With today's launch of the iPad 3G, the battle between Apple and Adobe over Flash, and the drama that continues to unfold regarding the leaked iPhone 4G, there's plenty of Apple to go around in the news. But instead of adding my two cents on any of these stories, I'd rather relay the rumor I read about over at AppleInsider.

Apparently, according to "sources familiar with the situation," the iPhone 4G may go on sale June 7, on the first day of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Like many Apple events, Steve Jobs will be giving the keynote speech that day at Moscone Center here in San Francisco and these sources say he will announce its availability during the speech.

The interesting thing here is that in past iPhone announcements, the device officially went on sale at least one week after the announcement, so this would be a treat for those impatiently waiting for the new iPhone (me included). Of course, like any rumor about Apple, we won't know what will happen until it is officially announced, but it's always fun to follow the Apple rumor mill.

As I've whined and groaned about here many times, I have the old-school 3G, so you can bet I'll be one of the people waiting in line sometime safely after the initial announcement blitz (hey, I'm fanatical, but sensible). If you're impatiently waiting for the iPhone 4G like I am (especially after having seen the leaked photos), let us know in the comments.

This week's apps are both games, including a game that lets you compete in the FIFA World Cup tournament and the sequel to a zombie-killing survival game.

FIFA World Cup 2010 lets you choose your favorite international team and play through the qualification rounds and on through the tournament for the coveted World Cup. I wrote about FIFA 10 in an earlier post and FIFA World Cup looks and feels mostly the same with some notable tweaks and improvements. FIFA World Cup lets you play any of 105 International Teams, even teams that haven't qualified for the actual tournament. The control system involves an onscreen joystick on the left side of your touch screen and pass and shoot buttons on the right. Like any touch screen joystick, it can be a little muddy compared to using a controller on a console, but once you get the hang of maneuvering your players, the game can be really fun. To add to your moves, FIFA World Cup offers a skill button to make your player pull of some fancy footwork to get around opponents. They've also added indicators to show you where your teammates are, making it much easier to make successful passes.

FIFA World Cup offers a few different game types to keep the game interesting. Beyond playing a team through the World Cup Tournament (and an Exhibition game option), you can play Captain Your Country, in which you create a player, choose your position, and try to play as efficiently as possible from that position. You also can play Penalty Shoot out to practice your crunch time shots. Multiplayer options include playing with a friend over shared WiFi or Bluetooth, but sadly, there are no online matchups. Overall, if you've been waiting to take your game to the ultimate Soccer/Football tournament, FIFA World Cup has plenty of extras to offer and challenging gameplay.

Alive 4-Ever RETURNS is the sequel to the zombie-killing survival game, Alive 4-ever. Just like the original, the control system includes a joypad on the left for movement and another on the right to fire your weapons. As you blow away zombies, other control options will appear, like a button for grenades (when you find them) and various special abilities you will learn as you level up. You have four characters to choose from that each have different strengths and weaknesses. As you level each character, you'll be able to add to their skills and abilities and buy new weapons for even more fire power.

Alive 4-ever Returns offers a story mode where you'll spend most of your time leveling up your characters to move through each level of the game, but there are a couple of other game modes to try. Survival battle lets you choose your most experienced character and drops you into an endless swarm of shambling zombies to fight as long as you can to survive. Horde battle takes a slightly different approach, challenging you to fight through waves of undead with brief breaks in in between the action where you can grab ammo and get more health. Once you have your zombie-killing skills down, you can team up with 3 other friends to kill zombies over a bluetooth connection. Overall, if you liked the first game or you want to check out a well-made survival shooter with rich RPG elements, this sequel is easily worth the price of admission.

What's your favorite iPhone app? Do you think FIFA World Cup offers enough new features to buy even if you already own FIFA 10? What do you think of Alive 4-ever Returns? Let me know in the comments!

You know me: I love a good freebie. Today I've got five of them for you, all Windows utilities that solve specific problems and/or make life a little easier. Best of all, not one of them will sell out.

Nepotism alert: Some of the links below lead to related posts on my Business Hacks blog--a great (IMHO) source for tools like these as well as everyday tips and tricks for making your workday work better. If you love me like you say you do, you'll bookmark it and visit daily.

1. Advanced Uninstaller  A perfect addition to any flash drive, this no-installation-required uninstaller does a fine job removing all traces of unwanted software. My favorite feature? Batch uninstall. Just tick the apps you want to ditch, and AU does the rest.

2. Dual Display Mouse Manager  Last year I finally pulled the trigger on a second monitor. Best. Purchase. Ever. My only complaint is that I frequently overshoot the "border" between monitors when I mouse to the edge of either one. Dual Display Mouse Manager senses my cursor's proximity to that transition point and automatically slows it down. It's a small convenience, but an essential one for anyone rocking two (or more) monitors.

