Having worked with Ladbrokes and 777mobile.com, among others, they know a thing or two about online gambling and it would be safe to say they know what they’re doing.

If you’re not so keen on the ‘play for real’ games then you will be pleased to know that they will soon be releasing a ‘play for fun’ iPhone app of Blackjack and this is currently in the Apple review process.

On the website you can view all your previous tracks as well as historical data to see how (if?) you’ve improved and also see your friends logs. The maps can be easily shared via the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

The iPhone app is available for free here and allows friends to send ‘pep talk’ messages that are then read out using Text to Speech to the user for example “Come on Mickey, you’ve been sat in Starbucks for 30 minutes, now get moving”.

The app and website are completely free at the moment. Premium features will be made available in the future (such as personalised training regimes) but the app and site, as they are now, will remain free – it will simply be additional features that will be paid for.

Jivo also have some eco-headphones, ‘Elements’, which are made from renewable cedar-wood. I’ve not seen (or heard) these in use but we will try to get some for review in the near future.

They also have a range of other, non-eco, cases and accessories so head over to their website and see what they have on offer!

CamerAlert is a Speed and Red Light Camera warning system for iPhones based on the popular PocketGPSWorld.com Speed Camera Database. It provides both audible and visual warnings as you approach a camera. When you are in a section of SPECs or Average Speed Cameras CamerAlert keeps track of your average speed to ensure you are aware of your average speed between each camera. To cut down on the number of “False Alerts” you are only warned for cameras that monitor your direction of travel.

CamerAlert works in two different modes: Map and List. In Map mode the main display is a map with the cameras positioned on it. This can be shown either as “North Up” or “Course Up”. The list mode simply shows a list of all the cameras in the area, highlighting the ones that you are approaching.

CamerAlert comes preinstalled with a Speed Camera Database. To ensure you have the latest camera information there is a free Latest Database Guarantee which allows you to download the latest database after product registration. CamerAlert allows you to use your existing PocketGPSWorld.com membership to keep the camera data up to date. With weekly releases of the database it is important to download the latest speed camera information to remain safe.

If you see a camera that is not in the database then you can report it using CamerAlert. This feature can also be used to change information about a camera already in the database i.e. changing speed or direction information.

Click here for more details and the CamerAlert user guide.

Powermat products are already available in the UK at John Lewis and Amazon among others) but some new products such as a single-device Powermat bundled with an iPhone case will be available in a wider range of high street stores.

We have secured one of these cases and a Powermat and will be reviewing the set up in the coming weeks.

AA Best of Britain

Mobile Commerce has partnered with the AA, a UK motoring organisation and travel publisher, to deliver the AA ‘Best of Britain’ iPhone application. The application provides all the information the user needs to find and book a weekend, or week, away in Britain and acts as a guide locating local entertainment and points of interest.

The AA Best of Britain iPhone App

Using the AA’s extensive database and with fully installed content, Best of Britain offers a guide covering every aspect for planning leisure pursuits – from hotels, pubs, guest houses and restaurants, to days out, golfing, caravanning and camping – the application features over 14,000 inspected, selected and recommended establishments, offering the traveller an unparalleled choice of places to stay, eat, drink or play a round of golf in Great Britain.

Entries within Best of Britain have been researched by experts and include detailed descriptions, pricing information, opening hours, more than 5,000 images, phone numbers, links to websites and detailed search options. The user is able to search around their current location or enter a location of their choice, with the results displayed on an embedded Google map.

The AA Best of Britain application will cost £4.99 to download via the iTunes App Store.

The Beta SDK for iPhone OS 3.2 is currently only for the iPad but there’s nothing to suggest that it won’t be made available to the iPhone either in a 3.2 update or a 4.0 update. OS 3.2 provides a shared storage folder for files to be easily shared between apps and synced to a desktop (much like photos are currently handled but hopefully with write permissions from a desktop!).

Why do we care about this? Well there are quite a few apps where data can only be added via a specific WiFi link from a desktop app, or by downloading from a server. Simply adding your own update files to the iPhone would allow app developers greater options for including user data – such as Points of Interest for SatNav apps like Sygic or CoPilot, CD/DVD ownership details for a database app such as CLZ Music or CLZ Movies or even user created levels for games from an online community. Whilst admittedly probably only a small number of users will have no WiFi access in their homes something like this would massively improve the situation

The other obvious benefit from this is that it could be used as a portable disk – connect the iPhone via USB, copy some files to the folder directly on your computer without the need for iTunes and then connect to another computer such as at your office or a friends, and you would have access to these files.

It’s something worth keeping an eye on…

So, what are the other options? Well, as Apple rightly advertise: ‘There’s an App for That’ although in this case there are 3 that do the job and are currently available in the UK AppStore. In alphabetical order we have: ‘Album Mixer – Shuffle by Album‘, ‘iAlbum Player‘ and ‘Quick Music‘.

