It’s the rumour that nobody believes yet it just won’t quit, dammit; is Apple about to announce the launch of an iPhone Nano?  In fact it’s already available, according to Apple Insider - if you live in Thailand and aren’t savvy enough to spot a fake:

Meanwhile, adding fuel to the fire that an official product will be launched shortly, is manufacturer Vaja. Their online store sells leather cases for a wide variety of electronic goods, and there in the menu is an option for the iPhone Nano, which leads to an enquiry form.

Since manufacturers are likely to receive advance warning of new lines in order to fulfill demand for accessories, is this yet further proof the iPhone Nano is coming soon? Or simply a marketing ploy to cash in on the unfounded gossip?

[Apple Insider] [Mac Rumours]

The iPhone. Truly deserving of the title the Jesus phone. Perfection in all ways. Except one: it’s not a very good phone. Specifcally, you need to charge it daily. On the road, away from home? Best buy yourself a second charger if you want to go wild and make calls on it.

No doubt Apple will get around to addressing the issue around the same time the Four Horsemen make an appearance. Until then, the world will just have to rely on PhD students with too much time on their hands.

Atif Shamin, studying at Carleton University in Canada, has had at the innards of his iPhone and done away with all those old fashioned wires, the primary cause of power loss. Replacing them is a micro-transmitter that wirelessly connects the circuit board and the antennae, increasing power efficiency by a factor of 12.

That’s battery life sorted for the next iPhone update. Next on the list - making a telephone call that ends when you decide, not the phone.

[SlipperyBrick]

Dream on fanboys; rumours that a new iPhone Nano was to be announced next month were re-animated when Crunchgear posted a case design for a smaller iPhone companion. Seemingly, accessory manufacturers receive such spec before announcements are made, so that’d be vaguely believable.

This meanwhile, looks like nothing more than ten minutes spent loafing about on Photoshop:

Crunchgear are labelling it as a “concept photo”; we’re not sure how you’d begin to use the keyboard on one of this things. It’d also mean no Apps Store, since the screens appear to be very different dimensions.

What will Apple announce at the annual Macworld Expo next month? Probably not something as radical as a new iPhone, that’s for sure; Steve Jobs isn’t even attending the event.

[Crunchgear]

TechRadar ran a blog listing ten reasons to jailbreak your iPhone on Friday drawing some ire as well affirmation. We’d have to say about nine of the reasons are weak but being able to use the iPhone as a tethered modem is essential (it’s shameful Apple banned NetShare from the app store).

So here’s a quick poll for Bitterwallet readers. Considering the app store has stolen a lot of thunder from Cydia/Installer and the inability to soft unlock 3G, do you still jailbreak your iPhone?

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Going to be late home from the office? Boss working you like a well oiled whore? Or perhaps a one night stand has unexpectedly landed in your lap and started applying special mouth love. Either way, you’re not going home anytime soon, which is bad news for your starving pooch.

Not a problem for Stephen Myers, who created a dog-treat dispenser in an hour and a half, using a CD spindle case and other scraps of household minutiae. Throw in a webcam, and Stephen can now feed Cooper the dog via his iPhone:

Brilliant. A finer use for an iPhone, there has never been. There’s certainly a commercial application in here, somewhere; QVC always need more crap to sell through the day. With any luck someone will build one that feeds the kids at home while we nip off to Magaluf for a week. “They’ve been fed, and I could see the the house wasn’t on fire. What’s your problem, copper?”

[slashgear]

Better stacked than the classified section of the Daily Sport, this will undoubtedly be the must-have toy for kids next year. Created by the founder and former CEO of iRiver’s parent company, the Mintpad does everything an iPod Touch can do. Plus a camera. Plus a doodlepad. Plus a lot less outlay.

Browse the web, take and upload photos, write memos and blogs, playback music and video, chat; it’s everything a child (or adult) could ask for.  But it’s the price that’s the dealbreaker; the Mintpad is currently on sale in Korea for 190,000 KRW - or about £88. Assuming the pound isn’t raped and pillaged by the Far East markets, then we could see this ubergadget on sale in UK shops for under £100.

[aving.net]

How fast is your iPhone when surfing? Is it like watching lightning strike your hand, such is the speed and dazzling intensity of page loading times? Or is it more like observing a cow laying a lazy pat into your palm? Yes, it’s the same for us. Feel misled by claims of blinding 3G speeds? You’re not the only one.

One of Apple’s television adverts for the iPhone advert has been banned by the ASA for exaggerating the speed of the handset’s connection. Bombarding the viewer Malcolm Macdowell-style with the phrase “really fast”, the ad showed pages loaded near instantly. Those of us in the real world wondered whether we’d bought the wrong handset.

17 people complained to the ASA, saying the advert had misled them as to its speed. Apple UK defended the ad, saying it was comparing the 3G model with its 2G predecessor and the claims were “relative not absolute” and that the average consumer would realise the phone’s performance would “vary by location”, which they state in the ad. Where then, we wonder, do you have to live for the iPhone to enjoy such a magnificent connection?

