When your software OS was upgraded recently, did you notice that the little zoom bar went away at the bottom? And, now you’re asking yourself, how do I get the zoom in my iPhone camera to work again?

It’s pretty easy. All you need to do is “pinch” the image as you would any photo you’ve taken and viewed in your photo library.

So, try this:

• Aim your camera at your subject.
• With your thumb and index finger, pinch the image on the glass of the iPhone as you frame up the shot.
• Spread your thumb and index finger to zoom in.
• Bring your thumb and index finger together to zoom out.

Enjoy!

After playing around with the iPhone, I eventually found a way to turn Foursquare back on on my iPhone so that it would allow me to check-in again, follow friends who check-in, find a location for a cold one, etc.

First, go to the “Settings” app icon on your iPhone home screen and choose General (NOT Notifications – don’t be fooled!!) …

After selecting “General,” choose “Location Services”:

Then, turn Foursquare “on” on the “Location Services” screen:

Go back to your Foursquare app and try to “check-in.”   Should work.

Perhaps it was a brain kluge on my part, but it took me a while to figure out how to create a playlist on my Iphone. With my old iPod seemed more intuitive when it came to playlist creation.

Here’s how to make an On-The-Go playlist on your iPhone. Fairly simple stuff after you learn one key idea about the iPhone playlist interface.

To Begin

Navigate to the “Ipod” located in the lower right of your Iphone’s screen.

Click the “Playlists” icon. And then, click “On-The-Go” to begin creating your playlists.

When you’re on the “On-The-Go” playlist screen, it should be empty.

Adding The First Song

Click “Edit” and then click the “+” sign.

Here’s the big tip!

At this point, you can now add any song from anywhere in your iPod such as another playlist, or the “Artists” section or the “Songs” section. Use the bottom nav to go between section and add from whatever mode you want.

In this case, I will choose “Playlists” to add a song to my new playlist from a song in another playlist.

Click the playlist in which the song is located. In this case, it’s a Coldplay song I’m after.

Then, navigate to the “+” sign next to the song. Again, in this case, it’s “Viva la Vida.”

The song will be grayed-out once you add it. You can keep adding all the songs you want from other playlists, modes – and note the “Add All Songs” button if you want to add everything from an artist, playlist, album, etc.

Finally, we’ll return to the playlist to see what it looks like after one song. And there it is, the song we added from the original Coldplay playlist.

Click “Done” and you’re done.

Presumably you put more than one song in your iPhone playlist.

Here’s “how to” take a screenshot, and then access it. You might also think of this as another way to do “Print Screen” on your computer at home – but on your iPhone.

First, navigate to whatever it is that you want to make a screenshot of.  You should be able to make screenshots of most application states – even games, presumably (prove you got to X level!!).

Next, depress the “lock” button on the top of your iPhone and the “home” button simultaneously.

You should see a brief flash as if a picture has been taken.

Now, that you have made your screenshot, go to “Photos” through the Home screen.

The last photo taken should be your screenshot. Send it to friends, download it and prove that you now know how to make a screenshot using your iPhone.

Screenshot

The new mobile site on Flickr is focused toward iPhone user with a typically, slick and highly usable Flickr interface. Now if you could easily take your iPhone cameraphone pictures and send them to Flickr easily, that would be perfect.

CNET reviewed the new Flickr site today and points out a great feature which is automatically scaling of photos. One drawback is that you can’t currently navigate between different sizes of the photos on the mobile site. We suggest a work around which is to go to “www.flickr.com” (the main site) rather than the iPhone site “m.flickr.com” if you really want the different sizes.

We like the navigation capabilities that are available when you view individual photos on the iPhone-optimized mobile site. Next to a larger thumbnail of your photo are two smaller thumbnails showing you the next and previous image in the photostream that you are viewing with arrows overlayed on each of the images. If only AT&T’s Edge network would bring the images down a bit faster, we’d love it. Still, this is a great new way to access your photos.

As CNET points out, since the iPhone doesn’t support Flash yet, you can’t view slideshows – you’ll need to view “Sets” instead.

We also like the ability to navigate comments on photos. The usability of Flickr’s “www” site is reflected in the execution of the new mobile design. Make sure to check it out if you like looking at photos – or you need to a place to store yours.

According to the article, Amazon is projected to sell 380,000 Kindle units in 2008. The new Stanza iPhone App was released in July and has already been downloaded 395,000 times. On their website, Portland, Ore.-based Lexcycle and its three-person development team, says it developed Stanza to “read eBooks on your Mac or PC and share with your iPhone, iPod Touch, & Kindle.”

Forbes notes the good and the bad of Stanza. On the good side, Stanza is faster than the Kindle in turning pages and in usability. But among the negatives, it’s hard on the eyes and it eats up the iPhone’s battery.

The best part of Stanza is that it’s free – of course, you need an iPhone. Kindle costs $380. And since, Stanza uses all public domain books (currently 50 years old or more), you won’t need to purchase an eBook like you do with the Kindle.

In the future, Stanza plans to create a revenue stream for itself by allowing the purchase of newer eBooks and taking a share of the purchase price according to Lexcycle’s CEO Marc Prud’hommeaux.

But this isn’t just an app to get you to read more about Barack Obama. For example, the application cleverly ranks your contacts so that anyone you know in key battleground states such as New Mexico or Pennsylvania will be prioritized and highlighted. Presumably, you will call them to tell them about voting for Obama if you choose to use the app.

IPhone Atlas makes note of the GPS feature which allows you to find out about where the nearest Obama campaign headquarters location is.

According to Steven Shankland at CNET, the app also tells you how many calls are being made nationwide through the use of the app – you are asked to choose whether or not you’d like to send your calling information anonymously to the application’s database.

There is also an iPhone app website here:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/iphone

With campaigns continuing to leverage the power of one-to-one communication available through the internet, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see this new app – although, we would have thought it would take another election cycle before campaigns get their iPhone act together.

As MG Siegler of Venture Beat points out, what election day app would be complete without a countdown clock to Election Day and a “donate” button which allows you to give to the candidate’s campaign. The Obama ’08 app has both.

If you have a 3G, you can pick up an adapter at an Apple store or sign up online beginning October 10.

To date, only some 3G users have experienced prongs that become detached from the adapter, but Apple suggests that it is taking no chances and making this offer to all 3G users in the affected countries.

Ultimately, even though Apple calls this an exchange program, it is definitely a recall and should be heeded by 3G users.

Complete details on the recall process are available on the Apple website here.