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Finally having the official release of the new iOS running on my iPhone 3GS, I decided to find out more about the possibility of reading ebooks on my iPhone.

Generally, I think the screen is too small for this. It may be a different experience for owners of the new iPhone 4, but to me it’s simply to small to read a 400 pages ebook. No question though, that it will be a nice option for those long waiting times at airports for example.

But what if you really just intend to read once in a while and don’t want to spend your money on ebooks available in the iTunes store? Well, besides Winnie the Pooh, which is for free as of now, the iBooks app can read all ebooks saved in the epub format. This is great as you can add ebooks to your iTunes library and sync them with your iPhone, iPod touch and/or iPad.

One option is the Gutenberg Project, which offers a variety of ebooks in the necessary epub format for free. I just tried it and it’s working well, although files are claimed to be in an experimental status.

So simply go to the above page, download a book to your computer, add it to iTunes and sync it with your device. Enjoy reading!

When I first got the iPhone into my hands, I ‘collected’ everything that remotely looked interesting. That did change a lot and now I only install apps if I really think they’re worth the effort.

My last app is called Angry Birds and is a game that you can play for hours without noticing how much time you spent playing it. The game-play is as simple as it can get but the level increase in difficulty and make it even more fun. But see for yourself:

I couldn’t think of a better topic for my 100th post, than something that kept me awake until I found a solution. Updating from OS3 to iOS (4), I ‘forgot’ to create a proper backup of my files. I didn’t really forget it, as I knew I don’t care about save-games and have all my contacts etc. synced. Still, I forgot something: my photos.

Once in a while, when I don’t want to take my camera with me, or simply don’t have it close by, I take photos with my iPhone camera in order to fill my Project 365 with life. When updating my phone earlier, everything was deleted, which unfortunately, also included the photos I took. Luckily enough, I’m surrounded by backups: iTunes makes backups from my iPhone. These backups again are backed up with my TimeCapsule. This again is partly backed up with Backblaze. (I guess losing my photos I took during two months of traveling through New Zealand and the USA left a mental scar.) Anyhow, here is the solution to my problem (and hopefully yours, too) and other problems that may occur if you just need certain files from a previously made iTunes backup without the need to restore the whole iPhone:

1) Download the iPhone / iPod touch backup extractor (Windows user have a similar app, which is available here).

2) Click ‘read backups’ and choose the newest one, or the one that you think is right. (Mac version – for Windows version please follow the instructions from the link above.)

3) Select the content you’d like to have (for photos it’s iPhone OS files) and click ‘extract’.

4) Once you decided where it should extract these files to, your photos are available in the folder Media -> DCIM -> 100APPLE once the extraction process finished.

I hope this helps you as much as it helped me!

Update: @ischack mentioned in the comments that it appears as if the program crashes, but he adds that the ‘beachball’ rather is an indicator for the extracting process working. Thanks

Trackmania is (next to the GTA-series) my favorite game. It’s THE game, if you’re looking for an exciting race game with jumps, loops and other crazy stuff.
Unfortunately, it isn’t available for the iPhone/iPod touch yet. Luckily enough though, there’s an alternative that will run smoothly even on the iPhone 1st Gen., which already tells you that it isn’t the kind of game that has a lot of bling-bling to offer when it comes to graphics. But that isn’t what the game is about anyways. It’s about testing your driving/flying skills and about competition.

I played Trackmania quite a while, was asked to join a clan and realized I’m playing too much. But Trackmania (and now also Jet Car Racing), is that kind of game that you can play if you have just 30 minutes or even 5 hours of time to spare and since it’s a racing game, you don’t miss out if you’re not playing for a while.

I’m excited that I found this game. If you like/d Trackmania on the computer, I’m sure you will like this game for your iPhone/iPod touch.
Here’s a video about the game:

There are only three mobile phone companies for me: Apple, HTC and Nokia – in that order. That said, I actually start to forget about them (having an iPhone). Concentrating on the news about the upcoming version, I almost ignore news on other mobile phones such as the upcoming HTC Desire.

To find out more about this phone, watch the following video (more reviews are available on YouTube):

Flickr is a great place to share your photos. It took me some time before I became acquainted with Flickr, but since I started my Project 365, I’m using this plattform to share my photos.