The ASA clearly couldn’t think of anywhere either, and so banned the ad. To be fair, we haven’t any real issue with the download times, but if Apple are going to show the handset doing one thing on the telly when it does something entirely different in real life, of course people will complain. Instead of amending the ad, hopefully Apple will amend the iPhone.

What have I got in my hand? It’s my iPod Touch, silly. I’m just syncing it with my MacBook to download some shiny. As we revealed last week, Apple have today released version 2.2 software for both the Touch and the iPhone.

What do you get? Depends. If you’ve got an iPhone, you can now enjoy Google Street View with your Google Maps, meaning you can navigate major streets at eye level. You can also pull up public transport timetables for your location, and share your whereabouts in an email with one tap.

There’s also an updated iTunes store, which lets you subscribe to and update podcasts remotely from your iPhone, instead of having to hook up to your Mac (no doubt the reason why Apple pulled the popular Podcaster app from the App Store), plus some tweaks to Safari and Mail, a promised decrease in dropped calls and a somewhat superfluous homepage shortcut.

If you’ve got an iPod Touch, you get exactly the same, except for stuff about dropped calls, but then it’s not a mobile so we’ll forgive them. Although they also seemed to have missed Google Street View. And the timetables. And you can’t share your location. I’ve just this second finished the update in case it was a mistaken omission, but it seems not. Bah. Seems like the Touch owners have been short-changed, unless there’s some operational reason not to include the fun stuff?

[Apple]

Price fixing is a dirty business, one that benefits the big boys and picks the pockets of the consumer. If you’ve bought a Motorola mobile, a Dell PC or an iPod in the last few years, you may have spent over the odds as a victim of a manufacturing cartel.

Three companies - LG, Sharp and Chunghwa Picture Tubes Ltd - have admitted to fixing the prices of liquid crystal display TV screens, computer monitors and other LCD screens. In particular, Sharp was charged for fixing prices on LCD panels sold to Dell for computers, Motorola for its Razr phone and Apple for its iPods.

Collectively, the three firms have been fined nearly $600 million by the US Department of Justice; LG was fined $400 million - the second highest criminal fine the department has ever imposed.

[Broadcasting & Cable]

Throughout history, men have been found conkers-deep in all the wrong people places. Every conceivable means of squirming out from these inexcusably tight spots has been sought by the gentlemen in question; sometimes successfully, other times less so.

One excuse that is unlikely to hold water is; “What happened dear, was that I accidentally took a photo of myself bollock naked which, due to a well know iPhone glitch, not only attached itself to the email address of a woman but sent itself to her as well.” Ah yes, that old chesnut. In fact, it’d take a guy with pretty big balls (which may or may not be visible in said photo) to a) dream up such a preposterous story and b) think it’ll actually work should his wife discover what’s going on.

Which she does. So let’s pick up the story with Susan, who posted on Apple’s official support forum:

Please help! I took my husband’s i-phone and found a raunchy picture of him attached to an e-mail to a woman in his sent e-mail file (a Yahoo account). When I approached him about this (I think that he is cheating on me) he admitted that he took the picture but says that he never sent it to anyone. He claims that he went to the Genius Bar at the local Apple store and they told him that it is an i-phone glitch: that photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent. Has anyone ever heard of this happening? The future of my marriage depends on this answer!

Sure, everyone’s heard of that bug Susan. No wait, sorry, they haven’t at all. In fact there are only two posters in the whole of the Apple forums who seem aware of this issue; one of them, Erikislame, was previously active in a thread entitled “Can you erase single phone calls or SMS from the iphone?” and the other, judgement, only registered after the thread was started. Curious. Another poster suggests they may in fact be the same person; Susan’s husband. Hmm.

As an aside, even if there was a buggy line of code that could somehow attach photos to an email and send it to specific individuals without prior knowledge, there is no application in the iPhone Store that forces people to get nekked. Or is there? If so, what else does it make them do? Surely the picture wasn’t that revealing, was it Susan?

Well, if you must know … it was a close-up shot of him pleasuring himself taken at the exact moment of maximum pleasure. (I’m trying to remain G-rated here.) It’s such a good shot that one must wonder if he actually practiced it a few times before getting it right!

Ah. Susan says her discovery of the photo ends any doubt she has concerning the whispered phone conversations and anonymous texts she was already aware of, and that her attorney is already involved.

Next week, we reveal how a Blackberry bullied a middle-aged mother of two into sleeping with the entire first team of West Ham United. Twice.

[The Register]

Are you one of the top ten brands in the world? Likely to dominate global media and online innovation for the foreseeable future? Launching a revolutionary new application to a planet of consumers?

Right. In that case, it’s best to check your product is in stock before you try selling it. I’m talking to you, Google.

