Earth Hour, founded by the World Wildlife Fund, has been steadily growing in participation since its Sydney inception in 2007. With 50 million participants it has become a global statement for the sustainability movement. And now, with a completely straight face, the WWF and the Leo Burnett group have released 60+, the official Earth Hour iPhone app.

The goal of the app is to help encourage everyday people to do more for the environment and extend Earth Hour beyond a simple annual event. Just because you turned off the lights for an hour doesn’t mean you should stop thinking about the environment by using an electronic device.

Like many location-based services, the app uses to-dos and checkins. You can check in actions you’ve taken to help reduce the human impact on the environment. The app provides you a list of such actions including using more natural light, changing the air-con setting or installing a water-saving showerhead. Oddly enough, not charging your iPhone doesn’t appear on the list.

Checking in actions nets you achievements which can then be shared across larger social networks.

The WWF will also use the app to track global and individual checkins to help measure Earth Hour’s impact and participation levels. Game Centre support is forthcoming so that you can have empirical proof that you are, in fact, Greener Than Thou.

The app looks very cool and rustic on your high-tech screen, since all of the design elements are actually taken from hand drawings. The designs were done on recycled cardboard and paper and the badges were hand-sewn. And then turned into pixels and beamed to you across a network of transmitters from massive computer servers all over the world.

Despite this charge, it can still be a cheaper way to check your voicemail from overseas. Check voicemail the normal, i.e. calling your inbox to listen to your messages can quickly end up costing you a fortune since you have to pay exorbitant rates for international calling –  just under 4.50/minute on Telstra (or just under 3 bucks on Vodafone) from China for example.

But visual voice mail is a little different. Instead of dialling your voice mail, visual voice mail sends your messages to you as highly compressed data files. A 30 second message ends up being about 85kb. The practical upshot is this – when travelling outside of Australia, instead of paying for international calling rates, all you pay for is the fee for the data transfer. Yeah, its still at international rates but since the files are so small, it’s still cheaper. Telstra charges 1.5 c/kb (Vodafone is once again cheaper at 1c/kb) for casual data roaming; do the math.

Better yet, let me do it for you. A 30 second message played back from China on Telstra would cost abnout 2.25 (plus 40c flagfall, so its reall 2.65). On the other hand, downloading and then playing back that same message with visual voicemail would cost about 1.25. Even with the 5 dollar a month fee you still break even if you listen to six messages in a month.

If you travel for business or are planning a trip overseas, consider the visual voicemail option. You won’t save enough to buy a house except in Southeast Asia), but you might just pay for your airport reading with it.

Romance of Rome, their latest offering, places you in the role of an adventurous young lad named Marcus as he tries to win the girl of his dreams by finding hidden stuff throughout the imperial capital. The story is told through comic-esque cutscenes complete with (slightly cheeseball) voice acting.

Of course, this is just window dressing to the main gameplay, which is finding stuff, Where’s Wally style, in various locations. Since you’ll spend so much time staring at them, it’s great that the locations look great and have a real Roman feel to them.

But you won’t be spending all your time in just one screen. As you find and collect items you can turn them in for money which you use to buy other items, some of which are really helpful in-game. Another twist is that some characters will give you quests to find specific items that they need to accomplish some goal. Help them out and you’ll be rewarded. It adds a new layer of depth to a genre that can otherwise be pretty dull.

The app is pretty kid-friendly – nothing violent or offensive (I wouldn’t want to know what kind of items you might find in a game that realistically depicted ancient Rome) and the hints system is pretty forgiving, so it makes a good distraction for the kiddies but its quest system and interesting locations mean that you may find yourself fighting with the little ones to find that last item.
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Style is what iPhones are all about and the new Black Diamond dock is nothing if not stylish. Rather than being designed purely for music, the Black Diamond appeals to another sense – sight. The dock is a partial sphere with a geodesic pattern on the front and an angled slot in the back for your iPhone. The base is a rubber ring to keep the thing from rolling off the desk. Two small holes that correspond to the iPhone’s speakers so that audio still plays clearly. The faceted facing is translucent so that the display of the phone lights it up when inserted.

