Potentially in line with the iPhone 3.0 firmware update out tomorrow, the added abilities to interact with your friends through your iPhone is really exciting. Ongoing support and developments will be interesting to watch, more so with the developers needing to get contracts and the like in order for Year 2 of the iPhone app.

A few examples: You are able to use your Facebook account to find places to meet your friends using maps on Whrrl. Other options include challenging your friends to play Agency Wars, Binary Game, iBowl, Live Poker and Tap Tap Revenge 2. Other examples include using Facebook Connect with the Urban Spoon application. Once connected, you can see which restaurants your friends have reviewed on the iPhone as you are walking to dinner and share your thoughts afterwards. There will be more Facebook enabled applications available in the near future within the Apple App Store!

[via Facebook]

Users can see IM status in their contacts and elect to call, text, instant message, email or even send a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter message, all from one simple menu. The application is not available not only for the iPhone but also the iPod Touch. Eventually Pinger plans to add support for BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile, Palm and Symbian.

“If people under 25 designed mobile phones, they’d put IM and social network messaging alongside dialing, texting and e-mail,” said Greg Woock, Pinger CEO. “With more than 30 billion messages sent on IM and social networks every day, it’s probably about time someone deeply integrated them into the basic mobile phone experience.”

Pinger Phone includes a single menu that allows users to call, text, IM, e-mail, or even send a Facebook, MySpace or Twitter message to contacts. Users now can communicate with friends without moving back and fourth between applications. Pinger Phone also logs all of your communication history so you can review was said to a specific person. Many users will be happy to know that there is a horizontal keyboard to for those who find it easier on your fingers.

I’m telling you, people, I am seriously considering removing most of my iTunes library from the phone and just using these radio stations. Well, maybe not quite. But they are that good quality. It works like this: open AOL Radio–it’s free, by the way–and you’ll be asked if the app can use your current location. Select “Allow.” Then, a list of all the radio stations in your area will appear. You can select one and it will start playing live for you. You can also check in on what stations are playing all the way across the country. 

There are online radio stations to select from as well, so you can really key in on the genre you want to hear at the moment. Plus, there’s a list of your recent stations and stations you’ve favorited. 

My only complaint is that you can’t do anything else on your iPhone while listening. All in all, great app to have!

First up is the More Cowbell app. Any Saturday Night Live fan knows this reference. Needless to say, Christopher Walken is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying and you have to love him for that. This app consists of a picture of a cowbell. You touch the bell and it makes that distinctive sound, but if you stop, ol’ Walken demands, “I gotta have more cowbell!” Good stuff.

The SimStapler is slightly less amusing, but still funny. It shows a Mac OS 9 desktop (with trashcan and all) and all you do is touch the SimStapler icon. It opens andyou can staple away! Of course the occasional “Splendid!” does spice it up a bit. And yes, I really did press that thing about 70 times. Why? Well, a score of 0 on a game (any game) just looks a little sad, don’t you think?

So what’s the verdict? Entirely useless. But fun just the same.

Okay, I’ve collected myself. So what’s the problem? Well, it turns out Aurora Feint has some serious security issues. Nothing malicious, mind you, but a security threat, nonetheless. In order to keep track of other players online, the game uploads your entire contact list to the server. However, this transfer of your data occurs unencrypted–which poses a big risk to your personal information.

After discovering the security hole, Apple removed the game from their App Store. But now it seems the game is back in the review stage after the developers added HTTPS in order to encrypt data.

What I want to know has to do with the version of the game that’s still on my iPhone. I never opted into the community feature, but how will Apple deal with those that still play the unencrypted version? Will a reinstall take care of it?

[via Just Another iPhone Blog]

Word Press for iPhone

Can you tell I’m excited? The highly-anticipated WordPress app is up at the iTunes AppStore and so far, it looks pretty good!

Installation went fairly smooth. You’ll be asked to enter in your blog url, user name and password, just make sure to enter in your actual blog url–not your blog login url! After getting past that, it’s all pretty smooth. You can access your posts by clicking on the blog name–not the arrow, which takes you back to the login screen.

From there, you write and edit posts much like you would on your computer. However, this is a straight HTML version of WordPress. No WYSIWYG in sight here, all except for the image capabilities.

Writing a post is fairly simple. Just enter a title, your tags and categories if you have them and then write the content. You can select what you want to do with the post under “Status,” whether it be save it or publish it. You can also add photos to the post by clicking on the “Photos” button and adding them from your Library or by taking them with your camera on the spot.

You can preview your posts as well and even change the publish date if you’d like.

All in all, it seems to be a good app that will provide bloggers with the flexibility they crave while out and about. Though, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t love to see more of the features available within your computer’s browser in this app version, like automatic linking and video insertion. But isn’t that the name of the game with us technology people? Always wanting more?  Demo video of WordPress for iPhone is currently being uploaded and should be ready shortly.

WordPress for iPhone hands-on demo - click through for high-resolution video on YouTube.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_d-bvu8X4Y[/youtube]