Our goal, when we started WhatsOniPhone a little over a month ago, was to quickly become a community resource for sharing news and reviews on the applications that are transforming the iPhone and iPod Touch in the next-generation computing platform.

Our goal is also to become a place where developers can make their voices heard, share insights, plans and the latest news, and receive thoughtful feedback on their work.

We are pleased to share with you that based on our review, as well as feedback from other users, John Ellis of Standard Widget Corp, the developers behind iToony, contacted us to let us, and you, know that they have decided to lower the price on iToony to $2.99 USD. This is not, John told us, a temporary change but a permanent one.

We applaud John for making this adjustment and making iToony a better value for consumers. We encourage you to check iToony out.

Reviews from me have so far been pretty thin on the ground and I’m sorry.  Its not that I’m being lazy, or even that I’m too caught up in playing with all of the great new App Store software to sit down and write, no its much worse than that.  I STILL don’t have an iPhone!

I thought I was being cunning by selling my G1 iPhone a couple of days before the announcement of the 3G.  I got a good price and I thought I’d only have a few days to wait to pick up the next model… Alas, Steve Jobs made us wait a month between his announcement and the release, and then to my dismay, Charles Dunstone has got me waiting another 2 weeks.

For those of you who don’t know, old Charlie is the Chairman of "The Carphone Warehouse".  An "independent" phone shop chain that has 700 stores in the UK and  a deal to sell iPhones on the o2 network alongside the Apple and o2 shops.

I am now being told that my iPhone will most likely be delivered on Monday 28th July.  And its not like I just ordered it either, I queued for 3 hours at the opening of my local store and was the 5th person to the desk!!  Unfortunately my local CPW (Brighton, Western Road) had been delivered 10 x 8gbs and only 2 x 16gbs.

Being number 5 I was given the choice of an 8gb iPhone there and then, or a 16gb delivered to my home the next day.  The manager assured me that there were over 1500 in the warehouse when I ordered and that one of those was allocated to me for next day delivery.  So I walked out £59 lighter and signed up to a £45 per month tariff with nothing more than a SIM card to show for my 3 hour wait!

Of course Saturday came and went, Monday came and went, I was told Friday delivery, then I was told that that delivery was only 8gbs, so I am now being told that the next delivery will be Friday 25th which should mean it actually gets to me on Monday July 28th.  17 days after I queued!

The best part is that I got my first o2 bill this morning!  £45 for the month and I haven’t even got a phone!

Anyhow, you can rest assured that I have my eye on a number of apps that I’d like to try out and review and as soon as I have something to install it on I will be writing here!

Charles Dunstone, if you’re reading this, sort it out mate!

I love my iKids and they love my iPhone. 

Glad to see apps that are available for them to enjoy as well. While in the car, in the store, attempting a pedicure, this will occupy them just fine.  🙂

So, Finger Paint vs. Scribble –

One of the things I have appreciated most since making the move to Apple’s Mac OS X last fall is the frequency of the updates that come to most of the applications I regularly use. Rarely does a day go by when there is not an update available for one program or another. It is nice to know that developers are constantly working to refine and/or add features to applications long after they have "shipped".

My friends who have been intimately involved with the jailbreak wonder known as installer.app have enjoyed the same thing over the months. On an apparently regular basis applications they had loaded on their iPhones received updates. Best of all, the installer.app actually notified them when updates were available. There was no need to go searching for one or to hunt something down. Installer.app actually checked for them.

I was pleased to see that this same functionality is part of the App Store.

Jott and reQall are both powerful tools in their own right. While each offers slightly different functionality, the bread and butter of both is found in their transcription ability. Now that each offers a resident application the comparisons are inevitable so… I’m going to compare the two.

In anticipation of an upcoming full review of both I did a couple of quick, unscientific, tests. The main things I wanted to see were (a) transcription accuracy and (b) speed of turnaround time.

I used the following statement as the first test–

This is a first attempt at two of us doing a quick comparison of the transcription accuracy of JOTT and REQALL.

Actual transcriptions from the two–

I’ve been a fan of SugarSync, the automated Internet backup and synchronization service from Sharpcast, since it was first in beta. SugarSync does a great job seemlessly keeping the files on my various computers in perfect sync. Since it works automatically in the background, it ensures that my data is safely backed up and accessible no matter where I am.

SugarSync’s iPhone optimized website makes accessing the files stored with the service a breeze. So long as I have a data connection I can view files from my iPhone or iPod Touch, or email them to myself or others in seconds. I find the peace of mind and convenience the service gives me to be invaluable which is why I happily became one of their first paid customers when the service came out of beta in March.

SugarSync has been continually expanding their services and just this morning announced a killer new feature.

We’ve been hearing a instability stories from iPhone users including apps spontaneously shutting down, auto-rebooting and even some freezing. It’s unclear if the cause can be directly traced to the apps, the firmware or some combination of the two, but help may be on the way.

A post over at the 9to5Mac and The Boy Genius Report suggests that a quick update to last week’s 2.0 firmware may soon be "shipping". While little more than rumor, the report claims to have seen website traffic requests emanating from systems that ID themselves as 2.1.

We’re not into fueling rumors here, but with all the crashing about which we’ve been hearing we hope this latest "update" rumor is true.

I’m in the mountains on vacation.  It’s 5pm, Monday, July 14th.  That means it’s cocktail hour and I’m jonesing for a margarita. 

I go to the cabinet and I pull out the Jose Cuervo margarita mix. (My brother-in-law brought it up with him during his most recent visit.) There’s a recipe on the back which calls for 1 part tequila, 3 parts margarita mix. Great… or maybe not.

Let’s look at the ingredients on the mix: first ingredient-water, second ingredient- high-fructose corn syrup.

That’s not a margarita, that’s a margarita-flavored slushie.  (He’ll be drinking the margarita mix all by his lonesome the next time he visits.)

I remember there are some cocktail cards I received as a gift a few years ago in the liquor cabinet.  I pull them out, and low and behold there’s a card for a straight up/classic margarita BUT…

This might be obvious to some, and I wasn’t sure if I should post this or not, but it’s been bugging me that some one else might not realize this, so…

I was thinking all weekend long how incredibly long it takes to sync the new updated iPhone.  Like Dan pointed out earlier, it used to sync in a few minutes, now its more like 30… and I have no idea why…

Then, I realized that I was going to sync every time i bought a new app, I would buy online through iTunes and then I would go ahead and sync to get the new software on my phone…  I mean, this used to be the only way to get apps on your phone right?

But then it dawned on me that Apple built the ability to download from the App Store directly into the iPhone!!!   No more downloading and buying on itunes and then syncing to get that software, I could just download wirelessly and thats it!  When I charge at night and plug in the phone, it will ask if i want to transfer the app back to itunes… then I can just go to sleep and feel no pain.

I know, some of you are probably like, DUH… but for those of you who didn’t think of this… you can post a "thank you" in the comments… 🙂

We’re three days in.  The initial excitement is over. The stores are waiting to be restocked. We’ve all had a chance to check out a few applications. There is a lot about which to be impressed.  However,  it is now clear that news about iPhone firmware 2.0 and the App Store isn’t all good. Mixed in with the good has been some bad and some ugly.  And the ugly is REALLY UGLY.