AT&T is slowly but surely — very slowly but very surely, it seems — expanding their LTE (Long Term Evolution) rollout to include Bloomington and Muncie Indiana, and Bryan-College Station Texas. (Google Maps them!)

In terms of Apple devices, LTE is currently only available for the new iPad, but is rumored to be coming to the next generation iPhone this fall. Granted, these aren’t major markets, but Cleveland, Akron and Canton, Ohio, Lafayette, Indiana, Baton Rouge and New Orleans Louisiana, St. Louis Missouri, and Staten Island, N.Y are set to follow some time this summer.

And every little bit helps, right?

The Converge USB charging hub from Think Geek is a fun, futon-inspired stand for your iPhone, iPod tour or iPad. Working on an Apple mobile blog like iMore means you start to amass a lot of Apple mobile devices and even if I’m only using an iPhone and an iPad every day, keeping them both charged in an easy, elegant way has proven to be more of a challenge than I originally imagined. Converge looks like a great way to do just that.

Converge is the futon of charging hubs. Its white folds remind us of a bendy futon mattress, but it has the added feature of a slot to slip in charging cables. With the help of soft TPE grips, cables stay nestled out of sight behind Converge. Just plug the power source into your nearest outlet and you can charge up to 4 USB devices while they chill out on Converge’s curvy frame.

Hiding cables beneath the fold of the Converge is a great idea, and including 4 USB charging outlets makes it great for power gadget users, couples, and even families who need to keep a lot of devices at the ready. And if you’re cross-platform, it works with most other smartphones and tablets as well (though curiously not the Blackberry Torch, Blackberry Curve, or the Barnes & Noble Nook…?)

$39.99 – Buy now

Apple’s virtual personal assistant, Siri, can do all sorts of wonderful things, including creating and updating Notes right on your iPhone. Dave Calo of 52 Tiger breaks down the process:

To create a new note, tell Siri, "Create a new note," "Make a new note" or something similar. You can give a note a title at the same time, for instance, "Make a new note packing list" or "Create a new note places to visit." That becomes the first line of the note.

Updating an existing Note is just as easy. It’s not perfect, mind you, as Siri doesn’t always understand what you’re saying 100% of the time, and Apple hasn’t yet giving Siri equal access to all system apps (i.e. it can read you SMS but not Notes), but for quickly getting a bit of information entered into your iPhone, Siri can be ridiculously fast.

Hit the link below for Dave’s complete workflow. (I use a similar process to quickly create Reminders.)

Source: 52 Tiger

As promised, AT&T has begun unlocking qualified, off-contract iPhones. iMore forum member iPhonejunkie3 reports that the process wasn’t swift, but it was effective:

Today, 4/8/12, I called AT&T to unlock my contract free 3GS. Took 30 minutes on T’s end to get the unlock code, and only 5 minutes to perform a backup and restore via iTunes. Interestingly enough, the phone number shows as NA in the iTunes screen. Same IMEI and ICCID if you click on the same spot.

According to AT&T, the requirements to receive an official unlock are:

A customer's account must be in good standing, their device cannot be associated with a current and active term commitment on an AT&T customer account, and they need to have fulfilled their contract term, upgraded under one of our upgrade policies or paid an early termination fee.

AT&T enters to iPhone’s IMEI number into Apple’s database and the next time the iPhone is connected to iTunes, Apple will authorize and perform the unlock. It’s an unusual but fairly straightforward process.

Again, kudos to AT&T for seeing the light and providing this service to their customers.

If you’re calling AT&T today to request your official iPhone unlock, jump into our forums and let us know how it goes for you.

I want to watch something on TV but I can’t. PVR. Boom. I can watch it when I want. I want to read something on the web but I can’t. Read later. Boom. I can read it when I want. I have an idea but am in no position to leverage it at the moment… Go to anyone of a dozen note-taking or mind mapping or sketching apps that are generally far too feature-filled and cumbersome to get into, out of, and triage things in just exactly the way you need to triage them. This is still a problem that needs better solving.

