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If you are an iPhone owner, and you won’t through all the trouble to deal with AT&T and tie yourself up for a couple of years with their service contract, you probably know how to get the best out of your iPhone. Whether it’s watching YouTube videos, surfing the net, or texting, you can do it all with the Phone.

But many newbies still have trouble getting the true value from what they paid a fortune for. If you buy the iPhone and just use it to answer your phone calls, then you are seriously mistreating your phone. So I have decided to provide 5 sources that can potentially provide you with more ways to get the best out off your iPhone.

• Wallpapers for your iPhone: We all have come to love how the iPhone looks and feels but you don’t have to be stuck with the same look and fee. Try playing with iPhone wallpapers to give some variety to your iPhone life. Zedge is a good resource to look at. You can also try out the Wallpapers offered by Jamster.
• Ring tones for your iPhone: Nothing can spice of your life like getting a new ring-tone for your iPhone. You can try places such as Jamster to get the tone that you feel is right for your phone. Don’t forget to try MacMost. They have some good tones as well.
• Videos for your iPhone: Watching videos on your iPhone is a must really. Why have a super media device such as iPhone and not use it for these that it does best. Sure. iPhone has a fairly tiny screen, but it’s still good enough to see videos from MetaCafe or YouTube. Not only that, you can download movies and videos for your iPhone from various sources. You can try Videos4iPhone, PhoneHub, PDC. Of course, you can catch more videos on AOL Video, MetaCafe, and YouTube.
• Web Apps for your iPhone: the most fun that you can have with your iPhone is by taking advantage of the web apps that are available for the iPhone. I feel strongly about Web Apps being the best way to get the best out of your iPhone. Here are the top few in my book:
  • ESPN Mobile: Life without ESPN is life without joy!
  • Emergency Car Care Guide: I don’t know about you, but if my car goes down without me having a guide, I rather leave the car and walk home on foot as I am hopeless with cars.
  • Blind Chess Trainer: I don’t know about you, but I love the blind chess better than I do the normal chess. It’s very exhaustive for mind, but it’s a lot of fun. It also prevents alzheimers disease. It’s a fact.
  • Price.Is: Are you a bargain junkie? I am. I check techdeals, techbargains, slickdeals, dailyfind, deals of america for the latest deals everyday. Price.Is brings that your iPhone. Lovely!
  • Backgammon: crazy about Backgammon? Playing it on the iPhone is even more fun.
  • Call Checker: I don’t know about you, but I get extremely annoyed when people call 3 AM in the morning and the first thing they ask is, “what time is it over there?” If you don’t know what time it is, then why are they calling? If you know it’s too late, why are they calling? Don’t do that to others! Use Call Checker.

Finally, don’t forget to keep up with the blogs. I would start with Bloglines top 1000. I am sure you will have enough time to keep up with all of them! Whatever you do, don’t let your iPhone to waste. Suggestions for content? Please share!

The launch of the new iPhone is upon us. It is rumored that the iPhone 3G will start selling July 11th, 6:00 a.m sharp. We all remember last year’s deal when people had to wait for hours in line to get their hands on the iPhone. Here are a couple of pointers if you are going to go for the 3G this year:

1. There is no I in team: Team work is extremely important if you want to minimize your time staying in line and get your hands on the new iPhone as soon as possible. Last year I only tried the Apple store, and found out that the AT&T stores in my area where bascially deserted. Now depending on where you live, you may have to switch back and forth between these two stores. Why not go after the iPhone in team. Grab a friend, a relative, anyone you can find in the streets, and go as a team. Team work always pays off.
2. Aim for a few hours: there is a good chance that you will have to wait more than a couple of hours to get your hands on the phone. You could also get lucky and get your phone in only 10 minutes, but it doesn’t hurt to set your expectations low. Make sure you have water, beverage, and whatever else you may need after a couple hours of wait.
3. Don’t forget your old iPhone: Not a lot of people forget their cell phones when they go out. But come July 11th, you need to have your phone ready in case your store runs out of iPhones. It shouldn’t happen but it could, so plan for it.

I would get early (like 4:00 a.m) to get in line. Going earlier than that is just not worth it in my opinion. At the same time, don’t expect to get there 5:30 am and be the first in line. Everybody can do 30 minutes early. But 2 hours early? Now that would be a challenge to at least 70% of iPhone shoppers. But don’t be surprised if you see people in line that early. I was surprised the first time but it happens all the time.

That is the question everyone is asking as we draw closer to the release date announcement at WWDC. So what’s the best way to get the iPhone 2.0? Well. For those of us who were lucky enough to have the pleasure of sitting outside stores for hours to get our hands to iPhone, this time around will be a bit easier as we are more experienced.

So here are the options:

• Wait endless hours and get your hands on it at the Apple/AT&T Store
• Order online from the Apple Store
• Get it on eBay!

I personally recommend the first one as the second option really didn’t work for me. I remember every time I tried the online store, it was either down or unresponsive. And after a short while it went out of stock. The store thing has become a tradition for true Apple fans. It is sort of a badge of honor to have the patience to wait in line for hours to have your hands on these iPhones as early as possible.

I strongly recommend going to the Apple store. Much better than AT&T store in my opinion. Unfortunately, there aren’t many of them around in my area so that was a hassle but if you are stuck between an Apple and AT&T store, go directly to Apple.

The online store thing could definitely work if you are vigilant enough to order your iPhone as soon as possible. Of course, if you log in and see that the site is down or very slow, then you are probably experiencing iPhone lover laziness syndrome (ills). No doubt a lot of people will attack the online store, so know what you are dealing with beforehand.

eBay is the shark land these days. I personally believe it is immoral for someone to buy iPhones just to sell them for twice they are worth on eBay. Of course, I understand the business side of it, and many of these people feel entitled to all the profit they are getting as they suffer to get their hands on the iPhones as early as possible. Having said that, not cool to make the iPhone not affordable for many of us and make us wait for Apple to restock. But if you have money to burn, go for it. Just make sure you don’t buy a piece of paper that has iPhone 2.0 written on it (a  piece of paper with the word PS3 sold for $350 on eBay once, so strangers things have happened.

These are all reasonable options, but if you decide to go with the first option, make sure you use the remaining time we have till the release date to train yourself for the ultimate test of endurance and patience. Good luck!

I have personally seen a few sites that don’t quite look good on small screens such as that of iPhone. If you are a blogger, and you use wordpress interfact to blog, then you may experience some difficulties while trying to blog on your iPhone. WPhone plug in for your iPhone is exactly what you need to solve this problem. This plug in sits between you and your Wordpress interfact and makes it very easy to write and edit posts. If you haven’t tried WPhone yet, you can catch it here.

iPhone 1.1.2 firmware came out recently and many iPhone users have now updates their iPhone’s from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 firmware. One of the issues that some of my colleagues have experienced with their iPhones is the low sound volume. In other words, the volume is so low that you can’t hear the sound that is coming from the other side. Here are what you may be dealing with here:

iPhone Hardware problem: iPhone is not perfect, and you may have gotten the wrong phone. If you got your iPhone with 1.1.2 installed on it, then there is probably no way for you to tell if this was a hardware problem or a soft issue. I would suggest downgrading to 1.1.1 to fix the issue if you can. Of course, if you are still experiencing the issue then you should take your iPhone to an Apple Store to see if they can fix it.  Of course, make sure you have your volume turned up before taking it to Apple Store. I have not heard anyone having this experience with 1.1.1 firmware so I suspect it is soft issue, but you may have a bad iPhone in your hands too! Please feel free to share your experience if you have seen any issues with the 1.1.2 firmware.