The media’s fickle love affair with social networking has spurned MySpace in favor of Facebook, and now Twitter, with a little LinkedIn on the side. Each of these social networks has enjoyed some level of success either by focusing on one market, or by doing at least one thing very well.

Also, each of these started as a desktop web application before offering mobile access and only a handful deliver a true iPhone interface.

read it here touchtip.com

The 2008 X6 also has an Ipod/Iphone USB integrated system, 16-speaker HD surround sound and a DVD player w/rear entertainment system including front and rear screens.  BMW’s new partnership with Google allows X6 drivers with a BMW Assist Account to receive routing and mapping to their vehicle from a computer.

read it here freepressreleases.co.uk

Brussels // R.Bollen // 12 May 2008 :: The makers of schmap.com were so kind to give me early access to their brand new iPhone web application. Schmap.com is a cool City Guide application that gives you all the best city information, when you bring your iPhone to one of your next City Trips. You can first read about the history of the city to get a feel for the culture and backgrounds.

The guide contents are Tours, Attractions, Activities, Hotels, Restaurants, Bars/Clubs, Coffee/Tea, Art & Fun, Shopping, Services and Festivals. You can filter the content afterwards more precise for special interests.

When you select your favorite bar by tapping the picture you will see their address, phone number, website and so on. When you turn the iPhone horizontal it will display the (sch)map! Very well done!

Local search is also built-in but was not yet available in the early preview. The public Beta is available for public on Monday May 12. It sure deserves a place in your bookmarks.

Visit tomorrow, http://www.schmap.com with your iPhone or iPod Touch. Feel free to comment so we can give the feedback back.

Apple may open up its iPhone and iPod touch devices to third-party apps next month, but the chances that Linux users will get invited to the party are slim at best. That hasn’t stopped some intrepid hackers from coming up with a better music-syncing solution than the one Mac and Windows users have—a two-way wireless transfer, from almost any music organizing app you like, no wait for iTunes or USB cable required. Linux users, let’s take a look at how to set up your iPhone or iPod touch for any-time wireless access after the jump.

read it here lifehacker.com

Last September we did a column on the new iPhone ringtones - or, namely, the lack there of. Licensing problems with the five major music groups made only eight percent of the Apple Music Store available as a ringtone. As you may remember, out of 14.3 days worth of music, I had 14 songs I could turn into a ringtone.

read it here pdastreet.com

Arkados says it plans to release a reference design, or “system blueprint,” that will allow manufacturers to embed Arkados chip-and-software solutions into a device that enables the iPhone (News - Alert) or iPod to “talk” to and control whole-house audio systems.

read it here internetcommunications.tmcnet.com

Good news for folks in Ireland who want an 8GB iPhone right now ... following in the footsteps of O2 UK, O2 Ireland is dropping the price €100 from €399 to €299.

read it here redeyechicago.com

#1 DVD Ripper provides you a fast and easy way to back up your favorite DVD movies and need not worry that your children might be scratching the copies during the day-to-day use. You can easily convert DVD to AVI with mp3 or AC3 5.1 surround audio, DVD to VCD (MPEG1), SVCD (MPEG2), AVI, and DivX ,MP4/H264 WMV, 3GP, MP3, WMA, WAV etc formats.

You can take your DVDs on the plane, train or automobile, watch them on your computer, laptop, iPod, iPhone, PDA, PSP, or pocket PC on vacation, at work or at school. No matter where you are, you can still enjoy DVD even without the DVD discs. #1 DVD Ripper was the winner of Maximum PC Magazine’s 2005 Softy Award.

read it here memysoftware.blogspot.com

We at TidBITS try to avoid obsessing about the iPhone - there are plenty of other media outlets that already do that. But a number of recent events are worth summarizing for what they indicate about both the current utility of the iPhone and its future in the U.S. and worldwide.

read it here tidbits.com

Awaiting AppStore launch, international game developer Simiotica announces immediate availability of the iPhone and iPod Touch game aMaze! via Installer.App. aMaze! is very realistic transition of the classic wooden balance game Labyrinth, where players guide steel ball through a maze avoiding holes, to the iPhone.

“Large multi-touch screen, OpenGL ES and OpenAL support, built-in accelerometers make iPhone most powerful mobile gaming device on the market. We have developed aMaze to meet expectation of the iPhone owners for games with innovative gameplay not yet possible with other devices. While awaiting the launch of the official AppStore, we make it available through the Istaller.App to let iPhone entusiasts enjoy it as early as possible”, explains Alex Dubov, Simiotica CMO.

read it here simiotica.com

Otter Products is now offering limited-edition pink cases for the iPhone and iPod nano in an effort to raise money to help fight breast cancer and raise awareness of the disease. It is donating 10 percent of the proceeds earned off these OtterBox for iPhone or iPod nano Defender Series cases to the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade, which supports access to care and finding a cure for breast cancer, with a focus on the medically underserved.

read it here pdastreet.com

Remember when we showed you an iPhone controlling a TiVo over IP by means of Telnet?

