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).

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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!

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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.

Immediately after you launch Pastebot, the item that is currently in your iPhone’s clipboard will be copied into the app. Pastebot can store both text and images. In the clipboard you can browse your clippings and copy an item to your iPhone’s clipboard with a single tap. You can also tap the arrow next to the item to view the entire thing. After you tap on a clipboard item some information will popup. If it is a text item, you will see the character count. If it is an image, you will see the dimensions. Just to the right of this information will be two buttons. One to share it, and one to edit it. With text files, you can paste the item to your Mac, search via Google, send it as an email, or move the item to a folder in Pastebots. With an image you will also be able to save the image to the photo library on your device. You can also move multiple items to a folder, or delete multiple items, using the edit button.

Pastebot has a variety of filters to apply to both text and images. When you are viewing an image you can tap the gear icon to display the filters. For images, there are five options to choose from. You can change the brightness, convert to black and white, convert to sepia, invert the colors, and change the saturation. Tapping the edit button will also let you rotate and crop the image. There are even more options for text files. You can change the entire item to lowercase or uppercase, quote lines, find and replace words, and do much more.

Pastebot also includes one killer feature, you can sync it with your Mac! Once you install the free Mac application, anything you copy on your Mac will be sent to Pastebot (as long as your device is on the same Wi-Fi network, and Pastebot is open). If you tap and hold on an item in Pastebot, it will be sent to your Mac.

Pastebot seems to have everything covered. It’s a great clipboard application and even has a few nice editing tools. I didn’t run into many problems, but it would be nice if Mac syncing was possible with Bluetooth as well, for times when Wi-Fi is not accessible. Pastebot is currently available on iTunes for $1.99, the free Pastebot Sync utility for Mac is available on the Tapbots website.

Airlock is very easy to set up, you just need to turn bluetooth on on your iPhone and follow the directions on your Mac. Once you select your device, you can change some preferences to make sure Airlock works just how you want it to. First, you can change the range of Airlock. This is done with a nice little radar. A little blip on the radar shows your device, and you can drag the “activation range” slider to make the activation area on the radar bigger, or smaller.

Airlock has some more advanced features too. You can have Airlock automatically launch items when you come into range, or leave range, of your computer. Airlock can also increase the rate in which it scans for a device. This can decrease the battery of your iPhone or iPod if you set it very high, but it will also make your screen lock, and unlock, quicker. If you do not have your iPhone with you, you can click the small lock in the corner of the lock screen to type in your password. When you do this Airlock will be deactivated until it detects your device again. Currently Airlock only works with an iPhone or an iPod Touch, but they plan on adding support for almost any bluetooth device in the future.

Airlock does come with a few issues. If you want to save your battery, and you lower the responsiveness of the app, it will take a longer time to lock or unlock your computer. This is where the manual unlock tool comes in useful, but it still might be frustrating for some users. If you do not make the activation range large enough, you might suddenly get locked out, even if your device is near your computer. Be sure to try out the demo of Airlock first, because the developer does report that some users with bluetooth mice and keyboards are having issues. They are currently working on a fix for this.

Airlock is an interesting application. It does have a few issues, but it’s a cool app that I think everyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch should try out. A trial is available and you can purchase Airlock for $7.77 on it’s website.

And while Big Fish Games has always catered to both PC and Mac audiences, Mac games — as is often the case — have always felt like an afterthought.  Today Big Fish Games sought to rectify that and has launched it’s own separate Mac gaming portal at http://www.bigfishgames.com/mac.html.

In celebration of the new Mac-friendly site Big Fish is offering more than 70 games at the special price of $2.99.  Award winning casual games like Drawn The Painted Tower and Return to Ravenhurst, as well as brand new releases like Valerie Porter and Hotel Dash: Suite Success will all be available at this special price to Mac owners until November 30th.

Click here to check out Felix’s Favorites for the full selection of games on sale, and make sure to enter the coupon code FELIX to get your games at the $2.99 sale price.

ScreenFlow 2 adds some great features to let you create sleek screencasts.  There are now new transitions to flow between different clips. If you drag two clips together a transition will automatically be placed in between. You can change the type of transition by double-clicking the transition area. You can also drag new clips in from another screen recording and you can speed up or slow down clips.

This update adds a lot of features to help you edit the audio in your clips. First off, you can detach the audio from the video clip, and even copy it to a different video. You can also have ScreenFlow automatically fade out the background audio when you have a voiceover player, and fade back in after it is over. They have added live audio scrubbing too, so you can quickly scan through to get the the section in the audio that you want.

