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.

You can download it here.

Not only does it have GPS functionality and integration with Google Earth (which includes a 3-year-old sky view of New York City), but it also integrates with relevant entries made by “editors” over at Wikipedia and shows you photos on Flickr taken at any given location.

For example, if a photos has been taken near the Fillmore East’s old location on New York City’s Second Avenue and have been geo-tagged, you would see a marker in Earthscape that you could click for that photo.

It’s a graphical touring book for the iPhone, if you will. Fodor’s eat your heart out. And, to reiterate, this uses Google Earth (kinda) not Google Maps – a much cooler effect.

Here’s a video made by the editor of the Google Earth blog who notes this isn’t true, high res, “Google Earth”:

If you haven’t tried the new Genius feature yet – make sure you do. We feel like it’s unlocked our library of music by making memorable playlists from the depths of our treasure trove of greatest hits from the 80s.

Now, that the Remote app has been updated, we’ll be able to use our iPhone to manipulate Genius lists on the Apple iMac G4 that houses the gigabytes of music our current iPhone cannot handle.

The new Remote app works for iPod lines, too, and allows you to see the album artwork of songs and adjust other settings.

The best part of the Remote app is the cost. It’s free in iTunes.

It hasn’t been long since the app was birthed in iTunes, but as of this writing, the application has earned 3 out of 5 stars after five reviews.

15,500 Names To Choose From

According to the intro on the $4.99 app, it has over 15,500 names of 130 origins and has social networking features such as list and email capabilities which allows your mother or some other interested party to give their two cents about your impending tax write-off’s name.

Links to Google from each name allow the prospective baby namer research capabilities into the heart of the search monolith.

For parents freaking out about what to call their child, this iPhone app from Neutrinos ought to put them over the edge.

Keep in mind, the iPhone home screen icon is a different file than the favicon.ico file that creates an image in the bookmarks or on the tabs of a web browser.

iPhone Custom Icon How-To

To make a custom icon, create 60×60 png graphic in an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop. You may find that 57×57 is what Apple recommends, but we found 60×60 to work great and it’s easier to remember. When you make the graphic, consider whether you want to put your logo on a white or black background and how that will work when you finally see it on your Apple iPhone.

With our icon for MyNewIphoneWorld.com, we chose a white background with our trademark logo:

Take this 60×60 image and upload to the top-level of your web directory. Make sure the filename reads “apple-touch-icon.png”.

Now, in the HTML of your site and within the HEAD tag, place the following tag:

<link rel=”apple-touch-icon” href=”/apple-touch-icon.png”/>

Next, go to your iPhone and navigate to your website using your Safari browser. Click the plus “+” sign at the bottom of the browser once your website loads, and then select “Add to Home Screen.”

At this point, your icon will load and you will be able to customize the name of your home screen bookmark (a.k.a. web clips). We recommend abbreviating to 13 or 14 characters or less so that the name doesn’t get “greeked” (for example, a greeked label could look like “MyNew…. .com”).

It may sound like a long process, but if you have a little patience – it should only take 3 or 4 minutes to complete the iPhone “iconification” of your website. Not only will it look good on your iPhone, but anyone who bookmarks your site on their iPhone will have the same icon – and they’ll be more likely to keep it on their home screen if it looks nice.

Have fun!

But, we ran into an iPhone problem when downloading and then updating our firmware. Fortunately, the fix was easy.

The Issue

With iTunes 8.0 already installed, we plugged in our Apple iPhone through the USB cable to our iMac G4. Itunes recognized we did not have the new firmware when we clicked “Check for Updates,” so it offered to download and install it which we immediately accepted.

After the installation, we tried to use the new iPhone while it was still hooked up to the computer. We noticed, for example, we couldn’t get simple weather updates using the weather app that has been in our iPhone since day 1. Also, email didn’t seem to download anything and we couldn’t call anyone.

The Solution

Having sensed that we’d run into this sort of problem before, we tried the first thing that popped into our mind – a reset. In the past, when we’ve mysteriously had no reception from AT&T, for example, we’ve done a reset and the phone’s connectivity had come back to life.

How to re-set: Depress the home button on the face of the iPhone and the Power button at the top of the iPhone and hold. After a few seconds it will ask you if you want to power down, but don’t power down – just keep holding the buttons and you will suddenly see the apple icon appear meaning that the reset is in process.

Keep in mind that in a reset, you don’t lose any data like certain types of iPhone restores.

Once we reset the iPhone with the new 2.1 Firmware, our iPhone worked perfectly and we could start up our newest app, Koi Pond, and stare at digital carp.

His post today covering Hurricane Ike which is approaching Galveston Bay is thorough and intense with a firm warning that “the hurricane is much larger and more powerful than Category 5 Katrina or Category 5 Rita.” Sobering to say the least.

Masters got his PHD in meteorology from Michigan.

Bookmark his link for your iPhone today:

http://i.wund.com/auto/iphone/blog/JeffMasters/

There are many IM communication apps out there but Yahoo!’s Instant Messenger’s ability to send messages via text rather than as an instant message has always been helpful. As a result, the user on the other end always gets the text even when they’re not online. AOL’s AIM instant messenger client does not do provide the same feature, for example.

But, Yahoo! OneConnect from Yahoo! Mobile is much more than just an IM app. It achieves which many companies such as Google and Facebook are trying to build not just for the Apple iPhone.

Users have many profiles and instant messaging accounts in their social network world, and they ideally need to be able to integrate with all of them through one client.

According to the Yahoo! Mobile team interviewed by Jennifer Dolcourt at CNET, OneConnect will allow you to: update photos and contacts on and through your iPhone, send status messages at your favorite social networks and send free IMs and text messages.

