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Barnes & Noble is one of my favorite book stores here in town. I just recently checked their iPhone app and I was very impressed.

B&N Bookstore is the name of the app in App Store should you search for it. Let’s see how this free iPhone App measures up beyond the basic functionality of searching for books, music & dvds.

In the first screen you’d see a bookcase where you can swipe to see book covers like in a carousal. Under that is the area where you see different sections like Recommendations, Bestsellers, New Realeases, Review & Studio. This is tagged as the Discover section and is like virtually strolling through the bookstore.

I was looking at the Bestsellers and you can see the online and list prices there. Nice.

One of the newest features is that now you can read book reviews right from your iPhone! Extra nice!

Now comes the cool factor for you iPhone owners. Let’s say you have a book in front of you that you want to check a price for.

Go to the ‘Search’ page and click on the green camera button. Take a picture of your book cover and the app will find your book from the millions of books in the store!

Amazon’s iPhone App has had this feature for a while but I was still impresses with how accurately and swifty it found this Drupal Book for me.

And the Stores page lets you quickly find a Barnes & Noble around you with a simple click of the familiar ‘Locate me’ button near the search box.

B&N Bookstore App is a must have for a book lover, IMHO. Plus, the the price can’t be more right - Free.

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Hello there! Hope you found a nice app, or a cool hack or the latest iPhone news. Don't miss future updates, grab our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter and get free updates.

Apple has updated and posted the iPhone OS 3.0 User Guide (pdf link) online.

Get your hands on it now!

Here are a few posts that can help you find some cool iPhone OS 3.0 features that you weren’t aware of

• 100+ Hidden Features in iPhone OS 3.0
• AT&T WiFi auto-authentication on OS 3.0
• iPhone OS 3.0 plus 46 security bugs
• How To: See New Push Notifications Settings in iPhone OS 3.0
• The Push is On: Apple Turns on Push Notifications
• Big Update: Evernote for iPhone 3.0 is Here

Have a good reading time! I am awaiting my iPhone 3G S shipment to be delivered by Fedex today and will post our unboxing pictures later on.

If you got your iPhone 3G S already, post your thoughts in the comments. We wanna hear from you.

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You have probably seen sneak peek of the new iPhone 3GS demo from Apple’s Guided Tour.

A YouTube video of the new iPhone 3GS has been found in the wild. The speaker demoing the iPhone 3GS is speaking Portuguese or Greek, I am not sure.

But, this video is great to just watch the various new features of the iPhone 3GS in action.

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The new iPhone 3GS has officially been announced. With tons of juicy features and we will be covering them in detail in the coming weeks as soon I get my hands on one.

Here are some of the important features announced

• Video - 30fps VGA video with in-phone editing support
• HSDPA - 7.2Mbps on supported carriers
• Camera - 3 megapixel, autofocus, autoexposure, tap to focus, better low light sensitivity
• Improved battery life - in Wifi mode, Internet surfing mode, etc
• Turn-by-Turn direction support - in Google maps and via apps like TomTom
• Performance - reporting almost twice the speed in most operations
• Colors - Black and White

iPhone 3GS Videos

• New iPhone 3GS TV Ad
• iPhone 3GS Guided Tour

Pricing in US

iPhone 3GS has been announced at the following prices and will be available on June 19.

• 32GB iPhone 3GS - $299 with contract
• 16GB iPhone 3GS - $199 with contract

The current iPhone 3G will continue to be available at

• 16GB iPhone 3G - $99 with contract

So, the $99 iPhone rumor was correct after all. It was a little disappointing to not find the front facing camera but the rest of the features are enough to make me go out and buy a 32GB iPhone 3GS! How about you?

If you have been holding off on buying a iPhone so far, I’d say iPhone 3GS makes a pretty good case for buying one.

iPhone OS 3.0

iPhone OS 3.0 will be available on June 17th for download via iTunes. And you can read about iPhone 3.0 new features here. if you have a jailbreak iPhone, please wait until the Devteam releases Quickpwn 3.0 or Pwnage 3.0 before updating your iPhone OS!

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Amazon recently just launched their new Kindle 2 (Latest Generation wireless reading device) and priced it at $360.

Amazon just launched a free iPhone Kindle App that lets you read Amazon eBooks with your iPhone or iPod Touch.

You can read any Kindle-compatible book you’ve purchased from Amazon’s catalog in your iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, you can read the first chapter of any book for free if you want to try out the App without buying a book from Amazon Kindle.