ScreenFlow 2.0 also added a few other useful features. You can now export your video to YouTube, right out of the application. And Telestream added a feature that lets you pause the recording, and then resume it later. Finally, they added a few keyboard shortcuts, improved performance, and added Snow Leopard support.

This is a great update to a great application. It is a little pricey, $99 for a new license or $29 for an upgrade, but I think that anyone interested in screencasting should try out the demo. If you just need a cheap simple application to record your screen, you might want to try another alternative. You can download the trial and buy ScreenFlow at Telestream’s website.

In today’s MacApper How-To, we’re going to show you a little app to bridge the divide between Facebook and your Apple Address Book.

1) Head on over to the Apple.com downloads section, and grab a handy little app called AddressBookSync.

2) Once you’ve downloaded the disk image, and dragged it to your Applications folder, go ahead and launch the app. Upon launch you’ll be prompted to give it access to your Facebook account via Facebook Connect.

3) Once you connect, the app should start downloading your friends list, and comparing any names within Address Book to your friends list. AddressBookSync will also download your friend’s current profile pictures, and show them side-by-side with the current picture you have assigned to them in Address Book (if any).

4) Hit “Sync to Address Book,” and all of the photos will be assigned in Address Book.

You can feel free to trash the app once finished, but I suggest keeping it around. That way you can keep photos up-to-date for all of your contacts. Facebook’s TOS prevent developers from calling other useful info like e-mails, screennames, and phone numbers through the API (likely out of privacy concerns), but getting the photos is a definite first step. No more digging through photos and cropping!

The AppStore is known for a lot of things, but easy navigation isn’t one of them.  With tens of thousands of games on the service, knowing when a real gem comes out can be more of a challenge than it should be.  Big games may get featured on the What’s Hot or What’s New pages, and they may sit at the top of the sale numbers for a few weeks, but unless you’re actively checking to see what’s new on a regular basis it’s almost inevitable you’re going to miss a golden gaming experience.

Today we’re taking a look at 5 upcoming game worth keeping an eye out for.  Why miss out on the big names if we can give you the heads up before they happen?

Ravensword
Release Date: Shortly (currently submitted for approval)
Price: Unknown

What is it: A 3D action RPG that’s been described as equal parts Oblivion and Twilight Princess, Ravensword developers are promising a richer, deeper experience than anything that’s come before on the iPhone.

Why you should be excited: Set in an expansive world with plenty of side quests, rumor has it you’ll need 3-6 hours to get through the main quest alone.  In a traditional RPG that’s a drop in the bucket — but on the iPhone?  For a game that looks this good, that’s tremendous.

Forget about how good it looks and how deep it should play for a moment though and realize this:  what you’re witnessing here is the birth of a franchise.  The game isn’t even out yet and Chillingo’s already committed to an expansion in the next six months that should add new gameplay devices in addition to content.  Even bigger is the promise of Ravensword Online, the iPhone’s first true MMO in 2010.  An MMO.  On the iPhone.  And all of itstarts right here with the release of the first Ravensword.

Eliminate
Release Date: Shortly (currently submitted for approval)
Price: FREE

What is it: First person shooters on the iPhone have had a spotty reputation at best, but ngmoco hopes to turn that around with this upcoming online arena shooter.

Why you should be excited: Eliminate will offer instant, jump-in, multiplayer action from anywhere in the world.  Multiplayer on the iPhone has ranged from nightmarish to “meh.”  If ngmoco can pull off Eliminate, that’sall going to change.  The only downside to the game is that you’ll only have so much “energy” to use in a day, meaning you can only play so long before you have to let your character recharge.  Now that Apple allows microtransactions you’ll be able to purchase your way back into the game early.  It sounds a lot like the business model used by Zynga in games like Mafia Wars, which is definitely something I have mixed feelings about.

Galactic Keep: Dice Battles
Release Date: 2010
Price: Unknown

What is it: A role-playing game that plays less like Final Fantasy and more like… well, a role-playing game.  Remember those nights of D&D in your parents basement?  That’s Galactic Keep.  Everything down to the dice, hand-drawn maps, and monster stats replicates that old school, table-top gaming experience.

