Join TiPb tonight for all the week’s news, views, and rants. If you have any questions, leave a comment below, hit us up on Twitter @theiphoneblog, or better still — join us live in the chat room via http://www.tipb.com/live

Chat with you soon!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone Live! Tonight at 8pm ET/5pm PT

Our sibling site, WMExperts.com is doing their part to balance TiPb’s Apple-centricity with a reminder that Microsoft Windows 7 launches tomorrow. However, since most iPhone and iPod touch users are also Windows users, TiPb’s fully on board this new release train as well.

I’ve been using Windows 7 since the beta, and have ordered but not yet received my upgrade licenses (oh, hai Amazon!). Not to get all Mossberg’y, but I’ve found it to be solid, stable, and yes — compatible. However, I liked Vista, so something that sought to make Vista better… it had me from announcement.

Those worried that there might be issues with Windows 7, it looks like both Apple and Microsoft have done everything they needed to do to make sure users would have no problems for iPhone, iPod touch, MobileMe, and/or iTunes 9 users. If you do experience any trouble, hit up TiPb’s iPhone Forums and we’ll be happy to trouble shoot with you.

For now, we’re just curious how many of you plan to upgrade?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Windows 7 Launches Tomorrow, Which iPhone Users are Making the Upgrade?

Earthworm Jim [$4.99 - iTunes link], an iPhone and iPod touch remake of the classic Sega and Nintendo game of the same name, has just landed in the App Store.

Confession: I was a huge Earthworm Jim fan back in the day. The animation sold me instantly, and that animation looks just as good on the iPhone. I’m downloading it now. If anyone else gives it a try, especially old-school fans, let us know what you think.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: Earthworm Jim Blasts its Way Onto the iPhone

The BlueAnt Q1 voice controlled Bluetooth headset for iPhone [$109.95 - TiPb Store] is the higher end version of the BlueAnt V1 I tested last month, and came away impressed with. How impressed? It’s a piece of hardware I would recommend it to anyone in the market for a new bluetooth headset. Now that the good folks over at BlueAnt were nice enough to send me the Q1, will I make the switch? For all of the juicy details follow us after the break!

Similar to the BlueAnt V1, this new and improved Q1 boasts many accessories in the package. Along with the sleek gunmetal voice-controled headset you get large and small earbuds, ear hook, USB cable, AC adapter, and a quick start guide.

In my V1 review I mentioned that the Q1’s improvements may not warrant the higher price to upgrade. I can now honestly say I was wrong. From a first glance, the Q1 looks much more visually appealing to the eye but it does not stop there. The Q1 measures 2.16 inches long while weighing in at .30 oz without the optional ear hook attached and .38 oz with it attached. These specifications help make this headset, hands-down, the most comfortable headset I have ever used. Even with the ear hook attached I can easily go a full day wearing it and not feel any discomfort. With the different sized ear buds and the ear hook you are bound to find a great comfortable fit. The controls are kept simple, you have the volume up/down buttons and the BlueAnt button which acts as power on/off, answer/end calls, and enables voice command.

Now lets get to the good stuff – performance. The BlueAnt Q1 simply out shines all of the competition I’ve tested in the performance category in every way except for battery life. My biggest complaint is that the headset gets 4 hours of talk time and 100 hours of standby. Sure that does not sound bad but when the Q1’s older sibling, the V1, gets one more hour talk time and 100 hours more of standby time… it makes me wonder how BlueAnt dropped the ball on that one. Moving on let’s break down the key features.

• Voice Control with the BlueGenie™ Voice User interface
• Multipoint technology allowing you to connect two handsets at once
• Voice Isolation Technology
• Revolutionary Noise Suppression and Echo Cancellation
• Custom internal wind-shields reduce wind noise to whisper

The first thing I noticed with the improved voice control present on the Q1 was speed dialing. On the V1 I found voice speed dialing worked a bit less than perfectly. I’m happy to report that on the Q1 it works flawlessly. You simply go by your favorite contacts stored within your iPhone. A simple tap of the BlueAnt button and a voice command of “Speed dial 1″ will call the first contact stored within your favorites. Not only can you use voice commands for speed dialing but other things such as checking your battery life, answering/ending phone calls, calling back the last incoming call, redialing your last outgoing call, etc… A great feature that 99% of the time understood what I was saying and completed the task.

