So why is this important, if you can’t see the difference?  As Ars Technica explain, it’s all about optimising your video library for playback on multiple devices:

“[It] can be [useful] if you want the same files to be playable the mobile device and on the computer screen or TV. If you are interested in experimenting yourself, don’t forget to stick to baseline H.264 encoding and remember that these files will not play on older generation iPods”Iljitsch van Beijnum, Ars Technica

The upside is that movies bought from the iTunes store are actually being delivered in higher resolution than you might expect, given Apple’s quoted compatibility for the iPhone; Iljitsch found his copy of Punch-Drunk Love came in at 853 x 366, which would look far better through, say, an Apple TV than a 640 x 480 version might.

[via Gizmodo]

Which is no big deal for those with iMacs or MacBooks, they can just download a different program and not have to worry about it. Yet those of us with the iPod or iPhones are stuck with Safari. According to PayPal Safari lacks the Extended Validation Certificate, a technology that helps warn you against unsafe sites.

Therefore preventing any nasty issues that those might bring. Now, there is the argument that you can use your own common sense. However, we all have our weak moments when we click on a bad link. In which case, maybe it is best to heed PayPal’s advice and wait until we’re on a computer with something besides Safari to check in on our accounts.

[via crunchgear]

According to Patrick the app still has plenty of rough edges – some articles won’t work, and it’s prone to occasional crashes – but if you’ve the space and the inclination this might just be the hack for you.  The German Wikipedia version is also available, and there’s a Google Group if you’re looking for support. 

[via Wired]

Apple has come a long way in movie and song downloads via iTunes, but Steve explains that their current numbers certainly aren’t enough. Apple has sold 7 million movies, 125 million TV shows, and last week Apple sold their 4 billionth song. Today Apple will be releasing iTunes movie rentals for use on all of their video playing devices. Movie rentals will cost $3.99 for new titles, and $2.99 for older titles. Movie rentals are available for 30 days after buying, but the catch is once started, the movie only has 24 hours to be watched.

All major studio’s are involved in iTunes movie rentals which will make pretty much all movies in theaters available for rental. iTunes will have movies for rental today, and will have over 1000 movies for rental by the end of February.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32nkACIJuiw[/youtube]

CorePlayer’s supported formats include: H.263, WAV, OGG, Speex, WAVPACK, FLAC, MPC, TTA, AMR, ADPCM, ALaw, MuLaw, Midi, G.726, G.729, G.711, GSM 06.10

[Via JustAnotheriPhoneBlog]

[Via Podcastingnews]

Hit the cut for my dislikes on the iPhone.

Signal Strength

The iPhone’s signal strength isn’t too bad, but isn’t really the greatest either. What I really dislike about the signal is how fast the iPhone “refreshes” the signal bar. I never know when I have signal if I slightly move the phone. This might be in part of the internal antenna, but I don’t know. I’ve heard a lot of other problems about the signal strength on the iPhone.

Speaker Volume

This is probably my biggest dislike on the iPhone. The speaker volume on the iPhone is simply, awful. Putting the iPhone on speakerphone during a call is useless because you have to hold the bottom of the phone up to your ear anyways. Sure music should come out nice and clean on the speaker, but voice is so low, I would not care if the voice was heavily distorted such as Nextel phones. Anything for better speakerphone.

Battery Life

I can live with short battery life, but it’s just something that could be touched up a little bit. I can’t go one full day without charging my phone at least once. I remember with my old ones, I had to charge them every 3 to 4 days. I don’t see 3G coming at least until the iPhone gets a better battery and some more energy efficient parts.

Maybe we can expect a change coming in future updates, or possibly the 2nd version of the iPhone.

Picasa for the iPhone can be used by going to http://picasaweb.google.com or simply by clicking ‘more’ in Google’s new iPhone optimized version of their home page.

[Via Wired]

[Via Electronista]

Hum can be obtained in installer.app after adding the iApp-a-Day source to your source list.

Requiring no specific client software, nor subscription to browse the “Mobile Newsstand”, Zinio promise a broad range of titles including Men’s Health, American Photo, Macworld and, ahem, Playboy, with all titles initially offered free.  Navigation is via gestures and a pop-up contents table complete with summaries and links to other sections; you can also email pages directly to friends via the iPhone’s mail client.

You can try it out for yourself by visiting www.zinio.com/iphone on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Apple is also being asked to offer a warranty with the iPhone, if the motion for the phone to be unlocked is accepted. The fact that AT&T is the only service provider does seem a little strange and almost resembles a monopoly. 

I agree that in an ideal world the iPhone would be unlocked and open for all to use.  After all, there are plenty of people unhappy with AT&T’s service, and potentially a huge market for customers using other networks buying the handset.  Yet Apple’s one-carrier, control-all-the-cards stance looks unlikely to change with all but the strongest legal crowbar, so I wouldn’t expect to see this particular lawsuit back them into a corner.

Apple Sued Over Previously Unlocked v1.1.1 Firmware iPhones Being Disabled [via iPhone World]

So why is the iPod touch missing some of the apps from the iPhone? One person has already speculated that its because Apple wanted to separate the two devices. Basically they wanted to make the differences more prevalent than the PDA vs. the Smartphone where the only difference is cellular network connection.

And they have, but if this whole software thing is true, you can more than likely expect all of the apps, both from Apple and from other 3rd parties, to be headed to the iPod Touch in due time. So basically, if you already have a cellular device that you like just fine, but you like the other features of the iPhone, just wait and buy an iPod Touch, they will be almost exactly the same.

iPod Touch Can Run All Apple and Third-Parties’ iPhone Apps [via Gizmodo]

Check out some of the iPhone ebook options after the cut

Kevin Tofel, cam-whore and raconteur, has been trying Amazon’s ebook Upgrade service, where you can choose to buy an electronic copy of a book for online access in addition to buying the hard-copy.  It cost him $3.79 to access the ebook version of a previously purchased title; it takes the form of scanned pages rather than html conversions, and while that means fitting everything width-wise in portrait mode leaves the text too small (see photo directly above), in horizontal orientation it all becomes easy on the eye (see photo directly below). 

Issues remaining include finger-unfriendly controls (the narrow bar on the right of the screen flips forward through the pages), pregnant-pauses in download times because each page is a big photo, and lots of scrolling because you’re not fitting a huge amount on-screen at a time.

Meanwhile, retailer WOWIO has shown some pretty stunning screenshots of pre-optimisation ebooks viewed on the iPhone [via the indomitable Mike Cane]; they not only do traditional books but graphic novels and guide-books too, so appearance is extra important.  I have to say, these photos are luscious, showing off both the iPhone’s screen and the quality of the WOWIO material.

They go into some detail of what tweaks and changes they’d like to see on the handset before it might be the ideal ebook reader, but hopefully they’ll go ahead and optimise their pages anyway so that when Apple gets round to competing with, say, Sony’s Reader, we’ll have some great content to take advantage of it with.

Using your WiFi connection (or EDGE if you’re a masochist) you can search for specific tracks or radio genres and it tries to locate them among publicly available sites. Since nothing is actually downloaded permanently to your iPhone you shouldn’t run afoul of RIAA heavy-handedness, and storage space isn’t a concern.

Registration is optional – always good – but doing so lets you build playlists and email custom search pages and an embedded SeeqPod player to friends. Another good thing is that you don’t need to have an iPhone to use it – SeeqPod is a standalone service that works on just about anything with an internet connection.

[via MYiTablet.com/Talk]