Why you should be excited: Try and forget the amazing hand drawn art style for a minute.  Forget about the brilliant table top vibe and photorealistic dice.  What you’re left with after all of the spit and polish is a role-playing game for the iPhone that accurately replicates the experience of real role-playing games in five separate quests.  Tough decisions, fierce battles, and engaging stories for what we assume will be hours on end.  If you’ve ever spent a night around a kitchen table with Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and a bag of 20-sided dies, Galactic Keep could very well be the greatest thing you’ve ever put in your pocket.

The Relic
Release Date: November 2009
Price: Unknown

What is it: Think Gauntlet, but better.  Chillingo is bringing the classic hack’n’slash action of yesteryear to the iPhone in a multiplayer dungeon crawler that they describe as “Gauntlet on steroids.”

Why you should be excited: Earlier this year, Chillingo kicked off a brand new genre for the iPhone that caught on like wild fire: the twin stick shooter.  As our review of iDracula will attest, Chillingo knows what they’re doing when it comes to crazy hyper-violent top-down gameplay.  Now they’ve taken that experience and added in bigger environments, a variety of enemies, some objectives and a storyline.  While iDracula may have come up with a great mechanic, The Relic has the chance to use that in a great experience.  If someone had told me that the iDracula team were remaking Gauntlet for the iPhone I would have squealed like a little girl.  Hearing about The Relic pretty much had the same effect.

Star Wars: Trench Run
Release Date: Unknown
Price: $4.99

What is it: Remember that last scene in the first Star Wars?  When Luke and his buddies go all Red Dawn on the Death Star?  In the Star Wars community that’s remembered fondly as the Trench Run.  Thanks to THQ Wireless, pretty soon you’ll get to fly it yourself with the magic of tilt control.

Why you should be excited: It’s a little too early to tell, but judging by the screens it looks like we might finally be getting a fresh taste of the classic X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter series that graced our desktops nearly two decades ago.  The in-cockpit view and dogfighting looks strikingly similar, and it makes our hearts smile.  There’s also a definite taste of the original Star Wars Arcade here.  If THQ Wireless wanted a game that paid homage to the classics, those would be the games to draw from.

It also looks like Trench Run might let us fill the shoes of both Luke and Vader.  There’s a moment in the trailer where the screen switches to Vader’s cockpit trying to shoot down Luke.  It’s just as likely that this may be a section of game where you’re controlling Luke and trying to evade Vader’s targeting, but we’re hoping on playing as the dark lord himself.

When you start up iterum2 your last used radio station with automatically load, so you can quickly start listening to music. While you are listening to music, you can view the artist and title of the current track along with album artwork. You can also read the lyrics for the song. Oh the side of the screen you can tap buttons to buy the song, search for the song online, or share the song in an email or in a tweet on Twitter. You can add stations to a list of favorites to easily access them.

The channels in iterum2 cover many different genres; from reggae to spiritual. There are also some stations for talk shows. Most of the music channels play at 128kbps, which is pretty close to CD quality. You can also listen to music on Wi-Fi or on cellular connections.

iterum2 is a good application for internet radio, but it still has some problems. If you are listening to music and you switch to view the list of channels, or go to the settings, you’re music will stop playing.  I also had some occasional problems with the music slightly skipping. Finally, some genres only have one channel, and it would be great if the application had a wider selection.

If you are looking for an internet radio app that is similar to satellite radio, and isn’t like Pandora Radio, then you should try out iterum2. iterum2 includes a good list of channels, and more should be coming soon. iterum2 is currently available from in iTunes for $3.99.

Like the traditional Rock Band experience, you’ll get to select between four instruments — vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Each will feature it’s own authentic experience for every song in the game, and when played with friends should sync up flawlessly.  Note our use of the word “should.”  This game has been in development for more than a year now, so we’d like to think that they’ve worked all the kinks out.  But until we get a room full of band geeks jamming out on their portables, we’ll never really know how well the game will sync via Bluetooth.  At the end of the day, this will likely make or break the experience.  Knowing the top notch quality of previous Rock Band efforts, we’re inclined to believe that Rock Band iPhone should pull this off without a hitch.