To get the most out of the Black Diamond you’ll need the Black Diamond app. The app has four features. The first, Effects, allows you to select different psychedelic light shows to display. The shifting patterns light up the Black Diamond, giving it an ethereal, lava lamp-like quality. The effect is cool, but quite subtle. You’ll really only see it in the dark, which brings us to the Sleep function. This lets you select music from your iTunes library and set a timer for how long it plays. The Wake-Up function is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin, or would be if it didn’t crash constantly. A bit more work needed there. The IM function alerts you whenever you receive an incoming message, provided that it’s an MSN message as other types are not supported yet.

Overall, the Black Diamond doesn’t do much besides look slick but it does that very well. With a bit more stability in the app, it would make a cool conversation piece and nightlight while you’re recharging your iPhone. Its an interesting idea – that docks don’t have to be boring but for the price you’d think that the supporting app would, you know, work.
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With the ubiquity of Flash on the internet, the iPhone’s lack of support for the program has always been a pain for iPhone users. However, Apple has green-lighted a new add-on for Safari that should solve the problem. The add-on, developed in the US by Skyfire will make all Flash video viewable on the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. 

Previously, when Apple users attempted to view a flash video they would receive an error message but the new app promises to fix the problem.

Apple and Adobe have a history of bad blood, with Steve Jobs making a point of not supporting Flash on the iPhone, citing security and the fact that Adobe was a “closed proprietary” system.

“Rather than use Flash, Apple has adopted HTML5, CSS and JavaScript – all open standards,” he wrote in April 2010.

According to Skyfire CEO Jeffrey Glueck his company had to do a bit of “engineering magic” to get around the iPhone’s Adobe issues.

The “magic”, said Glueck, was that it wouldn’t put Flash on the device because that’s “not kosher”.

Skyfire solved the problem by remotely rendering Flash files that a user attempts to view on the go into the Apple-approved HTML5 format.

“It’s a browser for the iPhone that solves that pesky problem when you encounter a Flash video and you get that ‘Flash missing’ error message and you can’t watch it,” he said.

“We’re bringing a technology – a browser – that allows you to see all those videos which we translate in to Apple-approved formats on the fly so that you can on your iPod Touch or iPhone see billions of videos that were previously unavailable.”

The browser only supports Flash videos and not Flash games or Flash apps and not all websites are supported. To check if the Skyfire browser supports your favourite websites, go to http://www.bit.ly/site_check. Even so, with so much internet content built in Flash, this workaround is a welcome relief to frustrated browsers. The current version of the browser is 2.2.1 and it’s a free download.

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Sometimes you just need to take a few minutes and do something mindless and fun. There’s an app for that. Actually, there are hundreds. Here are three ways to take a small mental holiday.

Oz Punch

One thing people of all political shades can agree on: sometimes you want to punch your elected officials in the face. With Oz Punch you can do just that. If you’re tired of hearing Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott exchange barbs on TV and want to watch them finally get down to brass tacks, Glide PTY’s Oz Punch lets you select one of six Aussie politicos and duke it out against the computer or another player.

Sleepmaker: Rain

Ah, the power nap. Find a hidey hole and get your head down for a few. But getting to sleep can be tough when you’re in the middle of the city. Or maybe you just need to take a moment and re-centre yourself. The solution is Sleepmaker: Rain Pro. This app consists of real recordings of rainfall in World Heritage listed Tassie forests. Featuring programmable sleep timers and fade outs and mulit-tasking functionality, this app lets you take a quick jaunt to Tassie whenever you need a break.

Oz Quiz

Want to test your knowledge of Australia fair? Oz Quiz contains over 600 questions and answers on topics like geography, sport, history and more. With version 3.0 or later you can compare your scores online or you could always play on your own.