3. Dexpot  No room in the budget for a second monitor? No problem: Dexpot endows your single screen with two or more virtual desktops. This popular freebie's been around for a while, but the latest version adds a killer plug-in for Windows 7 users: SevenDex, which pops up thumbnail views of your desktops when you mouse over the Dexpot taskbar icon. Sounds like a minor amenity, but trust me: it's a huge perk.

4. Universal Viewer  One of those utilities that really should be built into Windows, Universal Viewer lets you view the contents of just about any file. That's great for those times when someone sends you a weirdo file attachment and you don't have the program needed to read it. And like the aforementioned Advanced Uninstaller, UV is portable (no installation required), so it runs nicely from a flash drive.

5. Wizmouse  Oh, Microsoft. After all these years, Windows still isn't smart enough to detect where my cursor is pointed and make the mouse wheel work there. Instead, it works only in the window that has "focus," meaning the currently selected window. That's ludicrous! Fortunately, there's WizMouse, which activates the scroll wheel in whatever window is under your cursor, plain and simple. I started using this about a year ago; I can no longer compute without it.

OK, that's my list. Any freebie utilities you'd care to recommend? Hit the comments and list your faves.

Originally posted at The Cheapskate

"The geolocation feature is now available in Chrome 5.0.375.25 (Official Build 45690)."

With those words, posted Thursday at the bottom of a Chrome issue tracker item, the developer version of Google's browser for Windows, Mac, and Linux catches up to Firefox with one important new component of the Web. That component, geolocation, lets a browser tell a Web site the location of a person's computer once the person has given permission. (See illustration below.)

It's a handy feature, most notably for mapping or including your location in some message where it's relevant. And these days, location-based services are attracting a lot of attention as the Internet dovetails more closely with the real world.

Chrome has had geolocation support since March, but it wasn't activated by default until now. The support hasn't yet arrived in the beta or stable versions of Chrome.

One way to currently use geolocation in Firefox or Chrome is to go to Google Maps and click the small white circle in the upper-left corner of a map itself, below the navigation control and above the zoom control. A pop-up bar says, "http://maps.google.com/ wants to track your physical location," and if you click "allow," your location should then be shown with a blue circle on the map.

Different services are available to let a browser figure its location. Google uses mobile phone and wireless network information as well as your Internet Protocol address; mobile phones these days sometimes come with the ability to use GPS satellites to figure out where they are.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

The official debut was two weeks ago, and now Adobe Systems is actually delivering its Creative Suite 5 software to customers.

The CS5 software spans a broad range of uses--image editing in Photoshop and Photoshop Extended, video editing in Premiere Pro, Flash application creation in Flash Pro, Web page design in Dreamweaver, and more. New to the suite is Flash Catalyst, geared to let designers without much programming experience convert application mock-ups created in Illustrator or Photoshop into working Flash applications.

Adobe sells these programs alone or packages them up into suites tailored for various market segments. At the very top end is the $2,599 Master Collection, which includes everything. The designer-oriented Design Premium costs $1,799.

The prices aren't exactly low, but Adobe counts on new abilities and time-saving improvements to help professionals justify the expense of upgrading. For example, Photoshop CS5 comes with new tools for selecting complex subjects, and Premiere Pro includes the "Mercury" engine for video playback that can tap into the computer's graphics processor.

In something of a departure, though, Adobe is also moving to subscription revenue through an online service called CS Live.

Taking some of the wind out of Adobe's sails is Apple's recent move to block Flash Pro's headline feature, the ability to convert Flash applications into native iPhone applications. After that move earlier this month, Adobe ceased development of the Flash-to-iPhone feature, offering choice words about Apple's "closed" software system. In return, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs just this week lambasted Flash as yesterday's technology.

Although the debate began with Flash, Jobs broadened his criticism to the entire Creative Suite team.

"Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple's platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third-party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X," Jobs said.

Cocoa is the modern programming interface to Mac OS X and the only one to support 64-bit processors; with CS5, Adobe started switching to it from the Carbon interface that also worked on the older Mac OS 9 and 8 lineage.

Evidently Jobs' gripe rankled in some quarters at Adobe. "Adobe is now shipping twice as many 64-bit Cocoa pro apps as Apple. #lazy," Photoshop Principal Product Manager John Nack twittered Thursday.

And for all Jobs' griping about slow transitions, Apple's own Final Cut Studio remains a 32-bit Carbon application.

Below is Adobe's pricing and package configurations chart for CS5.

Originally posted at Deep Tech