Touch Arcade were given a hands-on preview of the game, and are reporting that the following 20 songs will make up the initial set list;

30 Seconds To Mars – “Attack”
AFI – “Girls Not Grey”
All American Rejects – “Move Along”
Beastie Boys – “Sabotage”
Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”
Blondie – “Hanging on the Telephone”
Foo Fighters – “Learn To Fly”
Foo Fighters – “Everlong”
George Thorogood & the Destroyers – “Bad to The Bone”
Jethro Tull – “Hymn 43″
Joan Jett – “Hymn 43″
Lynard Skynard – “Simple Man”
Motorhead – “Ace of Spades ‘08″
Pixies – “Debaser”
Presidents of The United States of America – “Ladybug”
Rise Against – “Give It All”
Silversun Pickups – “Lazy Eye”
Smashing Pumpkins – “Cherub Rock”
Steve Miller Band – “Take The Money and Run”
The Go Go’s – “We Got The Beat”

The one disappointing thing we gleamed from the Touch Arcade preview was that “every instrument has its own track that you tap along with.”  If true, that means that vocals have replaced actual singing with yet another instrument track.  It’s understandable (not all App Store shoppers have access to a mic), but still disappointing.  We would have loved to learn that iPhone rockers could belt out the hits into their microphones.  Doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

We’re also very glad to see that this release have gone in a very different direction than Rock Band’s other recent portable incarnation, Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP.  The PSP version had players attempting to keep all four instruments in play at the same time in a frantic, mad balancing act.  It was not unlike Harmonix’s breakthrough PS2 game Frequency, but it just didn’t seem to be a great fit for the portable player in our opinion.  Keeping things streamlined and as close the original experience as possible, much as EA Mobile seems to have done here, is really the best way to bring this to the portable market.

No word on price yet, but a number of sources are reporting that this has already been submitted to Apple for approval.  Hopefully this means we’ll be seeing it in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, enjoy every second of Tap Tap Revenge you can.  Once Rock Band hits, something tells me Tap Tap won’t carry the weight it once did in the court of public opinion.

Apple’s OS X changed the playing field back in 2001, setting Apple up to succeed for the next decade while Microsoft tripped over its own feet. Tools like Spotlight, Automator, the iLife suite, Safari, and the “Core” technologies all built into each new Mac have redefined how many use their computer. We can only hope that iTunes X will have the same effect, redefining how we use our media.

iTunes X Wish List (in no particular order):

Name and icon change

It’s time to put that amazing Apple creative team to work. No longer is iTunes merely a tunes manager. It’s a jukebox, a TV and Movie Manager/Player, it’s a sync utility, it’s a store, it’s an Audiobook player, and for over 20 million people it’s phone management software. Obviously iTunes and its icon both have serious street cred, but if the iBook can survive a name change, so can iTunes. Wow us Apple, we know you can.

Tighter control over the library

How many times have you had 3 songs by the same artist all tagged as different genres? How many times have you had mis-tagged genres? Bruce Springsteen isn’t grunge metal iTunes, it just isn’t. What about when you create a new MP3 in Audacity or GarageBand and iTunes automatically adds it to your library, duplicating the track to your music folder to keep your files organized? How about duplicates? Don’t even get me started on Album Art…

When you get a big library in iTunes, it can just be a headache keeping it all properly tagged, organized, etc. iTunes has tools to combat some of these difficulties, but sometimes you just wish they were smarter.

• Automatically remove the duplicates – analyze track length, match up the wave lengths, compare the tags
• Talk to Genius/the iTunes Store and find out the right genre for a song
• Call third-party services like Last.fm, Pandora, and Amazon to fetch missing album art (I know Amazon is competing with Apple, but they offer mostly open APIs to call product info).

Genius Mixes to go: Bridge the gap between the web and the desktop

iTunes has never been good internet radio software. Most attempts at internet radio in general have failed to launch. Apple knows what kind of music I like because of Genius analysis. Let me stream my Genius Mixes when I’m on-the-go and away from my library. Offer genre stations that will introduce me to new music. Partner with Last.fm or Pandora, or maybe build something new in-house (make better use of that iTunes.com domain name?). I would even pay a small monthly fee. Bridge the gap between the desktop and the web.

Please, pay attention to playlists

I love iTunes, but the playlist system leaves much to be desired. It’s been 8 years: give me a keyboard shortcut to add the currently playing song to playlist(s). The constant dragging of songs into playlists is maddening when you’re trying to build a playlist. How many times have you used shift+click or ctrl+click, selected 50 songs, and then forgotten to hold shift/click for song #51? Make it easy to build them, easier to share them with friends, or even allow the download/sharing of playlists from an online portal. Crowd-source playlist building.

