It's probably not a good sign that the first thing people ask me when they notice I'm holding an iPhone 4 is always something about how I deal with the reception issues. I've said here before that I have yet to experience dropped calls or any other issues related to "Antennagate" (yeesh, will we--as a society--ever get over the whole "Whatevergate" meme?), but that's probably largely just luck; maybe I'm fortunate that where I go in my daily life is covered pretty well by AT&T. I suspect I could be a rare exception.

The interesting thing to me is that the reception issues and "Death Grip" have been all over the news here in the U.S., but reports trickling in from other countries are quite the opposite. An Australian publication, The Daily Telegraph, gave a very positive review to Apple's iPhone 4 today saying finally about the reception issues, "Is the antenna an issue? No it's not. Have I dropped calls? No, I have not." Another story out of Norway (via AppleInsider) had similar results, with the writer concluding that the issues are more about weak U.S. mobile networks than they are about the iPhone 4 itself.

So my question is, even though the "Death Grip" might reduce your signal by a bar or two, if Apple had announced a deal with Verizon (or some other carrier) at launch, would we even be talking about "Antennagate?" I think I know what Steve Jobs would say if he thought nobody else was listening.

This week's iPhone AppsGate includes a fun tool to make stop-motion movies and a water-racing game sequel that is a huge improvement over the original.

StopMotion Recorder (99 cents) lets you create cool stop-motion movies where your only limit is your imagination. Featuring a fairly intuitive interface, StopMotion Recorder lets you set up your stationary shot, then has you tap the screen for each shot of your stop-motion film. The program provides an "onion skin" (a ghost of your previous shot) so you know just how to line up the next frame of your movie. You also get a grid overlay for even better alignment, and a "clap shot" feature that will take a picture when you clap so you can be closer to the action.

StopMotion Recorder has a number of different options that give you some choices for how the final product will turn out. You get a bunch of film styles that give your movie different effects like grainy old-timey shots and that old-school film strip border for that reel-to-reel feel. When you're finished, you can share your stop-motion masterpiece over e-mail, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube, or you can just save the movie to your iPhone's camera roll. Overall, StopMotion Recorder is a neat way to make funny little movies that just about anyone could appreciate. Hopefully we'll see some good stop-motion movies from this app start to spring up on YouTube or Twitter soon.

Aqua Moto Racing 2 ($4.99) is the sequel to Aqua Moto Racing, and has plenty of improvements over the original, including better graphics, more tracks, excellent wave physics, and challenging AI. You can control your personal water craft (PWC) in a few different ways, with options for both accelerometer-based steering or an onscreen steering wheel.

Much like the original, you'll be able to race in Quick Race mode and set the skill level, track, and number of opponents; or you can race through the championship mode and complete seven multirace circuits. As you race through championship mode, winning a circuit gives you more money and unlocks better PWCs with fixed stats. I actually prefer the setup in the original where you could adjust PWC stats for each race, but there's something to be said for just jumping in and racing.

While on the course, you'll race against five opponents through a circuit of buoys and jumps. Getting big enough air puts the game in slow motion, allowing you to hit trick buttons to pull off somewhat underwhelming tricks (maybe the animations are too fast?) that add to your turbo meter. It takes a few jumps usually to fill up the turbo meter so you'll want to wait for moments when you really need a boost. Also littered about each track are money bags and treasure chests that add to your cash total if you can get to them without letting your opponents pass you. If you get sick of the track layouts, you also can hit a "Mirrored" to make every track a different experience.

The best thing about Aqua Moto Racing 2 is the newly designed wave physics, that bring this title much closer to popular gamer favorite Wave Race (originally on the Nintendo 64).

Overall, with even better graphics than the original, the added wrinkle of big waves to contend with, multiple tracks, and upgradeable PWCs, Aqua Moto Racing 2 will appeal to anyone who likes unique racing games. If you want to check it out before buying, grab the Lite version (free).

What's your favorite iPhone app? Is the poor reception culprit really AT&T after all? What do you think of StopMotion Recorder? Am I crazy to say Aqua Moto Racing could ever touch the likes of Wave Race 64? Let me know in the comments!

