Free Blog

If you’ve applied for Apple’s iPhone Developer program, check email for your rejection letter. The twitterati are reporting widespread disappointment and anger as thousands of iPhone developer hopefuls have received a “Thank you but no thank you” message in their inbox. The emails are arriving with the subject of iPhone Developer Program Enrollment Status.

Did you get accepted? Do you know anyone who did? Let us know in the comments. Some readers are reporting acceptance — if you’ve been accepted please send us some more details — but they appear to be confusing the iPhone online developer SDK download with the “iPhone developer program,” which you can learn more about at Apple’s site. What we are talking about here is the $99 signup for the developer program, which includes a signing certificate to allow applications to run on physical iPhones and not just in the Aspen simulator. Just because you have downloaded the Xcode SDK components does not make you an iPhone dev Jedi — if you haven’t paid your $99, or you haven’t been invited to pay it, you have no lightsaber.

Corporations have been rejected and so have individuals. Premiere members, Select members, Online members, all rejected. To be clear, these rejections are not for the general iPhone SDK download program but for the paid $99 developer/AppStore access program. I have not been able to confirm any acceptances into this latter program.

Out of country developers are reporting slightly different rejections. One anonymous developer received this message: “At this time, the iPhone Developer Program is only available in the US, and will expand to other countries during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.”

An absolutely LOL moment from Daniel Jalkut, which I quote in full: “In other news, it looks like the Jailbreak Developer Program still has open slots, and people are getting approved as I type.”

TUAW reader UO perfectly summarizes the dilemma: “I got a rejection this morning too. What if I never get accepted? Spending that much time (until June?) working on code I may never be able to ship is an unacceptable risk right now.”

Dear Registered iPhone Developer, Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. Thank you for applying. Best regards, iPhone Developer Program

And just one more reminder: this is less about ‘rejection’ than it is about developers being unable to commit resources when Apple won’t give a firm go-ahead. Feel free to think about it as a “limbogram” rather than an outright rejection.

Unconfirmed insider reports are trickling in. One blue & green anonymous tipster tells us that Apple has yet to set up its certificate management system and cannot issue developer certs until this is finished and put in place. While this doesn’t explain why Apple sent out its letters worded the way they were, it might explain why TUAW cannot find a single developer who has documentedly been accepted into the system.

If you still don’t have an iPhone case, and pink case for some reason is not for you then you should check out Vaja cases. It’s made from durable Argentinean leather, and is probably the most customizable iPhone case ever!

The cheapest ivolution Grip holster (priced from $55) features 39 colors to choose from, ability to add belt clip and you can even engrave text or image on it, which would make a perfect gift for your beloved one.

But if $55 is too much you can choose slim bag for just $29. However if you want something more classy like i-volution SP be prepared to spend around $100. There are over 20 case designs to choose from, and each is customizable even more.

So if customization is you thing head over to Vaja Cases

Many iPhone users want to transfer their music clips, movies, and just random videos onto their iPhone. However it’s not all that easy to do, at least when your movies library is encoded in different formats and you don’t have professional software to convert the videos into an iPhone compatible format.

That’s where Movies2iPhone by Olivier Ksikes comes in. Movies2iPhone is a completely free video converter (based on FFmpeg) for Windows-powered machines that will convert any movie you have on your PC into an iPhone compatible format, which then could be easily transfered onto your iPhone via iTunes.

Movies2iPhone supported formats are Divx, Xvid, avi, mpeg, wmv, asf, mov, vob, and more. The software also features support for subtitles, and comes in 7 different languages. However, make sure that you have Windows XP or Windows Vista installed, as it’s not compatible with other operating systems.
Also worth noting is that this is still a beta version, so bugs are still in there: we’ve encountered a few, namely:
- The program can only process English file/folder names (so if your file is named in some other language, just give it an English name, and it will work).
- Occasionally (this bug happened while converting a 2 hour long DiVX movie) the program might give an error and appear to be closing. However, the conversion process will still be running, and as such you just need to wait patiently for it to complete.

Direct download:
- Movies2iPhone v0.66 beta (2.7MB)

Today, the Academy of American Poets announced the launch of a mobile poetry archive for iPhone owners, which provides free and direct access to the entire collection of over 2,500 poems on Poets.org, as well as hundreds of biographies and essays, all in the palm of a hand.

Designed using Web 2.0 Internet Standards and Apple’s Developers Guidelines, the site is optimized for the iPhone, and formatted for effortless access on most mobile devices.

