Google Earth’s ability to take a satellite camera and zoom down to practically any country, city or street in the world arguably made the common atlas obsolete overnight.  Previously only available as a desktop application, you can now carry around Google Earth in your pocket!  The iPhone/iPod touch iteration of this app is absolutely free, and serves up most of the functionality which we have grown to love with the desktop version.

It takes advantage of the iPhone’s hardware capabilities using a pinch and slide interface for zooming in and out, as well as the accelerometer for tilting terrain in 3D.  Not only that – you can also check click on Panoramio and Wikipedia entries which are embedded in relevant locations within the map so you can check out photos and learn more about the area which you’re viewing.  All in all, this app is a MUST have for anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch.

Check out the following video for more details.

Do you like Google Earth?  Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

Free RSS readers on the iTunes app store are a dime a dozen.  Most of them however, are not worth even a second look.  So what IS the best way to read your news and get yourself up to speed on an iPhone?

Well one app clearly stands out head and shoulders over the crowd, and it’s Net News Wire for the iPhone.

It’s powerful.  It comes with a plethora of customizable options, which lets you completely customize your reading experience.  At the same time, it’s simple to use.  If you don’t care for customization, it works out of the box beautifully.  It even syncs up with your online newsgator account so the feeds you read on your laptop will be in sync with the feeds you read on your iPod.

The best part? *Drumroll* ….Offline reading.

While almost all other free RSS readers rely on a net connection to function, NetNewsWire will download the feed onto the phone so you can read it offline.  That way you never have to worry about having a decent 3G connection.  If you’re using an iPod touch, it is truly a Godsend to be able to read feeds offline because you no longer need a Wi-Fi hotspot to get your daily news fix.

Do you read news on your mobile device?  Tell us about it in the comments!

Syncing your iPod Touch with iTunes on your Mac or Windows is a no-brain job. Simply plug in your iPod, fire up your iTunes and your synchronization will be done in a minute. However, since there is no Linux version of iTunes, there is almost no way that you can sync your iPod Touch with your computer. If you are using an Ubuntu system and you don’t want to create a Windows/Ubuntu dual boot just to sync your iPod Touch, here’s a tutorial that teaches you how to sync your iPod Touch with a WinXP virtual machine in Ubuntu Intrepid.

(This tutorial was tested using a iPod Touch 1st generation. I have not tested iPod Touch 2nd Gen, iPhone 2G/3G, but I guess they should work as well.)

Imagine that you are going to convert an avi video files to mp4 format so that you can sync it with your iPhone and watch it on the go. Now, if you have the subtitles files, wouldn’t it be great if you can embed it in the converted video as well?

While you can use your iPod as a portable hard disk, Apple does not allow you to transfer files to/from your iPhone. Although there are several apps that allows you to copy files, they are no free solutions. If you have jailbroken your iPhone, you can customize it to connect to the desktop and copy files to/from your iPhone.

The iPhone-dev team has recently released a QuickPwn tool that enable users to jailbreak iPhone and iPod Touch without having to reformat the whole unit. If you have not jailbroken your iPhone/iPod Touch, thinking that it is a difficult process, here is where you can learn to jailbreak your unit the easy way.

The QuickPwn is available for both Windows and Mac platform. There is a difference though. The Windows version of QuickPwn supports any 2.0.x firmware while the latest Mac version only supports 2.0.2 firmware. If you are using a Mac, you will have to upgrade your unit to the latest 2.0.2 firmware before you can use the QuickPwn tool.

iPhone/iPod Touch users will know that while it is easy to sync music from iTunes to your iPod, it certainly does not work the other way round. It may be a great security feature by Apple, but it has definitely caused lot of inconvenience to its users. Luckily, there are lots of easy way to get this done.