Oh yeah, feels like new again. Today I downloaded the new firmware for my iPhone and in case you haven’t been following my tweets, pownces, plurks, or friendfeed I am very satisfied. I haven’t felt this good about the device since I originally bought it, of course jail breaking it did feel good too but now these apps are leaps and bounds ahead of the original third party apps. Now I have something to hold me over until the AT&T 3G network stretches to my neck of the woods.

Of course I hit all the free apps first and most of those were to all my social networks. Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, and Pownce all have apps and I have a feeling that I may be using most of those more than their actual websites. All of these social apps allow use of the camera or your photo library to upload pics right to their site. They also speed up the delivery and surfing of all the essential data related to those sites i.e. who is eating cheese, who is playing with their new iPhone, and who is in the shower.

Another notable free app is the weather bug which far exceeds the included weather app. Now you can see which way the wind is blowing, radar maps, and any weather alerts.

The list of free apps that wouldn’t be complete without Apple’s own remote for iTunes and the Apple TV. Now you can surf and control the media in your library just like you are using an iPod. This will be handy in those party situations when you want to have your iPhone on you but still be in control of the tunes.

There are a few familiar programs in the app store that you may have seen in installer.app. I will look forward to supporting as soon as I have a few extra bucks lying around; Band, Mobile Flickr, and Sketches to name a few. I’m still looking for cameraPro or Snapture as I feel they include many features that are missing from the iPhones camera like a self timer. SummerBoard would also be nice as I like to customize the look of the icons and the dock.

One new app I went out and bought was the new MLB app. This app is a must for anyone who spends as much time refreshing baseball scores. It also has the option to watch video highlights of the games. You still have to use mlb.com to view the play by play, hopefully that comes in the form of an update soon.

I could go on and on about all the new apps but the jist of the situation is that all in all I am happier than ever with my old iPhone. I will someday go out and replace it but as it is I feel now I am in no hurry. Since I don’t have access to 3g I don’t feel like paying an extra $10 a month to have fewer text messages and a useless 3Gcard in my phone. The fact that it has GPS doesn’t sell me on the new one either as I have already noticed a big improvement in the “current location” that is already in google maps.

For instance if you login to your Flickr, Facebook, Blogger, YouTube, or Twitter account it will ask you if you want to integrate that account into the browser. For the photo and video sharing sites (i.e. flickr, Facebook, & YouTube) the browser has a media bar built in to navigate through the pictures and videos. There is also a person sidebar built in that will display your friend’s updates to twitter, facebook, flickr, and YouTube. de.licio.us bookmarking is also built into the browser so that you can save your bookmarks to the browser and to the de.licio.us web site at the same time.

If you are a blogger then you can take advantage of the blogging feature which brings up a window with an editor similar to what most blogging sites use. You can type in text in the editor section (basic WYSIWYG), fix up your html in the source section, and see what it will look like in the preview section. It also allows editing previous posts making for a quicker experience in getting your job done.

And if you are worried about leaving your favorite Firefox extensions behind you are in luck because most of them will work in Flock.

Overall it is a great browser and I can see there is potential for it to grow. I have switched over fairly successfully in the past few days. It imported all of my cookies, bookmarks, and passwords that I had saved in Firefox though I don’t think that the people sidebar it quite up to snuff when it comes to twitter, as It had a hard time keeping up with tweetr.

Blogged with Flock

Me.dium has been pushing the boundaries of the web ever since it started its beta release earlier this year. I first found it through the podcast Tiki Bar Tv when Dr. Tiki sent an invitation through the tiki bar facebook group to come and hang out and chat during the next episode premiere. Now they are hosting RockMe which they are dubbing the online mosh pit.

Me.dium is unlike other social networks. It exists in the sidebar of your browser (firefox or internet explorer). There you can see a visualization of where you friends are on the web and chat with any number of users. While you go from site to site a link below your name changes letting people know where you are and likewise you can see what site your friends are on. By clicking on your friends you go to the site they are looking at. It makes sharing new sites more interactive.

This is where Tiki Bar Tv excels because fans of the show can chat with other fans and stars of the show while everybody watches together.

I can see RockMe accomplishing a similar task by music fans sharing their favorite music and videos along with talking to musicians. The whole thing is hosted by Rose Hill Drive and features the Willowz, Gosling, Jeffrey Lewis, the Fiery Furnaces, and last but not least J. Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. will be showing up on the 22nd. It lasts from Sept. 18 – 24 so go on over to Me.dium and check it out.

So While I was posting my last blog post to facebook I noticed a new feature. There are now icons located under the profile picture that take you to where the application is nested on your or your friends profile.

This is a simple but very useful way to get to that wall or pirate application that could be hiding anywhere amongst the explosion of applications that have hit facebook in the past few months. It even highlights the app after you click on it.

Pownce is the product of Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, Shawn Allen, and digg founder Kevin Rose. Like Twitter and Jaiku it lets you update your friends with messages though here are are not limited to 140 characters. You also have the choice of sending a link, a file, event, or just a message. Not only that but you can also group your friends into sets and send messages to a set of friends, a individual friend, or out to the public. The sets I can see being handy being a twitter addict and only wanting to say something to a few people on my list i.e. co-workers, on-line friends, family. The friend feature works a lot like Twitter and Jaiku in the fact people can follow you without you having to be their friend. There is a pro option that allows you to send 100mb files instead of the 10mb limit imposed on the free users and no advertisements for $20 a year.

Pownce also has harnessed the power of air (adobe integrated runtime) to build a desktop program. It is a nice little program that could use a few more features but as it is still in alpha mode so I’m sure they will be adding them shortly. Kevin Rose already announced on Pownce yesterday that they are working on making the desktop program self updating along with the fact that more invites will be coming soon after the next version (don’t ask me for an invite yet, I don’t have any). The desktop program did have some connection issues from time to time but I’m thinking that has to do with the 15,000 invite requests Pownce received in the first 24 hours of existence.

The only thing I see keeping me away from Pownce is the lack of sms text messaging which is one of the main ways I use twitter. I’ll just have to see how it works with my cell phone.

I found my way into Pownce when a tweet came my way about a live diggnation feed on Zooomr being broadcasted from the Apple Store in Palo Alto with everyone camping out for the iPhone. After diggnation Robert Scoble took over with the guys from Zooomr and it seemed like everyone from Silicone Valley stopped by. I am excited to see what comes from Pownce and Zooomr but with so many different web services these days it is becoming hard to keep track of them all.