An excellent app for couples that want to efficiently divide up the work in a household. Adding a work account is easier than it used to be, but if you’re a technophobe, or if your company requires special security settings, call your help desk. Delivery options for sharing videos remain the same, but users will be able to export movies at 360p, 540p, or 720p resolutions. The screen is at its best with crisp text and vibrant images. Apple’s iMovie for iPhone ($4.99) helps you make fun videos using both the forward- and rear-facing cameras, letting you edit your footage, add themes and music, and more ( get more info about iMovie here ). In this free version, you can play through the first campaign mission, play dogfight missions to test your skill, or play online against other players. Just scroll over the timeline at the bottom and trim the video if necessary.

The new iOS4 multitasking feature makes music apps – as well as calling apps like Skype – ever more handy, because you can listen to tunes – or make calls – without having to shut down all other apps. Features aside, what matters most is how you customize it. All music or no music: On a mobile phone or tablet, radio apps required either playing music (and only playing music) or not playing any at all. Launch the app and tap the plus sign to start a new project. Here, you’ll find access to the camera’s video roll, your still image roll and your iTunes library, so you can work around them if you choose. It’s the type of feature that needs to be seen to be understood, but rest assured, if you have one.

Many planes cost 99 cents while some of the other more unique planes can be $1.99 and mission packs are available within a similar price range. After using the app yesterday, I’m thinking we’re going to need to put out the call for creative reader videos, but that idea is still in the works. To simplify your start, here are three cool apps to help add shine to your new Apple bling. Load in your professional and personal email accounts. Step 2. So extensive are the features, in fact, that the mobile version of iMovie will only run on the iPhone 4 and that phone’s more powerful A4 processor. If you’ve got a friend with a new iPhone, connect for your first video call and revel in your shared early adopterhood.

You have control over what theme you want to use and how long the video part appears before next transition effect. It’s free, so go get it. There are lots of app review sites and it’s easy to sink hours wandering the colorful virtual aisles of the app store. Transition markers will appear between clips; double tap these to select transition effects and the length of time. Step 1: Adjust settings to suit your taste, from the screen’s brightness to your phone’s wallpaper and password. Spend a few minutes capturing your kitten playing with an iPad to share with a far-away friend.

There are apps to help add shine to your new Apple bling. Load in your professional and personal email accounts. Step 2. So extensive are the features, in fact, that the mobile version of iMovie will only run on the iPhone 4 will be supporting. The other app I tested is also an iPhone 4 exclusive.

Unlike standalone videocams, though, this one lets you edit and upload on the go, or you can tap the lower left arrow icon to import media. You can email your song to friends or listen to other ditties produced globally.

Pinkham was vice president of Amazon’s global infrastructure before managing development of EC2.

Nimbula’s sales vice president, Martin Buhr, did EC2 business development and sales, and before that worked at Microsoft. It’s an interesting move. HPs acquisition of Melodeo and its music streaming application nuTsie, coming on the heels of its purchase of struggling smartphone maker Palm, suggest the company is making plans to challenge Apple in the smartphone space. The deal is “another example of our efforts to bring new, innovative technologies to market.

Google’s rumored music service would have a streaming music option, but the music itself would be subscription based and wouldn’t necessarily be a mirror of the customer’s local music library. Most people won’t be able to get either one for a month or so. Apple-owned Lala, which recently inked deals with Google and social networking behemoth Facebook, offers a library of approximately 6 million tracks, while iTunes offers 11 million tracks and sells individual MP3s for $1.29. The approach would go so far as to add two-way sync that sees music added on a computer or on the phone pushed up to the server. Although HP’s deal has been characterized as a showdown with Apple’s iTunes, it also seems like more evidence of HP’s frayed relationship with Microsoft, which has its own cloud music service in Zune. Chris Pinkham, co-founder and chief executive, said Nimbula doesn’t compete with his former employer and will actually be “an onramp for EC2.” “We don’t think this is directly competitive,” he said. “We think this is directly competitive,” he said. “We think this is complementary.” Nimbula is developing software that runs within a company’s network and directs where applications are run — in-house or on various cloud services — based on policies created by administrators. AOL bought Tegic in 1999 for $350 million in stock. They both have 1 gigahertz processors, start at $199 and require data plans. Does HP’s acquisition of Melodeo and its music streaming application nuTsie, coming on the heels of its purchase of struggling smartphone maker Palm, suggest the company is making plans to challenge Apple in the smartphone space.

