Tutorials – Page 5849 – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

AmpKit, a new way to shred with your iPhone

Peavey and Agile Partners have just introduced AmpKit and AmpKit LiNK, an iPhone-based hardware/app combo that takes portable guitar and bass effects to a new level. It’s loud, it’s lightweight, and it’s an extremely flexible (and relatively inexpensive) alternative to a floor full of pedals.

Matt Tinsley recently reviewed the iRig and AmpliTube combination that also became available recently. I pre-ordered the iRig, and I loved it from the moment I got it in the mail and plugged my guitar into it (I did unbox it first). I received a review unit of the AmpKit LiNK this month, though, and for the last couple of weeks, it’s been the mainstay of my practice sessions.

I’ll tell you up front that I’m not currently gigging, so I can’t attest to the road durability of this hardware, or the actual feasibility of using it onstage. I don’t doubt that it would perform well on both counts, but I haven’t battle-tested it. That being said, click “Read More” for my thoughts on the AmpKit/LiNK setup.

TUAW AmpKit, a new way to shred with your iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iTunes TV show rentals for 99 cents may be on the way

Here’s another rumor about the new Apple TV (or “iTV” as some are calling it), which may be in the cards for the upcoming Apple event in two weeks.

Bloomberg is reporting that Apple is in advanced talks with several media outlets to offer TV show rentals through iTunes for 99 cents an episode. Each episode would be made available within 24 hours of the episode’s airing on television, allowing one to essentially rent the episode for 48 hours, commercial-free.

This isn’t such a huge surprise, really, though it does strongly support the idea of a new Apple TV device and cloud-based streaming services to handle these rentals.

It’ll be interesting to see if one would be able to get a discount on a season pass of streaming episodes. If you watch two shows every weeknight, that’s about $40 a month. Depending on how many networks get on board, even at three shows a night at $60/month seems like a bargain against what some cable and satellite companies charge. Even a better deal, when they are commercial free and viewable on many devices.

TUAW iTunes TV show rentals for 99 cents may be on the way originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Former Apple manager accused of hiding $125k in shoeboxes

Back when I was a kid, I kept my most valuable possessions, my baseball and basketball card collection, in a shoe box. Apparently, so too did former Apple employee Paul Devine. Devine is accused of wire fraud and conspiracy on the basis that he collected more than $2.5 million in kickbacks from Apple’s suppliers. And during their investigation, officials found $125,000 stored away in shoe boxes at his home, as well as more than $20,000 worth of foreign currency. Prosecutors also allege that Devine may have other sources of cash.

In Devine’s position as a global supply manager at Apple, it’s alleged that he was privy to information such as projected sales of Apple products, the cost to manufacture an Apple product, and the prices of bids from competing suppliers. Prosecutors allege that he leveraged this knowledge by providing it to those in the supply chain in return for kickbacks.

The allegations against Devine are noteworthy, given Apple’s penchant for secrecy. For instance, according to reports, Apple employees must test unreleased products in secret rooms under covered workstations, and are not allowed to follow other employees too closely.

[via Macworld]

TUAW Former Apple manager accused of hiding $125k in shoeboxes originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Aug 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yogile: Easy Group Photo Sharing

These days we’re all photographers, whether via cell phone, point & shoot, a more serious DSLR or some other gadget with photo snapping capabilities. We’re a digitally social and sharing society these days, yet it’s still surprisingly difficult to share group photos outside social networks like Facebook.

Yogile brings a simple and very usable solution to the table for easy photo sharing for groups. Read on for our look at Yogile’s interface, pricing and usability.

Overview

For as many photo storage and sharing sites as there are these days, it’s surprising that so many of them lack easy group sharing features. Many people use Facebook to tag each other in their uploaded albums and many still email photos back and fourth! So where’s the really simple solution?

Yogile is one, that’s for sure. It’s simple enough for your not-so-tech-savvy friends or family to upload photos to, yet offers enough features to actually be a usable photo gallery.

Yogile

The idea behind Yogile is simple; someone signs up and creates an album then sends out the link for everyone else at which point others can easily upload their photos without being required to sign up. Know someone that likes sending photos via email? Give them your custom @yogile email address and they can upload photos by simply emailing them.

Pricing

Yogile is Free. However, you’re limited to 100 MB on free accounts. For $24.95 you can upgrade to unlimited storage which also includes unlimited photo uploads, unlimited albums and ad-free sharing and browsing. That’s not a bad deal and quite comparable to competing services.

Upgrade Price

Unfortunately I couldn’t find information on the limitations placed on free accounts but in testing Yogile with photos I’d be sharing, I didn’t have a bit of trouble.

Although free accounts are supposedly ad-supported, I didn’t see a single ad, even when sharing photos with non-Yogile users.

Interface Design and Usability

Although Yogile’s interface design isn’t anything super snazzy, it is very clean and minimalistic. As a designer and someone that sees tons of websites every day, I love it when sites like Yogile offer some sexy eye candy. That being said though, I definitely appreciate the simplicity and minimalism they’ve gone with. It’s a design that wouldn’t scare my grandmother away but appealing enough for my friends or siblings.

Interface

Yogile is very usable. It’s incredibly responsive and makes fantastic use of JavaScript enhancements. The JavaScript enhancements that’ve been implemented really help create a much more seamless, snappy and pleasant experience.

An example of this is quickly editing album and photo titles, album descriptions and other information inline, simply by clicking them.

Inline Editing

Uploading and Sharing

Uploading and sharing your photos is incredibly easy. If you’ve already signed up you’ll simply click the Add Photo Album button, name your album and optionally enter a password and/or customize its link and hit Save.

Create Photo Album

Next you’ll select and upload your photos. The upload process is very responsive and seemed to work flawlessly with bundles of photos, including the upload progress, remaining files and remaining upload data size.

Upload Photos

Once your photos are uploaded you can easily share the whole album or individual photos with others by sending the unique Yogile URL or clicking the share button to quickly send the link via email.

Sharing

Yogile even includes Yahoo, Gmail and Hotmail contacts integration to easily look up your contact’s addresses.

Let Others Upload Photos

Others are able to easily add more photos to your album as long as they have the album’s URL (and password if you’ve set one). They’ll be prompted to sign up but can optionally upload their photos anonymously.

Anonymous Upload

Even if they do decide to sign up, it takes but only a second. Although, it is nice that sign up isn’t required as many of my friends and family don’t care to add yet another account to their website collection.

Final Thoughts

Yogile is about as clean and simple as it gets to accomplish group photo sharing, and it works. The site has other great features as well such as the ability to download full albums as .zip archives, view photos via slideshow, order photos in several different ways and view photos in several different thumbnail sizes (or single full view).

The ability to upload photos via email or MMS is nice for those on the go but also for those who prefer to share their photos via email. The integration of JavaScript enhancements and fantastic site responsiveness makes Yogile fantastic to use.

The downsides? Well, a little more space for free accounts would be nice considering so many other photo galleries online offer 1GB or more for free. Yogile is also holding back a significant amount of information I’d like to know before really making it a permanent solution in my photo sharing toolbox. Details on free and upgraded ($24.95/yr) accounts should be standard and easily accessible.

Overall Yogile definitely deserves an outstanding 8/10 with potential to move up.

