The iPhone is a powerful tool. As app developers get more creative, it’s slowly displacing all the other stuff we’re used to carrying around. It started with the iPod and PDA, then moved on to our handheld gaming devices and portable DVD players, and now it’s eliminating the store loyalty cards from our wallets and the car keys from our pockets.

Another entirely natural target, even in the days when iPhones and iPod touches held just a few gigabytes, has been the humble flash drive, and File Magic aims to make it obsolete.

SpashData’s $2.99 (at the time of writing) File Magic product consists of an iPhone app which runs on iPhone OS 2.1 and up (including the iPod Touch) and a desktop companion which is supported on Windows XP and Vista and Mac OS X 10.4.11 and up. It’s easy to add, manage, and delete files through the desktop application and I had no connectivity issues during my two-week trial of File Magic.

While the desktop companion does make managing files from your home computer relatively painless, it puts some distance between File Magic and other forms of portable storage. Flash drives, portable hard disk drives, and even floppy disks all work on modern operating systems with no drivers or add-ons. File Magic does not, and if I want to quickly dump a file or two onto a friend’s computer, I do not want to spend time downloading and installing software, and I doubt that my friend (or the local librarian or school administrator) would take kindly to the idea either.

Other iPhone file managers don’t have this limitation and offer FTP, WebDAV, or web browser-based access to files. For me, WebDAV and plain HTTP are the perfect combination: I can mount the phone in the Finder for bulk uploading and file management, or load it in a browser to quickly upload or download a file or two. And, you know what? Aside from being noticeably slower than a flash drive, that model works. But File Magic can’t do it.

File Magic has other quirks. It organizes files into categories: documents, music, video, images, email, others, and folders. I can’t find much of a point to this, as it puts an extra tap between me and my files. I can make my own folders, and if I don’t it probably means that I’m happy with all my files in one big list, just like every other storage medium. File Magic also has a splash screen, which abuses the iPhone OS’s loading image feature intended only to display a minimal rendering of the application while it’s starting up. The interface is confusing, glitchy, and outright broken in places, but does get the job done if you’re willing to look past the bugs.

There are some features that makes this app stand out from others in its domain. In addition to transferring files to and from computers, File Magic can transfer between devices running the app. I wasn’t able to test out this feature. It can email your files too, and while this feature could use a lot of polish (the interface for composing messages is rough and separate emails are sent for every file), it works just fine.

File Magic also includes a couple of features which are entirely unrelated to its main purpose but could be useful. There’s an “Import Address Book” button in the desktop application that dumps the iPhone’s contacts to a CSV file. You can compose emails in a minimal interface and transfer them to the device for later sending. The emails can’t be edited and disappear from File Magic the first time they’re used (even when you don’t send them), so as it stands the drafts folder on an IMAP or Exchange account is far better suited to holding half-finished emails.

In the end, it’s a solid choice for toting your data around. I’ll probably stick with Air Sharing — it’s more polished and doesn’t require (or even have) an application running on my desktop — but File Magic offers many more features, and a lower price. That alone might give it the edge, for some.

Disclaimer: We received a review copy of File Magic which inspired and was used in the writing of this article.

In a somewhat-unexpected-yet-not-entirely-surprising turn of events, Apple announced to developers today that in-app purchases are available to free applications.

At WWDC this year, Scott Forstall defended restricting In App Purchases to paid applications (costing a minimum of 99¢).

…to keep it simple, when a consumer sees a free application, free apps remain free. You won’t be asked ever to buy something inside that free application.

Because of that, developers who wanted to offer free, feature-limited lite versions of their applications had to publish it and the full version as separate apps, and some previously-free apps, including the hugely-successful Tap Tap Revenge, gained 99¢ price tags to support add-ons unlocked through In App Purchase.

All that’s missing now are paid updates.

Take a look after the jump, and get a sneak peek at whats inside.

