iPhone

So, I love a good after lunch bowel movement as much as the next guy, maybe more. Lately, I've gotten into a bit of a groove where I go after lunch and play Tetris on my iPhone.  A full game of 120 or 130 lines usually takes me about 15 minutes, well enough time for me to finish my business.

Tetris has always been my favorite game all the way back to NES days so you can imagine my joy upon learning I could take it anywhere with me and use the iPhone's touch screen interface to rotate and slam down the pieces. But just like the NES version, I was curious how far it would go and how fast it would get. The NES version never had a top out point as far as I can remember. Neither did the Ti-85 graphing calculator version that got passed around when I was in high school. So, I've been wondering what the top-out was for the iPhone version.

Well, today, I found it.

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Today on the show, Kevin and Olivia are going to run down the top iPhone apps and so it behooves us to bestow upon you a list of useful links so that you may follow the subculture know as iPhone and iPod Touch apps. We'll call this new group of Apple fans Appheads (pronounced af-heads.)

So for all you Appheads out there, here's some more app goodness:

AppCraver - This blog about apps is updated several times daily and has interviews with 3rd party developers.

iPhone Hacks - We would never condone jailbreaking your phone and voiding the warranty, but as a purely educational exercise, you should check out this site that can take your phone to the next level, albeit against the rules.

iPhone Application List - Despite the completely unsexy title, this site has an excellent searchable database of all the apps available in the store. Kind of makes you forget the annoying search incapabilities of the store itself.


Go to it, Appheads. Be fruitful and stuff.

Staring at a computer monitor all day is tough on your eyes. If you're a heavy gamer or iPhone addict, that's even more strain on your ocular instruments. Since none of us are about to give up our eye-frying jobs, gaming systems, or BlackBerries, what do you do? Gunnar Optiks offers a solution with its line of eyeglasses and lenses designed to relieve eyestrain due to heavy computer use, gaming, and PDA use. The company claims that its goods help prevent digital eye fatigue (DEF) and computer vision syndrome (CVS). I haven't heard of either of those, but I know my eyes get tired after a long day of work coupled with a multi-hour gaming session.

I've picked up a pair of Gunnars and will be using them for the next month. Today I'll have some unboxing fun with you and give you my initial impressions. I'll hit you with an update in two weeks to see if Gunnar Optiks have mad a big difference (or not). In a month, I'll give you my conclusion and closing thoughts on the company's curious eye wear. On a side note, I think it's cool that the company is (obviously) named after the more talented Nelson brother.

Hit the jump for some unboxing love and first impressions!

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Steve Jobs recently stepped aside as CEO of Apple, taking five months off to deal with health problems stemming from his battle with cancer. If you've been following Apple's stock price, it tends to rise and fall with the health of Jobs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (ask your dad) will be conducting a review of Apple's reveal of Jobs's health to determine if they attempted to manipulate their stock price by concealing or timing the release of information.

An SEC review, however, does not mean guilt is assumed and no one is saying that yet. In fact, Apple stock price has actually gone up since the SEC review was revealed. Wacky, huh?

Hit the jump for in-depth financial analysis from the only "person" that understands how the stock market actually works: Dr. Snuggles.

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The iTunes App Store, which has been running since July 2008, has now hit 500 million application downloads. As EngadgetMobile notes, it took Apple two years to hit this milestone with music downloads from iTunes. People love applications.

If you had any doubts about the fact that the App Store is the iPhone's killer app, put them to rest. This number includes both paid and free applications, but it's definitely making some developers money (see: Trism developer).

There are over 15,000 applications available in the App Store, but none of them are Saito's Gabo, which was completed but shot down by Apple. I'm still mad about that.

Let this be a note to Google, Palm, and RIM. This is how you build a platform that's greater than just a smartphone. Sure, open source platforms are better than closed source platforms and you might have an app store... but you need apps to sell. Developers flock to the platform that will make them money.

Either way, there are a lot of great applications. What are your favorites? Mine are Tweetie (Twitter), Facebook, iTalk, Pandora, Galcon, and Scrabble.

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Remember when Sinden was like, "Yoot Saito, Japanese game designer, famous for Seaman and Odama (GameCube), is working on the iPhone version of Seaman 2 called Gabo" and you were all like, "That's totally awesome!"

TOO BAD.

The game is actually done, but Apple has reportedly denied Saito's game from getting on the App Store. Ouch. Let this be a lesson to would-be developers hoping to get their application on iTunes. Unless that application is a virtual fart machine...

With that being said... How dare you, Apple? This could be a real problem going forward if companies and established game developers can sink time and money in a project only to have Apple reject it for whatever reason it chooses.

Furthermore, this is exactly the type of application that should be approved in place of a mobile fart machine. Shame on you, Apple... shame on you.

Also, the development team has moved on to other projects. Don't expect this to be released unless Apple reconsiders.

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Up to now, Apple's App Store has housed extra applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch that are open to any developer, but a breakthrough occurred recently allowing for completely new browsers to be posted and purchased.

There are a few that have been put up so far, but a lot of users are hoping the big guys like Opera and Firefox will get their shot at the iPhone's little handheld computer phone. Right now though, you can download Incognito which leaves no browser history, Webmate, which uses the now-standard tabs for browsing, and Shaking Web that uses a complex algorithm with the accelerometer to reduce the movement a user's shaky hand.

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Barack Obama is days away from being sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States of America. While I'm sure he's anxious to start the gig, there's one thing he's going to miss: his precious BlackBerry . Although he told Barbara Walters that he was negotiating to keep his PDA, his efforts have been unsuccessful. In a recent interview withCNBC, Obama said, "I'm still clinging to my BlackBerry. They're going to pry it out of my hands." Unfortunately for the President-elect, run-of-the-mill BlackBerry phones are not secure enough for the classified information he'll be receiving in between Mark Gormley videos.

CNet outlines a few handsets that are secure. Both are products of the US Defense Department's "Secure Mobile Environment Portable Electronic Device" project...and both have taken severe beatings with the ugly stick.

The L-3 Communications Guardian (pictured right) might as well be called Fischer Price's My First PDA. The Guardian runs on variousGSM, CDMA, and Worldcell frequencies. Most importantly, local files are covered by an encryption scheme. Sure it's a rugged device, but I think Obama would be shocked going from the smooth experience of a BlackBerry to the jankiness that is Windows Mobile.

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Tech writers and gadget enthusiasts alike were thrilled with last week's announcement of the Palm Pre at CES 2009. Many of you have listed it as the biggest news coming out of the show in our Sony Walkman giveaway. While it's easy to see why so many journalists are excited about the product, it's not unusual for writers to become enamored with the potential of a device without thinking about its real-world applications. GigaOm's Om Malik, one of my favorite tech writers, is trying to keep it real. Malik recently wrote, "I remain highly skeptical of Palm's chance to succeed with this new effort. I may be the only one who isn’t buying it." He also pointed out a few reasons why people shouldn't be too excited about the Palm Pre. Let's take a look at his wizened comments and break them down.

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