Telstra are launching a new iPhone app that gives T-Box customers the ability to change the channel, record programs and mute the sound by shaking the iPhone. The T-Box does come with a remote already, but by comparison is small, clunky and crowded. If you are both an iPhone and T-Box owner, it’s a no brainer, get the damn app.

“Internet-enabled entertainment is fast becoming the norm as products like the Telstra T-Box and smart TVs become part of the furniture in living rooms across the country. The technology has evolved from being a novelty for technology enthusiasts into something anyone can understand and use,” Telstra’s Executive Director of Media, J-B Rousselot said.

According to Telstra, around 50% of their mobile customers own a smart phone, which has justified a ‘considerable investment’ in the development of mobile applications. Telstra say an Android version of the app is in development and will available soon.

Since it’s launch, there has been more than 200,000 T-Box’s sold, delivering more than 1.8 Million movies to Australian homes.

More information @ Telstra.

You can now pre-order Apple’s latest phone, the iPhone 4 S unlocked from Apple’s online store which was announced during a press conference on the 5th.

The phone comes in black and white at three different price points:

• 16GB $799
• 32GB $899
• 64GB $999

As of writing this none of the carriers have released information about purchasing the iPhone 4 S on a contract, stay tuned to techAU.

Update
Optus tweeted out this morning that their pre-orders were ready to go, however the link provided http://optus.com.au/iphone4s is broken.

Update 2
Optus have released new plans for the iPhone 4S and surprisingly aren’t better than current plans.. TechGeek has a great run down of the details.

Learn more about the iPhone 4 S:

Apple iPhone announcement: the important bits.

Apple just screwed Telstra. No LTE. No HD calls.

Apple Store

In typical Apple style, the event this morning started with sales figures. While interesting to some, statistics can be crafted to effectively say what you want. What you’re really after the juicy new details.. so here they are.

iOS5

Developers have been flushing out the bugs in iOS5 for months now.. it’s now ready for prime time. The iOS5 Gold Master will be available to developers today and shortly after for the public.

Apple also showed off a new ‘Cards’ app. This allows you to snap a photo with your phone and send it as a physical printed card to your friends and family. The originator will receive a push notification when the card is delivered.

Another new Reminders app will in iOS will be location aware, providing you with prompts when your near a certain location. This should actually be really useful for groceries,

Safari Mobile will get a new feature that comes from desktop browsers, Tabbed Browsing.

The iPod Nano will also get iOS5, this makes it the 3rd skew of the operating system. iPhone, iPad and now iPod Nano. The Nano will also track your runs using the Nike technology without an additional sensor in your shoes.

iCloud

Available to App Developers, iCloud syncs documents, photos, books and apps to be synced between devices via iCloud.

Find My Friends is a new feature that allows iOS users to discover the location of their friends. Naturally there would need to be privacy controls to ensure that you can be off the grid when you want to be. This will be competition for Facebook’s Check-in feature.

iTunes Match will cost US $25 per year, will launch at the end of October, but is a US only feature. Add it to the list.

iPhone

Apple have announced an iPhone 4S featuring an upgraded A5 dual-core processor. The iPhone 4S will achieve 7x the GPU capabilities of our existing iPhone 4. The physical dimensions are the same as the current model, same screen, good news for developers.

Apple have have modified the antenna in the 4S, despite it really being a non-issue.

Image credit: The Verge

The iPhone 4S is being labelled as a World Phone.. and will support HSDPA or data speeds up to 14.4 Mbps. Not exactly the 4G LTE support (Telstra) hoped for.

The camera gets an upgrade with an 8 Megapixel sensor, auto white balancing, faster load times and only 0.5 seconds between shots. In video mode, it also supports 1080p recording, and real time image stabilisation. Unfortunately the front camera has still been left at VGA quality.

Image credit: Engadget

Voice controls will now be enhanced with the help of Siri, a company Apple acquired. Surprisingly the name has survived the acquisition with the natural voice translation on the iPhone called ‘Siri’. The live demo showed examples of “What’s the weather like today” and “Find me a great Greek restaurant in Palo Alto”. Siri is also able to create travel path on Google Maps, or set an alarm on your phone.