After having the door judo-chopped closed in our face by a crazy-looking Tesla coil operator (ArcAttack‘s Patrick Brown, B.K.A. Parsec), Sidney and I were allowed to enter Gizmodo Gallery. With everything from musical Tesla coils to the worlds biggest Cheeto on display, the gallery is a great experience for all.

Lets start off the tour with our favorite judo-chopping crew working on the Tesla coil music maker thingy. The musical compositions are played by two solid-state Tesla coils playing along with a robotic drummer. To give you some sort of idea about how fast these coils are powered on and off, to make a an A note, they must turn the coil on and off 440 times… each second. The coils are operated by computer through a MIDI control box. In case that’s too easy for you, remember that the team still had to work around the fact that the electromagnetic field from the Tesla coils disrupts signals sent over copper, so they use light pulses over fiber optic cables instead. They also had to figure out how to turn a Tesla coil on and off 440 times a second, hence the solid-state controls.

Where did this idea come from, you ask? The team member we interviewed says they came up with it in a coffee shop. Since Tesla coils have been around since the late 1800′s, it’s mixing old tech (Tesla coil) with new (computers). He put it, “it’s kinda like the first dude that ever put wheels on a cooler.” Not exactly what I would compare musical Tesla coils to, but I’m sure you get what he’s trying to say here.

Next on our list of totally awesome gadgets is the ChefStack automatic pancake maker. The machine that has already been made famous by Gizmodo themselves is on display all week and making free pancakes for all! If you would like, you can buy an automatic pancake maker for your own house and make 200 pancakes an hour! You just have to pay $3500 to get the machine in the first place… but that’s beside the point. The pancake maker is a great innovation that just shows that literally anything will sell to the right person.

New York University also brought over two interesting products that students are working on in the Tisch School. The first is a machine I can only describe as a guitar piano (although they like to call it the Irregular Incurve). A piano keyboard is hooked up to a machine that strums different strings with guitar picks that correspond to the keys on the keyboard. This supposedly makes music, although when I used it it just kinda…failed.

The other project from NYU is the Mud Computer. As the projects website says, “the Mud Tub is an experimental organic interface that lets users control a computer while playing in the mud.” When you first see the “Mud Tub,” you’re gonna think, “Why is there a strange man playing with mud in the middle of a tech gallery?” unless, of course, you’re reading this. After closer examination, we see that the man is actually interacting with a computer by playing with the mud. A projector shines a green ball onto the mud from above that you can move around. It slides down to the lowest parts of the mud, just like a real ball. Cool, isn’t it?

There were obviously many other items at the Gizmodo Gallery, such as the worlds biggest Cheeto, a 103″ plasma TV, the world’s smallest drill (I’m not sure if that’s true but it is pretty small!), and much more. Sidney and I do plan on going back later this week to see if the most fun items, like a huge 3D Etch-A-Sketch and Alpay Kasal’s interactive mirror, are working (they were out of commission today due to power issues). So stay tuned in for more on Gizmodo Gallery 09! If you so happen to be in the New York City area, I truly suggest heading to the gallery and checking it out for yourself.

The Gizmodo Gallery is open all week long (September 23rd-27th, 2009), in New York City. Check Gizmodo’s Website for more details.

The first major question is, who will run Apple once Steve Jobs retires. It would seem that the front-runner for Jobs’ job is Apple’s own Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook. He was in charge of Apple’s day-to-day operations while Jobs was on medical leave for his pancreatic cancer treatment. He has done a fine job I running the company even in the middle of a recession. But is he capable?

As the money shows, yes. On the day Jobs left, Apple stocks closed at $85.33. As of this morning, Apple opened at $132.07. While at the helm, Cook has seen the settlement of a lawsuit from IBM over Mark Papermaster, the release of a new iPod Shuffle, and the one Billionth app-store download. Apple has also reported its best non-holiday quarter bringing in $8.2 Billion in March.

Maybe pancreatic cancer was just a minor flaw in Steve Jobs’ master plan to rule the world and live forever. But incase it wasn’t, we have to look into the future to see what looks best for Apple. Will we see the beginning of a new era in technology CEO’s, or will we see the demise of our beloved computer dynasty? Only time will tell.

This Saturday, Alex Lindsay posted a short video on MacBreak showing what Pixel Corps managed to do with a shiny new iPhone 3GS and the video equipment they had lying around. His rig consisted of:

• A Redrock microShoulderMount
• (What looks like) a Beachtek DXA-4
• A mic (can’t identify)
• A Sima SLB-M
• A Litepanels Micro
• A follow focus (can’t identify)

And the iPhone mount:

• A PED3-Auto

The resulting rig is total overkill, and the mic and follow focus don’t work — the latter because the iPhone isn’t capable of changing its focus while in the middle of a recording, and the former (hopefully) because they don’t have a proper adapter for the Beachtek box.

The resulting video quality? Surprisingly good! A light and some extra support can do wonders.

Needless to say, we’re ridiculously tired. There are still plenty of stories to tell, but this liveblog is officially over. Stay tuned.

There are some awesome people out there.

The rain stopped (finally!) and we’re almost all dried off. It’s now safe to break out the technology. There are ten people in line, but only around five buyers.

We managed to sneak into the Apple Store for a quick top-off of our MBPs, but were just kicked out so the store can be closed down.

Workers have climbed on top of the cube and have begun a cleaning of the whole outside surface.

Barricades have been set up throughout the plaza. It looks like they’re prepared for a huge turnout closer to 7:00.

While we’ve braved the elements, a few people have come up to ask us a few questions, including Engadget, CNN, Reuters, the New York Times, and Bloomberg. I’ll be posting links to their coverage of the iPhone 3GS launch, and well, us!

Engadget: iPhone 3G S line begins in NY, weather be damned

UPDATE: 6:30 PM EDT: Reuters: IPhone to hit stores as Apple awaits Jobs’ return Matt Dodd was quoted on the second page of the article, and our plans for camping out were mentioned.

UPDATE: 7:00 PM EDT: Fortune / CNN Money: Lines form for the new iPhone in New York and Tokyo

Reuters (Again): Braving stormy weather for iPhone: well, sorta

Pocket Lint: iPhone 3G S line starts to form in New York

UPDATE: 7:30 PM EDT: The following is a listing of posts and articals after we got home. Take a look!

Fortune / CNN Money: Live from the (relatively sedate) iPhone 3G S launch

Gizmodo: Why In Hell Are People Camping Out For the iPhone 3GS?

Touch Podium: Line Ups Begin Early June 18th, for iPhone 3G S in New York and Tokyo, Most Likely Other Places Too

UPDATE 6/22/09 7:00 AM: Bloomberg: Apple’s IPhone Draws Crowds as Competition Stiffens Talks about us under ‘Camping Out’

If this is your first time at The iLife, Welcome! Be sure to subscribe to our RSS Feed, so that you always get the latest, in-depth tech news!

Photo from Engadget. Thanks!

I got completely soaked in the half hour I was there, even with all those umbrellas, so, guys, I wish you luck.

We’ll be posting updates throughout the day here and on Twitter (@theilife) and the folks at TheDigitalLifestyle.tv are planning to set us up with live streaming later today, so keep an eye on their feed.

If you’re in the area, stop by. If not, drop us a Tweet or a comment. Happy 3GS day to all!

Galaga Remix was created by Namco, and it is a brilliant remake of the original arcade game. Galaga Remix includes an updated version as well as the original 1981 Galaga. The old version of the game does allow you to reclaim a captured ship so you can have double the firepower with dual ships like in the old arcade game, however this app really shines with the updated version. The new Galaga’s graphics are much easier on the eyes, and includes new boss battles, multiple upgrades for your ship, and plenty of levels.

The rest of the review is after the break.

One feature from the old Galaga was to save a ship if it got captured, which then would give you a dual fighter, the updated Galaga takes that idea and runs with it. If your ship is captured by one of 3 different types of enemies, once you free your ship, it will give you a new ability, a different one based on which enemy captured you. You can upgrade in three different ways, a more powerful attack, a spread shot, or faster shooting. Each one of these can stack twice, or with one other ability. So, you can get yourself a fast shooting spread attack, or stack two power attacks to make a devastating super cannon. This allows you to create a total of 9 ships (3 basic upgraded ships, and 6 stacked upgraded ships).

The game gives you several different methods in order to control your ship, either with arrow buttons, a slider, or you can use the built-in accelerometers. However, due to the portrait setup of the classic Galaga, the controls are a bit harder to use due to their small size. For the updated version, since it is in landscape, the controls are much easier to use.

The only thing I could complain about is that it never is quite clear which monsters will kamikaze into you, or if they will change direction at the last moment and avoid a collision. This does keep it more true to the original, but Namco has shown they can take an old concept and make it much better, so it would be nice if they would give you a warning when you are about to get rammed by one of those buggers. Other than that, it would be nice to have some more levels, the game comes with a little over 30, but the more the merrier.

Great visuals, a good variety of gameplay, and 30+ stages, Galaga Remix is available at $5.99, so go grab it from the App Store here.

Palm and Sprint have finally announced the official release date and pricing for the upcoming Palm Pre. The Pre will be release on June 6th (2 weeks!) for $199 with a two-year service agreement and after a $100mail-in rebate. It will also require a Everything Data plan, which will run at $69.99 a month with450 minutes. This is on par with the cheapest iPhone plan, but it comes with a big advantage, namely unlimited texting. You can also get Sprint’s Simply Everything plan for $99.99 a month, which includes unlimited voice, text, and data.

So, overall the Pre is going to be running on par with the iPhone in terms of pricing, but it will be interesting how the release will pay out with it’s release being so close to Apple’s WWDC (Which is June 8-12), where Apple is expected to release iPhone 3.0, and possibly a new iPhone.

Say tuned during the next two weeks, this is going to be interesting.

UPDATE: Forgot to include this earlier, The Pre will be available at Sprint stores, Best Buy, Radio Shack, select Wal-Mart stores and online at Sprint.com.  You can also read the full Sprint Press Release here.

Also, it was posted at Endgadget that the Pre will be $549 with out a contract acording to Sprint customer service.

In the United States over the last half century a large amount of consumer goods were originally government sponsored military devices that trickled down to the consumer market. Think GPS, handheld radios, Toughbooks, Nextel cellphones, Roomba, the internet, and modern computers started originally as a military project. All of these things started out in the hands of Uncle Sam, and then went on to the consumer market to become what we know today.

However, now the military has started to look at consumer goods and apply them for military usage. The iPod Touch is starting to become integrated into the US military. They can be used (soon) to help soldiers communicate with the local population. Snipers use a calculator on the iPod to make better precision shots. The reason they are looking into consumer products is because consumer products are made to be cheap. To have a military standard device capable of less than what a $230 iPod can do can be twice or more the price purely because less of them are made. Because iPods are made to be mass produced, they end up being cheaper to configure the iPods (like add a screen protector or case) then it would be to have a military specific device.

This of course benefits us as consumers because if the government starts buying something on the cheap, it requires less of our national budget to buy military goods, which in turn means either less taxes, or more welfare for the needy.

The US military has always had a problem with their development cycles for new products they need. If the military wanted a iPod touch like device for soldiers to use in order to communicate with locals, they would put out a contract to engineering firms around the country to design something. The thing would end up being bulky and durable, but would most likely be limited to just communication features. And on top of that, it would take 5-10 years until the device was finalized and accepted by the branches in order to start deploying them. This is on top of what I said earlier, compared to the consumer market there would be a very limited number of these things made, meaning their price would be through the roof. And if they ever wanted to upgrade or modify it, that would be another 5-10 years cycle of intense research and development with a large amount of expenditure.

At this point, hardware isn’t the issue, software is all the military really needs to worry about. There are plenty of things we at home already use day-to-day that can be retrofitted to survive in harsh environments and that only really need new software to do what they need.

FireWire was developed by Apple in the 80′s, with contributions from Texas Instruments, IBM, Sony and a few other companies. FireWire’s first release was in 1995, and its major contender is Universal Serial Bus (USB), which was released in 1996. USB was a collaboration between Microsoft, IBM, Intel, and several other companies.

As shown, FireWire came out earlier (albeit by a year) and was vastly superior to USB. Not only that, but it took USB until 2000 to beat FireWire’s theoretical max. However, what is rarely stated is that even though USB’s theoretical max is higher, this is the THEORETICAL speed, meaning the actually speed is typically slower. In the case of USB 2.0, normal sustained transfer speeds max out around 240 Mb/s, half of its advertised 480 MB/s. Typically speeds are even slower than that, sub 200 (my external hard drives running USB 2.0 usually sit around 200 Mb/s). Of course the same applies to FireWire, however sustain speeds for FireWire are much closer to their theoretical, with their read speeds being 70% faster read and 50% faster write speeds over USB (for Firewire, we see ours sit around 325 Mb/s). Even though USB is slower, USB is on every computer you can buy on the market. FireWire on the other hand has been dwindling.

But USB isn’t Firewire’s only competitor. External SATA has been becoming increasingly more common with external hard drives, boasting speeds of nearly 1 Gigabit/s. And eSATA has plans to start marketing to film cameras soon, which is one of the few markets FireWire has a good hold on.

HDMI is another competitor after FireWire territory. FireWire can be used for TV, but HDMI is gaining a larger market penetration than FireWire has.

FireWire’s major holds in industry are film, automobiles, and military aircraft. These are industries that use FireWire as a standard. But with new standards rising, FireWire may lose its hold. Faster components are coming around every day. FireWire is starting to show its age, and support seems to be dwindling every day.

I wouldn’t say FireWire is going to die anytime soon. FireWire has shown itself to be versatile and fast. It does has a certain niche of the market. However, it seems to be lacking support, especially in the consumer market. USB already has 100% market penetration, and is held as a standard by the entire industry. eSATA is displacing FireWire for transfers to and from external drives, due to its higher transfer speeds. Soon, unless FireWire makes a big jump quickly, FireWire may be lost as a IEEE standard.

Flight Control, created by Firemint, is an addictive little game where you draw the flight paths of different aircraft to their landing strips, basically you are an air traffic controller. There are 4 different types of aircraft, a blue helicopter, a yellow Cessna type plane, and two different kinds of red jets, one being faster than the other.

The graphics are simple but clean. There isn’t any in-game music while you are directing things, and you can’t listen to music and the game sounds at the same time. The game sounds are helpful, they warn you when aircraft get close to each other, and ding whenever you land one, but if you are playing a long time it is better to listen to music. Otherwise, the game keeps track of your statistics (most likely aircraft to crash, most planes landed, last game’s planes landed) so you can see how you’ve improved.

This game could use some improvements, like a fast-forward, especially at the beginning. Every time you restart, you have to wait a long time for airplanes to show up, which makes the start of each run very slow. Otherwise, the graphics are a bit simple, a plane or helicopter landing just shows them fade away as opposed to actually landing. When there is a mid-air collision, they just blink to show they have hit each other. It would be more interesting (and a better finale to each game) if they exploded. Lastly, a few more gameplay elements would be good, like if they had clouds float over the airport to make it harder to see what is going on. However, all of these minor faults don’t hurt the game enough to avoid buying it.

Flight Control is addictive and entertaining, and it only costs $0.99, which is a great price for this game! You can pick it up from the App Store here.

Now that Apple has started to make more headway into the Microsoft dominated market, the flamewars have become more intense. As we know Apple has already made several distasteful commercials attacking Microsoft and Vista, now Microsoft is stepping up to the plate, and hitting where it hurts: the Price.

Microsoft was quite respectable for not degrading themselves to mudslinging until this point, but they undeniably know that attacking the price of Mac products is the most effective way to boost sales. The Apple Tax has become notorious, especially for PC users who try to stop others from switching to Mac. In almost any situation, if you compare Mac and PC hardware, there always seems to be a gap in pricing even when they are almost identical computers.

Continued after the break…

Lets look at the MacBook Pro and the HP HDX16t series:

MacBook Pro 15″ screen $2074.00

HP HDX16t 16″ screen $1677.99

That is a $396 difference in price. Both computers have the an internal webcam, 64-bit operating systems, the same 512mb 9600M graphics card, and their batteries last about the same amount of time. The MBP has 2GBs of DDR3 ram, which has a similar price to 4GBs of DDR2 ram that the HP has. Admittedly the MacBook Pro does have a second graphics card which the HP doesn’t, but the HP comes with a slightly faster processor, larger screen and a Blu-ray disc drive. The Blu-ray drive alone would be a couple hundred dollar difference if it was even offered on the MBP.

There are tons of different excuses for why Macs cost more. Many would argue that Apple has a better interface and operating system, or the Mac design is better, but these are subjective ideas. These aren’t the reasons that Apple has offered as to way their products cost more. Apple could easily design a cheap computer based on the same principals that Dell, Hewlett Packard, and ASUS use, and have computers for a closer price, but they choose not to. There are a ton of different things you can point out about either computer, but no matter how you argue this, it ends up that there is a price gap (no matter how big or small) between the Mac and PC.

As it stands, as long as a person can look at the technical specifications between a Mac and PC, and see that for comparable hardware the PC costs a lot less, people will be scared away from buying Apple. It convinces people that when you buy a Mac product, you are paying a tax for the logo. Apple needs more consumers to survive in the Microsoft-saturated market if they want to stay alive. To do that, Apple needs to drop their prices on their computers, or else they may be brought back to near-extinction again.

WordsWorth is a fun unique game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Basically, its a combination of a solo player game of Boggle, and a ever changing word search.  Hexagonal tiles are spaced out along the board, and its your job to earn enough points to advance to the next level. It keeps getting harder, level after level, up to level 30. The game as two modes, Timed and Classic. I really preferred the classic mode, as a way to just relax and keep me busy when I had nothing else to do, since I always have my iPod Touch on me.

See more about WordsWorth, after the jump.

Overall, I really enjoyed playing WordsWorth, which was surprising because I usually dislike word games because I can never find anything. Luckily, WordsWorth has a handy scramble feature which will shuffle all of the tiles on the board. I really liked how you activated it, by shaking your iPhone, kind of like boggle. Even if you do play in a more relaxed classic mode, there are still some challenges. For example, there are timed tiles which appear every time you scrabble the board as a penalty, and also pop up as you progress through out the levels of the game. You have to be fast, and use these red tiles, because otherwise it’s game over.

The game also has other features which help keep the game interesting, like wildcards, and “buzzwords” where a random word is chosen and if you make it, you get extra points. Most of the time, the correct letter combination is not on the board, so you have to stay on the look out and selectively get rid of tiles so you can make them line up correctly, if you chose to go for it. there is no time limit or penalty for not completing buzzwords.

One thing that really annoyed me was the background music, which was pretty short (about a minute) and didn’t loop very well. So, every time the music restarted, you hear a “jump”. Luckily, you can either turn the music off in the settings, or play your own music and automatically override the background music.

I have to say, it’s great to have a game that you can always turn to, that you can always play more, and it keeps your mind active! And, even if you manage to make it to level 30, the game is completely different every time, but restarting might be a bit easy at first. It’s definitely worth the $1.99, and it’s available in the App Store (Need iTunes to view). You can also try out the “Light” version for free. The lite version only has 3 levels, and is clasic mode only, among a few other things. You can also get it in the app store.

Pros:
Ever Changing Game Play
Flex your brain
Two Game Modes

Cons:
Annoying Background music

P.S:  This game and review is real, and not an April Fools joke. Have Fun!

Time Crisis Strike is a rail-shooter, fire-and-duck game just like his arcade brothers. Your goal is to stop the evil Wild Dog from his new (unknown) plot to cause mayhem. It’s a single campaign with 3 stages totaling 23 screens, and you face off against about a half dozen different types of enemies. Controls are simple, touch where you want to shoot, tilt the iPhone forward to duck and reload, then tilt it back to stand up and continue to shoot.

This game is a lot of fun, especially because it’s Time Crisis. Its graphics are good, and the music and sounds are all great. There were no noticeable bugs or gameplay issues, the game was very well polished. They also have five unlockable “Crisis Missions”, which each challenges you to accomplish a specific task, like only shoot the yellow soldiers. Overall the Time Crisis feel of the game is great, although it does lack the light-gun and foot-pedal, it is a great port to the iPhone.

The only drawbacks to this game are that even though you have a tilt-meter for ducking, sometimes it feels like a button would be much more useful. Otherwise, the game can feel short if you only play through the arcade mode once, but honing your skill at this game can be very entertaining, plus the unlockable challenge missions, or you can challenge friend to see who can get the highest score.

Fans of Time Crisis absolutely have to get this game. Otherwise, if you just want a good rail-shooter, Time Crisis Strike is the way to go. You can pick it up from the App Store for $5.99

Thursday afternoon, Apple has announced that its annual developer conference will kick off on Monday June 8th at Moscone West in San Francisco and end Friday, June 12th. Tickets for the event are currently $1295 until April 24th, when Apple plans to increase the price by $300. Last years event did sell out in May, with over 5,000 attendees.

This year, Apple is expected to show off a close to finished build of Snow Leopard along with a new iPhone hardware revision as well as a completed (or close to complete) iPhone OS 3.0. More information will be coming soon.

The iLife accurately predicted the dates for this years WWDC and will be providing coverage on the latest builds of Snow Leopard and iPhone OS 3.0.

Updated: Apple has sent out a mass emailing announcing WWDC 2009 and stating:

“Turn your ideas into groundbreaking apps at WWDC 2009. Don’t miss your chance to join over 1000 Apple engineers and 5000 of your peers for an exciting five days of hands-on learning, in-depth technical presentations, and one-to-one code-level assistance. Whether you’re developing, deploying, or integrating with Apple technologies, WWDC 2009 will provide the insight and inspiration you need to take your work to the next level.”

The entire Flip line is known for their ease of use, quality, and portability, but this is the first Flip to be High Definition capable, with a resolution of 720p. Since the Mino boasts a rather small size of 3.94″ x 1.97″ x 0.63″, and a light weight of 3.3oz, it’s really easy to throw into your pocket when you go out. It’s really great as a day to day video camera, when you just want to get together with some friends and throw something up on YouTube. It’s also a great starter camera for a tween, so that they can make their first home movies. It even includes some basic video editing and sharing software called FlipShare, which comes right on the camera. FlipShare is really nice, because it allows you to do some basic editing, like trimming and combining clips together, or adding a background audio track, and upload it directly to YouTube. However, if you want to use the clips in another program, like embedding a video into a PowerPoint, or cataloging them in Picasa, you will have to convert them first.

Overall, the Flip Mino HD was really fun and easy to use. All you have to do is hit the big red recording button, and you’re ready to go! You line up your shots, and playback your shots on the built in 1.5″ screen. Personally, I think it would have been nice if it was a little bit bigger. The camera also had battery life, you get about two hours of recording off a single charge, and you can record about one hour of HD video using the cameras built in 4 GB of storage.

Read the rest of the review, after the jump.

