Apple announced the iPod Touch, aka the iPhone, without the phone built-in.  It has comes with more memory and is thinner than the iPhone. But, what does this do to the iPod/iPhone market?

The iPod Touch is now an option for those who don’t need a phone, or can’t get out of a contract, but would like to use it as a wifi PDA + music player. Many people still carry a phone and an organizer. Some due to the “corporate standard” or they may need to use of custom application, built on one of these platforms.

The move to smartphones, like the iPhone, Blackberry, Treo and new devices still in the works is imminent. But there are limitations on the disk size on the phones. Even with news SD cards, they don’t match the 160GB size of the newest iPod, the Classic. For those users who carry their entire digital library with them, Apple kept an iPod close to the original form, but as usual thinner.

I haven’t held the new iPod Nano yet, so I’ll hold judgement on how it fits in a workout routine, now that its bigger and there’s no much to an iPod Shuffle, unless the Nano has become to big for running and gets replaced by the Shuffle.

I’m looking forward to some first hand use with these devices.

MacRumors reports that the first native iPhone game has been released for the iPhone. Its a puzzle game called Lights Off.

First the good news:
It’s an exciting anouncement because the developers created it without much help from Apple. Apple has not provided developers with an SDK (software development kit). This means anyone who wants to make a third party program, has to more work to do to get a game or other program to work with the iPhone interface, etc.

Now the bad news:
I haven’t played or downloaded it myself because it takes hacking the iPhone and installing some extra pieces of software to get it to work. On top of that there is a risk that the iPhone could be permanently damaged by doing this. Here’s their disclaimer text “Disclaimer: Lights Off is provided on an “as is” basis, without warranty of any kind. If your iPhone breaks, don’t cry on our shoulders.”

But this is still exciting news because it indicates that additional software for iPhones, (other than web-based via Safari) is on the horizon.

Prediction:
I expect Apple will do one of two things in the next month or so, release an iPhone patch that makes the game not run, or give in to developers and release an official SDK.

Since the iPhone is so good at trying to find and connect to available WiFi hotspots, it is no wonder that security companies are working hard to come up with solutions to improve on security.

The iPhone’s browser supports SSL websites, but often websites don’t offer SSL on all the pages they should be protecting, or maybe your accessing corporate intranets, etc. that also aren’t as secure as they should be.

I came across a security package from GoTrusted.com. They already make security products for the PC’s and now are offering a 7-day free trial to use their security system on the iPhone platform.

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In my quest for cool stuff I came across a mobile translation tool for the iPhone. It is a web-based tool that provides common phrases translated from English into French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese.

The coolest part is that they provide you with audio clips of the phrases, so that you can listen to the phrase a few times and practice saying it.

I found the program extremely simple to use. They did a great job creating a custom interface for the iPhone.

They also make an iPod version, and versions for various Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones, which I haven’t tried.

BTW the link from your iPhone is http://www.coolgorilla.com/iphone or for their main site, click here Also, when you visit the page, be sure to click on the “Talking Phrase Books” It doesn’t look like a standard web link so I had to click around to find it.

I just plugged in the iPhone in and was treated to the iPhone update 1.01. It took quite a bit of time to install, so I was hoping to see something new after it awoke. [ update, don't see any new features ]

However, as I was sliding, pinching, pulling and poking around to see what if any new features were available, I stumbled upon something I had missed before.

In Mail, in order to delete messages, I had been tapping “Edit” then tapping on the red circle with a minus sign in it, then tapped the “Delete” box to the right of each message. A tedious operation, to say the least. The better solution, I happened upon, is sliding the message you wish to delete, to the left. You’ll then get a “Delete” box, which you can tap to delete.

So now I can remove my spam more efficiently.

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