The deal is “another example of our efforts to bring new, innovative technologies to market,” HP said. “We are excited about the potential of this technology to bring the power of cloud-based delivery services to millions of customers.” “Melodeo is one of the only companies with technology to aggregate a consumer’s digital media, manage it in the cloud and stream it to a phone without needing an active computer at home. HP did not disclose the financial terms of the deal or its exact plans. The PC veteran has completed a deal reportedly worth as much as $35 million and would primarily get nuTsie, a mobile media streaming app. We are excited about the potential of this technology to bring the power of cloud-based delivery services to millions of customers.

Instead of paying for (or downloading) a song at all, all you do is hop onto their service, type in an artist you like and a ‘radio station’ will be generated with a wide array of music you’re sure to like. Now, instead of just having the Pandora application running and nothing else, you can multitask it to the background and go about your business all while listening to free streaming music. Sure, you’re subject to a few advertisements here and there but when getting a service completely free of charge there isn’t much you can complain about. Not to mention the fact that you can slap down a few bucks to get the whole thing completely advertisement free. That’s because it is. Sounds great.

Flash forward to today and there are a plethora of different digital distrubtion platforms where you can grab your music both legally and illegally. Go get it. What ever way you choose to consume your music, it should be noted that Pandora is quickly becoming one of the most preferred methods.

The complete guide to the iPhone’s new OS

The new iOS 4 firmware update has arrived for newer iPhone and iPod Touch models. Here’s what you need to know to get the most out of the new, improved operating system.

First off, have you actually upgraded? If not, here’s how.

Afterwards, be sure to go to iTunes and download the apps updated for iOS 4. Now, let’s look at what the new OS will do for your phone or iPod.

Multitasking and fast app switching
The big one. Here’s how you try it.

1. Open the phone app
2. Hit the home button once, then open Safari and go to any site
3. Double tap the home button, which will bring up a little menu tray
4. Select one of the “open” apps to switch directly to it

You can also swipe left and right to scroll through the different “pages” of apps you have open. If your app is multitasking-enabled, it will resume exactly where you left off. Games will continue from pause mode, web pages will be where you left them, music will continuously play even while you’re in another app, and so forth. The standard multitasking benefits.

So yes, this allows you to listen to Pandora in the background while you do other stuff. Well, as long as you grab that new version of Pandora. Strangely enough, YouTube backgrounding does not work, even though I remember specifically talks of that working. Not sure what happened there, or if the YouTube app needs an update.

The big picture is you can do a lot of stuff now that you couldn’t do before. You can have a Skype phone call and use your phone simultaneously, have a GPS turn-by-turn navigation app keep your place and keep routing you even while you go and send a text message, or even just load up a web page and have it full in in the background while you go change a song.

To close a running app
Steve Jobs doesn’t recommend that you even deal with closing running apps, because the phone will take care of it automatically. But if you want to shut off Pandora, or AIM, or anything else that’s running in the background and giving you alerts or doing something you want to end, here’s what you do.

1. Double tap the home button from any app
2. Press and hold on an app icon. The dismiss “minus” icon will pop up on each app and the icons will start shaking
3. Click the minus icon to kill an app. You can do so repeatedly for all the apps you want to close.
4. To get out of this mode, hit the home button

App folders
The hell of countless app screens is finally gone — or at least manageable in a sloppy way now. The folders in iOS 4.0 aren’t perfect but they help organization just a bit and they’re simple to use.

All you need to do is press-and-hold any app to trigger rearranging app icons and you’ll be able to drag them onto each other to create folders. Done. Your iPhone will even automatically suggest a name for the folder based on the type of apps you’re sticking in there (though you can change that with a tap).

Folders aren’t exactly perfect though. They fit twelve apps, but only show tiny versions of 9. Once opened, folders show apps in rows of four — which leaves a net nine-app folder looking awkward once open. No matter though, we’re content with being tossed at least a scrap here and hope that future iOS upgrades will address the some of the shortcomings of folders.