Atomic: The Swiss Army Browser for Your iPad

Ever since the iPhone App Store first appeared, users have cried out for third-party web browsers. While Apple doesn’t allow anything that can independently interpret Javascript (read: full-fledged web browsers) in the App Store, they eventually began approving apps that use WebKit (the core of Safari and MobileSafari) to display webpages.

In other words, you won’t be seeing Firefox for iPad anytime soon, but browsers that—to appropriate the ever-relevant car metaphor—use the same engine as MobileSafari with a different chassis and paint job—are now available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.

Apple insists that browsing the web on an iPad is already pretty magical, but there’s always someone ready to step up and demonstrate stronger magic. Atomic Web Browser is one such contestant.

A Potential Safari Replacement

As a simple replacement for MobileSafari, Atomic is pretty full-featured. While it’s not possible to save pages to your iPad’s homescreen as webclips (independent webapps), Atomic otherwise matches MobileSafari feature for feature.

In fact, Atomic made me realise just how simple MobileSafari is: beyond opening webpages, handling tabs (er, pages) and managing bookmarks, MobileSafari really doesn’t do all that much. It lacks a lot of features we’ve come to expect from desktop browsers, like a private browsing mode, the ability to view the source code of the pages you visit, and being able to choose between a gaggle of search engines.

Unlike Safari, Atomic was clearly created to bring the features of a desktop browser to the iPad. It offers all those feature plus a whole lot of customizability.

Something Seems Familiar

On first run, Atomic doesn’t look very much like MobileSafari. Not only is the toolbar a custom gradient-y black, but the tabs are a grey that make them stand out from the rest of the toolbar area and the progress bar (which appears in the bottom left corner of the screen when a page is loading) looks like something straight out of Windows, with its transparent glassiness. Everything about Atomic’s appearance shouts that, unlike MobileSafari, this application wasn’t “Designed by Apple in California”.

The Browser

Tabbed Browsing

The tabs that are so obvious in their grey-ness are one of Atomic’s selling points. Unlike MobileSafari’s ‘pages’ metaphor, Atomic uses tabs that at first blush would seem right at home in a desktop browser like Firefox or Chrome.

The plus sign to the right of the right-most tab opens a new tab, and each tab has a close button. Atomic can somehow handle at least ten tabs without running into the memory issues that so often afflict MobileSafari with just a few pages open; unless you’re running several complex HTML5 webapps or games, you’re unlikely to have to wait while a tab reloads, which is a major point in Atomic’s favour.

Tabbed Browsing

Atomic’s tabs don’t act exactly like desktop tabs, though; for one thing, they aren’t automatically resized to fit in the iPad’s limited amount of screen space. Instead, the entire tab bar scrolls when you press and drag on a tab.

This has two undesirable effects. First, the ‘new tab’ button can easily get hidden out of sight to the right of the screen when you have seven or more tabs open, which can be especially troubling if you’re working in the left-most tab and need to open a new tab quickly.

The second undesirable effect is that since tapping and dragging on the tab bar is a method of scrolling through your potentially endless list of tabs, you can’t tap and drag on tabs to reorder them. In fact, you can’t reorder your tabs at all.

Toolbar Buttons & Features

The other main features of Atomic are all accessed through toolbar buttons. The simplest toolbar button (not counting Back and Forward) is the one furthest left; the Bookmarks button behaves pretty much exactly as you’d expect, providing access to your history and previously bookmarked pages. It also, however, offers the ability to load pages saved to disk using the Action button (on which more in a moment).

Bookmark Management

The Action button—which is what I’m calling the plus sign in the toolbar, for lack of a better term—hides a number of actions you can take on the current page. You can add it as a bookmark, set it as your home page, open it in MobileSafari, email its URL, or post it to Facebook or Twitter. All fairly standard options, although the social network tools aren’t available in MobileSafari, so there are some advantages there.

The real treats, though, are the last two items. The second to last is “Save Webpage”, a feature that actually lets you save a webpage in its current state for opening in the future. This is similar to the “Save as web archive” feature in desktop Safari, and it goes so far as to save images and other files necessary for completely reproducing the page even if the website it was part of is completely deleted. Since you can’t yet print from an iPad, that might come in very handy.

Page Actions

The very last feature in the Action menu is “View Source”, which is exciting primarily to the very geeky; being able to check out what makes websites tick while on the go could be very useful. You can even search the source, although it will only find the first result, and email it to someone (if you have an equally geeky friend likely to ooh and ah over some piece of webfacing code).

The last thing I have to note about the Action popover, before I move on, is that it comes up with its pointer off-center on the Action button. Strange little imperfections like this abound throughout Atomic, and I find them increasingly distracting the more I use the app.

Viewing Page Source

Full Screen Browsing

Before we get to the Settings menu, where Atomic’s heart lives, let’s take a detour to the other end of the toolbar and notice that there’s a fullscreen button. It does pretty much what you’d guess, complete with more Windows-like glossy, translucent icons.

Full Screen Browsing

“Settings” Is Where the Heart Is

The Options menu (which is what I’m calling the popover that belongs to the gear button) has seven options: Enable/Disable Private Mode; Lock Rotation; Increase Font Size; Decrease Font Size; Save Font for Site, which allows you to save a custom font size so it will be used next time you open that website (there’s no way to jettison a saved font size other than setting a new one); Hide/Display Tab Bar, which allows you to gain back some valuable pixels if you plan to be on one page for a while; and finally Settings.

Options

If you like to control every aspect of your web browsing experience and your main complaint about the iPad is that it doesn’t offer enough customisation opportunities, you’ll love Atomic’s Settings. If you like the simplicity and “just works” nature of MobileSafari, you should probably stay away.

The Settings section of Atomic is quite frankly byzantine, and I’m not going to go over every possible point of customisation. As a taste, though, you can decide on Atomic’s startup behaviour (load your homepage? certain bookmarks? the last page viewed? all of the tabs from the last session?), set a passcode for the app, clear your history, cookies, and cache, turn ad blocking features on and off and set what buttons appear in full screen mode (and how translucent they are).

Still looking for more? You can also add translucent buttons to regular browsing mode, add and customize multitouch gestures, pick the search engine you want to use in Atomic’s search box, turn the browser pink (or other horrifying colours, or make it imitate Safari, colour-wise), set a user string (so you can claim to be running Internet Explorer 6, if that seems like fun to you), turn off images, hide or show the bookmark bar, turn on a list view for tabs if you love everything else about Atomic but hate the tabs, and, and, and… the list goes on.

You can even control whether you want to receive a low memory warning when you start to run low. It’s a control freak’s paradise!

Settings

This shows slightly more than half of the different sections of Settings. Atomic gives you lots of options. The following probably isn’t one you want to explore…!

Pink!

What Do You Get the Browser That Has Everything?

Atomic is gleefully complicated, and takes pride in using user interface metaphors that feel extremely out of place on the iPad. It allows users to make lots of choices, at the cost of providing the potential for them to make bad ones.

Overall, it’s pretty good at doing many of the things a traditional web browser is supposed to do, but as with most Swiss Army knives, it’s not excellent at any of them.