Revamp Music navigation

The iPod has always been the true pioneer of intuitive music navigation. Navigate music via Artist, Album, Track, Genre, or Playlist. iTunes has always had the ability to sort these fields, and even used to have the old browse eyeball, but it’s never been as intuitive as an iPod. iTunes developers have tried Cover Flow, Album Covers, and many iterations of list formats. Cover Flow is without a doubt one of their better attempts, but it has it’s short comings. In a collection where many albums lack album art, it’s not very pretty or useful, and it can really lag on a machine with a slower processor.

Considering we’re in the age of netbooks, having an iPod-esque navigation option would be a great addition, and provide UI congruity. With the long-rumored upcoming Apple Tablet, this would be especially handy.

Redo Movie/TV navigation entirely

The iTunes Store has turned iTunes into one of the first successful digital film/tv distribution networks. Others have tried downloads via the browser, but the browser doesn’t seem to be a successful delivery network for digital video downloads. However, the way iTunes organizes the digital video from its store (or from your own rips, if you’re tech-savvy enough) is very early 2000’s. Digital video is not music, and should not be sorted as such.

This view is hardly helpful for navigating a big collection…

Movies: Genre navigation, DVD/Blu-ray cover art, plot descriptions, director/cast/crew lists.

TV Shows: Series navigation by network/genre, season navigation, episode summaries.

iTunes should be calling services like IMDB/the iTunes Store for information on movies in your library. Plus, there’s no easy way to integrate DVD/Blu-ray extras in the current iTunes. Making the desktop movie experience more like the streaming web experience with Netflix and Hulu would make it much more powerful. If a movie I downloaded with iTunes or imported had DVD extras, exclusive interviews, etc., I would drop my DVD’s like hot pockets. Until then… I stick with buying and watching DVD’s.

Audiobooks

Audiobooks have always been somewhat of a side-hobby of Apple. If they were done correctly, it would be much more exciting to buy them digitally. Book jackets/information would be huge bonuses, extra’s from the author. A ticker showing what Page # correlates with the current time. Easier chapter skipping, built-in dictionary/glossary to look up words/characters/events. It’s currently an untapped medium: tap into it.

Revamp the Sidebar

The iTunes Sidebar is one of the more intuitive navigation systems in applications today. There’s very little clutter, it’s quick, its attractive, and most importantly it’s quite usable. However, it’s ever-growing in each redesign of iTunes. If you have a lot of playlists, shared computers on your network, connected devices, etc, it grows to an astonishing length. While it allows you to close off certain sections, that’s useless for syncing and moving content around. Try adding one the playlists at the bottom of your long list of playlists to your iPod. Case and point.

Navigation similar to that featured in the new iTunes Store would be welcome. Using both vertical and horizontal navigation is going to be vital as iTunes continues to grow bigger and bigger.

Lets get real on syncing

It’s time for some meatier syncing tools. One thing that the iTunes’ competitor Zune does quite well is give users information about what in your library is on your device. In Zune software, indicators next to each track tell users whether the item is synced or not. In the age where we rip CDs, copy music off of friend’s iPods, take backups off our own hard drives, and can purchase music directly on some iPods, it’s long-time for more powerful syncing tools. Have a view option to show what’s synced with the currently connected iPod, and whether you’re allowed to sync the content in your library over (is the track’s DRM authorized for this computer yet?). Give an estimate for the time needed to sync. Wireless syncing for the iPod/iPhone would also be a nice touch.

iTunes suite?

Lets face it: iTunes is too bloated. It just tries to do too much. With big libraries it’s just plain slow. If I’m launching iTunes to simply catch up on a podcast, I have to wait for it to load all my music, movies, audiobooks, TV shows, playlists, applications/games, and preferences. With small libraries it’s manageable, with large libraries… it’s a nightmare. Apple, it’s time to compartmentalize iTunes, and turn it into a suite of applications. Apple already kind-of does this with the ability to open core components in new windows.

• iTunes – iTunes as we know it today : an implementation of all the applications when you want everything at once
• Music application – Let users organize music, play like a jukebox, sync with devices
• TV/Film/ application – Navigate video collection, watch videos, sync with devices
• Store/Download Center application – For when you want to go on a spending spree, without lugging everything you own with you to the store. Plus podcasts – weekly/daily updated content for download and play.
• Sync manager – for managing syncing with iPods, iPhones, Apple TV and other computers on your network
• Front Row – It’s always been a side-developed app with roots in the Apple TV. Take iTunes DJ and other miscellaneous tools (visualizers, full screen cover flow, etc.) Apple has built over the years , throw them into Front Row, and give it a face lift.

