Remember that teaser from early December? It was later announced that Metal Gear Solid and a few other Konami releases will indeed be coming out for the Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch (iTouch).

The game, based off of Metal Gear Solid 4 will be debuting on the Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch on February 26th, 2009. As it stands, the game’s producer and Kojima Productions employee, Yasuyo Watanabe has stated that the controls for the game will definitely be simplified for the Apple iPhone/iTouch since it’s “not a gaming system” - which control-wise makes sense but definitely goes against John Carmack’s “The iPhone more powerful than Nintendo DS, PSP combined…” or Sega’s “…the iPhone Is As Powerful As the Dreamcast…” only if you wanted to start an argument that is.

Hell yes. February 26th, 2009. Mark your calendars.

Looks like the lads over at iPhone Source have a humdinger of a contest going on. Free entry and you have 7 days left! Don’t walk… run man… run!

Thanks to some wonderful supporters of iPhoneSource we’ve got some great items up for grabs:

• PED3 - ultimate rotating iPhone stand
• MimoBot - awseome designer USB drives
• Juxtaposericon - the most fun you can have with images on your iPhone
• BestSkinsEver - protect your investment from scratches
• Telegraphicon - send voice messages from your iPhone
• Note Padicon - the best iPhone Note Pad
• Recordicon - the ultimate iPhone voice recorder
• Duck Shooticon - great fun arcade style game

How to enter and other information is right here. And remember folks… free stuff is always a good thing. Go enter now.

[ iPhone Source ]

Do you feel it?

The stress of finding that gift for your favorite geek person in your life and don’t want to be trampled at the local stores during the Christmas rush? Well, RTL* to the rescue with the 12 days of Christmas Geek Gift Guide for the Last Minute Shopper!

On the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to the iPhone3G lover that has everything already:

A Vaja ivolution Top Special Edition iPhone3G Case in special Renato leather in the unusual color name of Carchofa. What could be seen as just a bunch of fancy words to describe an all Argentinian, quality hand-made cow-hide leather case that downright looks better than most any darn thing that any other iPhone owner can pull out while in line at your Starbucks. Imagine their lust over your hand-made leather case that is darker than a venti frappuchino but lighter than Wesley Snipes. It arrives in a rather unassuming white box with glossy “Vaja” embossed on the box.

Much like the other Vaja cases that come in limited editions, they carry a premium price - this one costs $120.00 USD. But you’ll be the one iPhone3G owner that sticks out from the rest of the pack. But the good thing, Vaja has some on hand… so they’re ready to ship the moment you pay for them and no need to wait. Read the rest of this entry »

Whatever the above cryptic message means (iPhone perhaps!?) if Hideo Kojima and Konami is behind it, expect genius. Find out, well as much as above, from [ Konami ]

No. I won’t count Metal Gear Solid Acid. Ever.

I’ve been an user of Joost since the days it was called “The Venice Project” when I thought the guys behind Skype and Kazaa couldn’t do any wrong. As long as I had my laptop and broadband/wireless access to the internet, I would catch a couple of shows.

However they’ve gone through a few changes from a desktop P2P based client to a web based client… now to an Apple iPhone application. And I couldn’t be any happier. It means that I can get my Fat Albert or Transformers fix even during meetings if I so wished.

Oh hell yeah.

As an owner of an Apple iPhone, I’m a big fan of being able to whip out my phone, fire up an app and start talking to people online via instant messenger or VoIP. Saves me money, time and in some cases, headaches.

I’ve tried to use the AIM application that’s been out and it still just does not do what I’d like for it to do… like never crash. I’ve switched to Fring, which gives me Skype and SIP (Gizmo Project mostly in my case) as well as MSN, GoogleTalk, and AIM.

Enter Nimbuzz.

Landscape-chat makes it easy and fast to type
Call your IM buddies all over the world for free on your Wifi connection: Skype, Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger (MSN), Google Talk
Chat with social network friends: Facebook, MySpace, Gadu-Gadu, studiVZ, Hyves

Presently it’s free in the Apple iTunes Store, and honestly, it’s giving my love of Fring a run for the money. The landscape mode definitely gives me more room to type, a more comfortable way to hold the phone and… ok, I like the default tones.

Leave it to Billshrink.com to come out with a comparison of the total cost of ownership between the wildly popular Apple iPhone 3G and the recently introduced and sold out BlackBerry Storm.

BillShrink launched today a Blackberry Storm vs. iPhone 3G Comparison Site where consumers can view and calculate the real cost of each device and plan, features and related service head to head.

BillShrink helps consumers find the right phone and plan given their personalized usage patterns, e.g., how many texts you send, how many minutes you use, etc. In today’s tight economy, the site is helping consumers save an average of $340 annually on their cell phone bills.

Mind you, Billshrink has already saved me a few dollars a month already - almost $200 a year. Oh, and if you want other comparisons:

Storm vs. iPhone vs. G1
Storm vs. iPhone vs. G1 vs. Instinct

Nice. All of the data in one place to compare it.

Now… if Billshrink.com can find an instant way to avoid having to pay getting out of my contract too, it’ll get my vote for “best.thing.ever” instead of “just” being an incredibly good service that’s given me almost $200 bucks a year for beer my savings.

Tonight should be known as the night of updates. After the PSP 5.02 update, Apple releases the highly anticipated iPhone 2.2 firmware. So you know the drill… fire up iTunes, download away.

So far, my experience isn’t that bad. Doesn’t seem to really perform any slower, nor does it seem to be more buggy. Copy and paste though… ha! Not yet…

TripIt combines a mobile client as well as your e-mail to gather your travel plans and conveniently arrange everything in such a manner that every part of your trip just “goes right”.

TripIt is a personal travel assistant that automatically organizes all your travel plans in one place. Travelers can access their itineraries online or via a mobile device and share their trips with friends and colleagues. TripIt is in beta, and has won a lot of attention from entities like TechCrunch, PC Mag and others.

Finally… something that I could have used ages ago! Read more about TripIt at their website and find out more about the people behind TripIt right here.

By Jonathan Kimak

iPhone owners in several cities can now access live traffic camera feeds thanks to a new application called Mobileyes. The iPhone user will be able to see how the traffic is in certain areas around their city and then use that info to make their commute a little shorter and even less stressful. There is also the potential to save fuel and money by spending less time idling in traffic and more time moving towards the freedom of home.

Current cities where this is available are: Detroit, Hartford, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, Knoxville, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C. while other cities will eventually be added. Depending on the speed of your connection the app can show low, medium or high resolution images.

Just remember to check this before you get on the road and not while you are driving.

VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

Link to the original article…

In case you don’t remember, I had posted pictures that were in a mate of mine (UK) iPhone, take a quick reminder stroll here. To date, that’s been my most active link. Ever.

Well, enter the person that probably took those pictures…

She’s actually quite cute! Well, the good news is that she still has her job, and seems to be a rather shy Foxconn employee that really is afraid of the limelight.

I don’t blame her. There’s some weirdos out there.

But it’s nice to finally put a face to the pictures.

Say whatever you want about Steve Jobs… but the man can be curt sometimes.

“This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September,” reads the one-line message from the Apple co-founder.

Anyway, it seems like a ton of users, myself included, are still having problems with their iPhone 3G reception as well as other anomalies regarding 3rd party applications starting up and then closing down.

The email provides an end date to problems that have become increasingly apparent in Apple’s support forums and elsewhere. Many report the iPhone 2.0 firmware suddenly failing to load non-default apps regardless of their nature, briefly loading them before abruptly jumping back to the home screen.

The bug occurs both with freshly downloaded software and with updates, but is reported as never having a definite fix; although some report successfully deleting and re-downloading apps to regain access, others find the solution either having no effect or gradually decaying over time to where the apps again fail to run. Restoring the iPhone also seldom works.

Head over to AppleInsider for more news about the e-mail heard ’round the world…

Just fix my iPhone 3G… September is right around the corner

As recently discussed, many 3G iPhone users are experiencing dropped connections as they wander between the EDGE and HSDPA portions of AT&T’s network. According to Richard Windsor, an analyst with Nomura Securities, the problem is most likely a flaw in Infineon s 3G chip. “We believe that these issues are typical of an immature chipset and radio protocol stack where we are almost certain Infineon is the 3G supplier,” said Windsor this week in a research note to investors. According to Windsor, the problem likely isn’t firmware upgradeable, meaning that Apple would need to physically replace the chips on phones exhibiting the behavior.
read comment(s)

Link to the original article…

Fire up your iTunes ya’ll. Seems like 2.01 is finally out after a rather rapid beta seeding of the 2.01 beta that was heard about just as recently as the end of last week.

So that means that you can now install everything from Skype to Photoshop, it allows for you to copy and paste, and it has iChat!*

*Ok, ok. I admit, I’m lying.

Seriously, it’s just some bugfixes. Huge download (about 260mb), took forever to install (near 10 minutes), my iPhone 3G does actually seem to be a bit faster though (yay!).

We’re not sure how this one got past Apple’s App Store censors, but the clever kids at Nullriver have released what appears to be the first tethering solution for the iPhone. The $10 NetShare app is just a SOCKS proxy that links an ad-hoc WiFi network to the iPhone’s 3G or EDGE connection — and if we could get it to work, we’d probably think it was a fine, if hacky, solution to a major limitation of Steve’s baby. As it stands, though, the instructions are pretty sparse, and while we can get the app to recognize a connection, we’re not able to actually load anything. We’re not sure how long this one’s going to last — anyone else willing to give it a shot before it gets yanked?

As an iPhone owner, I noticed the above story over at Engadget while at work yesterday. I just put it in the back of my mind as something I’d do a little later in the day, spend the $10 bucks on the Nullriver app that allows my iPhone 3G to do something I’ve been wanting to since I’ve had the thing… connect to it wirelessly via my Nokia N810 or laptop while mobile.

That is until Apple, who had previously allowed and authorized the useful app into their coveted App Store, adding a functionality that’s on most smartphones worth more than 2 cents, as well as jailbroken iPhones as well. For free.

So at the end of the day, what happens? Apple pulls the app. Now who do the geeks with an iPhone that’s honestly lacking a few areas of functionality that other users have had for years get mad at? AT&T or Apple?

Can’t say that I’m surprised though.

Update: It’s back in the Apple App Store. I couldn’t even begin to tell you what’s going on with this; but if you really wanted it, go get it now before they change their mind… again.

Update: And it’s gone again.