Nevertheless, if you’re looking for an iPad web browser with desktop-like features and customizability, and you don’t mind a very custom appearance, you shouldn’t still be reading this; you should be paying your $0.99 on the App Store and downloading Atomic right now.

If you’re looking for the simplest, most consistent and most attractive experience, Atomic probably won’t do for you (and you might want to stick with MobileSafari). There are a few other browsers in the App Store, but most of them (like iCab Mobile, which allows you to download large files and import them to a computer later, and Perfect, which offers a few of the same features in an unbelievably ugly, Windows-like app) either cost more or have less features—or both.

If $0.99 is too much for you without a test drive, it’s worth trying out Atomic’s free Lite version.

Quick Look: Look-Up

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the polls below if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Look-Up. The developer describes Look-Up as a game that brings the classic alien invasion game theme into the 21st century with an augmented reality twist. You have joined Earth’s Resistance Forces to hold back the aliens ships that are attacking our cities, forests, beaches and deserts – wherever you are, they are coming. Space invaders was never this real.

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Look-Up

About the App

Here are the top four features you can expect to see in the latest version:

Augmented reality means you play in your real surroundings
Stand up and fight in 360 mode, or sit down for 180 mode
Build an army with your friends in multiplayer mode
Defend Earth against 9 invasions with increasing difficulty

Requirements: iOS 3.1 +, iOS 4, iPhone

Price: 0.99

Developer: Soulbit7

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of Look-Up? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see Look-Up reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?customer surveys

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.

Quick Look: Group Text!

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the polls below if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Group Text!. The developer describes Group Text! as an app to easily send SMS to groups, to handpicked set of contacts or to custom distribution lists. You can also optionally create some templates to save time if you send the same text frequently.

Once you create a list, you no longer have to select contacts one-by-one for a group message. Simply tap on the list name and you are ready to send!

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Quick Look: Group Text!

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

send mass text messages
easy and quick interface
use address book groups, handpick set of contacts from address book or create distribution lists
optionally create and use message templates
iPhone 4 retina display ready

Requirements: iOS4

Price: 2.99

Developer: Andrea Vettori

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of Group Text!? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see Group Text! reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?online survey

10 Apps To Make Your iPod Touch as Awesome as an iPhone

The iPod has come a long way since 2001. The second generation model sitting on my desk doesn’t have a color screen, weighs enough to be used as a self-defense aid and does little else than play music (though block breaker was a pretty cool feature at the time).

My iPod Touch on the other hand is an astonishing technological feat rivaling that of the iPhone. However, there are definitely a few major features that iPhone users enjoy that I miss out on. Fortunately, several app developers are on the task of closing this feature gap and have significantly extended the functionality of the iPod Touch.

Today we’ll look at ten apps that help make your iPod Touch a lot cooler by mimicking some of the basic features found on iPhones.

Why Not Just Get an iPhone?

If you’re an iPod Touch owner, odds are, you really wanted an iPhone but were ultimately forced to settle for less (not always the case, but true for so many). This is an all too common story due to the several hurdles that stand in the way of many would-be customers who would gladly fork over $300 for a shiny new iPhone.

The biggest hurdle for many US inhabitants is AT&T. This story typically goes one of two ways. One group of people has finally decided that they don’t care who their carrier is as long as they can have an iPhone. Unfortunately though, they’re trapped in a multi-year contract with another carrier and refuse to pay the cancellation fees for early termination.

The second group of people loathe AT&T and will never switch. Some of these people have just had bad experiences, others have never even tried the carrier but abstain because of poor reviews from friends and family.

One final group of iPod Touch owners simply refuse to pay for data plans from any carrier. Simple flip phones void of apps, touch screens and full-featured web browsers make phone calls just fine for half the monthly fee.

Whatever your reason may be for not getting an iPhone, the truth is that an iPod Touch is an awesome alternative. It does nearly everything the iPhone does with only a few notable exceptions.

Let’s take a look at a few of the major missing features along with ten apps and/or devices that you can use to address the problem.

Phone Calls

The first and most obvious feature is the ability to make phone calls. The iPhone is a phone, the iPod Touch isn’t. It’s as simple as that. Neither the hardware nor the software were built with this intention in mind, so can it be done?

Let’s talk about hardware first. The most recent models of the iPod Touch feature support for the Apple mic/remote headphones, meaning that they can in fact handle both the audio-in and audio-out aspects of a phone conversation. The bonus is that these calls can often be made completely free of charge and void of any contracts.

Unfortunately, the iPod hardware doesn’t have cellular capability so the software solution will have to be VoIP. With the options below you’ll essentially be making phone calls over your WiFi connection.

Skype

“With Skype on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you can make and receive calls, and instant message anyone else on Skype, wherever they are in the world. You can also save on international calls and text messages to phones. Skype is free to download and easy to use.”

Price: Free

Skype

Acrobits Softphone – SIP phone for VoIP calls

“Use your iPhone [and iPod Touch] to make inexpensive calls over the internet anywhere. Call International destinations for pennies a minute. Call friends on the same network for free. Save on roaming charges by using the Softphone to make calls while abroad. Set up multiple SIP accounts and switch between them depending on who has the best rate for your call destination. Make calls through your office PBX, using your business number from anywhere.”

Price: $7.99

Acrobits Softphone

iCall Free VoIP

“Selected as a New York Times App of the Week, iCall is used by over 4,000,000 people worldwide. iCall is changing the way people around the globe communicate. iCall allows you to make and receive phone calls over 3G and WiFi, even when you don’t have a cell signal. Never pay a roaming charge again!”

Price: Free

iCall Free VoIP

fring

“fring is a multi-award winning mobile application that lets you make free voice calls, free video calls and live IM chats directly from your iPhone and iPod touch. fring operates as your mobile social hub. Communicate with your friends from fring and other favorite social services including MSN Messenger, GoogleTalk™, Twitter, Yahoo! , AIM, ICQ, all through one central profile, using your iPhone and iPod touch’s internet capability.”

Price: Free

fring

Text Messaging

Another basic phone feature not found on the iPod Touch is text messaging. This feature can be even more important to many users as text messaging continues to become more popular than even calling.

Fortunately, there are a plethora of texting apps available for the iPod Touch that allow you to send free texts to whoever you want. Here are a few to try out.

Textfree Unlimited

“Yep, send and receive unlimited free texts from an iPod touch or iPhone to any US mobile phone. No catch, no hidden anything, no yearly fees!”

Price: Free

Textfree Unlimited

AIM

AIM doesn’t just do instant messaging, it also supports Facebook chat and SMS texting as well. It’s an awesome all-in-one messaging solution that gives you access to tons of your friends across various networks, all free!

Price: Free

AIM

Textie

“The creators of Tweetie and Borange are proud to present Textie Messaging, the unlimited texting app for iPhone and iPod touch. If you and a friend both have iPhones but are still paying to text each other, we definitely recommend you try using Textie Messaging instead–and communicate for free.”

Price: Free

Textie

Camera

Despite unceasing customer demands, Apple has yet to put a camera in the iPod Touch. It’s interesting to note that if you pay $149 for an iPod Nano, you get a neat video camera, but if you fork out the extra dough and pay $199 for an iPod Touch, you get zilch.