It has a lot of the Kindle features like resizing text, bookmark pages, viewing notations you made on Kindle, etc.

The price point for Kindle is kind of out of my league at the moment and I have my entertainment budget lined up for stuff elsewhere this year.

But, the iPhone Kindle App creates a sweet spot where I can buy and read eBooks on my iPhone from the vast eBook Catalog with one of the most competitive pricing elsewhere.

If you already own a Kindle or planning to buy Kindle 2, the iPhone App makes a compelling statement.

Reason - WhisperSync. This feature automatically keeps track of where you left off in each book and it allows you to pick up from that spot in any Kindle-friendly devices you may have. You can leave your Kindle 2 bedside in the night and pick up on the reading on your way to work in a train/bus from your iPhone.

As Amazon’s Kindle service expands to more mobile devices, this feature is going to be kick-ass.

With Amazon moving into the iPhone eBook market, it’s time the other players stood up and took notice as the competition is going to be really stuff from now on.

If you are a iPhone eBook app writer, what do you think about this development?

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How many times have you had to remove your gloves when you were using your iPhone or iPod Touch this winter?

My answer: way too many times. The touch screen in my iPhone 3G is the best feature ever but I can’t quite get to everything with my gloves on.

That’s when the I was luckily contacted by the creator of this ingenious gloves - Etre Touchy and he sent me these to try on.

Now, this is about the only glove I use when I am out using my iPhone. Etre Touchy gives me a fun and practical way to keep my hands from freezing yet leave my thumb and index fingers open so I can do everything with my iPhone!

In fact, it even helps operating our recent Canon SX10 IS - digital camera purchase with ease when we shooting outdoors.

Plus, as you can see in the picture it is pretty stylish as well! Don’t you think? At $22.74, this is definitely worth a buy considering the annoyance we go through trying to work our iPhone or iPod Touch.

I was looking in Amazon for other options as well and here is a few I found that look promising for this winter. Here are a few:

• Freehands® Leather Gloves for IPhones
  Also with open thumb and index finger but the cover flips back for only the times you need
• Lowepro Lycra Photo Gloves with Control Dots
  The control dots in your fingers help with the touch screens

I’d love to hear how you manage to use your iPhone in the winter. Wouldn’t one of these gloves make a lovely gift for your better half?

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Flying Aces iPhone & iPod Touch App is one of a kind. It is the first Combat Flight Simulator App in the AppStore.

Flying Aces lets you sit in the cockpit of a F-15 Eagle and simulates combat situations tracking down enemy planes and shooting them down.

You can choose 2 theaters to fly in - Desert or Ocean and the graphics are pretty cool. Once you have chosen that, you get to control the plane just like holding a steering wheel. Flying Aces uses the Accelorometer to navigate your flight according to your hand tilt.

You can choose from 3 weapons light machine gun, heavy machine gun and a air to air missile to attack enemy planes. You also can pick up ammunition, fuel, etc. on the way. Enemy planes are indicated in red and pick up items in blue in the radar.

Flying Aces offers unique flying experience with the simulator and the 3D sounds make it even better when you listen to it via the headphones.

All in all, Flying Aces is a great buy for $7.99. If you like flight simulators and combat flights, Flying Aces will certainly fill in that niche in iPhone & iPod Touch. This is some pretty cool stuff.

Download Flying Aces {iTunes link}

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Our beloved Amazon.com has launched their own native iPhone & iPod Touch App. This takes shopping or looking up items at Amazon.com a breeze with your iPhone.

Without further adieu, a few features of the Amazon iPhone App

• On launching the app, you see your wish list and your login for Amazon
• With the Search tab, you can search for anything in Amazon
• Search results are shown as a list in descending order of relevance
• You can see different categories by tapping the ‘By Category’ button
• In the Product page, you can see full product description as well as customer reviews
• You can add products and remove products easily from your shopping cart

Amazon Remember’s

Amazon iPhone App has a cool experimental feature - Amazon Remembers tab. With this feature, you can take a picture of any item and send it over to Amazon. In a few minutes to a few hours, you will get a link to the Amazon product page to that item or something that closely resembles that item.

You can see the picture of our cordless phone. The first one is the one I sent and I received an email notification that a match was found. In about 5 minutes. And it rightly

The best thing is the results are saved in Amazon site so you can later review those at home for further research. This can be very useful when you are out shopping and help you remember to look up this item later.

