The latest rumour reads like it’s August all over again, but it does have one particularly disappointing aspect. According to the source, the iPod touch camera will match the not-so-hot quality of the nano’s.

Here’s to hoping the engineers can somehow stuff the iPhone’s camera into an iPod Touch. Sure, there’s not much space to work with in the Touch, but we can believe. [The Examiner via 9 to 5 Mac]

The neatest thing about this demo isn’t that 20 iPod touches have combined to make a giant touch display; the neatest thing is that the technology can scale.

Both the proof-of-concept video and the above illustration are by Japanese design house PROTOTYPE. Their giant hive display can begin a chain reaction when someone touches one iPod, or it’s even possible to “drop” some items between iPods (I don’t read that as full drag-and-drop capability).

Unfortunately, I have many more posts to write today, so I can’t calculate the size of a 16×9 display made up of the 50 million or so iPhone/iPod touch handsets out there. But I’m sure that someone in the comments simultaneously loves maths and hates their job enough to make this numeric factoid enter our existence. [Mongoose via technabob]

Apple Announces Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the App Store

CUPERTINO, Calif., Nov. 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Apple® today announced that developers have created over 100,000 apps for the revolutionary App Store, the largest applications store in the world. iPhone® and iPod touch® customers in 77 countries can choose from an incredible range of apps in 20 categories, including games, business, news, sports, health, reference and travel. App Store users have downloaded well over two billion apps, continuing to make it the world’s most popular applications store.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

Apple continues to improve search and discovery with new features including Genius for Apps, App Store Essentials selections, sub category listings and more valuable customer reviews. With the recently introduced iTunes® 9, it’s also now easier than ever to organize and sync your apps right in iTunes and they will automatically appear on your iPhone or iPod touch with the same layout.

The release of iPhone OS 3.0 this summer made over 100 new features available to iPhone and iPod touch users including Cut, Copy and Paste; MMS; landscape view for Mail, Text and Notes; stereo Bluetooth; shake to shuffle; parental controls; automatic login at Wi-Fi hot spots and Push Notifications. These new features have been incredibly popular with customers and there have already been more than two billion Push Notifications sent to apps available from the App Store. Additionally, the recently introduced In App Purchase feature for free apps means leading developers will now be able to offer customers the choice of buying content, subscriptions and digital services from directly inside their apps.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

Apple is in the process of retiring their massive fleet of Windows CE handhelds, made by Symbol Technologies and introduced back in 2005, with custom-designed iPod Touches. The initial announcement made this sound like a self-satisfied, gloating move by Apple, during which they’d happily—and publicly—ditch their clunky, ugly, jury-rigged handhelds for sleek, shiny iPod Touches. But judging by the photos nabbed by AppleInsider, this isn’t quite the case.

Apple’s point-of-sale touches take advantage of OS 3.0’s hardware accessory support a lot. Each one will be wrapped in a large plastic case, which includes a barcode scanner up top and a card reader slot in the side, as well as an extra battery. The whole assemblage — iPod included — is powered through a mini USB port. Naturally, sales will be carried out with a custom iPhone app; not so naturally, credit card signatures need to be entered with a stylus, almost like you’re using Windows Mobile (OH GOD!). Or, you know, paper.

More pictures at [AppleInsider]

The dev says that only the iPhone 3GS and latest iPod touch have the CPU, GPU and OpenGL ES 2.0 support to possibly handle smooth N64 emulation. But the “top-notch” N64 games might not be available “just yet”.

Of course, the even bigger hurdle is a reasonable enough control scheme to make the games remotely playable to begin with. I had enough problems with the real N64 controller, so it’s tough to imagine the iPhone handling things with any greater success. [All Tech Related via Maxconsole]

In a blog post from May, Carmack says he loves that players port Doom to every device imaginable, but he’s disappointed that there’s rarely any real effort to build a new, functional control scheme on platforms without a keyboard and mouse. In other words, he’d rather that instead of everyone stopping at “Does it run Doom?” they ask “Does it play Doom?”

