Probably like many people reading this blog post, I experienced firsthand the trouble Apple and AT&T had with the overwhelming number of preorders for the iPhone 4 on Tuesday. I thought I was being smart by deciding to skip the long lines and get the iPhone 4 delivered to my house, but I ended up getting nothing but errors after only the first few steps into the process.

After several attempts, I decided to wait a couple of days before trying again and ended up buying the black 32GB model through Apple on Thursday. Unfortunately, with the enormous amount of orders, the arrival date has slid all the way to July 14, so it will be much later than I hoped.

I'm interested to hear what other people who bought the new iPhone experienced and whether you decided to have it delivered or are going to pick it up at the Apple Store. Please share your stories in the comments.

This week's apps include a tool that helps you stay motivated for ongoing tasks and the sequel to one of my favorite iPhone games of 2009.

Streaks Motivational Calendar ($1.99) uses a simple--and surprisingly effective--concept to motivate you to stay productive. The idea is that you choose a thing you want to do more of, such as exercising, for example. Streaks Motivational Calendar lets you set up an exercising calendar on which you can mark off each day that you exercise with a big red X. Once you have a few days marked off, you'll have a streak.

I quickly found that something about visualizing that streak compelled me to continue with specific tasks simply because I didn't want to break the streak. I first heard of this motivational strategy over at Lifehacker in an article entitled Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret. I wouldn't be surprised if the developers of this app read the same piece.

Streaks Motivational Calendar lets you set up multiple calendars so you can track your progress toward various goals. You can name your calendars for any ongoing task, then simply touch the screen on the calendar to put an X on that day.

The app comes with settings for changing the theme of your calendars, showing an icon badge on your home screen for the currently selected streak, and lets you share your streaks with a friend. It also lets you browse your longest current and past streaks for a given task. Overall, I think this simple app offers a great way to motivate people to continue ongoing tasks using a nice looking, easy-to-use interface.

Super QuickHook is the sequel to one of my favorite iPhone games of 2009, adding brand new locations, new obstacles, and more fun and addictive gameplay.

As with Hook Champ, the object of the game is to swing from obstacle to obstacle using a grappling hook you shoot ahead of you by touching the screen to swing through levels. Super QuickHook adds a scrollable level-selection screen with new maps and environments, OpenFeint connectivity for high scores and leaderboards, and a new Endless Mode that challenges you to see how long you can last ahead of an avalanche.

As a big fan of Hook Champ, this was an easy purchase for me and I think Super QuickHook definitely lives up to the first game. Each level shows scores and times for the developer, giving you a goal to work toward in each environment. You also can race against another online player's ghost or your own ghost from your previous best time. The game comes with 18 new levels, including the endless Avalanche level, and there are more new levels on the way.

Overall, I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes 2D side-scrolling arcade games or enjoyed playing Hook Champ. As an extra bonus, the nature of the old-school graphics in this game make it look quite good on the iPad even with pixel doubling (there is no iPad version yet).

What's your favorite iPhone app at the moment? What are you going to use Streaks Motivational Calendar for? Are you happy with new layout and levels in Super QuickHook? Let me know in the comments!

In the latest update to Snow Leopard, Apple included software to protect Mac computers from a Trojan horse that has been distributed by attackers disguised as iPhoto, but which opens a back door on the machine, security firm Sophos said on Friday.

When Apple released OS X 10.6.4 on Tuesday, the company said it addressed certain compatibility issues with VPN connections and other things, but failed to mention anything about adding an anti-malware update.

But buried in the code is an update to the XProtect.plist file, which contains signatures of malware written to target the Mac. The signatures now detect malware dubbed "HellRTS," Graham Clulely of Sophos wrote in a blog post.

HellRTS, which Sophos detects as "OSX/Pinheard-B," is a Trojan that has been around several months. It lets attackers use infected computers to send spam, take screenshots, access files, and pretty much take control of the computer, Sophos said.

"Unfortunately, many Mac users seem oblivious to security threats which can run on their computers. And that isn't helped when Apple issues an anti-malware security update like this by stealth, rather than informing the public what it has done," Clulely writes. "You have to wonder whether their keeping quiet about an anti-malware security update like this was for marketing reasons. "Shh! Don't tell folks that we have to protect against malware on Mac OS X!"

Representatives from Apple did not immediately return e-mails seeking comment late on Friday.

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Tor Project have released a public beta of a new Firefox extension that lets people encrypt their communications with Facebook, Twitter, and other sites.

