Some people whinge and complain about the iPhone's lack of simple key features. Other people take matters into their own hands.

While getting video recording onto your jailbroken iPhone 3G isn't exactly new, it's been spelled out here by gadget-fan and YouTube blogger Blunty in simple enough terms that (almost) anyone can do it. If you can't live without the ability to record video on your mobile phone, then this is definitely the best place to start.

[GadgetSplaff - Thanks Goober!]

Tascam—last heard of here on Giz with a portable MP3 guitar "trainer"—has come up with another gizmo that may interest you if you're a guitarist. The GT-R1 is a portable MP3 recorder for capturing your axe work, capable of recording to MP3/WAVE at 48/44.1 kHz 24-bits uncompressed. That's not bad quality, and since it works with SDHC, you'll have plenty of recording time. Better yet it's got multiple effects built-in, and also has a "trainer" function which allows you to play along with your fave tracks at your choice of speed—without changing the pitch. Sounds pretty handy, and it'll be out August 26th in Japan for around US$310. [Akihabaranews]

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If you're covering an event and already carrying a huge gear bag with a laptop, camera, emergency Cliff bars and all the rest, QuickVoice is a welcome replacement for a standalone digital voice recorder. We like QuickVoice as a late addition to our favourites for its pause feature, which allows you to start and stop recordings without creating a whole new clip.

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Manufacturers are powering up on their Blu-ray disc development, now the format war's over: just two weeks ago we had the 6x speed ones, and now Delkin have these archive-quality discs. According to Delkin they're the first BDs "guaranteed to preserve data safely for over 200 years" and they use some sort of patented phase-change tech to make the discs resistant to UV degradation. They're also 25GB, 4x speed burnable, and have an anti-scratch coating. You're only going to want to preserve really important stuff on them though: a ten-pack will cost you US$250. Now, to find a Blu-ray player that'll last two centuries... [Reghardware]

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This isn't the first product to come down the pipeline offering portable audio recording capabilities for the iPod, but the new ProTrack from Alesis is definitely the most feature-rich. According to the press release, the ProTrack is "the world's first professional handheld digital stereo recorder for iPod" with two built-in high-quality condenser microphones, a pair of combination XLR - 1/4-inch inputs and a 1/8-inch stereo output. The device should be available sometime in Q3 for iPod (Classic or 5th Generation), or iPod nano (2nd or 3rd Generation)--but a price has yet to be determined.

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The Nintendo DS remake of the old Dreamcast favourite Bangai-O Spirits has one very notable feature that we haven't seen in years. Kotaku found out that instead of using Nintendo's local Wi-Fi or over-the-net DS codes, you share levels via audio recording. Once you've designed something you want your friends to see, it'll play back that level as an audio recording that you can record it as an audio file on your computer, then send however you send files normally.

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Qik's been doing live video streaming (think live YouTube) from Nokia S60 mobile phones for a few months now, but Mobilecrunch has the scoop that they're expanding to Windows Mobile phones shortly. The support and partnership will be officially announced next week at Tech-Ed, which will give WM users the ability to stream stuff like concerts and their wives giving birth (it's happened) direct from their handhelds. Qik's also thinking about the new iPhone, of course, but that's pending whatever features get announced next week. [Mobile Crunch via Crunchgear]

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The Gadget: This olympus microphone plugs into a recorder and your ear, recording whatever you hear. That makes it perfect for recording mobile phone interviews, which traditional telephone voice recorder setups meant for landlines can't.

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Sony's President and Electronics CEO, Ryoji Chubachi, hinted at new areas that their Blu-ray technology could expand into, including burners that sit inside LCD HDTVs with "recording" functionality. If this means that your future Sony TV will be able to record HDTV shows onto Blu-ray, that would be super neat (and rather convenient). What we'd really like is for Sony TVs to DVR functionality, which you could then offload shows you wanted to back up onto Blu-ray. We'd definitely pay for that. [Digitimes]

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The University of Rochester has just devised a way of reproducing music in a file that's compressed 1,000 times smaller than an MP3 file. The way they do it—physically modelling an instrument in a computer and then feeding it input variables (breath, tongue, fingers) in order to generate the output tone—seems super obvious. People were making music with MOD files by recording one tone and generating different notes with it back in the '90s. But actually reproducing the instrument wholesale? That's amazing.

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