That’s why he personally developed the controls for the iPhone version, and according to early reviews, the iPhone can now play Doom. Users are saying controls as good as you would expect from Carmack. Not to mention the other enhancements like 24-bit lighting.

Sure, you might have put the game on your jailbroken iPhone years ago, but graphical upgrades and tighter controls might make it worth the $US6.99 admission price. [Recombu]

The case—which costs $120—is available in both iPod Touch and iPhone flavours (although iPhone won’t arrive until December) and has the following specs:

• solar panels outputs 5.5V at 100 mAh in full sun
• Optimised power management system provides continuous
charge to iPod touch’s internal battery.
• Integrated rechargeable 1500 mAh 3.7 V lithium-ion polymer
battery offers 120% capacity of iPhone 3G
• Advanced lithium-ion polymer battery cell technology prevents
overcharging and provides protection from extreme temperature
• Custom engineered USB 2.0 cable provides high capacity charging and data exchange

[iWorld]

I contacted local distributor iWorld about this, and they told me that the decision to purchase the iLuv stock with a camera hole was Target’s. Apparently iLuv (along with a few other manufacturers, it seems) jumped the gun a bit in creating cases for the 3rd gen iPod Touch, and now there are crates in warehouses full of versions with useless camera holes.

In other words, the fact Target are selling cases with a hole for the mysteriously absent camera for iPod Touch doesn’t mean anything other than the guy who buys stuff for Target didn’t really pay too much attention to the specs on the new iPod Touch when he placed his order for cases.

Still, there’s still a chance Apple will release a Touch with a camera next year. Who wants to start that rumour?

[Thanks Ryan!]

The Price

$US80

The Verdict

Mikey is a nice, solid-feeling little mic for the iPod or iPhone. When used as a voice notes recorder, holding it up to your mouth, the standard setting of sensitivity doesn’t offer much of a difference versus the built-in mic. The ability to set the sensitivity for other uses, however, makes a big difference.

Setting it on a table to record an interview or conversation, for example, results in distant-sounding and quiet audio using the built-in mic. With the Mikey set to the most sensitive setting, however, the audio comes across clearly and loudly. For louder recordings, such as concerts, it’ll do its best to keep things from getting overblown. If you use that low-sensitivity setting for normal use, of course, you won’t be able to hear a thing.

At $US80, it’s tough to recommend for casual users, but for people who want to turn their iPod or iPhone into a more versatile portable audio recorder, it’s pretty great.

And a note: while the Mikey isn’t certified for use with the iPhone, and will prompt you to put it into aeroplane mode if you plug it in to an iPhone, it works just fine. Blue Microphones tells me that the next version will be certified for iPhone and will lose the prompt. [Mikey]

Sensitivity settings work great for various types of recordings

Looks and feels really solid

$US80 is too expensive for an accessory like this

I need SmartScreen in my iPhone, an application that allows you to place Dashboard-like widgets on the lock screen, so you can quickly access small pills of information quickly without having to get into applications. Smart, smooth, and oh-so-nice.

I don’t know about you, but I wish I could have access to bits of information in my iPhone without having to access the applications themselves. Calendar, Twitter, weather, Facebook updates…widgets that will only display data and, with one click, go straight to the app itself to do an action. That will allow the iPhone to have a customised front end like the Motoblur in the new Motorola Cliq.

Sadly, it won’t be available from the Apple iTunes Store: It requires to jailbreak your phone. However, it’s completely worth the effort, especially if they include some useful widgets with it. The developer is going to publish an SDK for it:

A SmartScreen SDK will be available to everyone in November 2009 but widget developers are being selected to participate in a Beta programme, if you feel you could participate and would like to produce widgets, please email dev@media-phone.ch and we will consider you early access to the programme.

I’m looking forward to the widgets people can come up with. I just hope SmartScreen doesn’t require me to paint my nails with glitter in order to use it. I like my current fluorescent green, thank you very much. [Media Phone]