignments and their due dates, you can also write notes, and its great for project organization utilizing the ability to add documents and other media to a project’s page. Other features include grade tracking and a multitude of customization options. Schoolhouse has now moved to a paid model that is set at a quite reasonable $14. You can try it for free with a limit of being able to input 20 assignments, but I highly recommend shelling out the 14 bucks and getting an incredibly useful organizational app. Schoolhouse is available from Logans Collins at their website.

3. iHomework – Mac- Free – iPhone/iPod Touch- $0.99

If you’re looking for an application that will wirelessly sync between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac, look no further. This little app works great with just what you think…homework. While there are little to no note-taking abilities, iHomework allows you to enter all the class info you can think of, such as dates, times, instructors (mobile only), and places. The Add Work button is where you input all of your new assignments and their corresponding information like type of assignment, due date, course, and even lets you input your grade for a particular assignment. One of the great features of this app is the ability to send any and all events to iCal. The wireless syncing process is fairly straightforward, although it could use some adjustment, as the first time around is a little confusing. iHomework for OSX is free from their website, and the iHomework mobile version is just 99 cents from your friendly neighborhood App Store. Well worth it.

4. EtreTask – Mac OS X only – Free

EtreTask is a dead-simple to do list for your Mac. There’s not much to say about it, but if you’re looking for a to-do list only, this is definitely the app for you. It’s lightweight, and couldn’t be more straightforward. Input a note, and check it off when it’s done! EtreTask is free from Etresoft.

5. Circus Ponies Notebook – Mac OS X only – $49.95

Regarded in the Mac community as one of the best note-taking/organizational applications out there, Notebook is a customizable, versatile masterpiece. Upon initial launch, you’re presented with a multitude of templates from which to get started. Want to get organized at college? Notebook sets up a notebook just for you, with tabs for each class, and a contents page to show you where to input your information. Want to write a novel? Plan a trip? Keep a journal? Keep track of recipes? There’s a template for that. Notebook is $49.95 from Circus Ponies for an individual license, an academic license (with valid academic credentials) is $29.95 and a family pack can be had for $99.95.

If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for a unique image for stand-by time, look no further as we dream up 5 fresh ideas for iPhone wallpaper.  And be sure to check out our comments for even more ideas from our readers!

The Space Age – The 1950’s was a special time.  World War II had ended, business was booming across America, and for the first time ever the world was on the brink of reaching the stars.  This lead to a boom in popular discussion and popular culture about what the future would look like.  Flying cars, houses on the moon, jetpacks — nothing was impossible!  And while the fantastic world we dreamed of more than 50 years ago never came to pass, artifacts of that idealized future can still be found strewn across the internet.  Why not check out some images of what we thought the future would look like and shrink them down to 320×480?

Telephones – The iPhone is many things to many people.  Email, GPS, Facebook, video camera…  the list goes on and on.  But how many of us actually use the thing as a phone?  Maybe you should choose a wallpaper that reminds you of its intended use.  The neat thing is, thanks to the long and storied history of the telephone, there are limitless possibilities for a hip photo opportunity.  Hand-crank phones, rotary phones, big ol’ 1980’s-style mobile phones — you name it, there’s a picture online.

Comic Book Covers – As a big comic book nerd growing up, it’s pretty easy for me to link great art with great comics.  Few things are as iconic or as personal  to a comics reader as a favorite cover, so why not share yours with the world?  Getting good scans of old comics covers used to be hard, but since 2006 one website has made it easy to find any comic cover you might be looking for – CoverBrowser.com.  With nearly half a million covers to choose from, I had very little difficulty in tracking down a specific Detective Comics cover that’s been haunting me since I was a kid.  Thanks CoverBrowser!

The Cold War – It may sound like a strange notion at first, but the Cold War brought to life some of the most unique imagery of the last 100 years.  Gas masks.  Soviet propaganda.  ICBM’s.  If you grew up any time before the fall of the Berlin Wall, you no doubt remember the daily threat of global thermonuclear war that quietly hung over all our heads.  Despite the terror it invoked at the time there’s a real kitsch nostalgia to the era and a rich photographic history to go along with it.  A quick search can find anything from Mickey Mouse breathing apparatuses to rusty old fallout shelter signs.

Video Game Art – I know what you’re thinking — using the latest screenshot from the hottest game just feels overdone and tacky.  But if you’re a gamer at heart and want to show some street cred, why not try and track down some tasteful shots or stellar fan art to show of your love of all things playable?  The screen above is a clip from 2008’s indie darling World of Goo (now available for Mac!) and offers up a great vibe without ever really feeling too fanboyish.  If you’re looking for fan art instead, you should do some searches on DeviantArt (here’s a personal favorite by NoBullet).

