Apple World

The ID America Gasket Case, inspired by the shape of the head gasket on a performance engine, is one of the most stylish cases I’ve ever seen. It’s made from lightweight brushed aluminum (but is very durable at the same time!) and has six different color versions – Aluminum Silver, Vintage Gold, Modern Bronze, Titanium Gray, Rally Blue and Jet Black. The case also comes with a protective film for the front and back sides of your iPhone 4S, protecting them from scratches, which is also a nice addition.

If you think iPhone plans are expensive in the United States, try traveling across an ocean with one. We’ve all heard the horror stories: multi-thousand-dollar bills for forgetting to turn off the you-will-accrue-substantial-charges-if-this-is-turned-on slider, but what do you do if you actually need to use the Web overseas? We’re here to help.

AT&T

For those of us already tied to a long-term contract with AT&T, options are fairly limited. The easiest and most cost-effective way for regular long-distance travelers to get instant access to the web and email wherever they are (within a reasonable 100-country radius) is by adding one of four international data packages, which start at $24.99 for 50MB of data. Much like text messaging, global add-ons can be changed or deleted at any time, but be aware of your usage -- extra kilobytes are pricey, costing $10 for each 10MB. Calls are a little trickier and vary widely between countries, but AT&T World Traveler ($5.99 a month) will keep the costs somewhat manageable.

Verizon/Sprint

Since the iPhone 4S is a dual-band phone, global Verizon and Sprint users are no longer stymied by the less-prevalent CDMA network. According to reports, both carriers will unlock iPhones for customers "in good standing," which simply means they've paid their bill for 60 days. Once unlocked, you have several options direct from the carrier, including Verizon's Global Data plan, which starts at $30/month for 50MB (Sprint doesn't have a bundled plan, but they'll be kind enough to notify you when your roaming charges top $50 and disable it completely when it hits quadruple figures). Talking's a little more palatable: Sprint's Worldwide Voice add-on offers discounted global rates for an additional $4.99 per month, and International Long Distance Value Plan is a buck less than that. Of course, once the SIM slots are unlocked, you're no longer tied to the carrier's options...

Unlocked

When Apple began selling unlocked iPhones stateside this summer, a collective cheer emerged among all contract holdouts, but there were a few caveats. For one, prices aren’t for the faint of heart -- $649 for the 16GB iPhone 4S, $749 for the 32GB version and $849 for 64 gigs -- for another, it requires a micro-SIM card. Still-independent T-Mobile -- which missed out on the iPhone jackpot again this year -- has been known to brag about the number of iPhones roaming around its network. For rabid communicators, the provider offers a handy $10-a-month with all-you-can-make calls to landlines in over 50 countries, texting in 200-plus countries, and discounted calls in over 150 countries (i.e., calls to Bangladesh will cost $0.34 per minute to landlines and $0.42 to mobile phones instead of the usual $2.99 rate). International internet service is a bit pricier at $15 per megabyte.

Of course, if you want to bypass the major carriers altogether (or have an unlocked Sprint or Verizon slot), you can pick up a prepaid Micro SIM card from OneSimCard and save a bundle on per-megabyte overuse charges. Cards cost $44.95 (you’ll get a European phone number), with packages of airtime starting at $10. Rates vary by country--in the United Kingdom, for example, $25 will get you 25MB of Internet use (in 10kb chunks), about 60 sent text messages or around an hour of outgoing talk time (incoming calls and texts are free)--but consistently clock in under the major carriers.

Bottom Line

Before hopping onto a plane with any one of these options, you’ll want to figure out how you’ll be using your iPhone. Of course, if you’re already under contract, you probably don’t want to drop a bundle of dough on a second unlocked iPhone--but for the most part, AT&T’s and Verizon's global add-ons -- not to mention Sprint's vigilance -- will keep your monthly bill affordable.

There's no doubt that the iPhone is the best camera that's always on you. And with iOS 5, Apple has included many new Camera features that would make even professional photographers a little more excited to use their mobile phones to capture the moment. Read on for a look at how you can get the most from the new Camera features in iOS 5.