Another feature, called multipoint technology, is one that some of you out there can appreciate while others will have no use for. Multipoint technology simply means that you can connect two phones to the Q1 at the same time and answer whichever one happens to be ringing. A nice feature for those of you dual-wielding 2 phones such as your beloved iPhone and say your Blackberry. I know with my previous headsets it would be a pain to have to repair the headset to another one of my phones so this is a welcomed feature.

The biggest improvement I have noticed coming from the V1 to this Q1 is all of the voice isolation technologies that are being implemented within the headset have been improved. When I was in a room with complete silence the person on the other end of the line would hear me crystal clear. The big test was how would it perform in a noisy situation. I am happy to report it faired pretty well. While the BlueAnt Q1 does not use a similar technology to the Jawbone’s noise assassin, the DSP technology in the Q1 does it’s job extremely well. The headset places all ambient noises and makes them sound very distant while raising the sound level of the users voice. Not a single caller complained about not being able to understand me or hear me loud and clear. The biggest improvement over the V1 was made in the wind-sheilds. Living in Chicago I had a great environment to test this out. While all wind noise was not erased, the caller on the other end always was able to hear with me clarity, even with a strong city wind smacking me in the face. Job well done.

Overall the BlueAnt Q1 voice controlled Bluetooth headset for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS is a excellent, top quality headset that should not be passed up if you are in the market for a top of the line piece of technology. Buy it now!

Learn more and purchase @TiPb’s Store >>>

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

BlueAnt Q1 Voice Controlled Bluetooth Headset for iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS

Dear Apple: yesterday, as part of your huge pre-holiday product launch, you announced a new iPhone-inspired multi-touch Magic Mouse with gestures. It looks nice. It might even (finally!) be a decent mouse. But TiPb’s left to wonder — for those of us who already have iPhones and iPod touches, wouldn’t it be even nicer to have an official “Magic Mouse” app? Scratch that, given the greater functionality in the MacBook (and MacBook Pro) multi-touch Glass Trackpads, wouldn’t it be great if you could just give us that in the App Store?

We have the Apple Remote (no, not the new doohickey, the app!), true enough, but that’s limited to iTunes and the Apple TV (not even Front Row!), and we have the Keynote Remote, but again that’s limited to presentation software. And granted, there are some great third party remote apps that do way more than just Mac. But you make Mac. Why not just take that wonderful technology you’ve built into Snow Leopard, hook it up over Bluetooth (until you get WiFi Direct going), and let us swipe, pinch, rotate, one-finger, two-finger, three-finger, four-finger move our way around the Mac just like the Magic Mouse — or the Glass Trackpad — from anywhere in Bluetooth range?

Dear Apple, we have the device, you have the technology. Hit the “launch” button on this one already! Sitting 10′ away on a sofa, using our iPhone or iPod touch to seamlessly gesture through everything on our media center Mac Mini or massive 27″ new iMac… t’would be sweet!

(And hey, Microsoft and Windows 7 developers — feel free to hook us up for your phenomenal multi-touch support as well!)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Dear Apple: How About an Official “Magic Mouse” App for the iPhone and iPod touch

The above graph, part of Morgan Stanley Internet analyst Mary Meeker’s presentation at Web 2.0, showing iPhone/iPod touch as the fastest-growing consuming electronic platform in history pretty much speaks for itself. However, TechCrunch is happy to add a big exclamation point at the end:

[iPhone/iPod touch] adoption ramp is even steeper than videogame consoles including the Nintendo Wii, Nintendo DS, and Sony PSP. The original iPod and Blackberry aren't even in the same league.

