YouTube video courtesy of morph123master

Here's a free iPhone app for your weekend amusement...

Shakin' Faces Morph123 Lite

The demo video above pretty much sums up its function: Take two photos, shake your iPhone, and watch the photos morph (change) from one image to the other with intermediate steps display along the way.

You can find it in the Apple iTunes App store here...

Shakin' Faces Morph123 Lite download

A free iPhone app from Consumer Reports is available in the iTunes App Store...

Consumer Reports iPhone app

It provides, what looks to me like, full articles from the ConsumerReports.org blogs . And, for you fellow gadget geeks, the app has separate sections for electronics, mobile electronics, and GPS.

Zagat, well known for their city guides, teamed with Handmark to deliver...

Zagat To Go '09 for iPhone

This $9.99 app is available from the Apple iTunes App Store and provides 40,000 reviews for, as they say, a price less than a single hardcopy Zagat Guide. The app will be updated through the end of 2009. The app will remain functional after that point but not updated (presumably to encourage you to buy Zagat '10).

There's an interesting little teaser in its iTunes Application Description that reads: COMING SOON: it'll work offline, too!. This promised upcoming feature should make the product more useful to iPod touch users who need a good disconnected experience for this product.

Notice something different about the iPhone's Safari mobile web browser after the 2.2 firmware update? Yep, there's a Google search text box (I call it a bubble, but that's just me) next to the web address (URL) text box. I'm not quite sure I like it yet. I liked being able to see a bit more of the URL. But, this feature may grow on me.

And, although I have not made any timing tests yet, I think Safari is rendering relatively complex web pages (like this one) faster than prior to the 2.2 update.

Unlike the Google Maps Street Views feature, the new iTunes Podcast streaming feature is available on both the iPhone and iPod touch. The screen shots here were all made using my first generation iPod touch. As you can see here, there are three main ways of browsing available audio and video podcasts. You can see the What's Hot view above.

The Top Tens views lets you drill down into the top 10 podcasts for each category listed.

And, the Categories view lets you see all podcasts within a category and its sub-categories.

The MSNBC Rachel Maddow video podcast would not play on my iPod touch. The error message given said: This movie format is not supported. So, I went down the list and tried the CNN Anderson Cooper 360 video podcast which played as expected. The video and audio quality was as good as expected.

This podcast streaming essentially provides audio and video on demand. You have to wonder how long it will be before Apple lets us stream TV shows or movies.

One of the T-Mobile G1's features that impressed me the most was its Google Maps Street View with compass orientation. The iPhone 3G does not have a compass. But, the 2.2 firmware upgrade does add Google Maps Street View. If you touch the human icon in the red background (next to the label Union St. in this example), you will see the Street View (example below).

You can use your fingertip to drag the view around the point you are at. Touching the circular map icon on the bottom right of the screen returns you to the map view.

I was really impressed by how fast I could move around Street View to look around the area. And, I really wish Apple had provided this in the iPod touch update too.

The iPhone 2.2 firmware update weighs in at 246.4MB. The iPod touch 2.2 firmware upgrade is even larger at 248.2MB. And, although most of the changes read the same as the iPhone update text, there are couple of differences. Google Map Street View is not available on the iPod touch. This is too bad since it would be usable in an arm chair as well as when actually on the streets.

There is one iPod touch change that is NOT noted in the iPhone firmware release information. I'm not sure if it is unique to the iPod touch, but here it is:

- Fixed issues where some users could not connect to secure WPA Wi-Fi networks

I've never had problems with the iPod touch's ability to connect to networks secured using WPA. In fact, I've found that it connects to such networks faster and more reliably than any of my Windows Mobile smartphones.

The iPhone and iPod touch version 2.2 firmware update weighs in at a hefty 246.4MB and provides the following changes:

- Map enhancements
-- Google Street view
-- Public transit & walking directions
-- Display address of dropped pins
-- Share location via email
- Mail enhancements
-- Fixed problems related to scheduled email fetches
-- Improved formatting of wide HTML email
- Safari stability & performance improved (I'll be the judge of that!)
- Podcasts can be wirelessly downloaded directly using iTunes app
- Decrease in call set-up failures and call drops
- Improved sound quality of visual voicemail messages
- Pressing the Home button from any Home screen takes you to the first Home screen
- Preference to turn on/off auto-correction in Keyboard settings

The security fixes related to the 2.2 update can be found here:

About the security content of iPhone OS 2.2 and iPhone OS for iPod touch 2.2

Screenshot courtesy of Orb Networks

A number of my friends have been streaming live TV to their Windows Mobile smartphones for a couple of years using Slingplayer. For some reason, I've never felt the need to watch live streaming TV on the go. But, I seem to be in the minority on this topic.

Kevin Tofel over at jkOnTheRun notes that...

Orb 2.0 brings live television streaming to iPhone, no jailbreak needed

...and is available from the iTunes Apps Store in two versions: A free limited lite edition and a $9.99 full version. The desktop app that serves up the live TV stream only runs on Windows PCs. So, Mac users are out of luck (hmm, unless, one the three virtualization hypervisors can talk to a TV tuner running in Windows as Guest OS on a Mac with Orb running in Windows).

You can learn more about this new iPhone app on this Orb webpage...

OrbLive for iPhone

Did you know Apple started their own App of the Week list this month? Yep, you can find it here...

Apple iPhone App of the Week

Here's a list of the iPhone apps they've chosen for App of the Week so far...

Nov. 17 - Air Sharing (wireless file sharing)
Nov. 10 - X-Plane 9 (flight simulator)
Nov. 3 - Spore Origins