This week’s best iPhone app releases include experimenting with 50 Cent, random flying kittehs invading your fotos, and custom playlists for wining and dining.

TomTom have designed a GPS cradle specifically for the iPod Touch, and it’s substantially cheaper than the iPhone model. The cradle is smaller than the one designed for the iPhone, works with both first- and second-generation iPod Touches if they’re running 3.0 firmware.

The real kicker is that it costs $99.95, $20 less than the iPhone version, even though the iPhone has a built-in GPS receiver. The given reason, is that the iPhone model has bluetooth capabilities. Any readers have the iPhone version, and can comment on what the bluetooth functionality is? Because the iPod Touch version is smaller, and cheaper. The $100 price tag probably won’t include the app itself either, which is also expensive. I wonder what would happen if you plugged an iPhone into the cheaper iTouch base…
[via AppleInsider]
Oh yes, we’re going there. The New Moon: The Twilight Saga flick has finally been released, and the months of preparation by TwiFans across the globe have finally paid off. So what does the App Store have to say about all of this Twilight hub-bub? A lot.
In an effort to aid moviegoers and fans alike, we found all of the iPhone apps you’ll need to tackle the opening day of New Moon. Utilize everything from Vampire Vocab apps to tips on when it’s safe to leave the theater to relieve yourself, in case you waited outside the theater for a few hours…or days.


"Bella, why can't you get a freakin' iPhone?"

"Just shut up and save me from these darn werewolves, Edward"
The Little App Factory are the developers of an immensely popular app called iPodRip, which lets you save media directly from your iPhone or iPod to your computer. However, they received a Cease & Desist from a law firm over using the term iPod in the title, so lead dev John Devor sent an impassioned plea to Steve Jobs.
Dear Mr. Jobs,
My name is John Devor and I’m the co-owner of a small Mac shareware company named The Little App Factory and a long-term Apple customer and shareholder. I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.
We have been distributing iPodRip since 2003 with the aim of providing a method to recover music, movies and photos from iPods and iPhones in the event of a serious hardware failure on their Mac which leads to data loss. Our goal has been to provide the highest quality product coupled with the highest quality service in a bid to resolve some of the angst that is generated by such an ordeal; service befitting of an Apple product. In this department we think we have succeeded as we have approximately 6 million customers, many Apple employees, music artists and other notable people in society. In fact I’d argue that our customer service is the best of all competing applications in our niche as many of them are scams and frauds that leave Apple customers with a terrible taste in their collective mouths. We fear very much that tens of thousands of Apple customers looking to recover their own music and having heard of our product via word-of-mouth or otherwise, will instead find a product produced by one of our competitors, and will wind up the victim of a scam (one closely-named competitor charges a hidden monthly fee, for instance).
It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons, and in fact I believe that we have been providing an excellent secondary service to Apple customers that has potentially caused you many repeat clients. In fact, we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!
With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, both of which we have put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into. Our company goal is to create Mac software of the highest quality with the best user experience possible. I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.
If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.
Best,
John Devor
Would you believe that Steve Jobs responded? And he was a bit of a dick:
Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.
Steve
Sent from my iPhone
iPodRip is now available as iRip. So there you go.

[via CrunchGear]
Google have just optimized their excellent News Feed for the iPhone, according to their mobile blog. Not only have they adjusted the news feed to make it work better with our favorite Apple toy, but it’s also tweaked for Android and Palm Pre, for you heretics. According to Google, it allows the same degree of customization as the desktop version, so you can tweak it to your hearts content. They’ve also refined the interface to fit more news on the main page, without completely dropping legibility.

I don’t know why you’d go anywhere for news other than Everything iCafe, though. Seriously, Google News is the premier news aggregator, and bringing better functionality to the iPhone is a great move.

In the most terse press release ever, Virgin Mobile have confirmed that they’re going to start selling the iPhone 3G and 3GS in Virgin Mobile Stores across Canada “in the coming months”. That’s pretty non-specific, but at least it’s official. The entirety of the press release is below:
TORONTO, Nov. 19 /CNW/ - Virgin Mobile Canada will launch iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in Virgin Mobile Retail Stores and online in Canada in the coming months. For more information on iPhone, please visit www.apple.com/iphone.
[via BGR]

Sony have announced their intentions to launch “Sony Online Service“, an iTunes like service to send content to their devices, and hopefully to other electronics too. The SOS is said to be based off the PlayStation Network, and unlike iTunes it will feature a degree of user generated content. Users will be able to upload photos and videos to their personal page on the site, and Sony is talking about potentially opening up the platform to outside app developers.
The big problem with this is apparent if you’ve ever tried to use Sony software and content before. Sony, more than any other major company, are mired in the world of proprietary content and DRM. There’s no doubt that whatever you purchase from their store will be in an obscure format that only the most recent of their devices can use, and will become obsolete in six months (coughmemorystickproduomark2cough). However, maybe they’ll have a change of heart, and use their substantial media network to sell popular content in common formats, for every device on the market. Also possible: moon made of cheese, Apple Tablet being released tomorrow, world peace
[via AppleInsider]
Gene-Munster with analyst firm Piper-Jaffray have issued a note to investors about the tablet, saying that they don’t actually expect many units in 2010, and they forecast the device to cost between $500 and $700. That would put it squarely between the iPhone and low-end MacBooks in price.
However, the calculations used to hit that number are more than a touch suspicious. The report says ”As a point of perspective, iSuppli has reported the bill of materials on the iPhone 3GS is $179. Backing out the phone functionality, we believe the bill of materials is about $160. Assuming the tablet is 3x the size of the iPod touch implies a bill of materials for the tablet of around $480.” However, anyone who’s been TV shopping knows that you can’t linearly shift the price to account for the size. An 84-inch TV isn’t twice the price of a 42-inch. Screen price increases dramatically with size, especially with OLEDs, which rumors point to the iTablet having.
[via AppleInsider]
Having a camera in your iPhone really is a great thing. No more fumbling around with an extra device in your bag, easily take photos on the go, and share every snapshot with the touch of a few buttons. But the iPhone camera is far from magical: Photos can easily turn out a blurry mess, the iPhone’s awkward shape makes it difficult to hit that small capture button when taking a self portrait, and, of course, there’s no flash, leaving you mostly out of luck in dark scenery.
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But with a few extremely reasonably priced apps, you can become a semi-professional iPhone photographer. Here’s a look at a few of the top-selling photography apps from the App Store.