Skype for iPhone: It's official

Months after teasing us at CES with an announcement of Skype's native VoIP client for the iPhone, the free Skype for iPhone will finally be available to download from the iTunes App Store sometime on Tuesday. We got a chance to sit down with the application's principal engineer before the announcement was made at CTIA 2009, to see Skype for iPhone do its thing.

While most of the features aren't too surprising--Skype does want to maintain some consistency across its mobile applications, after all--there are a few capabilities that are notably missing, and a few iPhone-only perks that are refreshing to see.

In terms of navigation, Skype's VoIP app for iPhone looks more like your traditional iPhone app than it does Skype 4.0 for Windows. For many who already prefer Apple's sleek interface archetype, that's a triumph, but those who enjoy Skype's branding may feel disappointed.
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Star Guitar iPhone app helps you learn guitar, write songs

I've been playing around with a new iPhone app, Star Guitar, for the last day or so, and it's a sophisticated piece of work that could help beginning guitar players learn how chords fit together into songs, as well as give more experienced songwriters a quick way to record their ideas when they don't have a guitar handy.

Released last week by Amidio, the creators of the Noise.io Pro synthesizer application for the iPhone, Star Guitar is based around a calculator-like interface that lets you choose from 144 chords.

The designers had to be very clever to fit that many chords on a single screen--essentially, you start by picking one of the seven natural-tone letters (A through G), then adding various modifications (flat or sharp, seventh, major, and suspended fourth). You might have to consult the help screen to figure out exactly which combination of buttons will create a particular chord--for example, a G6 is created by hitting "G" and "major"--but for the most part, if you know your chords, it's fairly intuitive.
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Mophie Juice Pack touches the iPod 2G

If you've been waiting for the Juice Pack Air for the iPhone 3G, it's still not out yet. However, you can now get Mophie's latest Juice Pack for the iPod touch 2G that the company announced on March 19.

The new Juice Pack gives iPod touch owners twice as much time to use their player for music, video, or surfing the Internet. According to Mophie, the pack will give the iPod touch 2G up to an additional 42 hours of music playback and up to 7 hours of video playback.

The Juice Pack is certified by Apple to work as a battery extender and as a protective case. It sports an ergonomic design with a soft-touch, nonslip rubberized finish, and it comes fully charged and ready to go out of the box.
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DSiWare: Pricing, browser, promotion revealed

Two weeks ago, we gave you an exclusive hands-on First Look at the Nintendo DSi, the company's second refresh of the DS portable gaming system. While we had to hold back some juicy details about the DSi, we can now let you in on all the fun.

The DSi Shop, which will go live April 5, will offer downloadable games and applications via the DSi Shop that you can store on either the 256MB of internal storage or on an SD card. When Nintendo visited us a few weeks ago, we got to play some DSiWare titles like WarioWare Snapped!, a collection of mini-games designed for use with the DSi's cameras. Snapped! had us moving our heads to dodge objects and watched our mouth's movements to re-enact eating a sandwich. We imagine there will be dozens of more titles that make use of the unit's cameras in addition to the microphone capabilities.

We also got to see a title called Moving Memo that lets you create a sort of flipbook animation. There have even been rumors about a Virtual Console for Game Boy and Game Boy Advance games on the DSi Shop (which would explain the absence of such games on the current Wii Virtual Console).
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Nintendo Wii storage solution is here

Last year we reported that a Nintendo Wii storage solution was upon us that will allow you to store and load games directly off of an SD card. At today's Nintendo press conference at GDC 2009, the company has just announced that an SD menu has been added to the Wii software, and is actually available right now for download via a system update.

The new feature will allow for SDHC cards up to 32GB to be used to store and play games. You'll also have the option to download games directly to your SD card via the Wii Shop Channel.

Via CNET Crave (source: Kotaku)

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