- – -

As you have probably guessed by now, these are just one geek’s ideas and clearly cater to my own personal tastes. Maybe you loved these suggestions, maybe you hated them.  No matter how you felt I just hope it got you thinking a little bit more about the personality that can be added to every iPhone with just a simple image search on the web.

You’ve seen our ideas, but we’d love to see yours!  Tell us what you like to put on your iPhone standby screen.  Link to wallpapers you’ve used and loved.  Tear down that curtain and show us how cool your iPhone can be!

—

A Few Words About iPhone Wallpaper: Setting your wallpaper is as easy as choosing an image from your Photos app and selecting wallpaper, but formatting it isn’t always so easy.  You can always zoom and crop on the device, but if you want something that’s going to really shine you’ll probably want to do some fiddling in a proper program.  Whether you prefer Photoshop, GIMP, or some free web-based alternative, you just need to know one thing:  iPhone wallpaper is 320×480 pixels.  Work within those dimensions and you’re good to go no matter what image you choose.  (On a side note:  all of the wallpapers featured in this articles have been sized to 320×480, so they’re ready to use.)

Resources – While we’ve mentioned DeviantArt and CoverBrowser, there are a number of other simple but prolific options out there for finding great images.  Flickr is a terrific resource, as is the simple Google Image Search.  Check out different online communities and see what’s out there in the world of photography and art!

When you open the application, it shows two folders. These allow you to keep files on your iPhone and also to sync them with your Desktop, and best of all it actually works. In order to set up the desktop sync, you need to register within the application for a desktop application to be sent to your email. It’s free and takes about 5 minutes.

Once you download the application for your desktop, you must move it to the applications folder and then you can begin working with it.

Connect your iPhone to a wireless network before proceeding with the next few steps. Then open the application. You do not have to keep it in the dock in order for it to work as it creates a sync folder on your desktop once you complete the next five steps.

As you open the application, it prompts you to setup a device, which you can do by going to the menu bar and selecting devices. Then you must open the application on your iPhone and click settings in the upper left hand corner, and then select add new desktop. It looks like this:

Once you go through the next few steps, the desktop application asks you to provide a PIN from the mobile application. Then it asks you to select the folders from your computer that you would like to sync with your iPhone. I chose several folders and it took about 5 minutes to upload. You can choose folders with images, excel sheets and word documents. Additionally you can view PDF files, but there are other applications in the iTunes store specifically dedicated to that, which do a better job of allowing you to view PDF documents. Ultimately you will see this screen which shows that the process is finished.

Now you can upload documents and sync ones created on your phone, from anywhere where Wifi is available. That is one of the cons of this device. You cannot sync to your desktop unless you iPhone and Mac are connected to the SAME wifi network. However, you can save your documents and edit them from anywhere.

The document editing allows you to change alignment, font, font colors, and also to highlight in a variety of colors. Additionally you can copy, paste, bold the font, italicize it, and underline it. This makes editing a breeze. The font colors provided are: black, three shades of grey, white, red, several shades of green, blue and pink, and a purple. You can also change the font to Arial, Calibri, Cambria, Courier New, Symbol, Times New Roman and Wingdings. Font sizes range from 8-72. You can also minimize the tool bar in order to provide a clear screen for writing and editing. The application also works in landscape mode.

All in all, despite it’s few faults, this product does exactly what it says it does– creates, edits and syncs Microsoft Word and Excel documents via iPhone and Mac.

One of Notify’s big features is the ability to have multiple accounts. You can set up Gmail, MobileMe and Rackspace accounts, or just use your own IMAP settings for any other mail account. Notify just sits in your menubar, and has a small envelope icon that lights up blue when you have new messages. When you click this, the main window for Notify pops up displaying a list of your new emails. There are also tabs on the top, so you can switch accounts.

In the message list each email shows the subject, and a short section of the full email. To view the full email you can either open the preview, by tapping the spacebar or clicking the preview icon, or open it in Gmail, by double clicking the message. You can also compose a new message, mark the message as read, delete the message, or reply to the message using the buttons at the bottom. Notify also includes notification options, which can be separately configured for each email account.

Notify is designed for people who use Gmail online, so there is no way to have Notify open Mail.app when you click on a message. Instead it launches your web browser. You also can not add attachments to messages that you type with the application.

Notify Pro costs $10, but once the trail expires you can use a free version forever. The free version lacks some features such as mail composing, full message preview, mark as read, and delete. You can download and buy Notify from the Vibealicious website.