This is definitely a temporary problem. With Apple promising to sell millions of FaceTime compatible devices, you can bet they’re going to start sticking cameras in both iPod Touches and iPads sometime in the near future (likely in the next couple months).

In the mean time, iPod Touch owners will have to remain without a solution for taking pictures… or will they?

DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition

This handy app allows you to control your Canon EOS or Nikon DSLR camera. You can “instantly adjust its settings, fire the shutter, review images, even get a live viewfinder preview.”

Technically, this app allows you to take pictures using your iPod. However, this is ultimately nothing like having a built-in camera (cut me some slack, it’s all I could find). Most people don’t have a 5D lying around and even if they do you still have to connect the camera to your computer making this solution not very mobility-friendly. But for any photographers out there, this is definitely a pretty neat app!

Price: $19.99

DSLR Camera Remote Professional Edition

Internet Access on the Go

The most significant annoyance I run into as an iPod Touch owner is simply the fact that I often can’t connect to the web when I’m outside of my house. Fortunately, I live in a major city and hotspots are plentiful, but there are still lots of dead zones where I simply can’t connect.

The best way to rid yourself of this problem is to pick up a personal mobile hotspot such as the MiFi. These awesome little guys provide wireless Internet access to any Wifi enabled devices from anywhere that you would normally have cell service.

As another option, Sprint is rumored to be releasing a new product called “Peel” that is essentially a mobile hotspot wrapped in an iPod Touch case. This would allow iPod Touch owners to seamlessly experience the same kind of freedom that iPhone users enjoy.

Unfortunately, these options all come with fat monthly fees (my research indicates around $30-40/month on the low end). Since many iPod Touch owners see having no contract or monthly fee as a major bonus, this will likely still leave a large part of the market sticking to pure WiFi.

For these users, the best you can do is download an app to help you find local WiFi hotspots so that you can easily know if the place you’re going will have coverage or not.

Wi-Fi Finder

“Quickly and easily find FREE or paid Wi-Fi when you travel with the JiWire Wi-Fi Finder for iPhone and iPod Touch. Download all of the locations offline, so you know how to stay connected when you are on the road. ”

Price: Free

Wi-Fi Finder

Spots – The WiFi Hotspot Directory

“Spots is a fast and beautiful hotspot directory containing half a million hotspots worldwide. Since Spots works offline, you can find hotspots from the included database. Spots does not use Wi-Fi to scan for nearest access points, nor does it contact any web services.”

Price: $1.99

Spots

Conclusion

Unfortunately, the iPhone will likely always remain at least a little cooler than the iPod Touch. However, apps like those found above will continue to push the bounds of the iPod making it ever closer to an all-in-one media and communication device free from any contracts and not tied to a specific service provider.

Leave a comment below and let us know what apps you use on your iPod Touch to make it feel a bit more like an iPhone!

Envato Birthday Bundle 2010 Giveaway [Updated]

If you haven’t heard, Envato, the company behind AppStorm, is turning four and in celebration has released the 2010 Birthday Bundle. As if $400 worth of files for $20 wasn’t an amazing enough deal, we’re giving away five bundles!

Read on for giveaway entry details. [Updated] Winners have been selected! Congrats to amrnt, urbenkeach, samdownie, jonjomckay and PauldeWouters.

Envato Birthday Bundle 2010

What do you get?

Over $400 of Envato Marketplace files including WordPress themes, graphics, audio, video and more!
$50 of hosting from MediaTemple
A $10 discount on any RockablePress book

How to Enter

Follow these steps for your entry to win a free Birthday Bundle.

Follow @webappstorm via Twitter if you aren’t already.
Send out this tweet (“Envato Birthday Bundle: $400 of Envato Items and $50 MediaTemple Hosting for JUST $20! http://enva.to/bbundle Limited Time Only! #bbundle”)
If you’re not already a member of an Envato Marketplace, take a few seconds to sign up. (Required to download Bundle)

Five lucky winners will be selected and announced Sunday at 5:00pm, Pacific Standard Time. Winners will be contacted via Twitter. Each winner’s Envato Marketplace account will be credited $20 to purchase the Birthday Bundle.

Please Note: Envato staff or people who have written more than two articles or tutorials for Web.AppStorm.net are ineligible to enter.

20 Very Best Coupon, Daily Deal and Social Buying Sites

>>Groupon Clone Script<<

Just $89, Full Featured ,Paypal, Tweet Machine

With the birth of online coupon and social buying sites, the retail industry has jumped the shark. Mainstream consumers with a penchant for lifestyle products & services and consumers who belong to the long tail with a slightly obscure taste are pampered alike by these websites. After the financial downturn, everyone of us have understood the value of money and group buying sites are making hay while the sun shines.

Arguably, a group buying site is the easiest business to hit the ground and running from day one. The concept benefits everyone in the food chain – the site, consumer and the business owner. Consumers benefit from lower prices by way of collective bargaining, the business gets new patrons and the site gets a cut from the sales. Looking for a way to figure the best among the mushrooming coupon and group deals clones? We’ve got you covered with this list.

Social Coupon Sites

Groupon

Groupon is the mother of the group buying gold rush. Though not the first ones with to invent the concept of group buying, they have a cult following thanks to all the great deals. It is very common to have clones popping up when there is a successful business idea in play. However, you would be surprised how many copycats have blatantly lifted Groupon’s design. The intuitive design and a no obligation to pay till the deal size is reached are keys to their success. Groupon has customized deals for a number US cities and of late they have started international versions of the site too. A referral system that credits $10 when you introduce the service is also in place.

LivingSocial

LivingSocial is a the daily deal group buying site that is often referred to as the main competitor to Groupon. Deals for more than 50 cities in the US and few other countries as well are announced daily. The site boasts to have a number of local experts on field to identify local attractions and offer value based to its visitors. Currently they are running a promotion for Visa card holders wherein they can gift a deal to they friend for free if they use their Visa card while purchasing their own deal.

Tippr

Tippr promotes itself as a daily deals site and has a gorgeous looking & minimal design webpage to push deals on a daily basis. Offers are available in 25 cities across US and exclusive deals with discounts from 50 to 90% are offered to the newsletter subscribers.Trippr also runs regular referral credit contests on the Twitter account. So keep an eye on their tweets too.

Thrillist

Long before the group buying saga, there existed a fabulous email newsletter service that pushed deals and lifestyle tips. Primarily catering a male audience (they have a sister site for women) Thrillist deals comes in two variants. First being the usual citywide daily deals and the second being Thrillist Nation, which delivers deals on the best & hottest gadgets, service & gear online.

BuyWithMe

Open to deals in 8 cities, BuyWithMe is known for offering tiered sub deals. For example, you have a discounted price for a hair cut and a deeper discount for haircut plus facial. Sweet! They could definitely use a design makeover of their webpage considering how swanky their competitor sites are.

Yipit

Yipit is active in 7 cities and is on the verge of launching in Denver, Las Vegas, Washington DC and London. They have multiple deals running per city any given day.

jasmere

jasmere connects specialty web retailers with style-conscious consumers, and offers limited time discounts of up to 70% off. jasmere also offers a 10% referral bonus and every weekday gifts the featured deal to a Facebook fan page member for free.