Siri is only available on iPhone 4S and will launch under the beta label. It also supports dictation. There will be a new microphone icon on the keyboard just like Google’s Android. Application developers can use a new API to integrate Siri support into their apps.

The great news for Australians is that Siri explicitly supports the Aussie accent.

Image credit: Engadget

Pricing and availability

The US will launch in United States, Canada, Australia, UK, France, Germany and Japan on October 14th. Pre-orders start on October 7th. There’s no local pricing, what we do know is the US prices – 16GB for $199 32GB for $299 and new 64GB model for $399.

Update
iPhone 4S starts at AUD $799. iPhone 4 $679. iPhone 3GS $449.

More info @ Apple.

Apple have finally confirmed a special invite-only iPhone Event on October 4th 10:00 am (US Pacific time), which will be October 5th Australian time. John Paczkowski over at All Things D reported the news a short time ago. The invite graphic has a very basic grid of 4 default iPhone applications with the text ‘Let’s talk iPhone’ below.

While it is great to have an iPhone-related event locked-in, there is something about the invite feels strange. There’s no teasing image of an iPhone 5 silhouette, which could be done without revealing critical information. Reading between the lines, the very blunt statement, Let’s talk iPhone, combined with picture of app icons, almost sounds like Apple will not launch a new iPhone but focus on iOS 5 on the iPhone.

It is telling that this event will take place to a small invite-only select crowd at Apple’s Cupertino campus, rather than at WWDC in front of thousands at a larger venue like Moscone West Centre like they have in the past. Let’s hope this event isn’t Apple’s way of letting us down gently that iPhone 5 is delayed. Time will tell.

More info @ All Things D.

Its April 28th in Australia and our Apple’s front page looks like this..

While the US version looks like this..

It’s not often Australia gets new products (I say new product, but really mean new colour) before the US. That said, we’ll take our little time zone victories where we can get them. I’m pretty sure at this point everyone who was going to get an iPhone4 already has a black one and is tied into a contract. Most iPhone users will wait till iPhone 5 before upgrading.. who knows, maybe the iPhone 5 will come in another colour..

Update
Turns out if you try and actually buy a white iPhone 4, you can’t, at least not yet. There’s currently no option to select the white version. Am sure it won’t be long, but looks like the front page went live a little early.

Update 2
Vodafone has posted a list of retail stores that are stocking the white iPhone 4 – http://blog.vodafone.com.au/blog/news/apple®-iphone™-4-white-store-list/

More info @ http://www.apple.com/au/iphone/

Telstra has finally launched Visual Voicemail today for iPhone customers, more than 2 years after competitor Vodafone. Naturally Telstra has to throw their own unique spin on it, calling the optional service ‘Message Bank Plus’.

Telstra explains how it works..

By linking up with the iPhone’s voicemail interface, MessageBank plus serves up all of your voice messages (in date order) as a list on your phone. To play back a message, you can simply browse through your list of voicemail and tap on the item you’d like to hear.

There’s nothing new about this feature, just the fact that Telstra is now making it available to their iPhone customers. While iOS4.3 gave us Mobile Hotspot for free, Telstra’s implementation of Visual Voicemail Message Bank Plus will set you back $5 per month. Not sure how many voice mails that you receive, but for the few I get, I doubt I could justify the cost.

Strangely this ‘new feature’ on Telstra iPhones will require at least iOS4.3, strange because Vodafone has had this feature for years, running of many earlier firmware versions. This makes you wonder what is unique about Telstra’s implementation ?

MessageBank Plus requires an Apple iPhone running iOS4.3 or later, connected to a Telstra Post-Paid mobile voice service.

Take a minute to read through the comments on the post, almost 100% of which condemn the $5pm fee. Many commenters highlight the fact that they are on $100+ plans, yet would still be required to pay. It seems this may be $5 to much for Telstra customers. It will be interesting to see Telstra’s response to this backlash, they are after all re-inventing themselves as the company that really listens to their customers.

While Telstra takes the heat today, it should also be highlighted that Optus still doesn’t offer Visual Voicemail at all, paid or not.