No doubt this plays into Apple’s recent financial results, but building on what must now be around a 60 million strong install base (50 million from last quarter + 7.4 million new iPhones, + undisclosed amount of iPod touches), builds just the kind of momentum that tends towards freight-train like.

TechCrunch also shows charts highlighting the increase in AT&T data traffic since the iPhone came online (4,932%), and how mobile adoption is “outpacing” desktop. Check out the full article, linked above, for more.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone/iPod touch Fastest-Growing Consumer Electronic Platform in History

Our very own editor-in-chief talks to CNN’s Richard Quest:

As Apple profits surge off the back of the iPhone, expert Dieter Bohn explains the reasons behind the success.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb on CNN: Dieter Talks iPhone and Apple

UPDATED: Looks like Google is partnering with MySpace’s iLike and with Lala for their iTunes music competitor. TechCrunch again has the details:

From information we've gathered from sources, the new service will be integrated into Google search. Users will be able to stream songs directly from Google via partners iLike and LaLa. Additional information around the music query will be provided to users as well (presumably any relevant results from YouTube as well as information already available in Google's existing music search – example). One source said that Google will organize music searches in a way very similar to the way they do public company stock searches today. Users will also be offered the opportunity to purchase songs for download, we've confirmed.

Original post after the break!

TechCrunch is claiming, based on multiple sources, that Google is set to take their Apple competition to a whole new level by introducing their own music service:

the company has spent the last several weeks securing content for the launch of the service from the major music labels. One source has referred to the new service as Google Audio.

Unclear is whether it will be streaming or download/purchase (could it, would the record labels let it, be like Spotify?!), and whether or not it will be available outside the US. (Amazon MP3, another iTunes competitor, has struggled to deploy internationally).

This would help record labels take another shot at iTunes dominance in the market and give Google’s Android platform another checkbox towards iPhone parity.

What kind of service would you want from Google Audio?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

UPDATED: Google to Partner with iLike, Lala, Launch Music Service, Compete with iTunes?

Sean Cooper Games and MEDL Mobile have created a highly addicting gem of a game, Boxhead: The Zombie Wars. [$0.99 for the next two days - iTunes Link] Playing this game makes me feel like I’ve died and gone to zombie heaven.

Boxhead: The Zombie Wars is a extremely fast paced action-shooter where you get to play as Jon Bambo, a mercenary with a kick butt arsenal of weaponry which includes – pistol, shotgun, C4 explosives, minigun, turret machine guns, etc…

The premise is simple, kill as many zombies as you possibly can without dying. The more zombies you kill in a row, the higher your points multiplier will go. The higher you get your multiplier, bigger and more destructive your weapons will be at your disposal. Zombie destruction on your iPhone has never been so enjoyable.

Enjoy!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Quick App: Boxhead – The Zombie Wars for iPhone

As part of the commentary on Jamie Zawinski leaving the Palm Pre for the iPhone (linked in the previous post), Daring Fireball adds:

Apple had a similar idea to WebOS for the iPhone, where certain apps would run as Dashboard-style widgets, written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Apple abandoned the idea in the six months between the iPhone's January 2007 announcement and when it went on sale at the end of June, concluding that performance for such apps was unacceptable and that they should go native Cocoa across the board. And Apple was only going to do it for small apps, like Weather, Stocks, and Calculator, not the flagship apps like Calendar and Mail.

Of course, web technologies have improved since 2007, especially JavaScript rendering. Usability and performance complaints aside, Palm embracing web developers in order to incentivize adoption of their platform was a smart strategy. Still, it’s interesting to see Apple’s reaction to it back then, and their decision to go 100% native. (Especially considering they’re now being criticized for not having widgets).

Did Apple make the right choice, do we still want widgets on the iPhone, or is HTML5 and SQLite in Safari making them redundant?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Was Going to Use Palm WebOS-style Widgets for iPhone in 2007, Abandoned Idea Due to Performance