To view new comments, upload pictures or more, a Flickr client on the iPhone can save precious time and is always available everywhere you take your phone. The official Flickr app though, is missing a few features one may like, such as photos near you and groups. Overall, I get the feeling that the official app is good for checking a new photo once in a while, but not if you intend to do more.

Darkslide instead is a Flickr client that pretty much gives me everything I could need – and more. I’m sure it’s going to fulfill you’re needs as well, but just check it out for yourself. There are both a free and a pro version available, while the only difference of those seems to be the advertisement.

Not being allowed to have a mobile phone with camera at work (because of security reasons), I’m forced to have a secondary phone, next to my iPhone. While this is already troublesome enough, as I can have only one phone registered in the network at a time, emails as well as my calendar and contacts aren’t sorted at all, which makes changes to them quite annoying – until now.

I finally managed to register at the OVI-store and get my old but still well working Nokia E61 to syncronize my contacts and my calendar. Also, push-email is finally working the way I like it. So how did I get it to work?:

1) I’m using Nuevasync, which works very well since I got it, That’s also the reason why I got a premium account. There’s a free trial though, to test the service.

2) Get an OVI account and download the newest version of Mail for Exchange of MfE.

3) Simply follow these steps and there you go, a synced calendar and contacts on all your phones as well as push-email.

I didn’t publish a lot of reviews in my Apps-section, but today I’d like to change that. The reason is my very high mobile phone bill, due to many calls to and from abroad.

Telekom offers an app with which you can easily check how much money you already spent and how many of your free minutes are left. I’m not a Telekom customer but rather decided to get a Simlock- and Netlock-free iPhone with Vodafone instead. Unfortunately, they don’t offer a similar app, as the iPhone isn’t sold by them. Nevertheless, if you’re guessing that someone else made the effort to create such an app, you’re right, it’s called Kosten Check D2.

Before I start writing about why I like it, I would like to pint out that a lot of people rated this app badly for it either not working at all or it having stopped doing so. Said that, to me it works fine thus far – knock on wood.

The app nicely shows you how much money you spent and how much free SMS, MMS and/or minutes you have left. This works because the app connects with Vodafone.de’s QuickCheck. Obviously since the app doesn’t really do much more, one would not see the need for it, but I prefer an app over websites any day. The app is nicely made and as I mentioned, it’s working well with me. So if you are looking for an app that helps you controlling your costs without having to log onto Vodafone’s website, this one may be the one you are looking for.

André wrote a nice article on how to disable the annoying message you get when you call  someone or even when someone calls you. Well, the article isn’t really about that but rather tethering. Nevertheless, thanks to Michael, I know now that a side-effect of setting this up, is that the call forwarding message disappears.

If you’re German speaking, just visit André’s (more detailed) or Michael’s (additional information) article and follow the steps. Otherwise, just read on:

1-a) Mac OS X: Close iTunes, open the Terminal and type (copy/paste) the following:

defaults write com.apple.iTunes carrier-testing -bool TRUE

1-b) Windows: Close iTunes and type (copy/paste) the following into Start -> Run

%ProgramFiles%\iTunes\iTunes.exe /setPrefInt carrier-testing 1

2) Visit this website, scroll down to the table, choose your carrier and download the *.ipcc file.

3) Connect your iPhone via USB and start iTunes.

4) Now press Alt (Mac OS X) or Shift (Windows) and search for updates. A new window will open, where you choose the just downloaded file.

5) You don’t get much response from the system (or at least I didn’t get anything), but it sure works.

Having almost 4GB and endless pages of apps on my iPhone, I started to wonder if it’s possible to add an icon as a spacer to increase the clarity. There are many ways if you have a jailbroken phone, but I also found a way to do so on a ‘normal’ one.

Just follow these steps:

1) Visit http://blank.appleiphone.fr/ with your iPhone

2) Add to  Home Screen

3) Instead of typing something which would appear as name, click Cancel

4) Add to Home Screen – again

5) Now the Add button appears without typing a name

6) Move your new spacer (blank icon) to the place you’d like it to be and voilà, there it is.

Thanks for the hint Ananas!