Here follows a brief rundown of the pros and cons of each app.

iAlbumPlayer

I didn’t get off to a good start with this app. On first run it told me I had no music on my iPhone and that I should change some auto-skip settings. I couldn’t even FIND any settings but later realised it is one of those annoying apps that require you to close it to change any settings. Once closed you go to the main iPhone settings and scroll down to find the app. Here you can turn on/off ‘autoplay at launch’ and ‘auto-skip’. Auto-skip has two further settings to choose a minimum rating and a mysterious ‘track lacking’ (which I THINK is the minimum number of tracks in an album). Both these have an option of ‘never’ implying the app should play the album regardless of rating or number of tracks. However, even after setting both to ‘never’ the app still told me to change the auto-skip settings and that there were no music albums on my iPhone. Occasionally it would play an album and the screen did look nice and clear but by this point I’d given up with iAlbumPlayer. In theory I should be able to press the stack of CDs on the main screen and it plays me a random album but it’s too buggy for me to even bother. I’m impatient, and this app has now felt my wrath! A shame really, as this seems to have the nicest looking display once it decides to actually play something!

Album Mixer: Shuffle by Album

On launch you are faced with a big ’shuffle albums’ button along with ‘filter’, ’settings’ and some play controls. Good, the settings are easy to get to! Within the settings you can select how many albums you want the app to shuffle, set the app to shuffle on launch and also choose shake to shuffle. As I mainly use my iPhone in the car I always turn off shake to shuffle features as pot holes and speed bumps usually give undesired results…! For the purpose of this review I turned it on, shook my phone and, yes, it worked! In use it is as simple as pressing the big ’shuffle albums’ button and a playlist of random albums is generated. It shows the album art on screen and, as the playlist is already generated, closing the app or putting your iPod/iPhone into standby means you can still listen to the albums in order. Back in the app you can shuffle the albums at any time, skip between tracks and also skip between albums.  You also have a ‘filter’ button that puts all your music genres and playlists into a single list. Selecting multiple items from this list will filter which albums will be chosen when you next shuffle. I like this app; it does what it was designed for with enough settings to fine tune your playlist too. The only downside, in my opinion, is the track names are illegible at the bottom and the artist and album title are quite small too.

Quick Music

This app isn’t specifically an album shuffler but it does have it as one of it’s advertised features.The main purpose of the app is to select music quickly. You can shuffle all your tracks; define your favourite artist and play only their tracks; define and play your favourite album; play tracks by a single random artist; and, the important one, play a random album. The settings are accessible from within the app and give you the option to start any of the play modes at startup (eg play favourite album at startup). You can also set your favourite artist and album here. Looking solely at the shuffle album feature here, it is slightly lacking. Yes, it will play a random album but as it only chooses a single album it means once the album finishes you need to open the app again to choose the next one. On a short journey this would be fine but on a long trip where you would normally listen to 4 or 5 albums it would get slightly frustrating having to continuously restart the app and/or press the ‘Play a random album’ button. When an album is playing the bulk of the screen is taken up by the play options and the artwork and track title seems squeezed in at the top. You can, however, put the iPhone into standby and view the full album artwork by viewing the lock screen though.

The purpose of reviewing these apps was to find a way to reinstate the Shuffle by Album feature that Apple disabled. As such, the clear winner is AlbumMixer: Shuffle by Album although the text size used in the app is miniscule, the actual album shuffle feature is very well implemented. Second place, and only because it isn’t actually specifically an album, shuffler, is Quick Music. Third place goes to iAlbumPlayer as it is too buggy to use.

I have been playing this game for about two weeks now an I have to admit it is addictive, and like it’s predecessor I can imagine it’ll be some time before I put it down.

The tasks are quite simple move the blocks into the dark area of the board and make them fit. Some of the puzzles are way too easy and some are much harder, but I was a little disappointed not to have any really fiendish puzzles to get my teeth into. This is offset by an immensely difficult and infuriating Arcade mode but lack of variety here makes for a short-lived experience.

This app is a real finger frenzy with some of the puzzles requiring the use of five fingers on the screen at once which for the older iPod touch is a little too much to handle but on the iPhone the issue is just how dextrous your fingers are. I did really like this app as I like puzzle games and the polish of this app is evident however it lacks depth that some might hope for and can be played to completion in only a few days, but for .59p it is still a bargain and one I wish to hope will have some updated levels soon.

I had a text from O2 which I thought was telling me I had been unlocked. Foolishly I upgraded my iPhone from its YellowSn0w jailbreak/unlock to OS 3.1.2. Then I found that my phone had not been unlocked… I checked the text from O2 again and realised it was not the unlock confirmation…

A few days later I phoned O2 to check on the status of the unlock and was told it would happen within the 14 days which has a few days left to go. On the 29th December nothing had happened. So I tried phoning O2 again and after a long wait I was cut off.

Today I finally got a text telling me I was unlocked and to put a new sim in the iPhone and connect to iTunes. I duly complied and iTunes told me the phone was not unlocked.

As I am off to the USA for a month I could not afford to go through the process again. Having upgraded the OS I had also upgraded the baseband which prevented me from Jailbreaking using YellowSn0w again. After a quick check I found that the Blackra1n and BlackSn0w jailbreak/unlock actually recommended using the OS/Baseband I had upgraded to. So a quick download and in less than 5 minutes my iPhone was jailbroken and unlocked. I can now put my US SIM in it and not be clobbered for stupid data roaming charges.

Now looking back on the O2 problem it may well be my fault as I have switched my 3G and 3GS sims. However if that is the cause then I would have thought that O2 might have picked this up and warned me rather than letting me try to go through the unlock process twice and fail…

O2 – 2 strikes over 6 weeks. BlackRa1n – Home run in 5 minutes…