Give us the option to launch parts of it, and flesh out each app. iLife is a suite for media creation. iTunes should be split into a similar suite for media playback/management.

Conclusion

There’s plenty more to innovate in iTunes. Hopefully in the next major release we’ll see see some exciting new features, and some redesigns of things that don’t work so well in the current version.

This isn’t the first time Sesame Street has showed some integration with our fruit-flavored overlords.  Last year the video podcast The Word on the Street debuted, featuring man on the street interviews with the new muppet Murray on a certain topic and classic Sesame Street clips that explore a similar theme.  As a parent to two little ones, having The Word on the Street in my pocket has made me a hero on more than one occasion.

The Word on the Street has recently been replaced by “Happy Healthy Monsters” in the same Sesame Street podcast feed on iTunes. Parents can also find other Sesame Street moments floating around iTunes.  The 1986 childhood classic Follow That Bird is available for rent or download, special episodes that touch on important subjects are available for free, and regular season episodes can be purchased in the Store.

If you’ve ever wondered where Sesame Street fits into last year’s popular ad campaign, Elmo is indeed a Mac.  Parents rejoice!

Jim Whitelaw is a man with a problem.  Jim bought his 10 year old daughter an iPod Touch so that she could play some games without having to break the bank on her allowance.  He set her up with an iTunes account, gave her an iTunes gift card, and told her to go at it.  Only, she couldn’t.  Apple Canada doesn’t allow iTunes gift cards to be used for App Store purchases.

Whitelaw contacted Apple customer support via email and was given the following reason;

“…you will not be able to purchase software, games, or applications with store credit or an iTunes Gift Card in Canada. Customers residing in Canada may only purchase software, games and applications using a credit card. This is due to Canadian Commerce Laws that the iTunes Store must strictly enforce.”

This story seemed all too familiar to me — not because I’d heard it before but because I’d lived it myself.  Earlier this year I had gone through the exact same situation.  What’s worse, the gift cards in Canada give no such warning.  At the time this occurred I attempted to look up the law in question, and failing to do so assumed the fault lie with my research abilities and not with Apple’s argument.  Jim Whitelaw, however, wasn’t content to walk away without a better answer.

When Apple customer care was unable to cite the law in question or put him in touch with someone that could, Whitelaw contacted his MPP (think Congress representative, but Canadian) for answers.  His MPP, too, could find no such law on the books, and like Whitelaw, refused to leave well enough alone.  The matter was escalated to the highest authority on the issue in Canada, the Hon. Tony Clement, Minister of Industry.  Here is the minister’s official response;

“(I) am unaware of which Canadian laws the company representatives are said to be enforcing.  I am not aware of any laws that prevent a company from accepting its own gift cards when it sells certain products.  That said, merchants are generally free to set their own policies respecting the payment methods they accept.”

So there you have it.  If the Canadian Minister of Industry can’t name the law that prevents Apple from accepting their own gift cards for certain purchases in Canada, my money says that no such law exists.  Furthermore, with no such warning printed on iTunes gift cards in Canada one could argue that this is nothing more than a dubious business practice intended to force people to spend additional funds in the iTunes Store than originally intended by referencing an imaginary law.

Mr. Whitelaw has sent an email to Steve Jobs, and is awaiting a response.  To follow his story as it develops, visit jimwhitelaw.com.

Software exclusivity is quickly becoming a thing of the past.  What once was a killer app for one system or another has now turned into the consumer connundrum of which software to buy for which device and why.  Determining a winner based on techincal differences and personal preferences takes time and research, yet one thing has become readily apparent: the iPhone is home to some tremendous bargains on some amazing software.  What you may spend $20 on elsewhere could only cost you $2 in the App Store, and it’s entirely possible you’ll end up with a better experience too!  Don’t believe us?  Take a look at these 5 examples of spectacular AppStore savings;

Burgertime Deluxe – Mac $19.95, PC $6.99, iPhone $1.99

What is it? It may not get mentioned as much as Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but Burgertime is an old school classic that every gamer from the arcade generation holds near and dear to their hearts.  Peter Pepper needs to navigate a series of platforms to drop all the parts of a burger down to the plate, and he has to do it while battling evil foodstuffs come to life.  Namco recently resurrected this much beloved franchise with Burgertime Deluxe for the PC and Mac, with an iPhone port following shortly afterwords.  $6.99 for the PC version is an excellent price, but they have the outrageous audacity to ask nearly $20 for the Mac version!  Apple fans, don’t spill the big bills on this fast food classic.  Grab it on the value menu instead — the iPhone version is only $1.99!