1. Quick Access

You can now access the built-in Camera application right from your Lock Screen. With your device powered off, simply double-tap on the Home button. You will notice a camera icon to the right-hand side of the unlock slider. Tap on this icon to launch the Camera app without even having to unlock your device.

2. Gridlines

If you have ever taken a photo and it was crooked, then you will like the new Gridlines feature. This feature places a 3x3 grid overlay on the Camera, allowing you to better line up shots before taking the photo. To get the gridlines on the screen, tap the Options button at the top of the screen, and slide ON the Grid feature.

3. Volume Up Shutter Button

When taking photos, you may find it difficult to tap the on-screen shutter button. Luckily, Apple now allows you to snap a photo with the Volume Up button used as a Shutter button. Now whenever you’re in the built-in Camera application, you can snap a picture using a hardware button.

4. AE/AF Lock

Now you can use the Auto Exposure setting from a particular angle in the photo by simply tapping once and holding on the screen until AE/AF Lock appears at the bottom, or you see a flashing blue square. To return to dynamic Auto Exposure/Auto Focus, tap once anywhere on the screen.

5. Pinch-to-Zoom

When composing your photo, you can get just the portion you want by zooming in using the Pinch-to-Zoom Gesture. Of course, you can still use the zoom slider by using the pinch-to-zoom gesture once on the screen to bring it up.

Since the day iPhone 4S was launched World Wide, it has been a very bad day for iPhone 4S so far now. The day it launched, a guy did a drop test of his iPhone 4S out side the Apple Store and screwed the screen of iPhone 4S. At least he confirmed that iPhone 4S can be dropped once, but not twice.

If you are an iDevice user, so you must be aware of Blendtec. Blendtec, every year takes iPhone,iPad, and iPod and blends it into a Blender to see what will be the result. Obviously the iDevices gets blend. You can see your self how the iPhone 4S blends in a blender.
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What are our thought on this ?

The new iTunes is out. While it's, let's just say different looking, we took a good hard look at the latest update to the hardest working app on our Macs and came up with some tips, tricks and features you might find helpful. From Ping to Album Art List View, we check out the good, the bad and the gray.

Ping

Opt In
Ping is opt in, so you have to turn it on in order for it to work. If you're concerned that Apple is going to pull a Facebook on you, put the aluminum foil down--Apple seems to have learned from the bad press surrounding Facebook's tendency to automatically opt-in its users to new features. You have to turn Ping on in order to start judging your friend's musical taste.

Becoming friends with people with restricted accounts

Unless you actually know the person and you're fine giving them the email account you use for iTunes, we suggest you steer clear of adding people with restricted accounts. And really, what are these people hiding? We all know you love Milli Vanilli. Blame it on the rain...

Posts?

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, there is no "post" what you ate for lunch option on Ping. Everything is based around music and friends.


You can post an album to your account via iTunes. After clicking the post button, you can add your musical pearls of wisdom.


You can also "Like" an album then comment on that.

Or you can just buy the album and tell the world why it's important for everyone else to buy the album.

Finally, you can comment and "Like" items in Recent Activity.

Go away Lady Gaga--Fixing recent activity

If it was up to Apple, we'd all be fans of Lady Gaga. The top of Recent Activity defaults to showing you people and artists you should follow. You can get rid of that and make the Recent Activity page actually useful by highlighting, well, recent activity.


To hide people to follow, artists to follow and search from Ping: Just navigate to the top left corner and click on the X. Don't worry, they're in the right-hand column.

A clean Recent Activity

Only featured artists so far

If you're looking for Bad Brains, Morrissey, The Arcade Fire, Britney Spears, or really anyone that doesn't show up in Apple's Featured Artist list, you're going to be disappointed. So far, only a few artists have jumped on the Ping bandwagon. Hopefully more artists will join the party soon.

Ping is available everywhere in iTunes

Seriously, it's in the Source bar on the left, it's in the menu bar of the iTunes store. Everywhere you look, Ping. If you haven't seen it by now, it's probably because of the new bland gray color scheme of iTunes.

No swears

If you have a "colorful" vocabulary, Ping is going to automatically tone it down for the kiddies. We tried some of our favorite PG-13 words and ended up with the * replacement. What the F**k?