AtCost

AT COST

AtCost offers deals in various cities across USA, Canada, UK and Australia. With AtCost, it is now possible for its visitors to easily add group buys, daily deals and flash sales directly on their own site blog or the Facebook fan page.

Dealmap

Dealmap is like a social aggregator of daily deals in your city. They collect all the best local deals from the largest number of sources and make them easy to find for visitors from the respective cities.

DealOn

DealOn offers savings upto 85% on Restaurants, Spas, and Events in your locality. Listing offers from 38 cities across USA, DealOn also offers gift cards for you to surprise your friends & family.

Daily Deals

Woot

With a cult following, Woot is more like a phenomena on the web. They offer only one deal a day and a new deal shows up the next day. They offer comprehensive insights and purchase patterns of the deals for all the visitors to see. Woot has now been acquired by Amazon and you gotta see the tongue in the cheek monkey rap they created to celebrate the occasion!

Woot Graphics

Newegg

Newegg offers fantastic daily deals on all products PC related. All products listed have comprehensive technical specifications, descriptions and reviews. Visitors can also set price alerts for a particular item listing and will be alerted via email when the product gets listed at the desired price point.

yugster

unlike Woot, yugster offers its customers / visitors a flexible purchase plans. Visitors can opt to take a sneak peek of tomorrow’s deal today and can also buy older listings if the items are still in stock.

Shnoop

Shnoop is a daily deal site offering only one product on sale at a deeply discounted sale. However, they also give their visitors a a chance to buy the previous days item as well until it is sold out, just like yugster.

1 Sale A Day

With an aptly selected domain name, 1 Sale A Day offers daily deals primarily in these five categories – general daily deal, Wireless, Watch, Family and Jewelery deals. Once the day ends, the product listed on the website is replaced with a new deal and the old deals cannot be availed like in the case of some of its competitors.

General Coupon Sites

RetailMeNot

RetailMeNot is a service that indexes conventional coupons (like the one we see in classifieds) from merchants and businesses. They have a whooping collection of coupons from about 65000 stores across USA. Just click on the coupon to copy it and get redirected to the page the coupon originally belongs to.

Coupons

Sitting on a lucrative domain name, Coupons.com is a great place to find real world coupons and coupon codes. To save the coupons that you like, just check on them and they are automatically added to your queue. Once you have selected everything, you can get them all printed in a single click.

FatWallet

In addition to thousands of coupons and cashback offers from about 25000 retailers across the country, FatWallet also offers staff picked best deals for its visitors. You can also take advantage of their great price comparison engine to find the best deals.

8Coupons

With a nice little map marking all the local hotspots, 8Coupons lets you clip coupons for the best deals to eat, shop, drink and purchase stuff in your neighbourhood.

MyCoupons

Even if you have not made up your mind yet on using coupons, the running ticker that displays how much money people saved by using MyCoupons definitely will. In addition to listing general coupons, MyCoupons also lists Gift cards available at discount rates.

Share Your Favorite!

Care to share an online destination that lets you save money with their great deals? The comments section is open for you!

Quick Look: Aqua Globs HD

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the polls below if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review!

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Aqua Globs HD. The developer describes Aqua Globs HD as very easy to get into with the main aim to gain points by joining cute wiggly globs. Touch and drag to navigate them and join them together. But watch out! Blue & orange globs don’t like each other, and you only have three lives!

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Quick Look: Aqua Globs HD

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

addictive and fun gameplay (adaptive difficulty)
unique twist in line-drawing genre with interactive tutorial!
each level with unique special glob with different abilities
multipliers and “clear all” button to give you extra points
polished high definition graphics through the whole game

Requirements: iPad

Price: 1.99

Developer: Qwiboo

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of Aqua Globs HD? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see Aqua Globs HD reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?online surveys

iPhone Game Friday: Music Games

Welcome to another Game Friday roundup on iPhone.Appstorm. This weeks issue focuses on music games for the iPhone/iPod, from the heavyweight Rock Band, to the minnow HangTunes. If you think we’ve missed Guitar Hero off the list, don’t worry, we covered it in an earlier Game Friday on New Releases.

Like always, if you have a game you want reviewed, please let us know!

Rock Band

First up this week is Rock Band, a game which works fantastically well on all major consoles where you can utilise different instruments, but it unfortunately a little linear on the iPhone. You can rock out to 30 free songs on guitar, bass, drums or vocal, but it all boils down to the same button tapping (you can’t even sing the vocals!) and the buttons that you have to tap are not really big enough.

However, what Rock Band lacks in playability, it makes up for with a fantastic selection of songs, including hits from Foo Fighters, Motorhead and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Additional tracks can be download for $0.99 and once you have the hang of it, it really isn’t all that bad!

Price: $6.99
Developer: Electronic Arts
Download: App Store

Thumpies

As far as odd-ball rhythm games go, Thumpies is right up there with the best of them. The aim of Thumpies is simple, you tap the drums in time with the bounce of the furry little animals in order to fill your progress meter and advance to the next level.

It starts off simple in order to ease you in gently, however when Thumpies are bouncing all over the screen, you need quick thinking to stay in the game. The controls are nice and responsive, which is essential for a rhythm game, and the graphics are lovely and colourful to appeal to both adults and children alike.

Price: $2.99
Developer: Big Blue Bubble
Download: App Store

Six-String

While Rock Band and Guitar Hero are arguably the best rhythm games out there, they really are nothing like playing the actual guitar. Six-String aims to change all that with an alternative approach to their gameplay, incorporating six strings and including features such as strumming and changing chords while you play.

It’s not an easy game and takes a lot of getting used to in order to master, but the song availability is solid, with hits from Bon Jovi, Scorpions and Tom Petty among the embedded tracks, with Hinder, Lady Gaga and Sum 41 available for purchase. For those of you who like a challenge, download the free demo and test your guitar playing skills.

Price: $4.99
Developer: UMG Recordings
Download: App Store

Genesis

Genesis is a rather oddball game, combining puzzle solving and music to create a rather intuitive and enjoyable app that can be incredibly challenging. You solve puzzles by bending light around space, connecting suns in order to complete the level.

The music gets louder the closer you are to solving the puzzle and there are hints available to help you when you get stuck. The beautiful graphics and original gameplay make this a great little title, albeit slightly on the short side. However, for $0.99, you can hardly complain that much!

Price: $0.99
Developer: Elements of Design
Download: App Store

HangTunes

Lastly this week is HangTunes, a hangman game that tests your knowledge of your own music library. It plays like a standard hangman game, with you needing to guess the names of songs from your music collection.

If you get stuck, you can get hints in the form of an audio sample or cover art preview. It sounds like an easy game, but when you have a few thousand songs on your iPhone/iPod, it can be hard remembering the obscure name of that song by a band you haven’t listened to in three years. Great for helping you rediscover your old music.

Price: $0.99
Developer: Stone Road Software
Download: App Store

What Have You Been Playing?

We always appreciate your feedback and suggestions for other games so please let us know what you have been playing in the comments below.

Social Check-Ins: Facebook Places Launched

Yesterday Facebook launched its latest social network feature, Facebook Places, which is set to compliment the growing market of location-based social check-in apps. Currently Foursquare, Gowalla, Booyah and Yelp are able to push data into Places. So, in a way, Facebook is working with (rather than in competition against) the check-in giants to best take advantage of the massive number of people on the social network.