Enter Drafts for iPhone by Agile Tortoise, which aims to be a staging ground for singular thoughts, an incubator for moments of insight, a way to capture ephemera. It’s a new riff on old jazz. I used Birdhouse for this type of thing for a long time, then switched to Simplenote, then a variety of Dropbox-enabled text editors. Now I often use Siri to quickly add items to an “Ideas” list in Reminders. But Drafts makes a compelling (use) case.

Drafts is no easier to get stuff into than any of my previous solutions, and is actually slightly more difficult than Reminders thanks to Apple not yet providing a mechanism for Siri to inject content into App Store apps (though you can certainly use Dictation once you manually tap into Drafts and the appropriate or new draft). However, it’s quite a bit more powerful to get stuff out of.

Open Drafts and start typing. It shows you the word count and letter count, and at the touch of the page icon, shows you a list of previous drafts.

At a touch of the Action button, anything in the current draft can be tweeted using any account already set up on your iPhone, or sent to some of the Twitter apps installed on your iPhone (Twitter and Tweetbot show up for me, Twitterrific and Twitterlator Neue do not), or it can be emailed or copied to the clipboard. It also supports John Gruber’s Markdown syntax, and can preview it or convert it to HTML and email it or copy the converted text to the clipboard.

With the tap of an action button, drafts can work wonders like sharing to Twitter, emailing, and converting from Markdown to HTML

Granted, when all I want to do is jot down an idea, plain text is king, but having Markdown built-in is a nice bonus. So is having both a character and word counter visible.

You can choose between several themes including the default light brown, a darker sepia, a grayscale variant, and an inverse night variant. You also have a bakers dozen of fonts to chose from, in small, medium, and large sizes. It’s the usual suspects, but that doesn’t make them any less welcome.

Drafts comes with 4 themes and a selection of 13 fonts so you can craft your environment as meticulously as your ideas.

Drafts isn’t perfect. While the user experience is excellent the user interface could stand another round or two of polish. There’s an oddness to the weighting and alignment of elements in the tool bar, and the contrast of the texture behind it. The Markdown icons, challenging as they may be, suffer from an awkward text overlay. And the app icon itself could do a much better job conveying just how well thought out an app this is.

There’s no iCloud and no sync yet, so outside of sharing via the action items detailed above, Drafts is a silo unto itself. There’s also no hint as to whether or not Draft’s actions will be extensible via URL scheme, the way Launch Center‘s are. It would be great to be able to send Draft text to other editors, note-takers, task-managers, etc.

The good

• Easy in, easy out.
• Powerful action options.
• Markdown support.

The bad

• No sync options
• Actions not extensible

The conclusion

Drafts is fast and crisp and solid where it counts. There’s no sync or extensibility yet but Markdown and excellent sharing actions make it a powerful idea pad for thoughts you don’t have a chance to collect right now. Just jot them down in Drafts and they’re time-shifted for you to collect later.

$0.99 – Download now

Every week the editors at iMore carefully select some of our favorite, most useful, most extraordinary apps, accessories, gadgets, and websites. This weeks selections includes a music app, a couple baseball apps, a photo app, an app for DIY-ers, an app for Canadian hockey followers, and more.

To see what we picked, and to tell us your pick, follow on after the break!

TuneIn Radio Pro – Seth Clifford

I’m a big fan of internet radio, and have been for a long time. I’ve tried so many different radio streaming apps throughout my tenure as a smartphone user, going all the way back to my Windows Mobile days. I first got into it with my Treo 700wx (ah, memories) and have been hooked ever since. There are a wide variety of apps in the App Store that let you stream seemingly innumerable radio stations from around the world, but the best one I’ve found is TuneIn Radio, specifically the Pro version. It’s an App Store favorite that I’ve been aware of for a while, but only now am I rediscovering how great it is.