Manually change your top 10 songs

No one we've met has agreed with the automatically populated top 10 songs Ping picked for you. The Music I Like option says that they will, "Automatically display all music I like, rate, review, or purchase." We're pretty sure purchase trumps the rest of that list. While we listen to certain albums over and over again, it chose an album we purchased and then never listened to because it sucked.


To fix this, navigate to My Profile > Edit profile, and scroll down to Music I like. Check Manually pick the Music to Display. Use the Search for Music box to search for songs you actually like.

If you think you're going to be able to pick songs not in the iTunes store, you would be mistaken. It's a huge mistake on Apple's part to not allow you to populate your top songs with music not available in iTunes. Oh well, fingers crossed for an update.

Preview what you own?

When you click on your Music I Like, instead of just playing the song. If you like it, you probably own it. It pops up with the preview of the album the song is on.

Preview your friends picks

If someone posts an album that interests you, you can click on Show Songs right below the album art to preview the album.

Invitations

You can invite friends to Ping via email or with Facebook Connect. As of writing this, Facebook Connect is wonky disabled and invite via email isn't tied to your address book. You have to type in every email address.

Share your profile

Instead of dealing with broken default ways of sharing your Ping profile, just navigate to Your Profile. Right-click on your name and select Copy Link from the contextual menu.


You can paste that into Facebook, Twitter, or any other way you can think of. It's faster and easier.

iPhone Ping Party

Remember when Steve said you could get your Ping on with your iPhone? Well, Plug your iPhone into your Mac after you update to iTunes 10 and it pushes Ping onto your iPhone.

iOS 5 now has full Twitter integration, which may or may not become a time consuming bad habit. Regardless, iOS 5 lets you sign in to your Twitter account once and enable you to tweet directly from Safari, Photos, Camera, YouTube, or Maps. It'll also let you update your contacts with Twitter usernames and profile pictures. We’ll show you how easy it is to set up and use Twitter in iOS 5.

1. Set Up Twitter

To begin setting up the iOS 5 Twitter integration, head to System Preferences > Twitter. Once there, tap on the Add Account button. From the resulting page, enter your user name and password. When you have finished, click the Sign In button.

If you are new to Twitter, press the Create New Account button and a new dialog will walk you through the new account creation process.

2. Update Your Contacts

After you have signed in, press the Update Contacts button. This will search your Address Book for contacts that are on Twitter (it searches by both email address and mobile phone number), and then automatically adds a Twitter username field and updates the profile pictures of the associated contacts. After tapping on the button, the process will take a few seconds depending on how many contacts you have stored on your device. If you manage your contacts through iCloud, the profile pictures and Twitter usernames will automatically be synced to the cloud.

3. Tweeting from iOS 5

Tweeting from iOS 5 is as easy as tapping on the share button in many of the built-in applications. Currently, you can share to Twitter using the following built-in applications:

- Safari
- Photos
- Camera
- YouTube
- Maps

We’ll show you how to do this in the built-in Photos application. To begin, tap on any photo that you wish to share, and then tap on the Share button in the toolbar. From the options, select Tweet.

A new dialog will pop open, with the photo attached. You will be able to type out your message in the text box. Tap the add location button to Geotag your tweet. When you have finished, tap the Send button and your message with image will be posted to Twitter.

iPhone 4S already makes it way to the Apple Stores finally,and already huge number of folks reached the Apple Store ground to get the device exclusively but still there are quite number of people who still confused in choosing the carrier, from which they have to purchase the iPhone. Especially those folks who minds the network data speed on their iOS devices.
Well if you are one of them and still confused between AT&T, Verizon and Sprint iPhone 4S from which to buy the iPhone, there we have a really good comparison video for you guys that may help you in choosing your feature carrier with iPhone 4S, as the video comes from the iDownloadBlog guys, we must say thanks to them for their content.
The guys over the site has just got three different iPhone 4S’s from each carrier and finally comes up with the comparison video to show, how these networks really do work on the Apple’s iPhone 4S. If network speed ever matters you, then must take a look into their speed comparison video after the break and find out your network.