There you have it. Whether its political frustration, insomnia or existential angst over lack of knowledge of your home country, these iPhone apps can clear out the mental pipes and get you back on track. All are available on iTunes for about a buck except for Sleepmaker, which is 4.99.
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Thanks for reading this far, Part 2 is Coming Soon!

In our view Apple’s history of re-inventing it’s most successful devices (think back to all the iPhone rumours that were circulating before it launched) leads us to believe that this device may be much more than early reports have suggested.

First of all what exactly do we know about the new Apple tablet?  It depends on the source you read but the most commonly accepted description is consistent with a report that appeared on Gizmodo.com in August this year:

“The device…..is going to have a 10 inch screen, and when I saw it looked just like a giant iPhone, with a black back— although that design could change at any time…..with the same black resin back, and the familiar home button….it will come in two editions, one with a webcam and one for educational use.”

Is that all?

In our opinion the key market that Apple will be seeking to gain dominance of will be the electronic book reader (ebook).

Apple already has a strong market position with digital music and video through iTunes and in mini applications (apps) through the App Store.

A new device like the tablet will be expected to leverage those existing strengths but importantly may also provide Apple with an entre into the digital reader market which is currently dominated by Amazon’s Kindle.  With a large colour screen and wireless access the device appears to be ready-made for an assualt on one of the fastest growing market segments.

And why wouldn’t Apple have its eyes on this prize?

Have a look at some of the numbers. At least one analyst of Amazon’s business (Sandeep Aggarwal of Collins Stewart) has forecast US$2 billion of revenue for the Kindle by 2012. This is revenue not solely derived from hardware sales but from the eco-system that surrounds it.  Apple makes enviable profits from those $0.99 downloads on iTunes.  The margins in ebooks should be at least as good.

In its first full year of sales back in 2002, Apple sold just under 400,000 iPods. Two years later that number was approachng 4.5million.

By comparison in its first year of sales Amazon has sold over 500,000 units.

Apple is a savvy operator and arguably the best in the business at developing products that change the way we live, work and play.  The Apple tablet will just not be a bigger iPhone or iPod Touch: it’s going to change the way we buy books.

It is believed that the quality of the songs will not be the same as those purchased fom Apple iTunes but the songs will be able to be played within seconds rather than waiting for the songs to be downloaded.

Users will have digital lockers where the songs can be streamed from and users will be able to synchronise with existing iTunes library so that the songs do not have to be repurchased.

Once users pay the intial 10 cents to have the songs streamed from within Lala they can then listen to the track at anytime via the Lala iPhone App.

The Lala iPhone App could assist in reducing the number of illegally downloaded MP3 files as the songs are essentially streamed and not MP3 files that can easily be downloaded on to other devices.

The Lala iPhone App is set to be released in November pending approval from Apple.

While the process is quite simple, there are a few tricky steps you can easily overlook which will make it tough for you to send an email.

The following is a guide for users when trying to send emails to others.

1)    Tap Enter
2)    Type a name or email address in the ‘to’ field, or tap ‘+’ to add a name from your contacts.
3)    As you type an email address, matching email addresses from your contacts list appear below. Tap an address to add it. To add more names, tap Return or ‘+’.
4)    NOTE: If you’re composing a message from your Microsoft Exchange account and have access to your enterprise Global Address List (GAL), matching addresses from the contacts on iPhone appear first, followed by matching GAL addresses.
5)    Tap Cc/Bcc/From if you want to copy or blind copy the message to others, or change the account you send the message from. If you have more than one email account, you can tap the From field to change the account you’re sending from.
6)    Enter a subject, then your message.
7)    You can tap Return to move from one field to another.
8)    Tap Send.

To Reply to an email, tap ‘Reply’ or ‘Reply all’ if you want to send it to others on the list.

To forward a message, tap ‘Forward’. You can add more email addresses form here.

It is also possible to add videos of photos to emails. Just tap the ‘Add Email’ and ‘Add Photo’ links to do so.