Well, over at the TiVo Community Forum, a user named Duckfin has compiled a “quick and dirty little program” that gives the iPhone and iPod touch a proper TiVO Remote.

read it here gizmodo.com.au

I recently challenged you all to come up with the most ridiculous iPhone 2 concept designs possible, and boy oh boy did you ever deliver. What you’re about to see is over 100 of the most impractical, nonsensical and flat-out retarded mobile phone designs the world has ever seen.

read it here gizmodo.com.au

We all miss copy/paste on the iPhone. But you will forget the problem with MobileTextEditJ! This little text-editing tool finally supports what everyone was wanting so much: copy/paste. You will need the latest build of the program which is 1.1.3.

read it here iphoneworld.ca

The iPhone continues to impress in terms of gaming possibility. Raging Thunder isn’t actually done yet on the iPhone (obviously—judging by this video there are more glitches on this thing than a Matrix full of black cats), but once it gets rolling, the award-winning game, put together by Polarbit, looks like a pretty sweet racing experience.

The accelerometer actually serves as a nice wheel (with a little help from the Wii wheel), and the graphics aren’t too shabby, either.

read it here tuaw.com

Silicon Alley Insider discovered yesterday that NBC has formatted a few of its shows — “30 Rock” and “The Office” — to stream on the Apple iPhone.

You need to be using the phone’s Wi-Fi connection, not AT&T’s Edge cellular data network. And the experience is nearly unwatchable because “the quality of the video stream is atrocious,” wrote a commenter on the site, David Dugan Michael Learmonth.

read it here bits.blogs.nytimes.com

This guy in the video uses his iPhone to control the plant watering system. The plant watering system is able to take directions from the iPhone because when the guy rotates the iPhone, the status is updated to a web server via JavaScript.

read it here tinsiders.blogspot.com

For the past decade or so, Microsoft Outlook has been the standard in personal information management. As a Windows Mobile user, I also used Outlook Mobile on my Treo 700wx. Actually, in combination, the desktop version and the mobile version of Outlook work pretty well, but there were a few quirks that bugged me.

read it here iphonebysteve.com

Whether you’re waiting in a dentist’s office or standing in line for Hannah Montana tickets, you need to stay in touch with the world around you. I suppose you could ask another human being what’s the latest news, but come on, this is the 21st century.

This is where your iPhone comes in.

read it here artoftheiphone.com

Sometimes, we at TUAW get awesome tips from our readers—this is proof. A certain, unnamed individual sent us some pictures of the latest build of the iPhone firmware showing .Mac push e-mail.

read it here tuaw.com

Mophie announced the release of Juice Pack, the first “Works with iPhone” certified battery extender on the market. While other vendors have released iPhone-compatible accessories for charging the phone’s battery, devices that receive Apple’s official certification ensure optimal connectivity with the iPhone.

read it here macworld.com

BURLINGAME, CALIF. -You’ve got to love Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs.

Rather than just telling everyone his plans, Jobs just lets everything get a little weird. And the meltdown at Synchronoss--the company that’s done a great business hooking all those iPhones up with carrier AT&T (nyse: T - news - people ) since the iPhone was launched last year--is just the latest example.

read it here forbes.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — In another step in the worldwide march of Apple Inc.’s iPhone, the top mobile phone operator in Latin America said Wednesday that it has inked a deal to bring the multimedia gadget to more than a dozen countries starting later this year.
America Movil SAB, controlled by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, said it plans to bring the iPhone to all of its Latin American operations but didn’t offer more details about the arrangement, including whether it would be the exclusive iPhone provider in the targeted countries.

read it here ap.google.com

PARIS -(Dow Jones)- France Telecom SA (FTE) is in talks with Apple Inc. (AAPL) to sell the U.S. company’s iPhone handset in other countries, Chief Financial Officer Gervais Pellissier said Wednesday.

France Telecom is in talks regarding “more than just two countries,” Pellissier said in response to a question during a conference call about whether the company was hoping to secure the rights for the iPhone in Spain and Poland. “It’s in discussion...we’ll see what the results are,” he said.

read it here money.cnn.com

Natuba is a new photo sharing site that targets iPhone users with an emphasis on mobile uploading. It comes from Richard Yoo, a former CEO of Rackspace and Serverbeach.

iPhone users with Natuba accounts can add their snapshots to the site by emailing them to a special address.

read it here techcrunch.com