It’s not surprising, but it’s good to know that you can in fact stick folders into the dock.

Improved Mail features (mail threading)
We’re glad to see that the Mail app received a bit of a feature makeover of sorts. All the new changes appear to be in response to complaints we’ve had our heard from other iPhone users.

The email threading feature is surprisingly solid. When you’ve got it turned on, emails will be grouped by replies — like in Gmail for example — and you’ll see a little number indicator next to the most messages in your inbox to show you how long a thread is. Tap that most recent message and all others will pop up.

Speaking of Gmail! Those users will be happy to see that the “delete” button that shows up after a swipe has turned into an “archive” button. Makes things just a bit more logical.

We’re also happy to see that there are now “smart” links in emails now. This means that you can tap on dates to add events to your calendar, press tracking numbers to pull up the UPS website, or open the Maps app when there’s an address included.

And the best change to the Mail app? The long-awaited unified inbox. You can finally view emails by inbox or in one large dump. When replying to a message from the unified inbox, your iPhone will automatically use the correct email account.

If you receive an email from a person who has a picture in your contacts, you’ll now see a tiny image of him or her in the corner. Kinda cute.

Note syncing
There is now an option to sync notes over-the-air with some email accounts—such as those through MobileMe.

New iPod multitasking controls
While you can no longer get a pop-up set of iPod controls by double-tapping the home button, you do have a decent replacement in the multi-tasking drawer. By swiping over to the very left of the drawer, you’ll be able to access some minimal iPod controls next to the orientation lock. Play/pause, forward, back. It’s just enough to make some quick adjustments to song selection, but we still miss the old pop-up-style controls a bit.

iBooks
That book e-reader program that’s already out on iPad is coming to iPhone! (Yay.) But it’s not built in. (Wha?) You have to hit the App Store and manually download the iBooks ap. It’s free. Maybe for competitive purposes? Who knows.

In any case, you can sync ePub and PDF books directly from iTunes by using the iBooks section. If you have books in other formats other than ePub, use calibr to convert them.

Custom homescreen wallpapers
If you have an iPhone 3GS or a late-model iPod Touch, you can set backgrounds for your home screen. Like on the iPad. Here’s how.

1. Go to Settings
2. Tap Wallpaper
3. Tap on the two icons that represent your two current homescreen/lockscreen wallpapers
4. Choose a picture from either the Wallpapers list that Apple included, or use one of your own photos from your photo album
5. Decide whether you want it on your lock screen, your home screen, or Both
6. Hit the home button to see your new home screen

Unfortunately, iPhone 3G users don’t get to have Wallpapers. But if you want those Lost wallpapers, here you go.

Digital zoom
Keep in mind that this is digital zoom, so the already-wanting quality of the iPhone 3G/3GS camera will get even worse when you go 5x bigger. This is no enhance, enhance, enhance magic.

But to do so, just open up the Camera app, tap somewhere on the middle of the screen and the slider will appear. Slide it right to zoom, left to un-crappify. Note, zooming doesn’t work on videos, where you can only tap to focus, but not zoom.

Bluetooth keyboards
Pairing a Bluetooth keyboard — almost any Bluetooth keyboard, not just the slender Apple-branded kind — is as simple as pairing any other Bluetooth device. Turn the keyboard on, turn on Bluetooth, let your phone detect the keyboard, and tap a few numbers. Done. It works quite well, though it takes a while to get used to not having the on-scree keyboard pop-up while a Bluetooth one is connected.

Turn off cellular data
If you’re traveling abroad and want to make sure you stick only to Wi-Fi, you can now turn off cell data. Go to Settings, General, and then Network.

Tethering
You can now tether your phone to your computer over USB or Bluetooth. But how? The first step is turning on tethering on your account, which you can do by going to att.com/mywireless and enrolling in the tethering plan. It’s an extra $20 a month, and you get to share whatever data plan you have on your phone with your computer.

Charging an extra $20 just for the privilege of using the same data you’re already using on another device seems seems pretty lame, but that’s a gripe for another time.

iAds
What, you’re in such a hurry to look at ads on your iPhone? You’ll have to cool it for a bit, because the ads themselves aren’t available until July 1. What you can do, though, is opt-out of the targeting portion of the ads by going to oo.apple.com, but that isn’t live until July 1 either.