The HTTPS Everywhere Firefox extension was inspired by Google's encrypted Web search option, the EFF said in announcing the tool on Thursday.

In addition to Facebook and Twitter, the Web sites that the software works on are Google Search, Wikipedia, The New York Times, The Washington Post, PayPal, EFF, Tor, and Ixquick.

The tool works by creating an HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) connection to the sites. But even if "https" is used, unless the address bar is colored and an unbroken lock icon is displayed in the bottom right corner, the page is not completely encrypted, EFF says.

Our colleagues over at ZDNet's Zero Day blog point out that using HTTPS doesn't hide a computer's IP address and users are still susceptible to tracking from broken SSL sessions displaying unencrypted third-party content.

"Forcing a full session on a popular social-networking service such as Facebook for instance, without taking into consideration the fact that SSL would not magically make all the personally identifiable information, including your IP, disappear, is wrong," writes Dancho Danchev on the Zero Day blog. "Full-session SSL, in combination with tools such as Vanish, next to Tor-like/VPN based anonymity network, are great for a fresh start."

Originally posted at InSecurity Complex

One month after releasing its open-source, royalty-free VP8 video compression technology, the company already is working on significant revisions to the technology.

VP8, combined with the Vorbis audio technology, form the WebM codec with which Google is trying to unfetter Web video from the patent and royalty encumbrances of rival codec H.264. To make WebM a stronger competitor, Google is beginning work not just on ways to speed up encoding and decoding of the VP8, but also deeper changes to the format itself.

"Like every codec, WebM is not immune to change; the difference in our project is that the improvements are publicly visible, and compatibility and implementation issues can be worked through in an open forum," said Google codec engineering manager Jim Bankoski in a blog post Thursday. "To maintain codec stability while also allowing for quality and performance improvements in VP8, we have added an experimental branch to the VP8 source tree."

The experimental work will affect the bitstream--the exact sequence of encoded information that represents the video stream. Changing its design means a decoder essentially would see gibberish, so decoders won't play the video unless they're compatible and set specifically to show the experimental format.

Software decoders can be updated relatively easily, but part of the promise of VP8 is hardware support that can improve video performance characteristics such as frame rate and resolution and can lower power consumption. And hardware takes longer to change.

"Many hardware vendors have committed to shipping VP8-accelerated products based on our current bitstream in 2011," Bankoski said. "Devices that use hardware acceleration for video are a very small percentage of overall Web traffic today, but they are a rapidly growing segment of the market and our project must be mindful of these vendors' needs."

But Google and its allies also must be mindful of competition. VP8 faces quality issues in its competition with H.264, especially if the codec is to match H.264 in use not just for Web video streaming but also for building it into cameras that record the video in the first place.

Just how fixed VP8 is remains a bit muddy. It was released as "developer preview" technology, and Google clearly is trying to strike the right balance between a fixed format that can be baked into hardware and the ever-changing software philosophy deeply embedded in the Google engineering culture.

"The VP8 bitstream is final, but some features of the WebM format are not yet complete," the WebM FAQ says. "The VP8 and WebM specifications as released on May 19th, 2010 are final. We believe that the code and tools can evolve and improve for many years without requiring changes to the core specifications. We'll maintain a separate branch of the code, however, for bold new ideas that could alter the specifications. If there are significant improvements to warrant a new revision we might adopt them, but only after careful consideration and after discussing suggested changes with the WebM community."

Google didn't respond to a request for comment about how fixed VP8 is.

The version of VP8 that now exists could be better, too. Google pointed to some VP8 improvement work under way now, including work to translate VP8 into low-level programming instructions for faster performance.

In addition, Google's John Koleszar has begun Project Dixie to rework the VP8 decoder design by, for example, improving how it deals with multicore processors and with processors' cache memory.

WebM is open-source software, meaning that anyone can see, change, and distribute the underlying source code. One of Google's biggest allies, Mozilla, has begun contributing to the project, such as Jeff Muizelaar's work to increase memory efficiency.

Originally posted at Deep Tech

Mozilla released a minor update to its tabbed e-mail program Thunderbird 3 this week, in anticipation of the release of its next beta version.

Thunderbird 3.0.5 for Windows, Mac, and Linux includes several fixes to the user interface, improves message indexing and profile access on a network, and corrects an e-mail notification bug on Mac OS X.

The changelog for version 3.0.5 is available for your perusal. More than 60 bugs have been fixed since Thunderbird 3 was released last December.

CNET News Poll

Imagining iTunes 10
Which of these features will we see in iTunes 10?