First off, it’s a universal app – big win there. Second, it allows you to not only stream internet stations, but can use your location to provide access to local radio as well. Lastly (and most importantly for me), you can create a TuneIn account, save your favorites and sync them between the web and your devices. I can’t tell you how great this is, because one of the biggest headaches I faced when trying different radio apps was always searching for and re-adding all the stations I like to listen to over and over again. This makes things so easy, it’s beautiful.

The app is nicely designed, with tons of options. You can browse stations (over 50,000) based on location, genre, language, and a few other criteria, or you can just search on an artist or song that you like and get results more tailored to what you’re looking for. It’s a cool feature that I have yet to fully enjoy as I’ve just been listening to my handful of stations that I usually do. The nice thing about the Pro version of the app is that you can also record stations and set timed recordings for yourself, which is helpful if you always want to make sure you’ve got what you want, when you want it. I use recordings as a kind of audio bookmark, to follow up and research artists later if I hear something I like. Finally, one of the coolest features of the app is Car Mode, in which the app interface changes to large, easy-to-hit button targets. So simple, and what a nice touch.

If you’re not sure if the app is your cup of tea, grab the free version and give it a spin. If you’re anything like me, you’ve read this far and it hasn’t even crossed your mind. The Pro version is a buck, and well worth every cent.

$0.99 – Download Now

NFL ’11 – Alli Flowers

It’s not exactly football season, but that doesn’t mean football is not on the minds of true football fans. And just because the app’s name is NFL 11, doesn’t mean it ended in 2011. It is keeping us up to date on all things NFL right into the 2012 season, with all the news and gossip that you’d want. (Not that my poor heart can bear any more news or gossip.)

A recent update gave us a tab titled Free Agency. Here, you can track who’s available, who’s interested, and who’s likely going somewhere. It even includes a great glossary of the types of free agency. I must confess, I had no idea there were more than two. I’m ashamed of myself! You can click on many of the players listed, and get all their stats.

Another feature available now is the Combine news. Lists of players, their schools, and their stats. This is a great lead up to the draft. We may have a while until the season starts, but NFL 11 is right there with us!

Free – Download Now]

PicFrame – Chris Oldroyd

This week's pic has been inspired by the amazing Leanna Lofte series on iPhone photography. If you haven't read any of these fantastic articles yet, get onto it now! They are awesome!

Anyway, back to my pic, PicFrame is a very simple yet powerful universal app that provides you with a huge selection of picture frames. You simple insert your pictures from your camera roll into the frames and you can show off your photos in style. The app has over sixty different frames to choose from and it is so easy to use.

Once you have created your masterpiece, you can save it in your camera roll, print it, share to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr or simply email it to friends or family. A lovely app and one that I am using all the time!

$0.99 – Download Now

MLB.com At Bat – Gary Mazo

Yesterday I did a feature on all the ways baseball fans can use their iPhone/iPad to follow America's pastime – Major League Baseball.

This was opening week for MLB, which meant that I started using one app more than just about any other– MLB.com At Bat. Each year at this time, I pay for my subscription and enjoy following each and every game of the season (at least those in which the Red Sox are playing!)

MLB.com At Bat is free for the "Lite" version – but if you are a real baseball fan, pay the $14.99 for the full season pass.

The options in this app are amazing. I can follow every pitch of every game. I get this very cool visual of the batter and can see the pitches (in real time) wiz by his head. I can look at the plays of the game or the box score at the same time on the right hand side of the screen and follow the scores from other games at the top of the screen.

I can find out the stats of every player – seeing their baseball card with last season's info and how they are doing this year.

When you pay the subscription fee, you can follow pitch by pitch, see in game video highlights and post game videos. You can also listen to every game live via the radio broadcasts from each of the teams playing. So, while I usually listen to the local Boston station, if the Red Sox are playing the Yankees and one of our guys hits a grand slam, I like to turn to the NY station and listen to them cry.

As the season progresses, and the playoffs get close, I like having the ability to follow other division rivals and even catch their games on Red Sox travel days.

All in all, this is one of my absolute favorite apps for my iPad and iPhone. This year it is a universal app – which is amazing. Last year I paid the $14.95 for each device – this year I just pay once and log in and restore my purchases on my other iOS devices.