More information @ Telstra Exchange

Many of us iPhone owners know too well how our images are being ruined by a flaw in the iPhone’s camera. When taking photos under fluorescent lights a blue tine appears on photos, radiating out from the centre as a circle. Unlike a photo with under or over-exposure, these photos can’t simply be adjusted using an image editing program. Because the tint affects only a region of the photo not a blue tint over the whole image, we can’t just use hue-adjustment techniques.

Introducing the Cam Spot Fix iPhone application. This application easily fixes the blue tint on photos.

Checkout some sample before and after photos below. While the application is A$2.49, to make a completely unusable photo into something usable can be invaluable.

Download the app via iTunes

Everyone’s favourite note-taking application (sans Evernote), Microsoft’s One Note has arrived in the Apple App Store. Available for iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, its refreshing to see even more Microsoft divisions servicing consumers. Obviously Microsoft sells their own mobile phone platform – Windows Phone 7, but the market penetration pales in comparison to Apples.

Similarly Amazon operates their software and hardware divisions separately, this means the amazon kindle software is available on multiple platforms, despite them selling their own dedicated hardware device. In reality, not everyone who wants One Note mobile will buy a WP7 device, so this just makes good business sense for Microsoft.

With OneNote Mobile, you can:
▪ Create flexible notes that can include text, pictures, bullets, and checkboxes
▪ Check To Do items off on the go
▪ Save time with quick access to your most recent notes
▪ Work with confidence—OneNote Mobile automatically syncs your notes with Windows Live in the background
▪ Organize your notes into sections or create new notebooks using OneNote 2010 or OneNote Web App and access them from your iPhone

Requirements:
▪ iPhone or iPod touch must have iOS 4.2 or higher
▪ A free Windows Live ID is required to use OneNote Mobile —use an existing one or let OneNote Mobile help you sign up
▪ Web functionality uses the free OneNote Web App available on Windows Live, which requires a supported web browser
▪ OneNote Mobile opens notebooks created in Microsoft OneNote 2010 or the OneNote Web App
▪ Customizing section colours requires Microsoft OneNote 2010
Access your notes online at http://office.live.com.

Right now it seems to be only available in the US store, hopefully it arrives in Australia soon.. come on MSAU.

More info about One Note on iOS at technet.

Update 2: Apparently the Skyfire app was pulled by the developers due to technical difficulties, not Apple. 

Update: It seems Apple has pulled the App from the Australian iTunes store. Yep, it pays to be quick on these things.

While Flash has many uses, one of the most common uses is a wrapper to embed video on websites, before now you had to jailbreak a iOS device to play any kind of flash content.

That just changed. Amazingly Apple approved a mobile browser called SkyFire which interprets flash video and allows you to tap and play that video in the native iPod app. Videos play in full screen and when your down close back to the page and place you were at.

It’s available now on the App Store for A$3.99 or $US2.99, apparently Apple still hasn’t got the memo about the currency being at parity.

Microsoft have finally flipped the switch on Exchange Push for their Mail, Contacts and Calendar services. Competitor Google has offered this for months, and like many other iPhone owners who want all their info on the go, I switched to gmail to achieve this.

To enable the services simply insert your credentials and use m.hotmail.com as the server address.

So now push email, contacts and calendar is available to Windows Live users, question is, how many people will switch from Google. While Gmail is beloved by tech darlings, the reality is there’s a lot more users on Windows Live. My contact list on Windows Live Messenger is many multiple times the length of that of Google Chat.

Personally I need to run both emails for different services like Google Reader / analytics and Skydrive, but may switch Windows Live Contacts and Calendar. As shown above, I now have exchange accounts defined, Google, Work and Hotmail.

Prior to today’s launch, users would be met with a looping Password prompt, now the service has launched, this no longer occurs. Its also important to note that Exchange activesync for Hotmail supports multiple calendars that can be turned on or off in settings. These individual calendars appear as different colour calendar entries on most mobile devices.

This move is critical in preparation for Microsoft’s launch of Windows Phone 7 later this year to achieve their target of hitting both personal and business users.