We’ll take a quick peek at Facebook Places and how you can protect your privacy with the new Facebook feature.

So what is it?

Facebook Places is the same idea as other popular check-in apps such as Foursquare and Gowalla. Places enables you to share where you are and connect with friends close by. Your friends can even tag you in their check-ins, a possible privacy concern for some people.

Places

A few friends of mine are diligent Foursquare users and while they’re out and about I find it fun to see the places they’re exploring and visiting; not because I like knowing where they are, but because I enjoy discovering the new places they’re also discovering.

Going a step further, I really like the idea of being able to “find” other friends also at your same location. It really brings a new aspect to socializing.

When will it be available?

Places is set to be rolled out within the United States over the next few days. I haven’t found a set launch date for international users. As soon as we know, we’ll let you know too so be sure to subscribe to RSS or follow us on Twitter. You might also follow The Facebook Blog.

The Facebook Blog

Places for Businesses

Business owners can claim their “places”, which will turn it into a Facebook Page, enabling them to post updates for those that like the page. Business owners will have to verify their claim with some form of official document. There’s obviously lots of advantages for businesses and advertisers to do this, which you can read more about at Facebook’s Places for Advertisers FAQ.

How do I protect my privacy?

The first thing that came to mind when I heard Places was launched was, how is this going to affect my privacy? Sharing your location isn’t exactly a bad thing and can actually be a lot of fun. On the other hand, your friends can tag you when they check into places, which could let others know you’re somewhere you didn’t want them to know about. I’m sure you can see the potential privacy issues here.

Fortunately you can protect your privacy with a few new privacy settings. By default the new Places settings are enabled, so if you want to lock down your privacy you’ll need to follow these few simple steps.

Log Into Facebook, Navigate to Privacy Settings

To get started, log into Facebook and navigate to your privacy settings page, then click Customize settings.

Customize Settings

Things I share

Within the Things I share section you’ll find two settings to control the privacy for the places you check in and whether or not to include you in “People Here Now” after you’ve checked in. The “People Here Now” feature basically let’s others know you’re at the location you’ve checked into via the locations page.

Checkin Settings

I’ve set mine to be more restrictive.

Things others share

If you don’t want others to be able to tag you in their check-ins, navigate to the Things others share section and select Disable for the Friends can check me into Places option.

Friends Checkin

Application Sharing

Lastly, your location can be shared via Facebook applications. If you’d like to restrict this as well, head back to your main Privacy Settings page and select Edit your settings under the Applications and Websites section (lower left corner).

Application Privacy

Next, click Edit Settings for the Info accessible through your friends. You’ll be able to deselect the Places I’ve Visited from the list of information accessible through your friends.

Info Through Friends

Final Thoughts

Social check-in apps and services never really caught my attention as I’m not a big fan of sharing my location and places I visit with everyone. I tried Foursquare but it really never caught on with me. Occasionally, however, I have noticed I’m willing to tweet about a few places I’m visiting so maybe Facebook Places is something I should at least try.

I’m very pleased to see that Facebook included easy privacy settings to disable places sharing. I’m not fond of Facebook’s privacy history so this was a positive step in my opinion.

Will you be using Facebook Places? What do you think of it?

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20 Back to School Apps and Tools for Students

It’s August, which means school is about to start for many high school and college students. You’ve all probably had a nice summer, but now it’s time to get back to pulling all-nighters, listening to boring professors, and attempting to learn something useful.

A lot of you may be dreading school, but it doesn’t have to be all bad, especially if you’re prepared. For all our student subscribers out there, we at Web.AppStorm have compiled a list of websites and tools that are guaranteed to help you get the most out of your education this semester. Go back to school with confidence!

Shmoop

Everybody knows about Sparknotes. Everybody. And your professors are like hawks; if they so much as get a whiff of Sparknotes analysis in your paper, they’ll tear you to shreds. Instead, ditch Sparknotes try Shmoop, a website I personally like a lot more than Sparknotes. Shmoop is an online study guide and resource for literature that provides summaries, analysis, quotes, themes, and follow up questions for lots of popular literature.

Shmoop makes the summaries fun to read by adding bids of humor and making it relateable. A great resource to use when you’ve confused about a novel or if you need inspiration for a paper. Did Shmoop not help you as much as you had hoped? No problem, try Cliffnotes, Pinkmonkey, or LitSum.

LectureFox

School is the place to learn, but sometimes you can learn more online. Now that most universities are becoming more technological, many popular universities are beginning to offer their lectures online for you. You just have to find them all! Use the LectureFox website to sift through all the different lectures from different universities. Learn chemistry, physics, computer science and more from some of the best universities in the US.

Snapter

Having a scanner is a great addition to your student arsenal, but they are way too expensive for the Top Ramen student. Instead, you can use the tool Snapter to get your documents online. You just need to take a picture of your document and Snapter will clean and fix the image for you and make it look as if you scanned it. Scan stuff without a scanner. Pretty nice right? Unfortunately, Snapter isn’t free. You have a 14 day free trial, and after that, you’ll have to pay $50 bucks for a license. I know, it’s a little pricey, but hey, it’s cheaper than your traditional scanner.

BookFinder

BookFinder may not look like much on first glance, but design isn’t everything. I’ve found that BookFinder is the best way to find textbooks online. As the site advertises, you can compare prices on over 150 million books for sale. I don’t even think Amazon can take this bad boy on.

If you’re not interested in buying books and would like to rent or sell some, check out eCampus (previously covered in a roundup about saving money online) or Chegg.com.

EasyBib

Research papers are tough, but citations are even tougher. When you need to build a bibliography, the first place you should head to is EasyBib. EasyBib automatically creates citations for you based on the book, website, and newspaper information you provide. When you finish building your bibliography, you can print or export it. EasyBib supports MLA, APA, and Chicago formats and is updated to the latest editions. Don’t quite like the feel of EasyBib? Try out BibMe, a similar and equally effective tool.

Zotero

Zotero is a must-have Firefox extension for all students, especially if you do a lot of research online. If you’re the kind of student who has dozens of tabs open and trying to get information from all of them, then Zotero is for you.

Zotero helps you save websites, links, images, and will cite all the sources for you. It’ll keep track of everything you save and allow you to search through your research library so you can be organized for any project.

FlashCardExchange

School often means a lot of memorization. You’ve got to memorize vocab, science terms, foreign words, your parent’s birthdays, and so on. It can be quite a handful sometimes. But with a tool like FlashCardExchange, you can use online flashcards to quiz yourself and memorize anything with a little bit of practice.

Create your own set of flashcards or use/edit one of thousands of user created sets available online. If you’d like an alternative to FlashCardExchange, you should definitely try out Quizlet, a website where you can study terms by playing games. It’s not quite as big as FlashCardExchange, but is definitely more fun to use.

Printable Paper

Nobody knows why it happens, but people always run out of paper when they need it the most. Let’s say you ran out of binder paper and have a huge paper due the next day. You could lose some face and beg your roommate for some or you could just head to PrintablePaper.net. With PrintablePaper, you can access hundreds of types of paper for you to download. Get binder paper, graph paper, isometric graph paper, music sheets, printable games, and more. All for free. Let’s just hope there’s still paper in the printer!

