If you been searching for some holiday music for your iPhone or iPod, iTunes has you covered with the iTunes Holiday Sampler by various artists. Oh, and not only is it free for one week, it’s an iTunes LP so you get all the goods including lyrics, images and artwork, and so on.

The good news is you will get a total of twenty tracks from artists like Weezer, David Archuleta, Toby Keith, Sarah McLachlan, etc… Now for the bad news, sadly if you are like Rene and outside of the U.S., this is not available to you. Don’t shoot us, we’re just the messenger.

To those of you who can download this, enjoy your free holiday music!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

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

iTunes Offers Free Holiday Sampler by Various Artists to iPhone/iPod Owners

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Join Chad, Rene, and Georgia for Apple buys Lulu, CrunchPad becomes JooJoo, more AT&T/Verizon ad silliness, iTablet, iPhone developer RSS, and your questions answered! Listen in!

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

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

TiPb Presents… iPhone Live! #79 — Lala JooJoo!

While announced 100,000 iPhones have been sold since it’s launch back on October 30th.

If you stop and think about it, China Unicom has about 144 million customers so that 100,000 mark really does not seem like much. Again, we are blaming slow sales on the abundance of unlocked iPhones that actually have WiFi and can be used with Pre-Paid SIM cards.

Rumor has it that, since the local laws have changed, Apple will be making a WiFi iPhone for China, but will it be enough? Or is the Chinese market just too different and is Apple too slow to catch on to that fact?

[Thanks to the Reptile for the tip]

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

China Unicom iPhone Sales Slowly Getting Better

Foxconn sounds like it’s once again on tap by Apple to manufacture the iPhone — the 4th generation iPhone this time around. At least, Eldar Murtazin, EiC of Mobile Review posted that up on Twitter:

“Foxconn received order for next generation iphone”

Engadget’s inclined to believe it, and it absolutely meshes with previous years, and with Phil Schiller’s June product cycle for the iPhone.

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

Foxconn Received Order for 4th Generation iPhone?

Hootsuite [$1.99 on sale until Dec. 17 - iTunes link] is a hybrid client that not only provides basic Twitter functionality but also hooks into Hootsuite’s own services to provide statistics (on things like ow.ly click-throughs) and scheduled tweets (so you can set it to tweet “Happy New Year!” while you’re busy getting your champagne on).

In our brief tests, it offered good functionality especially for a first release, with an interesting take on many of the standards, and if you have (or are willing to create) a Hootsuite account as well, it brings a host of new features to the table.

(Though no, push notifications isn’t one of them yet).

If you give it a try, let us know what you think (especially you, Bla1ze!). More screens after the break!

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

Hootsuite Comes to iPhone, Brings Twitter and Statistics with it

Draw [$2.99 - iTunes link] lets you doodle on your iPhone or iPod touch to pass the time or whip up whiteboard-style diagrams to illustrate your point, share via Twitter or email, and even challenge friend’s to tic-tac-toe or homespun games via P2P.

Draw comes by way of Erica Sadun of Jailbreak, iPhone dev, and TUAW fame, and she not only knows how to make great apps, but beautifully stylized ones as well. If you want a good mix of casual productivity and just plain old-world fun on a decidedly new-world device, give Draw a go and let us know what you think.

More screenshots after the break!

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

Draw: Shareable, Playable, Tweet-able Sketchpad for iPhone

The Wall Street Journal is weighing in on Apple’s purchase of online streaming music service, Lala, saying Apple is using it to explore taking iTunes to the cloud:

Lala.com lets users buy and listen to music through a Web browser, meaning its customers can access purchases from anywhere, as long as they are connected to the Internet. Apple is considering adopting that same model for songs sold on iTunes, a change that would give consumers more ways to access and manage their iTunes purchases—and wouldn’t require them to download Apple’s software or their purchases.

According to the WSJ, Apple paid $85 million for Lala, and that the big brains behind the service would be given “very significant roles” inside Apple.

Even before the acquisition closed Friday, Lala Chairman Bill Nguyen and Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president for Internet services, began making joint calls to various business partners, including record-label groups, discussing possibilities for the music service’s future.

Big Media is said to be cautiously optimistic about the concept, “optimistic” about web-based purchases, but “cautious” about adding to iTunes already dominant position in online music. And, of course, with plans still in the early stages, much could change before Steve Jobs or Phil Schiller put sneaker to stage and announce a customer facing solution.

While anywhere, anytime access sounds appealing, they also point out that past services have had problems negotiating “virtual goods”, such as Amazon pulling books from users’ Kindles, and we’d add Microsoft’s DRM services shutting down and placing access to user-purchased content in doubt. There’s still that Google partnership to navigate as well.

All in all, however, if iTunes goes cloud, as long as we still have the ability to buy and download music as well if we so choose, TiPb thinks it will be a net gain. (No pun intended). What do you think?

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

Apple’s Purchase of Online Music Streaming Service Lala to Take iTunes to the Clouds?

Apple’s job listings just got interesting again, with positions open for a Video Game Artist and a Software Engineer for the iPhone Gaming Group. That’s right, “iPhone Gaming Group”. It looks like that Game/Media Software Engineer position from last month wasn’t a one off, and Apple is finally, seriously, getting into the game… game. (Sorry, but you saw that coming!)

For the artist:

The interactive media group is looking for a skilled artist who wants to work as part of a small highly motivated team to work on interactive multimedia experiences on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The position on the team is to help design, visualize, enable and implement interface, 3D characters/environments, animation, texturing as well as original concept artwork.

For the engineer:

The iPhone Games Group is looking for a proactive, highly motivated engineer with 5 + years experience, to share their expertise in application and framework development.

So, how about it? Sounds like a lot of firepower for “Texas Holdem’ 2″, doesn’t it? Think we’ll finally see some Sony or Nintendo caliber 1st party gaming coming out of Apple? And if so, what would they be?

[via MacRumors]

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

Apple Hiring Video Game Artist for iPhone Gaming Group!