One caveat with this feature is that the results are returned by humans working in the Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service. So the accuracy could be questionable and so is the time period in which you get the results back as this service become popular.

[Obvious plug: We have our own Amazon Store - Shop link at the top, where we feature hand picked deals for iPod Touch & iPhone]

Download Amazon iPhone App

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There is a bunch of rumors surrounding iPhone running around at the moment. What’s new, right?

If you haven’t heard them all already, here is a short roundup.

iPhone 2.2 Firmware Coming Nov 21st

There’s talk on the street that iPhone Hellas has an insider report that the much awaited iPhone 2.2 firmware is to be released on Nov 21st.

Some of the cool iPhone 2.2 firmware features I am waiting for are

• Google Maps Streetview and Walking directions
• Transit routes that will give timings and directions for public transit
• Ability to share your current location via email
• Safari browser tweaks
• Ability to download podcasts straight to your iPhone (why they probably denied the excellent Podcaster app)
• Sorting Apps by categories in AppStore

One good news is that DevTeam had already announced that they have had success jailbreaking the beta versions of iPhone 2.2 firmware. So, we shouldn’t have to wait too long to jailbreak 2.2 firmware release.

AT&T to Offer Tethering Plan

MacBlogz is reporting that AT&T is working on an official iPhone tethering plan and that it could be as much as $30/month with a 5GB cap on bandwidth. No launch date in sight yet but this could be the answer for folks waiting to do this the non-jailbreak 2.1 way.

Costco to Sell Cheap iPhones?

There is already news that Apple is cutting down on iPhone production, with the way the economy is at the moment.

Now, there is another rumor that the discount wholesale giant Costco might be carrying discount iPhones that could cost $150 starting in January 2009.

Is Walmart Selling iPhones too?

This kinda doesn’t make sense if you consider the other rumor that Walmart might be selling iPhones soon. Walmart does have a iPhone friendly website now that you can browse products with and even locate stores near you easily.

We’ll watch and report which of these rumors indeed become true but the one news that has us excited is the iPhone firmware 2.2. Hopefully this should also addresses some performance issues with jailbroken 2.1 iPhone 3G’s experience.

[Image credit: AppleInsider]

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Flickr has to be one of the most used web services for a iPhone user. We all take pictures with our iPhones and upload them using various apps like Pixup to Flickr. But, browsing Flickr itself with our iPhone wasn’t that great.

Now, Flickr has unveiled its iPhone-optimized mobile site - m.flickr.com. It’s fabulous. Most used links are at the top.You can see Activity, your sets, contacts, photostream, etc. You can view a picture and leave comments.

But, you don’t get the Uploadr, Organizr and Map that you get in the Flickr website. But, that’s probably ok as long as you can browser your sets & collections. But, sadly the slideshow feature is also missing. You can even add the Flickr web app to your Home with a nice icon set. if you’d like to see the screenshots instead, click over to the link below where Josh Bancroft has tons of them!

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PhoneFlix is a free iPhone app that lets you view and manage your Netflix queue right from your iPhone or iPod Touch. Although PhoneFlix isn’t affiliated to Netflix in any way, it lets you login to your Netflix account and manage your queue. Plus, you can see your recent activity, recommendations and reviews as well.

You also get to browse through Netflix’s catalog of over 100,000 movies, documentaries and TV shows. I liked the fact that I could browse by movie categories, TV shows, Top 100 movies and pretty much all the top menu items in the Netflix website from my iPhone.

It looks like some folks have trouble logging into their Netflix account via PhoneFlix, but they are working to resolve it. Let us know it worked for you.

Just a quick note though, if after putting in your username and password, if it seems like you are still on the same screen, you probably typed in username or password wrong. It doesn’t give you an error.

Download PhoneFlix

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Scramboni is the brain child of the online Multi-player Social & casual gaming platform ByteClub.com. This is first of the promised lien of apps/games from ByteClub.

Scramboni is a fun game where you get to play 20 rounds of unscrambling words of different difficulties. What makes it fun is that you are playing this with a number of people online.

You get 30 seconds to unscramble a word and you get points based on how quick you are. Your score resets every game (20 rounds) so you get a fresh shot at the title spot every game.

You need a Byteclub.com account but registering even from my iPhone was short and sweet and I was playing in no time. This was very entertaining when we were driving late in the night and were feeling sleepy. This woke us up very fast!

Download Scramboni

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