Syncing libraries across multiple computers
Music stored "in the cloud"
TV show or channel subscription service
Podcast recorder and editor
iChat-like function for video chatting with new iPhones
Karaoke! Vocals stripped, lyrics shown
Option to play vuvuzela over all tracks

View results

This week, Apple dropped iTunes 9.2 on us. It includes syncing for iOS 4 and that new iPhone you may or may not have heard about. The new iPhone, of course, brings the possibility of even more new features coming soon, and those with a long memory will note that 9.2 was the final version of Mac OS before OS X (Mac OS version 10.0) landed in 2001.

All that got us wondering if iTunes 10 (iTunes X?) might be coming sooner rather than later. And that got us thinking about what iTunes 10 would include that would be radically different from what we've got now.

We've come up with a list of things that might show up in the next version of iTunes, and a few that might not. Look ahead with us past iTunes 9.2 and tell us which of these you think we'll most likely actually see in iTunes 10? Vote in our poll and sound off in our Talkback section below.

Originally posted at Crave

If you've got an Android-powered T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Slide, voice company Vlingo wants to do you a favor--by giving you its $9.99 app for free.

Speak the words and Vlingo's voice launcher for Android will open apps on your phone, update your Twitter and Facebook status, dial contacts, and send e-mails and texts as you dictate them. You can also tell it to search the Web and Google Maps. Its SafeReader feature can relay incoming e-mails and texts so drivers can keep their eyes on the wheel.

So, what prompted Vlingo's sudden generosity, and why is its benevolence aimed at MyTouch 3G Slide users alone? "We feel so sorry for them," Dave Grannan, Vlingo's CEO told CNET in an interview.

Grannan was referring to the phone's user interface, which we'll admit doesn't offer the most intuitive method out of the box for launching Android's built-in voice commands and voice dialing. What Grannan didn't freely admit is that Vlingo is also trying to elbow into the competition's territory, in this case a baked-in voice technology powered by rival Nuance, a speech recognition company made famous by creating the T9 system of predictive text.

Either way, Grannan's statement of pity is couched in "ouch."

Vlingo's offer is on for a limited, but unspecified, time whose span will likely have a lot to do with how eager MyTouch 3G Slide users are to take advantage of the giveaway. To get started, initiate the download process on Vlingo.com and Vlingo will automatically send a direct download link to MyTouch 3G Slide handsets.

Originally posted at Android Atlas

Apple made some changes to its MobileMe service Friday.

The MobileMe Mail service that was in beta for a little over a month is now available to all members. Mail at me.com now has widescreen and compact views, mail organization rules, single-click archiving, a formatting toolbar, SSL protection, and better junk mail protection. You can also use MobileMe to read mail from your other e-mail addresses now, according to Apple.

The service is only supported in Safari, Firefox, and IE8, and not in Chrome or Opera.

Apple isn't known for its Web services prowess, and still charges $99 for what is essentially free on other services, with the exception of Find My iPhone and Remote Wipe. There was a rumor earlier this year that the entire service would be offered for free, but at least for now, it appears Apple is sticking with charging for it.

As of Friday, Find My iPhone, the service that helps owners track down the device's location if it's lost, is available as a free application in the App Store for MobileMe subscribers. So Find My iPhone can also function as "Find my iPod Touch" or "Find my iPad" too.

This story was corrected at 11:15 a.m. PDT to reflect that MobileMe mail is supported in IE8.

Originally posted at Circuit Breaker

If you have children between the ages of 3 and 11, there's an app you have to get: Tales2Go. It provides on-demand access to more than 1,000 children's books and stories--everything from "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" to "Junie B. Jones."

The app is free, but a one-year subscription costs $24.99, which is a steal in my book.

However, if you download and register Tales2Go using a valid e-mail address between now and midnight tonight (Pacific Time), you'll get a summer's worth of streaming absolutely free.

Specifically, instead of expiring after 30 days--the standard trial period--Tales2Go will keep on playing through Labor Day.

After that, you'll need to pony up your $25 if you want more streaming goodness. As I mentioned, I think that's a tremendous deal, especially considering that a single audiobook CD can easily cost that much.

Of course, you have nearly three months to decide that for yourself. Just make sure you grab the app and register it today. As of 12:01 a.m. Saturday, the deal is over.

Bonus deal: Banzai Rabbit (a.k.a. the best Frogger clone ever) is currently on sale for 99 cents. Grab it before it hops (pun!) back up to $4.99.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas