CNN launched their CNN Mobile iPhone app today, and it will bring full print and video news reports, and even allow users to record their own news/eyewitness accounts of stories and submit it, if need be.

More from the app description:

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“Maximizing the revolutionary features of iPhone OS 3.1, the new CNN App showcases news of the day through text, video and photos. It also features live breaking news video, push notification, localization and personalization tools, user-generated content capture and upload functionality through iReport, and more.

“The CNN App has what we think

is one of the best user experiences around, and will quickly become an essential daily news source for many iPhone and iPod touch users,”said Louis Gump, vice president of CNN Mobile. “We tailored the best of CNN specifically for them, whether they check in from the beach, the airport or the ballpark.”

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You can even personalize the news to bring local events and new reports, weather, and videos of local interest to your iPhone. It all sounds pretty solid to us.

The app sells for $1.99 in the App Store right now.

Yahoo’s Flickr service now has a native app available in the App Store. The iPhone has become the most popular cell phone camera used to upload photos to the image sharing site and it’s likely this new native app will only increase its popularity among Flickr users.

When you first sign in to the Flickr app, you are required to authorize the app to use your Flickr account, which is done through Safari on the iPhone. After this, uploads to your Flickr account will be handled directly through the app with no further authorization requests (another plus for those who upload on the run).

The app can geotag your photos and offers immediate access to your recent uploads, your entire Flickr stream, and those of your Flickr contacts, making it multi-functional and flexible.

The Chipotle Ordering app is back in the App Store after only a short period of availability earlier this year.

First appearing in January, the app was live for only a few hours and then pulled due to unanticipated demand that overloaded the servers handling orders. At that time, the plan was to have the app return to the App Store after a couple of weeks.

The

app offers the ability to locate nearby Chipotle restaurants and browse the menu. Desired items can be ordered and paid for with a credit card. Favorite menu items can be saved for future orders.

The Chipotle Ordering app is free and can be found in the App Store right now.

For those of who haven’t tried this chain’s food…some of the best “mexican” food out there.

Here’s a cool way to design an app: the new Sonar Ruler app uses the iPhone’s speaker to send out a short click and then measures how long it takes for the sound to bounce off a surface. It then tells you the distance. How’s that for phone flexibility?

It’s not perfectly accurate, however. It works best on large, flat surfaces that are perpendicular to the phone, which will provide measurements accurate within an inch. It won’t work on smaller objects, however, and things like temperature and wind can affect the readings. So you won’t want to use it to measure where to cut a piece of wood. But still, that’s a damned neat trick for a phone to be able to do.

Sonar Ruler is an experimental app that uses sound to measure distances. It sends a short click from the speaker and measures how long that click takes to bounce off of something and return to the phone. It then estimates how far away you are.

If you’re a teacher, this app is a great way to teach students the principles of sonar, and how sound propagates through air.

You can grab this for 99 cents from the App Store.

Ed Colligan, the former chief executive of Palm, reportedly rejected an offer years ago from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs to agree to not hire each others’ employees.

The information comes from a U.S. Justice Department investigation that obtained communications between the two CEOs, according to Bloomberg. After rejecting the offer, Colligan reportedly told Jobs that what he proposed was “likely illegal.”

The conversation took place in August 2007, just after the launch of the iPhone, and when Palm appointed Apple’s former senior engineering VP, Jon Rubinstein, as executive chairman.

According to the communications between the two, Jobs told Colligan he was concerned that Rubinstein, as a former Apple employee, was recruiting existing Apple employees. “We must do whatever we

can to stop this,” Jobs reportedly said.

The documents say that Colligan told Jobs he considered the proposal, but ultimately decided against it.

“Your proposal that we agree that neither company will hire the other’s employees, regardless of the individual’s desires, is not only wrong, it is likely illegal,” Colligan said to Jobs, according to the communications.

However, Jobs’ specific proposal was not included in the communications. It was only referenced and discussed by the two executives.

“Jobs said Apple had patents and more money than Palm if the companies ended up in a legal fight, according to the communications,” Bloomberg reported. Apple spokeswoman Katie Cotton declined to comment on the matter and Jobs did not return e-mails (as expected).

A report filed by a tipster claiming access to iTunes 9 says that it is “possible” the next version of Apple’s media player will sport both DVD import and playback as well as Facebook integration, allowing users to advertise songs and playlists with their friends.

The report and screenshots were published by the Boy Genius Report, which earlier in the month wrote that iTunes 9 is expected to allow organization of iPhone apps and iPod games and indicated some sort of social media integration was in the cards.

The latest report includes screen shots that depict a Facebook category in the iTunes Source list, allowing users to advertise new song titles and playlists in their Facebook profile. Also included is a screen shot of how advertised tracks would appear on Facebook.

BGR also presents a screen shot of iTunes 9 that suggests the capability to sync music, video, podcast, and photo content to third party device, a Samsung YH-J70xx MP3 player. Apple has previously only signaled a disinterest in supporting sync with third party devices, actively halting the Palm Pre’s attempts to identify itself as an iPod.

More interesting are the depiction of buttons in the lower right that allow for DVD

playback and import, suggesting that iTunes could do for DVDs what it got started doing for CDs. Were Apple to negotiate the right to rip DVDs, it would radically change the home movie industry in ways the industry has not demonstrated any interest in exploring. However, the addition of a “DVD Playback” button suggests that the screen shots are more likely to be fakes, as iTunes already has a playback button: “play.”

The studios have worked hard to thwart any commercial attempts to enable users to rip their own DVDs, recently filing an injunction against RealNetwork’s DVD Ripper software and even opposing a home theater installer from allowing users to rip their own DVDs for digital playback, despite the system not even producing an easy to distribute copy.

At Macworld Expo 2008, Apple announced having worked out a compromise with Twentieth Century Fox called Digital Copy for iTunes, which puts a mobile version of the movie on the DVD for use with iPods, the iPhone, Apple TV, and other media devices. Many new DVDs now include a Digital Copy of the movie, which doesn’t require any media ripping steps (transcoding and compression); instead, it simply initiates an iTunes download using a code included with the DVD.

Bandsintown, the webapp that offers personalized concert recommendations, is out with an iPhone app that not only shows what’s playing nearby with geo-location, but scans your music to recommend like-minded artists.

Bandsintown’s web facilities have gotten an overhaul recently, adding Pandora to its Last.fm account syncing, social features, streaming tweets and pictures from concerts as they happen, and the ability to track nearby concert venues in addition to artists and music types. The iPhone app, however, is the convenient tool for finding interesting live music when you’re on the go, running through your iTunes tracks and using your location to pull picks from its impressive database of ticket providers and music venues.

Bandsintown’s site and iPhone app are free to use.
App details are here: http://www.bandsintown.com/iphone

The much-awaited TomTom for iPhone GPS navigation app has popped up in the New Zealand App Store with a reported asking price ranging from about $81 to $125. The app price does not include the TomTom iPhone car kit.

According to MacRumors, the four-flavored app covers the U.S. & Canada, Western Europe, Australia, and, naturally, New Zealand. Pricing:
- U.S. & Canada: NZ $124.99 (US $84.41)
- Western Europe: NZ $179.99 (US $121.55)

- Australia: NZ $104.99 (US $79.90)
- New Zealand: NZ $119.99 (US $81.03)

Earlier this month, UK retailer Handtec let slip that the equally anticipated TomTom for iPhone car kit would sell for about $195, a GPS-boosting receiver, windshield mount, car charger and speakers. That news, and the perhaps premature New Zealand launch this weekend, would seem to indicate a global release is imminent.

It’s been talked about and delayed a number of time, so it’ll be nice to finally set it available for purchase.

eBay’s iPhone app has received an upgrade to version 1.4.0 and now includes push notifications and the ability to pay with PayPal directly from the app.

The new push notification feature can let users know when they have been outbid or when the auction of a watched item is about to end.

The App Store description officially lists the following new features:

- Optimized for 3.0 OS
- Integrated Pay with PayPal support

- Push notifications for outbid events and watched items
- Recent detailed seller feedback
- Completed items search
- Description search

Push notifications became available with the iPhone 3.0 firmware update that was released on June 17th. Since that time, a number of apps have been updated to take advantage of this new feature, including instant messaging apps AIM and Beejive, Zillow Real Estate, and others.

The eBay app is free and is available in the App Store right now.

Emails can be unique, but sometimes you just need to tell the boss you’re “Running 10 minutes late,” or ask a spouse what they need from the store.

Pastie makes sending common text blocks to contacts fast and easy.

Pastie gives you a space to type out common messages, then decide whether you want to assign those messages a specific contact and delivery method (email or SMS),

or decide when you click the “Pastie.” For non-email and SMS purposes, Pastie also allows for quick clipboard copies of your text snippets to be pasted into any other app. The free/Lite version limits users to three text blocks, while the $1.99 full version does not do this.

Pastie Lite and Pastie are free and $1.99 downloads, respectively, and both require an iPhone running at least 3.0 firmware.