“I have always believed that poetry has a necessary place in daily life,” said Tree Swenson, executive director of the Academy of American Poets. “As the first arts organization to offer mobile content, the Academy of American Poets affirms its imperative to connect people to poetry by creating free and simple access for everyone,” Ezra Pound of Poets.org said.
Poems can be browsed by author, title, occasion, or form, and searched easily by keyword on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Visitors can read a poem, anytime, anywhere–whether to fill a spare moment, woo a darling, toast a friend, find solace, or recite a few immortal lines–verse is now at your fingertips.

This new mobile archive offers unlimited access to Poets.org just in time for National Poetry Month in April, a month long celebration of poetry and its vital place in American culture, which was inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. On April 17, mobile users can instantly celebrate the first national Poem In Your Pocket Day by reading poems and sharing them with your loved ones.

To reach the mobile site, simply go to www.poets.org/m on any mobile device.

Happy Apple iPhone Downloads is a paid downloads service for Apple iPhone and Apple iPod Touch.

Users that subscribe get access to free Apple iPhone downloads and free Apple iPod Touch downloads.

Essentially, the program provides you with downloads and conversion of files that one can find online to iPhone and iPod Touch.

Happy Apple iPhone downloads service offers downloads for iPhone Game Emulators, Themes, Applications, Videos, Media Converters, Images, Movies, and Music, however it’s your responsibility to ensure that your downloads are legal.

Happy Apple iPhone downloads package that allows you to do all that retails for $49.95. To subscribe and for more information proceed to Happy Apple iPhone Downloads site.

As we reported previously, T-Mobile is indeed bringing iPhone to Austria. It will start selling iPhones on Friday. There will be 8GB for €399 and 16GB for € 499. And as usual iPhone service is contract based. There is going to be 2 year contract of up to €60 per month. But while it wasn’t officially confirmed by T-Mobile Austria, this was confirmed by Austrian newspaper Standard.

If so, Austria will be the 5th country with the iPhone after current ones and Ireland, which will sell iPhones from March 14.

There’s loads of native YouTube download-applications for Windows and Mac machines out there, but so far people that wanted to download a YouTube video to their iPhone had to resort to the former.

MxTube, a native (however, non-authorized) program for the iPhone, fixes that: upon installing the MxTube one can download YouTube videos to iPhone, skipping the main computer.

The program works via a pseudo-Youtube-interface, that allows you to search for YouTube videos and download them in both high (Wi-Fi optimized) and low (Edge optimized) formats.

In order to install MxTube and download YouTube videos onto your iPhone, you need to have a jailbreaked iPhone with Installer.app on it. Make sure you have “Community Sources” (”Sources” -> “Community Sources” in Installer) added, then locate and install the program.

Not even a week passed since iPhone SDK launch and it was already downloaded over 100,000 times. Surely not every person will create ground-breaking app, even if app at all, but we certainly can expect some nice applications coming for iPhone in the near future.

Game developers and publishers were quick to realise its potential and had plenty of announcements lately. Now app developers were a bit slower. But it’s probably because they are hard at work.

Interestingly that a weeks’ time as enough to crack iPhone 2.0 as we reported earlier. 

According to 9to5 Mac, the exclusive provider of iPhone in Australia is going to be Telstra.

They are linking to a job posting on Sensis (search engine division of Telstra). Sensis is looking for a person to design iPhone search application. And this probably means that they are getting ready for the iPhone. You can check the job description here.

Previously it was speculated that Telco might be iPhone provider. It is also possible that Apple could choose Vodafone or Singtel.

So just like with China, this is another unclear happening. Hopefully we won’t have to wait too long to find out who is going to provide iPhone. But in the meantime stay tuned!

The Boy Genius Report has recently reported on a rumor of T-Mobile setting up shop in Canada.

According to the report, Deutsche Telekom has been pre-approved for financing and testing cell tower reception in Canada. Plans are to launch the new telecom service in 2009.

As of right now, Rogers (and Fido, which belongs to it) is the only GSM service provider in Canada. The addition of T-Mobile will significantly drive down the overinflated data costs in Canada, as well as provide another possible option for iPhone support in Canada. T-Mobile is currently the provider of iPhone in Germany and Austria.

The Boy Genius reports claims this to still be a rumor, due of lack of definitive information.

It remains to be seen whether this rumor will materialize, but T-Mobile is known to be an innovative company, and more competition cannot hurt Canadian cellular industry, mostly dominated by oligopolies like Rogers and Bell (although smaller operators, like Virgin Mobile, are starting to make inroads).

T-Mobile is currently offering rather affordable data and talk plans to iPhone owners in Germany — but it remains to be seen whether the additional competition will translate into cheaper rates for Canadian iPhone users.