On the 1st September Apple and Steve Jobs unveiled a whole new product range of iPods (some as a surprise) ready for the 2010 holiday season.

A new Shuffle, Nano and Touch all look great but what do you think?? Will you be getting one?

Well the case really changes the way you play games full stop.  It is a mile ahead of using my other case, the Incase Slider for instance.  The Exspect Protective gaming grip is ergonomically brilliant and the grips are in the right place at the rear of the case.  I just have not seen any other iPhone aimed cases like this and is adequate for gaming on the go or at home.  Another advantage is that as much as it is a gaming case, it also satisfies the basic needs of an iPhone user as well.  It fits both the iPhone 3G/3GS as well as the iPod Touch 2G.  So with this, the gaming grip also has all the buttons/ports accessible thus not hampering your demands.  When you feel the case it is lightweight however there is significant reinforcement on the back especially at the ‘leg’ areas but it is debatable how much of a challenge this would provide to a proper iPhone hard case.  Saying that I think it would do a good job the majority of the time.

Obviously this case is aimed at the gaming market and these grips can mean that in everyday use it can be uncomfortable to carry around.  For instance in trousers, especially jeans, the case adds larger thickness making it stand out more.  It doesn’t really add weight just the fact is nearly doubles the thickness of the iPhone which may not be really wanted but thats the pay off you take for getting a better gaming experience.

So the Exspect iPhone Protective Gaming Grip does exactly what it needs to and that is to make gaming more comfortable and easier on the device.  There are the limitations mainly in the added size to the iPhone but if you are after that extra gaming dimension then for between £5 and £15 you can try this special device.

So obviously as you’d expect from a FIFA title, there are 30 official leagues, 570 teams and 12,620 players. You won’t miss anything and I’m really surprised at how much data EA managed to sneak into this game.  You get all the stats for the players like you would on the console versions and obviously the only limitation is the iPhones control interface for you to read all this data.  The music, graphics and menus all shout out that FIFA feeling and they’ve done a good job of bringing the experience over to the portable platform.  Also don’t forget the amount of modes you have and a Manager Mode is great.  It was what I missed with Real Football 2009 and now with a transfer hub and customisable team management there is a lot to do here!

Now obviously the biggest argument against FIFA 10 (and most iPhone games) is the touch screen interface.  It is hard to do a sports game on the device and EA have gone for the D-pad and two button approach similar to Real Football.  But to pull off the more complicated moves like low cross you have to swipe from one button to the next.  It’s not perfect and from my experience isn’t always picked up which can lead to frustrating gaming. Also the “A” and “B” buttons are too small and too close together which EA need to address. Now they do offer 3 presets of moving the buttons around and this can help but it doesn’t make the buttons bigger which would be a godsend.  A minor problem is that the latest transfers don’t seem to be up to date but this should be easily fixed in an update. Other than that there are no little other bugs in the game and I have had no slowdowns or crashes.

So with EA’s first FIFA game on the iPhone platform, they have shown they have a major interest in the mobile gaming market and if they continue to develop the series -- it will continue to be a winner. If you’re interested in football games and have spare time on the go, then why not have a look at FIFA 10 for the iPhone or iPod Touch and take your team to glory!

Available for 59p (a lite version is available for free) all Photo Tweet is, is essentially a photo uploader for the twitgoo service.  And it works exceptionally well for what it touts and I’ve had no bugs or problems running it. The only little niggle is a constant “Optimizing” message coming up everytime I boot the application which takes some valuable seconds.  A great advantage is the ability for the app to automatically resend the photo if you lose connection at all and I have tested this and it works brilliantly.

However what the app is, is also it’s biggest downfall.  It’s just a photo uploader.  Most twitter applications for the iPhone have all of this built in and there is nothing new here. But focusing on just the images is a unique niche idea and only a handful of other apps are trying this and this is where I believe Photo Tweet should expand.  From my experience there are many twitter picture hosts (twitpic,twitgoo etc.) and I think an easy option to select between these would be necessary, as I don’t feel the urge to suddenly stop using twitpic and reallocating my pictures to a new service which Photo Tweet is forcing me to.  Obviously this won’t be as much of a problem if you’re already on Twitgoo but I think it immediately can turn off some users.

The ability to save a photo tweet and schedule it for upload later is apparently contained in the app according to the iTunes description but I can’t seem to find it myself.  This is great for people in a hurry or if you’re a Pay as you Go customer who has no data usage and must wait for a WiFi hotspot.  My apologies if this feature is there but I think a way to make it more user friendly would be to add a Save button next to the Send button when you’re writing a tweet.  This way you could easily decide whether you want to send the photo tweet immediately or to save for later on.

I think the biggest opportunity for Photo Tweet to distance itself from competitors would be to offer image customisation to the market.  Imagine the simple effects (B&W,Sepia,X-Ray) that are in the Mac application Photobooth and now apply them to Photo Tweet.  The option to rotate or crop photos as well as adding speech bubbles on the actual image would be great!  So far I haven’t seen other applications going down this route and these options could add some more fun to the photos you tweet.

So in a way Photo Tweet is a disappointment in it’s current abilities but then again it doesn’t claim to do everything and it does what it claims perfectly.  Hopefully the application developer will see about further enhancing Photo Tweet to distinguish it from the countless Twitter applications out there and make it a must-have app for Twitter addicts.

