MacRumors

Pogo Stylus

Macenstein took the time to review two iPhone styluses that are available for the iPhone: iPhone Japanese Touch Stylus ($14.99) and the Pogo iPhone Stylus ($19.99). For the purpose of the review, Macenstein used the styluses as an artists tool for iPhone apps like Flipbook [App Store] and Kineo (formerly Flickbook) [App Store].

While the Japanese Touch Stylus wins points for aesthetics, Macinestein found its unique flexible tip to be a difficult to use.

Drawing with this stylus was a definite chore, as the entire flat surface of the tip must be firmly pressed against the screen in order for the iPhone to register it. I had hoped the angled tip might provide enough contact when drawing to give more of a feel of a real pen, but unless you keep this stylus angled flat to the surface, it will not register.

Meanwhile, the Pogo iPhone stylus is described as "far batter" in overall usability and accuracy:

Despite the tip of the stylus being somewhat rounded and soft, I found I was able to get much more accurate line placement that I thought I would.

More details in the full review.

iFlix screenshot

For online movie rental enthusiasts, two applications are now available to manage either your Netflix or Blockbuster rental queues.

iFlix

Flix [App Store] is a $1.99 application that allows you to manage your Netflix queues. The developer describes the app:

Add, remove, and reorder movies with a few easy flicks of a finger. You can rate movies youve seen recently, see ratings and descriptions for all the Netflix top lists, and even search for a particular title to learn more about it before popping it up to the top of your queue.

Also provided is an extensive tutorial with screenshots on how to accomplish various tasks on the iPhone.

Dashbuster

Dashbuster [App Store] is a $3.99 app that allows you to manage either Netflix or Blockbuster movie queues. Features detailed by the author include:

View your shipped, queued, and saved movies at a glance, including cover art
Drag and Drop Queue Reordering
Swipe to Delete Movie removal
View movie details quickly and easily; Stars, Director, Description and Cover Art
Quickly add movies from popular RSS feeds
Search for and add movies on the go

The developer does offer a free version called Dashbuster Free [App Store] which does not allow you to add or change movies from your iPhone, and will incorporate ads in the future.

Silicon Studios offers a series of tools for audio enthusiasts to provide Midi controls from their iPhone or iPod Touch.

iTM MidiLab (Free) - free demo of the tools
iTM Keys ($5.99) - Midi keyboard
iTM Matrix ($5.99) - Button matrix
iTM XYPad ($5.99) - Touch Pad
iTM MCU ($5.99) - Mackie Control Emulation

The apps requires a host Mac running their iTouchMidi OS X application that is available on their website.

A video is available demonstrating its use with Ableton Live.

Orange France is admitting that they are capping iPhone 3G speeds to 384kbps; this as a recent survey has showed significant regional differences in speed.

Orange will be bumping the cap to 1Mbps on September 15, however that cap is still under HSDPA's theoretical maximum and less than what European T-Mobile users have been experiencing (up to 1.8 Mbps).

[IT Wire via France Info (French)]

China.org.cn reports on the photos posted to our forum last week of a Foxconn factory worker. Forum user markm49uk had found the photos on his brand new iPhone.

This led to speculation on the identity and the fate of the factory worker's job. Fortunately, it's been confirmed that the employee was not fired based on comments from a Foxconn representative:

"She is definitely not fired," an unidentified representative from Foxconn's factory in Shenzhen, southern China, told the newspaper Xiandai Kuaibao.

The representative did confirm that she was an employee at the Shenzhen factory and that it was likely that the test photos were left on the iPhone's memory "accidentally".

Jeffrey Grossman's Movies [Free, App Store] has been acquired by Flixster and been rereleased last night as a complete rewrite.

Version 1.5 adds a number of new features:

- Expanded list of movies and theatres
- Movie posters and descriptions for all movies
- Trailers for all Box Office leaders and upcoming movies
- Search of over 50,000 movies with posters, description, cast and dierctors
- Support for Canada and UK

It may be worth looking at this free application again: App Store

Noah Witherspoon, the developer behind the current #1 application on the App Store, has revealed that Tris [Free, App Store] will no longer be available as of Wednesday, August 27th.

The Tetris-clone caught the attention of the Tetris Company who claims a "copyright" claim on the game.

The trouble is, I'm a college student, and not an affluent one, and I simply do not have the time, energy, or resources to fight this battle right now. There's a point at which I am willing to give up and be practical, to let the world have its way with that ever-mistreated little ideal of principle. Thus, it's with great sadness that I must announce that I'll be pulling Tris from the App Store on Wednesday, August 27th, to remain in Apple's systems but publicly unavailable until I work out a solution to this.

As a result, if you had any interest in Tris, now's your last chance to get the popular game.

[Download]

Swedish website Gtesborgs-Posten is reporting that tests of the iPhone's antenna are "completely normal," which may go to counteract suspicions that ongoing connectivity issues are due to the iPhone's antenna.

The test was conducted by Bluetest, a small company that sells test chambers for wireless devices with small antennas, and the results were compared to a Sony Ericsson P1 and a Nokia N73. The bottom line of the tests were that the iPhone was on-par with the other phones.

Testing was only done with one iPhone so it does not eliminate the possibility of a manufacturing defect, however the author notes that before the test the iPhone had been registering lower 3G bars than the Nokia model and would be more apt to switch to the EDGE network; symptoms common amongst users with the connectivity issue.

BusinessWeek (and later a memo from Steve Jobs) has previously reported that the issue was to be fixed via a software update. Since then, iPhone Software 2.0.2 has been released claiming to fix the problem, though users have still reported the issue.

Wired published the results of their international speed tests for the iPhone 3G. Results came in from over 2,600 individuals and did find significant regional differences in testing.

When broken down by country, they found that participants in Australia had the slowest average 3G download speeds at 759 Kbps.

Meanwhile, results from individual carriers showed that European T-Mobile had the fastest speeds at 1,822 Kbps, followed by Canada (both Rogers and Fido) at 1,330 Kbps. U.S. AT&T customers found themselves in 3rd place, tied with Telstra, Telia and Softbank at an average speed of 990 Kbps.

Wired's results provides the findings in more detail.