Yes, even the biggest companies in the world make juvenile schoolboy errors. On Friday, Google officially launched their voice-recognition search application for the iPhone, allowing users to Google search on their phone’s browser by talking into the handset. Except the app was subject to the same paperwork and clearance checks all iPhone applications are, and Apple was yet to rubber-stamp for inclusion in the App Store. Hence a big launch… and no app to be found. Doh!

[Wired]

The techo-fact hunting chaps at Electric Pig have stumbled upon a Greek iPhone website, as you do, and discovered details of iPhone 2.2 software that is said to become available a week tomorrow, November 21st.

Nobody else is shouting about such an update, so take it with a quantum of sulphide for now, but presumably any such upgraded software would also apply to the iPod Touch (if you don’t have one yet, have a look here for the bargain of the century).

Anything exciting? According to the Greeks, the update will include Google Street View, as well as public transport directions and the ability to turn auto-correction off while typing (praise the electro-lord).

There’ll also be a new look to Safari, with a Google search bar always visible, an improved App Store, and the ability to download podcasts without connecting to a computer, plus increased language support too.

The ability to cut-and-paste text? It isn’t mentioned and Apple don’t seem all that bothered about delivering it, despite the hordes of screaming masses demanding it. There are only eight days to wait, so we’ll soon see if the website is talk out of its hat or whether somebody has the inside skinny from a source unknown to the rest of us.

[electricpig]

Since Apple launched its App Store in July, owners of iPhones or the iPod Touch have been able to download hundreds of games and books, tools for navigations, social networking widgets and a Chuck Norris joke generator. Some of the applications are fun, free and flimsy, others are complex and costly.

And then there are those applications that are next-to-useless, but cost you hard earned coin before you discover exactly how useless they are. For example, if you’re in the market for a travel guide - content ideally suited to a device you carry with you - there isn’t a great deal of choice. Frommers initially led the way with four guides - London, New York, Paris and San Francisco - which are comprehensive if a little wordy, for £5.99 each.

At the other end of the scale, let’s introduce you to the travel guides where there’s every chance you’ll know more about the locale than they do. There are 16 destinations available in the GUIDEYOU range, which sort of suggests they should be comprehensive. So why is nearly every piece of feedback about them negative? Within a few seconds of purchasing one for £3.49, you discover the reason: they’re bloody rubbish.

Specifically, there’s a complete lack of content. GUIDEYOU New York includes reviews of just four bars in Manhattan. Unbelievably, the Statue of Liberty isn’t included in the list of tourist attractions, nor is Times Square. You thought New York was good for shopping? Apparently not. There are only nine stores in the whole city, and one of them is an ice cream factory.

If that wasn’t reason enough to avoid like the pox, the entries are written in broken English throughout. The view from the Brooklyn Bridge, for example:

One is most gapingly exposed to the pulsing energy of this amazing city.

And then there’s Central Park:

Encompasses 5p% of the area of Manhattan. The park was opened in 1873 and many hauses and churches were torn down in order to enable its construction. A relasxing getaway from the New Yorker hectic.

And just where is the Hudson Hotel?

356 West 58th Street (zwishen Eighth und Ninth Avenue)

Apple has banned several apps from its Apps Store, but the quality threshold is still shockingly low in places. Bitterwallet’s advice? Treat apps the same way you’d treat any other product; they may only cost a few quid, but take some time to read up on them before purchasing.

The iPhone 3g has been on the market for months now but a software unlock has so far eluded the unlock community. The software unlock solution may be imminent though as the iPhone Dev Team (the ones who pioneered the 2g unlock) have released a video today where they gain baseband access and install a custom app. The ability to crack the baseband opens up the possibility of manipulating the control of hardware and thus circumventing the Apple unlock.

The current solutions for those wishing to unlock their iPhone 3g are a dodgy hardware unlock generally by way of a SIM hack or buying an official unlocked handset. The modified SIM unlock is unreliable and not recommended by the unlock community. The best option is to drop a whack of cash and buy a PAYG Italian, Belgian, French, Hong Kong or Australian handset which are all either unlocked by Apple out of the box or by loading the PAYG card and making a phone call to the operator. The advantage of this unlock is that it is officially done by Apple and will never be broken by subsequent firmware updates.

Bloody internet. Nothing is secret anymore. Although, if you had your money on any company being able to conduct covert activity online, you’d put it on Apple. They’re clever and they’re very good at keeping secrets until Steve Jobs takes to a stage to share them.

Or maybe not. The New York Times reports that a search engine insider has usage logs showing traffic from an unknown Apple product. How do they know it’s new? Even a layman who operates a website can use Google Analytics or similar to see what type of browser is displaying their website. For example, if somebody views your website on an iPhone, you can see that your website has been displayed at 320 x 480 pixels resolution.

The deep throat at the search engine company has seen activity from an Apple product with a screen resolution higher than the iPhone or iPod Touch, but lower than a MacBook. One possible explanation is that Apple are testing a netbook to bully the likes of ACER out the market. Another is that that’s all Apple are doing - testing - and it’ll come to nothing. Boo.

[electricpig]