Do you use the MLB.com At Bat app or do you have another favorite app for following you team? – Just jump to this forum thread to share your thoughts.

Free – Download Now

CBC Hockey Night In Canada – Bla1ze

With the Stanley Cup playoffs soon-to-be underway it’s time to start loading up on apps that help you keep track of all the games happening. Even if you’re not a hockey fan you can still follow along with the CBC Hockey Night in Canada app, fan or not it’s a basic app that will help you keep up-to-date on scores and schedules plus, it has news and video features built-in. Yes, there is much more feature rich applications available in the iTunes App Store but this one will certainly fill basic needs for free.

Free – Download Now

Sid Meier's Pirates! – Chris Vitek

Sid Meier's Pirates game is one that has been out for a while, and is based on a PC game of the same name. I was just looking through some old game lists, however, and I decided to give it a shot. It turns out to be a fun, RPG style game that took up much more time than I anticipated. Basically…you are a pirate. Between attacking other ships, forging alliances, plundering, and trying to woo the women (as any pirate scoundrel may want to do) you try to build up you gold, crew, and collection of ships to become the terror of the sea! It makes good use of the iPad controls, using motion controls (for things like dancing and fighting), and piloting your ship around through tapping the screen. You can complete quests and tasks, attack enemies, or just engage in barter and sale to try to build your gold hoard. While the graphics are a little dates, it is an engaging game that I sat and played for about 2 hours before I realized how long I was playing.

$4.99 – Download Now

Snapguide for iPhone – iMuggle

I recently reviewed Snapguide for iPhone and I have to say I’ve been addicted to it ever since. While I haven’t had time to upload any guides yet, I’ve enjoyed weeding through other user’s guides and I’ve found a lot of cool projects that I’d like to try myself. Not only tech projects but home projects and recipes that I probably never would have found out about without the help of Snapguide.

I’m really surprised an application like this hadn’t been thought of before now. It really is ingenious. While it reminds me somewhat of the idea behind Pinterest, it seems to take it one step further and provides us with an outlet to express creativity in a whole new way and share it with the world. Every type of project from creating your own iPod dock to making Easter Egg pops, to how to fix other home gadgets can be found on Snapguide. I can see it becoming one of my most used apps as I’ve always had a strong interest for DIY projects and finding new ways to occupy my free time.

If you haven’t checked it out already, make sure you do.

Free – Download Now

Official iMore for iPhone app – llofte

In case you missed the news, the official iMore app has hit the App Store! It’s gorgeous and the perfect way to keep up with iMore news on your iPhone. So make sure to pick it up if you haven’t already! Trust me — it’s way cool.

Free – Download now

Marvel – Rene Ritchie

The Marvel Comics app for iPhone and iPad — made my comiXology who also make the awesome multi-publisher Comics as well as the DC, Image, and other apps — has once again been updated and now offers sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and email, but more interestingly — Infinite Comics.

Up until now the Marvel app has featured fairly straight forward ports of the traditional print comics, though an optional, guided, panel view took some advantage of the digital medium. Infinite Comics attempts to be an even more authentically digital experience. It’s not animation and it’s not motion comics. There are transitions but not actions, staged dialog but no spoken words.

I’m not sure if Infinite Comics are the next step in the evolution of sequential art or just an experiment, but I like that Marvel is experimenting and trying to evolve. It took them a while to turn their big ship towards the mobile technology, but now that ship seems to have engines on full.

If you want to try it out, grab the Marvel app and buy the $3.99 Avengers vs. X-Men debut issue. (Yeah, pricing is still an issue they’re trying hard not to address, but this is about the format, not the business model.)

Free – Download now

Tell us your pick!

Those were our picks, iMore Nation, so now it’s your turn! Tell us your pick of the week below. Give us the name of your favorite app, site, or accessory, and tell us why it made your life more productive, more informed, more entertaining, or just plain more fun. Jump into the comments and let us know your pick of the week!