In addition to iPhone users, iPod Touch users will find this last feature very useful in that they don’t have a phone on their device, of course.

As of today, though, we still haven’t seen OneConnect available in the iTunes App Store.

Om Malik interviewed Skype CEO, Josh Silverman, this past week and he claimed that Skype for Pocket PC devices has been very popular with nearly 7 million downloads. Silverman said, “People don’t want just voice, they are looking for presence and chatting [of Skype].”

Malik adds that his recent discussions with telecom operators in Europe reveal that they make more money with Skype-enabled phones than non-Skype-enabled.

Rumors swirl that U.S. telecom operators may be planning their “Skype-killer” VOIP client but nothing has transpired to date.

Either Skype is going to appears soon on our iPhone network or AT&T will provide a reasonable facsimile. Currently, Skype provides the best user experience by far.

To view Om Malik’s interview with Silverman, click below:

Engadget calls the update: “bug fixes galore” and quotes Jobs as saying there will be “No crashes.” We’re not sure if he meant the iPhone won’t crash, or if Apple’s servers won’t crash from everyone downloading the new firmware.

iPod Touch owners will also be able to use the update which is available for them now, but it will cost them $10.

The much-talked-about Nike+ support sadly won’t be available for the iPhone due to a lack of horsepower in the iPhone’s hardware. iPod’s will be enabled for Nike+ which allows workout mavens to track their workouts on their iPods and through the Nike+ website.

Still, there were some good stats unveiled including over 100,000,000 downloads of apps from the iTunes app store.

One of the cooler, new features in iTunes is something called “Genius” which intelligently and instantly makes playlists by looking at one song and then populating a playlist that relates to it.

“People have a lot of music on their devices that they haven’t listened to in ages,” Jobs said. “That’s what Genius does. It helps them rediscover music they already have.” Obviously, this is something the iPhone owners community will enjoy as well as iPod owners.

Marc Sigal makes a nice summary on his blog about the huge opportunity ahead for Apple – if for no other reason than the solid position Apple has created in its music and communication platform to date:

“The numbers don’t lie: 65M credit cards on account with iTunes account holders; a rapidly growing subset of these users can be reached anytime, anywhere via the iTunes wireless store (read: the 10M+ iPhone and iPod touch owners expected by year’s end)…”

In spite of the hoopla around the event, Silicon Alley Insider reports that investors in Apple stock “sold on the news” and Apple stock sank during the keynote.

Among them, Kevin hears that there is a new update for iTunes coming. iTunes 8.0.

If he is correct, it would seem that at this time there is little impact to iPhone users in that other than new visualization capabilities within iTunes and library management tools, nothing will be updated for the iPhone.

But, if you’re looking for new, cheaper iPods, tomorrow will be a good day to buy them according to Rose as updated pricing is predicted that will make them cheaper and fit more in line with other products such as the $199 iPhone
3G.

Given that secrecy prior to a product launch has always been a fixation of Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, we wonder how he is or will be reacting once he sees that Rose has “outed” the whole event tomorrow – if Rose’s sources are correct.

Heads will roll in Cupertino!

If you have a USB hub and are connecting your iPhone to your computer through the device, it may be that all you need to do is plug your iPhone into one of the USB ports available directly on the computer – don’t use the hub.

In the comments of the post, readers note that this sync issue fix may only work for Apple Macintosh computer users and that slowness on the Windows platform continues to persist.

Here are MyNewIphoneWorld.com, we have noticed that everytime we sync to our G4 iMac (we always sync directly), it takes a minute or two to sync and says “Backing Up Data”. Not sure why the Iphone seems to need to do a backup every time – it should be doing a sync.

Ars Technica reports that the new solution for speeding up sync is working for some users and others – not so much.

If there was one attribute which many Apple iPhone users would like in their iPhone it’s the copy-and-paste function with which they are familiar on their computers.

For example, would it not be handy to be able copy a segment from one email and paste into another on your iPhone?

Currently, you can’t do it without fudging.

According to Gizmodo, Apple’s multi-touch sensors of the future will allow users to select “Copy” and “Paste” between applications such as from email to the “Notes” application on the iPhone.

If you’re looking for the complete details on how it will all work, Apple’s registration of a patent application is available on the USPTO website.

Even beyond, copy and paste, Apple is looking to use “force sensors” to deliver or acquire secondary data such as when you hit the screen, say, harder than usual.

An example could be the manipulation of a photo on the iPhone’s camera of the future such that when you tap harder on the screen, it increases the contrast more quickly than a soft tap.

We have found that communication through the easy to use iPhone interface improves upon the website version, and syncs nicely with our texting. Noticing more what other people are doing on Facebook has been a key benefit – a.k.a. “Status Update.” When we’re using a computer’s browser, we tend to visit our own profile and own world, if you will.

SMS vs. Facebook Chat

Presciently, on AllFacebook in July, Nick O’Neill posited that the new Facebook app could mean the end to text messaging, or SMS, as we know it. We agree. For one, Facebook chat is free, SMS is not.

Also, the functionality is similar to any text messaging with Facebook, but the added features of the Facebook iPhone community application make it more useful – and it doesn’t hurt that the interface designed by the product team is very easy to use and looks great.

As VentureBeat has detailed, the Facebook app takes aim at Twitter, too – the popular micro-blogging service through “Status Update” – which asks users, “What are you doing?”

Again, Twitter uses the costly SMS. Facebook is free.

We use several apps on the iPhone, but so far Facebook is our favorite app.

What’s your fav iPhone? Let us know and we’ll profile it here.