Spreeder

Spreeder is a tool for slow readers or those of you who get distracted by all the pretty little words on a page. Copy and paste text (preferably from your textbook or novel) into Spreeder, and set a WPM (words per minute) you want to read at. Spreeder then flashes one word at a time*, and you can zip through the passage in no time. Try the tool out and find what your maximum WPM is for more efficiency. Warning: Spreeder can cause dizziness. Copy this article into Spreeder and set the WPM to 2000. You’ll see what I mean. A similar tool a ZapReader, another online speed reading tool.

You can edit the number of words to display in the settings.

FBPurity

Facebook is both a blessing and a curse. It’s probably the easiest way to contact fellow students, but also the easiest way to distract you (thanks to these 10 addictive Facebook apps). That’s where FBPurity steps in and takes control. FBPurity is a Greasemonkey script that hides those annoying game invitations and other distractions.

Choose what parts of FB you want to hide and what parts you want to keep. You can get similar functionality out of the FFixer greasemonkey script mentioned in our list of fantastic greasemonkey addons. Now hurry up and clean up Facebook.

Dropbox

If you plan on surviving school, you’ve got to back up your files. Dropbox, a tool that the Appstorm staff absolutely loves, can keep your precious files safe from exploding computers, your vicious roommate, and theft.

Since we’ve mentioned this tool multiple times on AppStorm, I won’t go into much detail about how useful Dropbox is. Instead, you should read our all our articles about awesome dropbox tips.

MyNoteIt

Good organization can make school a hell of a lot easier. If you lack the natural organization skills, you can use websites like MyNoteIt to help you out. Using MyNoteIt, you can create groups and invite your classmates so you can all share notes, edit notes, and manage tasks. Of course, it works much better if you have a lot of friends in the group. The more the merrier! Similar tools include NoteMesh and Notecentric.

Amazon Student

Amazon is probably one of the best places to purchase anything for cheap, but that’s not the reason I wanted to feature it. As of right now, US college students can get a year’s worth of Amazon Prime membership for free. Amazon Prime is program that provides members with unlimited free 2 day shipping on a variety of Amazon goods. Students can really save a lot this year by purchasing their school materials from Amazon.

Design Your Dorm

I bet you college freshman can’t wait to get out of the house and are itching to plan your new dorm room, right? Well if you live in America (sorry everybody else), you can use Design Your Dorm to, you guessed it, design your dorm! With over 140+ universities in their database with actual dorm size and info, Design Your Dorm is the perfect tool for getting things ready for your visit. You can add furniture, edit decorations, and even buy the products in your virtual dorm and have it shipped right to your university. What more could you want? Oh, and did I mention this is all in 3D?

Rate My Professors

Going off to a new school this year and don’t know what to expect from your professors? Check them out on RateMyProfessors.com. RateMyProfessors is an online review site that allows students to rate their professors based on difficulty, helpfulness, clarity, and interest. Ratings are anonymous but seem to be quite accurate. Search for a professors or a school and find out if that crazy looking professor really is crazy so you can take the necessary precautions beforehand. For those of you who aren’t in college yet, use RateMyTeachers instead.

PocketMod

Wouldn’t it be great to have a personalized little notebook that you could stick in your pocket? Meet PocketMod, a nifty tool that helps you customize your own little pocket notebook. Customize each page of your PocketMod with information you want, print it out, and fold it into a notebook. It seems a little silly, but functions great as a notebook, scheduler, or even a cheatsheet (not that you should ever use one!)

WePapers

WePapers wants to create “the world’s biggest study group”, and they’re doing pretty well. WePapers is a place for students to share their own lecture notes with others, and access thousands of free lecture notes and presentations from varies universities covering a huge range of subjects. Think of it as the FlashCardExchange for lecture notes.

FileDestructor 2.0

FileDestructor

So you’ve been partying it up this weekend, hanging out with friends, and blasting noobs on XBOX Live, and it’s finally time to start that paper. You glance over at your clock. 3am. Dang. You could either sacrifice those precious hours of sleep to turn in a sloppy paper or attempt to blow it off entirely and blame it on “technical difficulties”.

What do you do? Well, if you chose the latter option, then FileDestructor is right up your alley. With FileDestructor, you can make a “fake file” that looks exactly like the real thing in terms of size and extension but conveniently gives an error when your professor attempts to open it up. By the time your professor figures out what happened, you’ve got the real thing done and turned in.

We will not be held responsible for any trouble you may get into for using this tool. Use this as a last resort!

WriteCheck

Plagarism is a huge deal in universities and the easiest way to get yourself booted out of the institution you spent four years trying to get into. But I understand, sometimes it’s possible to plagiarize “on accident.” If you’re paranoid and afraid that parts of your paper was plagiarized, use the WriteCheck tool to find out for sure. WriteCheck is a paid service, but powered by the folks that run TurnItIn.com. If you have $5 to spare, use WriteCheck to keep those university secret agents off your tail.

Software For Starving Students

Software for Starving Students

Let’s face it; students are poor. They’ve got to pay for enrollment, rent, textbooks, food, and dates with their significant other. Students don’t have the money to buy expensive software like Microsoft Office (even if they do offer discounts for students). Software For Starving Students is a website for – as the name suggests – students who are in the financial slums. The site offers a huge collection of free software for students to download and use (on both PC and Mac). Students can also download an .iso to burn on a CD and get all the tools at once.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you learned a thing or two from this list of resources and found something new that you’d like to use this semester. We at Web.AppStorm want to wish you the best of luck in school and can only hope that you’ll still have the time to browse our site! Have fun in school and learn as much as you can!

Did I happen to miss an awesome tool for school that has helped you before? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks!

Get the intro. graphic, “Stack of books“, by author bondyman at GraphicRiver.net

25+ iPhone Cases and Covers for Your 3G/3GS

With the release of the new iPhone, many people flocked to upgrade at the earliest possible opportunity. Unfortunately, there are plenty of people who either don’t want to upgrade, or can’t afford to just at the moment.

It would be cruel to leave our wonderful iPhone 3G/3GS users out in the cold, so today we’re offering a roundup of some really gorgeous cases and covers for your iPhone. Some are budget-friendly, others are incredibly sophisticated and extravagant. There’s something for everyone!

Premium Rubberized Back Cover

A simple hard case for those that don’t want to draw too much attention away from their beautiful iPhone, but still want the protection for the back which is so easily scratched.

Price: $9.95

Otterbox Defender

If you’re especially clumsy with your belongings and want to get some hardcore protection, then look no further. Otterbox is well known for making durable cases. While it does make the phone a bit bulkier, you can be sure the added bulk will protect it from the scariest of drops.

The other great thing about this case is that all buttons and ports are accessible so you won’t have to take it out each time.

Price: $29.95

Crystal Silicone Skin Case

If you prefer thinner cases that will protect from scratches, then consider a cover made of flexible and durable silicone. While it’s not designed to withstand long drops, it counters that by providing you with a better grip than most smooth cases.

However, if you happen to be the worlds biggest butter fingers, then I’m sorry to say that no amount of grip will help it stay in your hand.