I wish the camera had a removable rechargeable battery, because the current recharge able battery is built in, and an SD card slot to expand the camera’s storage, or use an Eye-Fi card to wirelessly send your videos to your computer. I was very happy with the video and sound quality, but wish there was some built in anti-shake correction, or a way to smooth out video in the FlipShare software. No matter how hard I tried to hold the camera perfectly still it was impossible to not have any shakes in the footage. If you plan to buy one of these cameras, I suggest that you also get a small tripod, like this one from Amazon, since the Mino has a built in tripod mount. I also wish that there was a way to take still pictures directly on the camera, because right now the only solution is to use the still function in the FlipShare software which is really annoying, because you cannot be sure of how the picture is going to turn out until you go back to your computer, upload it, and look at the clip frame by frame. A still picture function would also make the camera more useful on a day to day basis.

I have to say, my favorite feature of the Flip was the built in USB plug, that is discreetly stored inside the camera until you need it, then you just slide a small lever and it flips out. The USB arm also has a small LED on it, to show when charging of the battery is complete, since the camera can charge over USB. One thing that I wish Pure Digital had included in the box, is a short USB extender, so if your computers’ USB ports are cramped together, you can still easily plug the camera in, since the USB arm on the Mino HD, unlike previous Flip models, has absolutely no flexibility.

Also, a great thing about the Flip Mino HD is that the design is fully customizable when you buy it online at www.theflip.com for $229.99. You can upload your own art work, such as a design you made, your logo, or a picture of your family, and have it imprinted onto a Flip Mino HD. There’s even a gallery of premade designs that you can choose from. You can also buy the black version at amazon.com for about $208, at the time of writing.

Included in the box along with the Flip Mino HD:

• Soft Carrying Bag
• Video cable, to hook the camera up to your TV
• Wrist Lanyard
• Quick Start Guide
• FlipShare software installer on camera

Check out some of the footage I shot with the Flip Mino HD below:

Video review of the Flip Mino HD:

Waiting for the subway (Most of video is me trying to hold the camera still, subway pulls in towards end):

On the Subway (Motion Test):

Pros:

• Small Size
• 720p HD Video Quality
• Rechargeable Battery
• Built in USB Plug
• Customizable Design
• Built in Software for basic editing

Cons:

• No Expandable Storage
• No Removable Battery
• Video Often Shaky, hard to hold still (at least for me)

Photo Gallery:

The front of Moscone West, WWDC 2008

Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, often abbreviated as WWDC, is an annual conference held in San Francisco for Apple Developers. In recent years, thousands of developers have gathered at the Moscone Center and notably in 2008, Apple sold out of tickets- which can be attributed to the success of the iPhone SDK. This year shouldn’t be very different, as the recent iPhone OS 3.0 preview and SDK update will keep new developers attracted to the already huge platform. Along with the iPhone OS 3.0, Mac OS X Snow Leopard which was announced at WWDC 2008, is expected to be near or ready release.

WWDC typically kicks off with a Keynote from CEO Steve Jobs, who is currently on a medical leave until June. It is still unclear whether Steve Jobs will present at this years keynote, which usually kicks off the conference. Usually WWDC is held in the second week of May or June, but was rescheduled to August in 2006. Curiously the Moscone Center schedule shows only one week long date reserved with the title of “Corporate Meeting” in between events such as Sun’s Java One, Cisco Live!, Linux World, Oracle OpenWorld- June 6-12. In past years, Apple has used the “Corporate Meeting” as a mask for their own events, keeping the dates secret until an official announcement is made. Interestingly however, there is another event from May 27th to 28th with the same “Corporate Meeting” title.

The June 6th to 12th dates fall on the same week as WWDC 2008. Above, a chart of WWDC dates going back until 2004.

Aside from the Snow Leopard and iPhone OS 3.0 releases, Apple is also expected to release the iPhone 2,1 that has been spotted in sever logs. If Apple intends on holding the conference in early June this year, we should hear of an announcement sometime very soon. Stay tuned to The iLife for the latest news!