Making playlists on your phone
You can do this now! Just hit the “Add New Playlist” from your playlists screen, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Quick Web, Wikipedia search
Swipe left from the home screen to get to the quick search area, where it now brings up not just local results, but gives you web and wikipedia links as well.

Speed
This isn’t exactly something you “try”, but compared to 3.1.3, iPhone 4 (on a 3GS) is definitely faster. Everything is snappier and quite fluid. Any of the sluggishness found in the betas is definitely gone.

New contacts screen
Adding a new contact is streamlined so that you don’t need to keep jumping to a new input page in order to add a field, making everything just slightly faster.

Sync Events, Faces and Places from iPhoto
If you use iPhoto, you can sync discrete Faces, Events and Places from within iTunes, making it easier than setting up a hack-workaround album solution that doesn’t work quite as well as Apple’s native feature.

Spellcheck
There’s a built-in spellchecker, which is useful, unless you’re deliberately going for misspelled words in an ironic text, then it’s horrifyingly annoying.

Search with Yahoo or Bing
Under Settings, Safari, Search Engine, you can change your default search engine to one of the non-Google alternatives, if you’re the type of person who likes those engines more.

Send full-sized, any-sized photos when you’re emailing
No longer do you have to sync your iPhone to your computer to get full-sized photos off of it. You can also have the option of resizing to a small, medium or large size, in case it’s something you don’t need super clarify for.

SMS character count, MMS disabling, searching
Like the Mail app, the Messaging app got a few new features. For the most part the changes are minor — there are now options to toggle off MMS and grouping of messages with multiple recipients as well as a character count. The best new feature though is the SMS search. It’s not really different from any other search in the iOS. It simply live-updates results as you keep adding to your query.

Easier adjustment of location services

Now with apps being able to grab and use your location in the background, there might be multiple apps knowing where you are at the same time. The locations menu lets you keep track of who’s used your data in the last 24 hours, or if you want, you can shut off location for certain apps entirely.

Better enterprise support

There’s a small segment of you that will care about this, but the iPhone OS 4 can do a bunch of Enterprise stuff. And here it is, courtesy of Ars Technica:

• You can now encrypt your e-mail or attachments with your iPhone PIN code. The API for this is also available to developers so that you will be able to encrypt data inside of third-party apps as well.
• Apple now offers a mobile device management solution so that someone deploying lots of iPhones within a company can manage them.
• Wireless app distribution: no longer do you have to deploy apps across your company’s iPhones with a physical connection. You can distribute apps to anywhere in the world from your own servers.
• As we mentioned in the Mail section, you can now have multiple Exchange accounts on a single phone.
• There’s now support for Exchange Server 2010.
• There’s now also support for SSL VPN.

Improved lock codes

For the frustrated and paranoid, Apple has finally added an option to toggle from four-digit “simple passcodes” to longer alphanumeric lockcodes.

Custom dictionaries
You can now finally stop telling people to go “duck” themselves because they’re such “ducking” idiots by adding your favorite terms to a custom dictionary. The only stupid thing is that the option to edit a dictionary only appears if you add a foreign keyboard in the “International Keyboards” menu.

Cosmetic changes
Plenty of minor cosmetic changes in iOS 4. A few settings — like the Spotlight search customization — are now easier to find and some app icons are just a tiny bit prettier. A few of the changes are actually useful though, such as the ability to finally view your Photo Roll in a horizontal orientation and YouTube in a vertical one.

How it runs on iPhone 3G
There’s no multitasking in iOS 4 for the iPhone 3G. (Or wallpapers or Bluetooth keyboard support.) Which would be fine, if iOS 4 delivered that other thing iPhone 3G owners really wanted: speed. It’s no faster than OS 3.1. The hangups, the stuttering and the chugging, still make the iPhone 3G kind of infuriating to use, or at least make you really want to buy a new iPhone.

But iOS 4 still makes it a better experience overall: The unified inbox and folders alone make it worth the jump. After all, it’s not any worse than 3.1.

What we still didn’t get (and want in iOS 5)
SMS tone customization. Seriously! C’mon!’

