Apple releases new iPod Touch / iPhone firmware - 3.1 beta 3, just couple weeks after firmware 3.1 beta 2. As usual it is only for and avaliable via developer.apple.com. iPhone 3.1 Beta 2 expires tomorrow, July 28 at 12am (device local time). The OS weighs is around 307MB.

You can now copy/paste videos into email like pictures. Previously you could only use the share option which would compress the video to a lower resolution. New functionality was tested with a 33 second video clip (14.7MB), sent via gmail. The recieved file was 640×480 / 30fps. Sending the same file via the share function resulted in a size of 3.21MB and 480×320 / 30fps. Here is a video demo:

UPDATE: Firmware 3.1 Beta 3: What's new?

via theiphoneblog, whenwillapple

Here is a CNet review of Google location services for iPhone that were recently announced:

Here is a great collection of abstract wallpapers for iPhone. There are 110 items:

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AdMob published it's June report, showing detailed statistics about smartphone market. As for iPhone 54% of iPhone OS devices are currently in the US; however, this number has slowly declined from 61% in the last six months, implying that international users are growing faster than those in the US. Following the US, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France each have over 5% of users. As a region, Western Europe has a 26% share of iPhone and iPod touch users.

Based on Apple guidance, the company has shipped 26.4 million iPhones and approximately 18.6 million iPod touches to date.

Here is a table, that shows the number of iPhones by country:

Here's some interesting statistics about smartphone traffic. Sounds like Apple is looking quite good in both the US and the rest of the world:

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Dexter game will appear in AppStore by the end of August or early September. Dexter has a very beautiful 3D graphics with 30 frames per second and 30,000 polygons. It will be released in 4 episodes, with each one from 8 to 10 hours of play. iSpazio was able to get the introductory trailer of the game:

via ispazio

While the Palm Pre running webOS was initially able to sync directly with iTunes by presenting itself as an iPod. Later Apple disabled the functionality just last week with the release of iTunes 8.2.1.

The cat-and-mouse game between Apple and Palm continues today with release of Palm webOS 1.1. It brings many new features and improvements to the Palm Pre including restoration of iTunes media syncing. Here's a quote from official changelog for webOS 1.1:

Resolves an issue preventing media sync from working with latest version of iTunes (8.2.1).

What's next, iTunes 8.2.2?

PS: There is another method to enable Palm sync with iTunes called doubletwist.

Solopalmari made a comparison between the 4 devices: iPhone 3GS, Nokia N97, HTC Touch Pro2 and HTC Hero. For each of these we will see a photo (click to zoom) and a video (download). For each device Solopalmari specialists calculated a rating based on test results. And the winner is.. let's see:

iPhone 3GS (Solopalmari camera rating 6.5):

You can also take a look at the video, download it here.

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Apple disabled the ability of non iPod/iPhone devices to sync with iTunes. Here is a work around:

Apple is always against certain types of applications... Some call these apps "porn", others say "sexy". For example Apple removed Hottest Girls and Beauty Meter apps from AppStore and didn't give approval for Action Babes. In the same time it approves app with erotic content. Couple hours ago an app called "Sports Illustrated Swimsuit 2009" appeared in AppStore.

The application allows us to view a series of images of international super models.  For each of these there is also a video clip of 2 minutes each. We can look at the pictures in SlideShow and rotate the iPhone 90° to see a small calendar.

Application cost is $2.99 (AppStore link).

DropBox is a service similar to Apple iDisk that allows you to save your files on a server and immediately share all the pictures, documents or programs on another computer.

DropBox plans to release a free iPhone application. It will allow to download and upload data from DropBox account. Here is a newsletter we received recently:

DropBox shows an excellent service, especially because it offers free 2GB of web space to perform backups, store files and sync various devices. If you want to try it, click here and download the application.

Now YouTube is full of videos that in one way or another relate to the iPhone. Here is a video of an E-Maxx rc truck being controlled by an iPhone. The iPhone is using a WifiBot rc kit to control the truck.

It is always hard to choose one solution, especially when they look similer. We see many questions like: "What is the best navigaton app for iPhone, Navigon and Sygic?". Today Macity released a comparison video:

Navigon looks much simpler, it doesn't have some features and beautiful graphics of Sygic. By the way, do not forget, that apps from TomTom and iGO might apper quite soon in AppStore.

As we know, with applications for iPhone has the ability to find anything. We can look for a job, locate friends or our service stations, but now you can also find the marijuana. The application is called Cannabis and it was approved by Apple.

The aim is fully legal as they contain a database of useful locations, where you can find the herb for medical purposes. As you have guessed it based on the geo-service and is able to show all the details on pharmacies, doctors, layers or organizations that sell or care for patients.

The rating of this app is quite poor (2.5 out of 5). Comments say this app doesn't work well.

App costs $2.99, here's an AppStore link.

SkyVoyager and SkyGazer are two wonderful Carina Software applications that you can download for free only today, because of the 40th first landing on the Moon anniversary. Here are brief details of these two appplications:

SkyVoyager (regilar price is $14.99, AppStore link) is a powerful astronomy program, with a database of 300,000 stars and 30,000 deep sky objects. It renders the planets and moons in detail, using NASA mission imagery.

SkyVoyager is a planetarium that precisely shows the sky from any location on Earth, at any time in the past or future. It contains informative descriptions of the planets, stars, and constellations; and includes hundreds of images from both NASA and leading astro-photographers.

SkyGazer (regular price is $2.99, AppStore link) is an easy-to-use planetarium program designed for beginners in astronomy. This app can be considered as a lite version of SkyVoyager, much smaller database, smaller functionality. But still it is a very good app.

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