AT&T Continues to Stay Confident About Losing iPhone Exclusivity

We reported earlier in the month about AT&T downplaying and avoiding questions about the effects it will suffer if and when their iPhone exclusivity runs out. The tune is staying the same from the telephone provider but now they are citing tablets such as the iPad as their future lifeline.

Without getting specific about the rumors of a Verizon iPhone, Glen Lurie (AT&T emerging devices president) says that the company plans to keep "plugging along" at the same rate of success they are now. Yeah, right...

Upload HD Video From Your iPhone With 720tube

Apple is infamous for creating amazing devices that have one too many steps involved in utilizing them fully. The video camera on the iPhone 4 is a great example of this. Uploading HD video to YouTube was a hassle to master. Not anymore  because 720tube lets you do just that.

You choose your video from your camera roll and login to YouTube both from within the app. Then just add a title, description and other information about the clip like you normally would. Upload and enjoy...

Bartab Lets You Buy People Drinks With Your iPhone

You know that virtual beer you can buy your friends on Facebook? It just became even more ridiculous. Mobile Crunch discusses an app entitled Bartab, which lets you send real booze tickets to people whether you know them or not.

The unique application is free in the App Store and  lets you purchase the drink coupon for $1, and then you send it by way of Facebook or text message. When the lucky recipient gets the announcement they show it to the bartender and pay $1 to redeem their beverage. The whole having to pay the bartender makes it a bit less cool but state laws require it...

Apple to Hold “Special Event” on September 1st

Surprisingly, we didn't get an invite for this, but TechCrunch did, and according to it, Apple will be holding a "special event" on September 1st, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco at 10 am.

The invite comes with the image above, which strongly indicates the event will most likely be focused on music. Let the speculations go wild! What are they going to unveil? My guess is we're going to hear about the new iPod Touch with a nice Retina Display and a front-facing camera for FaceTime. Apple will also probably unveil a cloud-based version of iTunes... 

Call InfoFields App Gives More Info About Who’s Calling You

Call InfoFields is a new mod that lets you add an extra contact field of your choice to be shown when you are receiving a call, (ie. Job Title, Email, URL, Address or any other field of the contact that is calling you).

To set it up, just go in the settings and select what additional field of information you would like to display when you receive a call (ie. birthday, URL, job title of the contact, etc...). Obviously this information needs to be populated by you for each contact to be displayed on your phone.

iPhone Game Angry Birds Coming to Toys and Movies?

I wondered when the App Store would produce a hit so huge that it would crossover into a cultural phenomenon. It seems that time is now, and the characters in the the limelight will be the fierce and feathered Angry Birds.

Variety reports that the developers at Rovio have been in talks with Hollywood executives about expanding the iPhone success of Angry Birds to the next level. The following is from the original article...

Will Apple’s iBooks Get iAds?

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the possibility of advertisements hitting the pages of iBooks. This annoying idea is purely speculation but nevertheless worth a thought considering Apple's newest creation, iAds.

Books as an advertising platform would have much more influence than movies or television since readers typically reread a novel over the course of many years. iBooks would be around as long as the buyer decides to keep them on their devices, and that could be a long time considering the limited amount of space they take up.

Movies Rented on The iPhone 4 Can’t Be Transferred Back to iTunes

iLounge reveals a bit of discerning information that took a mysterious amount of time to surface. It turns out that the iPhone 4 shares the same limitations as the iPad and the Apple TV in regards to being unable to transfer rented movies back to your iTunes library.

The ability to move rentals had never been a problem before when renting on previous iPhone models. An excerpt from the iPhone iOS 4 User Guide briefly mentions the limitation on page 99, and it reads as such:

Man Watches His House Get Robbed on His iPhone

Vincent Hunter was visiting relatives in Connecticut when his iPhone sounded an alert that his motion detectors were going haywire in his Dallas home.

When he opened the app on his iPhone he witnessed two burglars attempting to break an entering as he dialed 911.

iCam was the application he had installed on his phone, which is available in the App Store for $4.99. The app allows you to stream live video to your iPhone from up to 4 different webcams.

New Jailbreak App Announces Who’s Calling You

CallTell is a new jailbreak app that will tell you who's calling before your phone starts ringing. If the person who's calling is in your contacts, it will just say his name. How cool is that? The app also works with text messages and can go as far as reading the text message to you!

CallTell only works on the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4. All options can be enabled/disabled within the Settings.app.

You can download CallTell from Cydia for $1.99. Tell us what you think about this app if you download it.

A Unique Hand Engraved iPhone

It only took 8 hours for this guy to hand engrave the bottom of his iPhone bezel.

You can only imagine how long it would take to do it all.

Engraving my iPhone is something I’ve wanted to do for quite some time now, the plain metal border was so tempting. I’ve searched the net, but haven’t yet found any hand engraved iPhones. There are a lot of laser engraved ones and cases, but to me laser engraving is not really a true engraving. So someone must start with the handmade.

For starters I engraved the bottom part of it, so when I did screw up, it wouldn’t be too noticeable. The metal seems to be some kind of stainless steel and a very tough one too. I broke many-many graver tips during the process and at least 1/4th of the time was spent on re-sharpening the gravers.

[Gizmodo]

Apple Announces iTunes U Tops 350,000 Files For Download

TechCrunch announces some inspiring statistics released by Apple that show the educational access platform, iTunes U has leaped over 350,000 available files. Even more impressive is nearly half of the 800 plus universities worldwide that have active iTunes U accounts are distributing their content publicly.

Also revealed were the 300 million downloads recorded to date that are free of charge. Institutions supplying the content include Harvard, MIT, Oxford, and University de Montreal...