Time-budgeting throughout the work day is difficult when the Internet's distractions are at your fingertips. StayFocusd is a Google Chrome extension that limits these addicting Web binges to a time span of your choosing so you can be more productive. Whether you want to block a specific Web site, a subsection of the site, or the Internet as a whole, StayFocusd does all of these things in configurations of your choice. Though it is intuitive and easy to use, this extension is very unforgiving; users must be sure about the sites they want to block because they will not have access until the next day.

The download adds a round blue icon to the right-hand side of your address bar. This icon acts as the extension's headquarters; click on the icon when you want to block/allow sites, change settings, and set time limits. Though customizing StayFocusd is easy by clicking the "settings" link, once the time limit is up for a particular site, there is no going back. If this does not scare you, there is a "nuclear" option that blocks everything. If you still need the Internet except for a handful of sites, it is possible to block everything except for your "allowed" sites. Be sure to check out a list of FAQs in the "help" link once the add-on is installed, just so you know what you are getting yourself into. When you try to go back to a blocked Web site, a guilt-inducing message appears: "Shouldn't you be working?" The publishers are probably just trying to make you feel ashamed enough to donate; there is a link that asks for cash below the message.

If you do not want Facebook, YouTube, or that one blog with the awkward family pictures to distract you from work, use StayFocusd as a handy tool toward more fruitful work. However, make sure you are serious about your temporary Web diet, or else you will find yourself in regret, possibly browsing on your smartphone.

It's a major time-killer to sift through your three dozen open tabs, looking for a needle in a tab-stack. So it's a good thing that Mozilla has given tabs some long-overdue love in the second Firefox 4 beta with App Tabs.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, App Tabs are perfect for Web apps. The feature makes your must-use tabs easy to find and makes it harder to close them. Check out this tutorial to see how to use them and how they compare with the similar feature from Google Chrome, Pin Tab.

Shooting panoramic photos with a mobile phone can be difficult. Often times it requires doing all the work in a software app when you get back from wherever you are, as well as trying to make sure that the phone's camera does not change its white balance or exposure between shots.

Occipital, the creators of the popular RedLaser scanning app (which wassold to eBay last month) have a new iPhone app debuting on Friday called 360 Panorama, which is attempting to change that. For $2.99, users can simply move their phone from left to right to capture a photo panorama. The end result is a single, panoramic photo that requires zero post-processing.

Behind the scenes the app is actually using the iPhone's video camera, which means that users will need a 3GS or the newer iPhone 4 to use it. The app also takes advantage of the iPhone 4's gyroscope hardware to help judge how quickly you're rotating, so it can figure out what needs to be captured and where you've already been. As it records imagery, it stitches together an image based on your movement, which you can see and track to make any angle corrections. Some modern day point and shoot cameras like Sony's Cyber-shot DSC-W370 are able to do the same thing, though with a larger end result.

Size and distortions are ultimately the two things that limit this app from being as useful as proper photo stitching software. The images it spits out are quite small when compared with the still shots your camera takes. You can see this in the two sample photos I've embedded below (click on each to see it in full size):

And a full 360 of an interior:

The larger problem is the distortion, which Occipital co-founder Vikas Reddy told me is made worse in indoor situations. His team is working on ways to make it better in a future release, but in the meantime shooting outdoors provides for a much smoother and less jaggy experience. Being in the urban jungle of downtown San Francisco, I wasn't able to fully test how well it would work on something like rolling hills or a forest, but as you can see from the shots above it does a fine job until you hit perfectly straight lines where the software is forced to make a stitch by guesswork.

These issues aside, 360 Panorama is an incredibly neat, and genuinely useful app. It may have no business taking over the job of a good crisp, and low distortion still image, but if you want to quickly capture an incredible amount of detail of the world around you, it's tough to beat.

If you want to see how it works while using it, you can see it in the company's demo video below:

iPhone users can also check out OutmanTech's Video Panorama app ($1.99) and Boinx's You Gotta See This ($1.99), both of which work with the same basic principle.

Originally posted at Web Crawler