Is there a difference? Technically no.  Visually the game is dead on.   So are the levels.  The controls though?  That’s a different story.  While no means a deal breaker, it’s not always as easy as it should be to get young Mr. Pepper off a ladder.  This problem only pops up from time to time, but it was definitely aggravating enough to mention.  Still — for $18 in savings it’s a small price to pay.

Star Wars Legacy: Broken – Trade Paperback $17.95, Original Issues $17.94, iPhone $1.98

What is it? Star Wars Legacy is an ongoing comics series published by Dark Horse Comics.  Set more than 100 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, it tells the story of Cade Skywalker, padawan-turned bounty hunter in a dark and sithly future.  Broken collects the first six issues of the series.  With the trade paperback you’ll need to spend $17.95 to get started on the adventure — but on the iPhone?  Broken Vol. 1 and Broken Vol. 2 are 99 cents each on the App Store, and collect all six issues when combined.

Is there a difference? You’re going to lose the tactile feel and smell of a real comic, but if you can live with that you’ll find reading comics on the iPhone is even better than the real thing.  The panels are bigger and easier to read, the backlit screen makes the colors pop, and the panel-by-panel navigation feels more comfortable than we’d like to admit.

Toki Tori – WiiWare 1000 points (roughly $10), iPhone $4.99

What is it? One of the best puzzle platformers ever created, Toki Tori tells the tale of a chicken trying to save his friends.  Rather than controlling our hero first hand, you’ll simply point him to where you want to go.  When it debuted on WiiWare last year it seemed like a good use of the system’s much touted motion controls.  But let’s be frank — this thing was made for touching.  Thankfully you can pick up our recently hatched hero on the iPhone for half the price of it’s WiiWare predecessor.

Is there a difference? Yep — it’s better on the iPhone.  Drastically in fact.  We had two major complaints with the Wii version — the default view was zoomed out much too far, and the motion controls required far too steady of a hand to be effective.  On the iPhone, both of these concerns have been addressed.  Of all the versions of Toki Tori we’ve seen over the years, the iPhone version is easily the best.

Droplitz – PC $9.99, PS3 $9.99, iPhone $1.99

What is it? Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that we become the most passionate about.  Tetris.  Bejeweled.  And now, Droplitz.  The goal in Droplitz is to rotate pipes in an attempt to guide their contents down to the drains below.  On the PC and PS3 they expect you to droplitz $10 of your hard earned cash, but on the iPhone?  You’ll only have to droplitz $1.99.

Is there a difference? The PS3 and PC versions are definitely prettier, and the larger screen allows for a bigger playfield too.  Despite this, the iPhone version is crazy addictive and captures the spirit and intent of the game perfectly.  You’ll technically be settling for less, but it’s really 10% less the experience at 80% less the price.  You do the math.

Awaken – Mac: $15, iPhone $1.99

What is it? Awaken is the Mac’s leading iTunes-friendly alarm clock.  Want to wake up to your complete collection of Anne Murray classics?  It’s all yours, Snowbird.  With everything it has to offer, $15 has always been a pretty good price for Awaken.  But if you can live with the delicate sounds of morning coming from your iPhone?  You can do that for $1.99.

Is there a difference? This is the only app on our list that has some pretty drastic differences, but that has less to do with handicapping the mobile version and more to do with the needs of each device.  While both devices serve as an alarm clock built entirely around you music library, the Mac version offers a few neat twists like the ability to set alarms to launch programs or the ability to control the alarm from across the room with your Mac remote.  If you tend to wake up, shower, watch a video podcast, and then check your email over breakfast, you can program the Mac version to do all of these things for you.  Well, almost.  You’ll need to eat that grapefruit yourself.  Awaken for the iPhone is a great choice for an iPhone alarm clock, especially if you tend to travel.  But if you want a fully-featured alarm clock that will cater to you daily desktop needs, you may actually want to spend the extra.