Price: $9.15

CaseCrown Soft Polycarbonate Slim-Fit Case

While CaseCrowns slim fit case provides great protection from scratches, it doesn’t protect the screen like a lot of back cover cases.

Not to worry, metallic green always looks nice. Don’t think you can only purchase this in green, though – there are a variety of other colors available too!

Price: $12.21

OtterBox Impact Case

If you want great protection from falls, but dislike the added bulk of the Otterbox Defender series, then try their Impact Case.

It provides great protection against falls like the name suggests, contains a clear protective film for the screen and is backed by a 1 year warranty! How can you say no to this?

Price: $9.97

Fading Laser Dots Case

A lightweight case that is ridiculously cheap but will do its job nicely. Comes in a range of colours and is great for those with a very tight budget.

Price: $0.99

Substrata Wood Cases

Beautifully crafted hand made cases do not come cheap. Substrata has released cases that have been made with maple, walnut, fir, paudak, wenge and zebrawood. The buttons are exposed so you wont have to remove the iPhone from the case (which is wonderfully easy thanks to the front panel on each case that slides down).

The one minor problem is that access to the headphone and dock connector is somewhat hampered since they are a bit small and deep. Don’t let that put you off though – whichever case you purchase will look absolutely fantastic!

Price: $94.99-$119.99

Crystal Silicone Skin Case Mix style

Before you get your hopes up, let me say that the case is not made out of crystal. To be honest, I don’t think that crystal would be the best thing to use for an iPhone case… Thankfully, the makers of this case weren’t insane and decided to use silicone instead!

Price: $9.15

iSkin solo FX Special Edition Case

iSkin have created this case with much love and affection, while infusing it with super powers like resisting temperature extremes (just don’t get too extreme).

It’s has an overhang on the front so you can place your phone face down without getting scratched.

Price: $49.95

I Heart Julius Hard Case

Everybody loves Paul Frank designs, and now you can have one surrounding your iPhone. It’s made from hard plastic and features Julius on the back who will make doubly sure your phone is safe.

Price: $44.95

Smartphone Experts BookCase

If you’re a business man, then stop scrolling and start reading. The Smartphone Experts BookCase completely encloses your phone and has slots for credit cards and business cards.

While it’s cheap, it is made from genuine leather, not imitation leather so you won’t be self conscious about carrying around a piece of plastic posing as leather.

Price: $9.95

Silver Catena – Engraved Edition

A slick looking case indeed. The Silver Catena is made of anodised plastic and its job is to protect your phone in style.

Just like the other cases, it too exposes the buttons and ports for the easy access everyone want. If you don’t like silver cases, then try it in black. It also comes with one clear screen protector and one mirror screen protector.

Price: $39.90

Vogue Leather Slip-In Case – White

A simple yet beautiful pouch for your phone made out of genuine leather. Anywhere you go, this bad boy will turn heads.

It’s available in orange, brown and black and comes with a screen protector for protection (what else?) when your phone is not inhabiting the pouch.

Price: $39.90

Real Metal Series – Red

Made out of real metal (aluminium alloy to be more exact), this cover will protect your phone in style. Since it won’t block your signal, you can tick off that reason that kept you from getting a metal case.

If you don’t like red (because it invokes envious rage into the hearts of people around you), you can go with one of the other colours, like a more calming blue.

Price: $39.90

Enigma

At $100, this one doesn’t not come cheap! It’s got a very slick design and is marketed to the upper class business men.

Don’t let that put you off, if you’ve got the cash, then splash away. It also comes in white if you don’t want to have a black case. Choices are really great!

Price: $99.99

Vulcan Hydro Polymer Jelly Case

A durable case that is also tear resistant. While I have never found anything that could possibly generate a tearing motion in a pocket, it always helps to be prepared! It gives great protection.

Price: $19.95

Leather Executive Flip Type Case

It’s not only for executives, it’s for people who feel like they are executives (whatever that feels like). The price certainly doesn’t keep people who aren’t execs from buying it. It has two card slots to hold whatever you can fit in there (mostly cards) and provides great all round protection for your phone.

Price: $12.95

Projeto

If you want to watch videos on a table using your iPhone but hate having choose between holding it up or putting it on the table and looking down. Then I have good news for you. Now you don’t have to, with the Projeto.

This case has a pop-out stand that can assume 18 different positions, so you can get exactly the right angle you want, as well as a ‘Sound Scoop’ that you can pop out which helps guide the sound to your ears.

Price: $34.99

Aura Series Mint – Sea Blue

You had better hurry to buy this because it is only in stock for a limited time. Is this a marketing ploy? I don’t know, but it doesn’t change the fact that this case looks damn good!

Comes in various colors and flavors along with 2 screen protectors, the regular clear version and the cool mirror version.

Price: $39.90

Sena Dockable Case

Made out of pure leather with a velvet lining, this case is dockable and clips onto your belt; if you don’t want the clip, simply remove it with the tools provided.

While it looks good, the corners are a little exposed, but if it’s sitting comfortably on your belt, it shouldn’t matter.

Price: $45.48

Griffin Elan form Etch

This nice little case is covered in etched genuine leather, bonded to a polycarbonate skeleton to give your phone great protection and looks. It also has an ‘EasyDock’ design lets you slip open the bottom of the case to dock your iPhone.

Price: $16.81

JAVOedge Cork Back Cover

This is a very unique case, made out of actual cork that is bonded to a plastic hard case, which turns out to be a great combination for protection against all sorts of damage. It does not however, protect the screen, but it does expose all the buttons and ports for the iPhone.

Price: $19.95

Incipio ECOcase

This ECOcase from Incipio looks great and is made from environmentally friendly materials. It might look a bit rough on the outside but don’t worry, there is a soft liner on the inside to make sure your phone wont get scratched.

Price: $4.99

DragonFly Portal Carbon Fiber Back Cover Case

This back cover hard case will guard your iPhone against damage well. Just as long as the damage is coming from the back and doesn’t aim for the hole that allows you to see the logo. At least it’ll protect your phone and still look good, which is a plus!

Price: $34.95

DragonFly Timber Rosewood Hard Protective Case

If you don’t like the wood cases from Subtrata for whatever reason, then you may want to try this Rosewood back cover case. It doesn’t protect the front of your phone which is a downside of these types of cases, but it sure does make it the back look nice!

Price: $34.95

Case-FX Flex Cube Case

Swirling Series Silicone – Golden Yellow

This case claims to be odor-free, strong, anti-static, dust proof and ultra slim. Sounds good right? It sure is! For just twenty dollars you can own this case and be confident that your phone is going to be safe.

Price: $19.90

Sena Ultra Slim Pouch

The Ultra Slim Pouch is very versatile, has some nice features and looks very stylish. It’s made from the finest Napa leather and it’s got a velvet lining. Slightly expensive but you get what you pay for.

Price: $49.95

Safe and Stylish!

I hope that you’ve found some of the above cases to fit the bill. There’s no doubt that protective offerings for the 3G and 3GS will be sticking around for a while into the future, but it’s worth picking up your favourite case soon – just in case it’s discontinued in favour of an iPhone 4 variety.

Which case do your favour? Or do you prefer to leave your iPhone as naked as the day it was born? Let us know in the comments!