• Facebook integration, or any kind of cloud-contact syncing
• iTunes cloud streaming, direct from an iTunes.com
• Better multitasking, because only having four icons visible at once is arbitrarily clumsy. Why swipe through so many apps to find the one to “quickly” switch to
• A solution to the modal popup problem. I don’t want to be locked out of what I’m doing whenever I get an IM
• Widgets in the multitasking tray
• A lock screen that shows email count, IM count, SMS count and other info to be determined by the user
• Home screen widgets even
• Free turn-by-turn application (Android can do it, why not one for iPhone)
• Ability to remove Apple’s default apps
• Horizontal homescreen
• Ability to disable spotlight searching entirely, for both privacy reasons and for clumsy-swiping reasons
• iChat mobile, with FaceTime on iPhone 4 somehow worked in to video chat with desktops
• A “mark all as read” or “select all” button in the Mail app would be nice.
• Email account specific email signatures could help us avoid forcing our work signature on all our personal email accounts.

Shazam for the iPad App Review

Shazam, the app which helps you remember the name of the song you just can’t remember, has made a version of their application for the iPad.

Imagine you’re driving along in the car listening to your favorite FM radio station. You hear a song that you like but have idea who the artist is or where to buy the music from when you get home. You open up your copy of Shazam on the iPhone or iPad. The app listens to the song and uses various matching algorithms and tells you what the song you are thinking of is and provides a link to iTunes to purchase the song and links to share the song on Facebook or Twitter–That’s Shazam.

The iPad version of the Shazam application works as well as the iPhone and iPod touch version, but the 1024×768 screen seems to be a bit overkill for the simplicity of the application. You do have to be connected to the internet for Shazam to identify the song that it’s listening to, which might not always be possible when you’re driving down a highway. Given the vast library of music that Shazam needs to identify, it’s not likely that Shazam will ever drop the requirement for you to have an internet connection.

The app integrates with both Facebook and Twitter reasonably well. It makes for an easy way to share a song with your social network. The Facebook connection was a bit slow for us, but once setup, works well enough.

Shazam for the iPad is available for free on the App Store.

iTunes 9.2 is available for download

Apple has updated iTunes this morning, adding new features related to iPhone 4 syncing and iOS 4 compatibility. iTunes 9.2 arrives a week before the scheduled launch of both iPhone 4 and iOS 4. It contains three security patches and half a dozen new features.

The free jukebox software lets you sync with iPhone 4 “to enjoy your favorite music, movies, TV shows, books and more on-the-go,” Apple wrote in release notes accompanying the 90+MB download. And because the new iBooks 1.1 app on iPad and any iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4 can open PDF documents, iTunes 9.2 also allows you to organize and sync PDF documents as books.

Another useful addition is the ability to organize your applications into folders using iTunes 9.2. This new feature of iOS 4 is aimed at reducing icon clutter on your homescreen by allowing you to group apps into custom folders. You can either drag an app icon over another one directly on the device, or accomplish the same feat in iTunes 9.2 using the homescreen management interface.

Apple also optimized iTunes’ code a bit. You will experience faster appearing album artwork when exploring your library, faster back-ups while syncing an iPhone or iPod touch with iOS 4, and more nimble scrolling.

You can download iTunes for Mac or Windows here. To update your existing installation to the latest version, use the OS X’s Software Update feature or the Apple Software Update app that comes with any Apple software download for Windows.

Read more in iTunes 9.2 release notes

Apple Debuts iPhone App Called Apple Store

Want to pre-order the new iPhone 4 or buy a new Mac mini on your iPhone? Starting Tuesday, there is an app for that. Apple debuted its own iPhone app called Apple Store that allows you to buy Apple hardware and other goodies via your iPhone or iPad.

Just as iTunes lets you buy apps, music, and movies via your iPhone, the Apple Store app allows you to brows before you buy iPhones, iPads, Macs, or any other Apple product your credit card can withstand. In a less-than-amazing coincidence, Tuesday is also the day that pre-orders for iPhone 4 are being taken.

Even More Handy

The free Apple Store app also helps you find nearby Apple stores, in case you want to shop in person. It’s tied into location services, so once you give your permission to be found, it will point you toward the nearest Apple store. From there you can make reservations to speak with an Apple Genius or sign up for an event like a workshop.