GPush is the first app for the iPhone that will send you a push notification any time you get a new message in your Gmail inbox.  It’s a fairly simple app that tackles a fairly simple problem, and it works.  After a simple username and password set up, you’ll receive a push notification whenever a new message pops into your Gmail account.  The push notification is similar to any text message you might receive.

One of our earlier complaints about the app, and one which we intended to focus on here was the inability to access your new mail directly from the notification.  This was addressed in a recently released update to the app, and we couldn’t be happier.  Now when you receive a new push, whether you’re in a application or not, you’ll be given the option to view the email or close the push notification.  If you choose to view the email you’ll be kicked out of your current application and taken to GPush.  Once there, GPush will take you to the new Gmail tab where it loads up a mobile-friendly version of your Gmail inbox that’s identical to the one seen in the Google Mobile App.

This new view feature is a great addition and well appreciated, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without flaws.  Clicking view only brings you to your inbox, not the email itself.  For folks like myself who much prefer using the iPhone’s built-in Mail app, having to use the web-based Gmail mobile feels a little too slow and clunky.  And the view option doesn’t work in every circumstance — if your device receives a push notification in standby you won’t have the option to view or close.  Instead sometimes you’ll be forced to open GPush the next time you unlock your device, and sometimes you won’t.  It’s flaky and inconsistent from the standby state, which is a fairly significant stumbling block when it comes to using the feature properly.

There are other annoyances with the app as well.  Many folks have multiple Gmail addresses for business, personal, etc.. but GPush only allows for one account.  And speaking of Gmail, why only the one client?  Sure Gmail is the biggest freemail provider out there, but does that mean users of Yahoo, Hotmail and Live need to be left out in the cold?  Or how about server based emails?  I happen to use several addresses, both Gmail and otherwise, and would have been delighted to have an app that could cater to all my push notification needs.

Despite our nitpicky complaints, GPush sets out with one thing in mind and it does that one thing incredibly well — it keeps me from bringing up my inbox every 5 minutes.  If it can accomplish that, it can probably accomplish anything.

GPush is available from Tiverias Apps on the iTunes AppStore for $1.99.

After looking at the changelogs—both the shiny publicized one as well as the more technical support one—I realized that the primary changes that I had issue with were all covered under the phrase “an improved look and feel.” With respect to the geniuses at Apple, this is a terrible way of doing things. The largest way a typical user interacts with a program like iTunes, whether or not it has Home Sharing, Genius Mixes, and the like, is through its UI. We get very used to these interfaces. And yet, there are never any specifics given as to what the changes to the UI actually are. This itself must change.

I’m not saying that the old iTunes interface was perfect, but it was something we were all used to. To suddenly change things around in an interface that makes sense just confuses everyone. Take the new column view, for instance. It is useless to me to have a list of all my artists, and then a small window for the songs. I preferred the old way, when I could have albums, artists, and genres all along the top, while still being able to see the song list below. This doesn’t necessarily mean it shouldn’t have to be changed, but Apple should at least tell us how to make it look the old way. I only found the options for reverting the view by wandering around in the menus for some time.

The playlist and other icons were changed in the sidebar as well. I, personally, don’t really care about this one way or another, but again it brings up the question of why Apple would do this when the old ones worked perfectly well. Is an off-center note more trendy than one in the middle? Is a cut-off gear nicer than a complete one?

About fifteen minutes after upgrading, I had reverted most changes, and made my peace with the new changes that I couldn’t fix. Satisfied with my life, I clicked the green button to minimize the window into the Mini Player I always keep in the corner of my screen. The window simply jumped slightly. Huh. I must have pressed the wrong thing. I clicked again. And again. And again. My world exploded once again. That was the most useful feature of iTunes—to have the display become small and unobtrusive. Had Apple actually gotten rid of this? Luckily, this was not the case; I eventually discovered that you could bring up the Mini Player by pressing Shift+Apple+M. Although this made it possible, it still seems like a stupid idea on Apple’s part. Why make this so much more difficult to do? I’m all for keyboard shortcuts, but if my hand is on the mouse, it would be nice to click. At least, tell me how to make it appear, rather than, once again, making me hunt through menus.

So, I’m not against change. Many of the new features of iTunes are great (I love the new Genius Mixes, among other aspects), but just, tell us about them, okay? An “improved look” is not nearly descriptive enough for me. Make sure that I—and people with less patience for scanning menus—know how to make a program do what it had always done in the past. Progress should not come at the cost of information. We’ll like the updates more if you tell us what’s in them, I swear.