So at only 59p this game will take up your day and when I’ve been playing time seems to fly by! Get it? Fly by? Ah I crack myself up.  Anyway the easy touch interface makes controlling the complicated task really easy, all you have to do is tap on the plane and tap on the destination be it either the terminal gate or the fuel depot.  The only problem is that during the mid and later levels the planes are coming in thick and fast which can get so busy on screen you tap on the wrong destination.  When you’re trying to get all the bonuses by making all the red planes dock with the red terminal it is very annoying when you accidentally tap the wrong colour terminal which is so frustrating!  All your hard work will have been wasted and the way to cancel a command is to double tap the destination but because the screen area is so small you don’t have enough time to cancel it effectively so it’s all a moment of loss….

Airport Mania does combine some kind of RPG elements albeit small, as you can customise your airport at the start of each stage.  You can add another gate, another runway, a spray paint centre, a VIP stand all to improve the speed of the airport process.  To gain these addons you collect money from completing flights early and making sure they’re not late or delayed.  Pretty simple really and it’s not until you get to the really late levels that you will struggle to make 99.9% of your flights early/on time.  As I mentioned earlier Airport Mania employs a colour coding system.  Each plane has a colour and every time you dock the plane to the gate, the gate also changes to that colour.  To start with there are only a couple of colours so it is easy to send all the blue planes to one gate and all the red planes to another gate.  The benefit of this is that you get a points multiplier x2,x3,x4,x5 etc which makes it a lot easier, and in the later levels necessary, to reach the best medals.  When the levels get on they introduce more colours and because you can only have so many gates you have to choose whether to play for bonuses or risk late, or losing altogether, your flights.  This tactical aspect to the game works quite well and is not required at all to enjoy the game for the majority of the levels.

So with more airplane and airport apps flying into the iTunes App Store, is the craze stale?  Well in this case at least, no.  It’s a different genre altogether from XPlane and is more of a puzzle than action game.  Levels aren’t long and tedious which really sucks you in to just play one more level.  The music is cheesy but works well and Airport Mania is full of light entertainment while also putting in some logical technique across 8 airports and 48 levels.  Will you take up the challenge of running an airport’s arrivals/departures? I know I did.

1. In Settings go to General, then Auto-Lock. Change to Never. If you don’t do this your iPhone will turn itself off automatically halfway through your photo slideshow.
2. In Settings go to Photos. Change Repeat to On. This way the slideshow will continue and not end at the end of your album.

That’s it! Presuming you have some photo albums already synced with your computer and iPhone/iPod Touch then you are ready to enjoy it. Go to Photos and choose your desired album then select the Play symbol at the bottom of the screen.  Then just place your device where you want to see it (I also reccommend putting it in Landscape mode as it presents the image in a better aspect ratio) and leave it to enjoy your photos but beware if you don’t have it plugged into a power source the battery life will drain quickly!  You can change some of the transitions in the Photo settings page to liven it up a bit but unfortunately there aren’t a whole many to choose from. Saying that, it’s better than paying for an application dedicated for the purpose and makes the office look more entertaining.

Here’s what was in my boxes of stuff:

• Maxell Back-up Battery Pack
• Belkin Auto Kit for iPod
• Belkin USB Anywhere
• 1GB SD card
• Portable Shaver
• Random Camera bag

Anyway it’s called Air Mouse Pro and it’s available in the iTunes App store for only £3.49. You also need to download some free server software for either platform to install on your computer first available from http://www.mobileairmouse.com then with the simplest setup ever you’re off and away. The app on the iPhone has a mouse like feature which uses the built in accelerometer to move the pointer around your screen and to be honest they’ve done a good effort but I’ve found it too fiddly to use.  However there is the traditional trackpad, like on a laptop, available which I use and performs gestures like on a Mac so scrolling down on web pages is a breeze! A keyboard is also there to enter in information although I seriously recommend actually using a real keyboard if you’re writing more than a couple of lines; but it all works fine even with a preview on the iPhone’s screen to let you know what you’re typing. I guess this is a handy extra if the actual monitor is too far away to see!

That’s all I really need it for but I was amazed at how much this application packs and yet functions fully. After fiddling with some of the buttons there are shortcut keys for all the common applications like the ones you see on some multimedia keyboards nowadays.  When you have Media Player open you can skip tracks or in Firefox you can refresh the page or go back/forward easily.  They are a nice added extra and for people using it as a dedicated media device probably more important but I don’t mind using the time to move my finger on the trackpad to the refresh button because I enjoy the experience itself so much!  There are other perks available and one is when I connect it to a Mac, the Mac keyboard comes up and on a Windows PC vice versa so you always have the proper set of tools! Congratulations to the developer for being so logical, you’d be surprised how many other applications don’t include these features.

I must stress though that this is NOT a remote client and it does not in any way actually show you your computer screen.  All it is, is an imitation of a mouse and keyboard which works just like any other on your computer so is perfect for making presentations or using it on a media centre dedicated machine etc. What’s nice is the amount of updates that Air Mouse has had and they’re not just bug fixes, I’m talking about decent feature plus updates. I’m looking forward to using this application when I desperately need it and will save me wasting time finding another keyboard!