iPhone  version 2.2 is in the pipeline for an upcoming release some time in the near future and, once again, it will bring some nice goodies. Wired.com has a nice overview of what we can expect.  Before you run through a quick summary, let’s take a second to list a couple of things that likely will not be there.

Cut and Paste – No

Push Notification (to compensate for not having apps running in the background) – Nope

Enhanced Bluetooth for wireless stereo or use with a keyboard – Nah

So what can we expect? According to the article we are looking to gain-

Among the most important time-saving utilities on my Mac, is a little application called TextExpander (TE). At its most basic, TE is about text macros, little shortcuts that let me type one thing into the keyboard and have the computer type a very different, and usually loner or more complex thing, on the screen.

For example, if I type my initials but double up on the first letter, TE inputs my email address into the text I am writing. If I type the initials of this website but double up on the "w", TE types the site’s url. It is a HUGE timesaver!

So having it on my Mac has made my life a lot easier. What about my iPhone, you ask? 

Well, WideMail was just updated to version 1.2 and a simple, but useful, version of this same functionality is part of it.

I updated my copy of the application, set up a number of these shortcuts, and started using it. How is it?

QuickSend, one of the many apps that make quick work of sending short, "stock" e-mail messages to one of a small, preselected group of contacts, just received a nice update.

Because QuickSend uses a " spinner" in order to choose which piece of text you want to send to which contact, it is, by far, the best of this genre of application when it comes to one-handed use. This update makes the application work much better than it had previously.

Using this application is simple.  After for setting it up by choosing a number of contacts and customizing the messages you want sent,  you simply start the application, turn the spinner to the contact to whom you want to be in touch, and the second spinner to the piece of text you want to send, and  hit the "e-mail" button. That’s all it takes. Moreover, the application currently has an experimental feature for doing exactly the same thing to SMS contacts in addition to e-mail.

 This updated version of the application includes the following —

The newly updated (to version 1.1) School of Rock has just seen a huge price drop from $6.99 to a mere $.99. As a fan of the movie, the app caught my eye when it was first released, but, I wasn’t  in the mood to drop another $6.99 on something that had an equal chance of being being good or being little more than a movie advertisement.

With a price drop down to $.99 I was willing to take the plunge.

Friends, trust me, this application isn’t "little more than a movie advertisement". It happens to be a much more complicated and well-done application for the iPhone than I expected.

The good folks at Engadget are reporting that the on-again / off-again / on-again / off-again free WiFi at Starbucks is…

On Again! 

Word is that text messages are being received near and far with word that owning the iPhone translates to two hours of WiFi conectivity per day for nothing!

We’ve been down this road numerous times in the past but, hopefully, this time is for real.

Java anyone?

via Engadget
 

We’ve looked at a number of apps that make it simple to quickly shoot off a pre-formatted email in just one or two steps.

Our app of choice has been MailDash. It works well and, through the use of templates and text snippets, offers an amazing level of customization.

The first app we reviewed in this genre, ReplyButler, was just updated to version 2.0. It has a lot to offer.

What ReplyButler has going for it, first and fremost, is the fact that it isn’t as feature rich as MailDash. It doesn’t offer nearly the same degree of customization and that can be a good thing. Why? Because it means that ReplyButler is incredibly simple to use.

With ReplyButler all you do is pick one of the text snippets, add a contact’s email address and hit "send". Fast, quick, done. In a rush, which is when an app like this is useful, this might be a very good thing.

This update does, however, add two nice features to the app.

iChalky is a simple app that never fails to make me laugh.

iChalky…

is a simplistic stick figure whose posture and behavior result from the mechanical constraints that define him. He consists of a set of 8 masses connected to one another through a series of damped springs with various coefficients. Gravity and instantaneous acceleration are estimated from your iPhone’s X and Y accelerometers and transferred onto Chalky’s virtual world.
Friction was further added to the edges of his frame along with some rudimentary stepping heuristics to give him a fighting chance to maintain his balance as you rotate your phone around or take him on the bus with you. You can also grab, stretch and throw him with your multi-touch screen if you feel he’s not getting enough abuse.
Chalky also thinks he can dance and he’ll start busting his moves if he detects music through your phone’s microphone… so crank up the tunes! Unfortunately you can’t use the iPod application on your phone as I couldn’t figure out how to make that work.

While the developer tries to describe Chalky, the only way to really understand it is to try it…

I have tried a number of dictionary/thesaurus options for the iPhone and found WordBook- A Dictionary & Thesaurus of the English Language to be the best for me on both fronts.

Well, after an update and price drop it just got better on both fronts.

In order to streamline my RSS feeds process of updates, I have been trying to find a way to separate my tech feeds from my news feeds. Both have grown in number to the point of each being unruly and, when combined, the sheer number of feeds that require updating is tremendous. In recent weeks I have looked at apps such a iNewz, hoping they would allow me to get my news there and leave my RSS feeds for tech updates. Unfortunately, none of the solutions I have found have worked all that well.

Fortunately, one of the original iPhone apps just got a nice update.

Back in July, when the App Store went live, the AP Mobile News Network was immediately available as a free download.

With it you could "Select local news from your trusted local newspapers and broadcasters and combine it with the best of the AP’s videos, photo galleries, and national and international coverage."

Unfortunately, as apps go, it was somewhat feature limited and very slow. That is no longer the case…

I love Evernote, the app that

turns the iPhone and iPod Touch into your external brain. 

Evernote–

…lets you remember anything that happens in your life. From notes to ideas to snapshots to recordings, put everything into Evernote and watch as it instantly synchronize from the iPhone to the web to your desktop.

Best of all, because Evernote is part of a larger system it works seemlessly with the free Mac and Windows desktop and web applications.

This is a huge update that finally…