Five navigation buttons sit at the bottom: Featured, Products, Stores, Search and Cart. One bonus: many products have a “Q&A” section, in which folks ask questions about the product, and others answer.

The Apple Store app appears to make shopping for Apple products easy and painless. There’s nothing innovative or ground-breaking about it, but it offers a more direct mobile link to Apple merchandise compared to other third-party Websites.

Stay tuned for PCWorld’s official review of the Apple Store within the App Guide section of PCWorld.com.

Quick Tip: Sharing iPhone and iPad Apps On the Go

Suddenly you find yourself with some extra time on your hands and your spouse, child, or parent tells you about a great app. If this person is a member of your household, they can share the app with you via iTunes sharing. However, what if you are on the road with your spouse or children and want to try out one of their apps, or share one of your own? Apple provides an easy way to do this.

Apple allows you to download an app you’ve already purchased from the App Store. This is perfect for when you purchase an app and realize the app isn’t synced to the iPhone. Simply “repurchase” your app and Apple will let you know that you already purchased it and there won’t be any charge. Thus you can reinstall any app you already purchased while on the road without any need to re-sync. Essentially you share apps over the air between your device and your synced iTunes.

Sharing Apps

Sharing apps with a family member works very much the same way. To add your spouse or significant other’s app to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, go to Settings, then Store. Choose Sign Out to sign out of your personal account.

Next, sign into the other person’s account. They’ll need to either give your their password or type it in.

Now that they are signed in to the App Store on your phone, they can download any app they’ve purchased and you will then be able to use that app on your phone. In addition to app sharing between you and your spouse, this is a great way that you can purchase apps for a child’s iPod touch, and then share only the apps you wish with that child. This might be much safer than giving them their own Apple Store account and your credit card! Keep in mind that you won’t be able to update your apps and the other person’s apps at the same time. To update their apps you’ll need to sign in as them and do updates separately.

Karma Violation?

Does this violate any rules, either Apple’s or karma’s? I don’t think so. Apple made the conscious decision to enable sharing between members of a household in iTunes, allowing family members to listen to each other’s music and watch each other’s videos. Household app sharing is explicitly allowed this same way. Apple is trusting its users to do the right thing with household and family app sharing, and we should return that favor by not abusing the system.

itunes

DoubleTwist introduced a free media player application for Google Android phones, which rivals the default media player on the platform. DoubleTwist’s app not only plays music and videos in a clean interface, but also has a desktop counterpart for iTunes-like syncing.

The Android operating system has been missing an easy-to-use desktop syncing application for your music, photos and videos, something that iPhone users have been enjoying from the start with Apple’s iTunes. DoubleTwist’s free Android app aims to solve this issue with a new mobile app for Android, and desktop counterparts for both PCs and Macs.

(see screenshots of the desktop application below)

DoubleTwist’s Android and desktop apps work together in a similar way to iTunes syncing on the iPhone. You can transfer your song ratings and play counts with your iTunes library songs, playlists, as well as videos and podcasts. The interface of the player and the desktop app is also very Apple-esque, so if you are used to iTunes, using DoubleTwist’s should be a breeze.

The DoubleTwist app for Android is available now in the Android Market, free of charge, only for a limited time. There is no home screen widget yet to control music playback, but the company said it is working on one already. Since the app is free, feel free to take it for a spin, as the interface is very polished and easy to use.

Is the future of music wireless?

Google did not make many improvements to the default Android media player since the version 1.5 of the OS, but the search giant intends to make traditional music syncing via cables obsolete. Google demonstrated at the I/O conference last month a feature within the Android Market that will allow users to download music wirelessly straight to their phones.

The Google demo also said that your music stored on a desktop computer or laptop would be made available to your phone via a wireless streaming connection. There are no details so far as to when this service would become available, but this would explain why Google did not put a lot of effort into traditional music syncing services on Android.

However, considering increasing costs to mobile data introduced on Wednesday by AT&T, and expected to follow through to other carriers as well in the near future, cable syncing from your computer to your phone seems to be a much more inexpensive solution at the moment.