Chimpomatic

It's been a long time coming, but IMDB finally have their own iPhone App. At last, you can recall what Mel Gibson is actually famous for from the comfort of your local pub (Mad Max, Lethal Weapon, Braveheart, surprisingly not much else).

It's a pretty thorough recreation of their comprehensive website - and in many ways is a lot more intuitive.

brilliant/slightly terrifying tale of revenge from some tech-savvy dude who had his iPhone nicked. good ad for mobile.me too

alright, it's not quite the Lego/iPhone hybrid we've all been waiting for (no? just me?) but this app does a good job of Legoising your pics

an iPhone-controlled wifi helicopter?! ooh it's the first A>W>E>S>O>M>E / P>O>I>N>T>L>E>S>S> product of the new decade! think the shot of the dude bugging his girlfriend on the sofa who's sensibly reading a magazine is a little bit too accurate

Google seem to be stepping up their mobile phone business, with Google Voice finding its feet in the US and the company now releasing its own unlocked, network-free handset - allegedly in January 2010.

The company has unofficially confirmed that it has given out handsets to its employees - which are built by HTC and are running a pumped up, unreleased version of Google's own Android operating system.

Meanwhile, Apple seems to be lining up to by VOIP provider iCall, which would give them a Google Voice of their own.

Lou Reed has launched a music-unrelated iPhone app, which seems to be a little short-sghted.

WIRED has the story. Get the App here.

Orange is going to jump on the iPhone bandwagon in time for Christmas 

Some interesting thoughts from Spotify boss Daniel Ek.

I'm still using Spotify on my phone. Not quite the iTunes replacement I was hoping for, but I'm enjoying the legitimacy....

the Hitchcock storyboard app we mentioned a while back is up and running - it lets you work out film storyboards using photos on your iPhone. Vimeo demos here

Some good-looking augmented reality apps on the slate from developer Across Air. They are listed as being available 'as soon as iPhone OS 3.1 launches', which happened last week. Apparently that update included some code-improvements that will enable all this future mapping technology to unfold...

With a ton of never-played-CDs archived around my house, I've been looking for a reason to get rid of them and move forwards with technology. Spotify has been looking like a likely candidate to fill that gap for a while - although with little difference between their offering and the likes of Real Player or the current incarnation of Napster, I'm not sure why - as I would never have gone near them. I think their stand-alone app (and now iPhone/Android app) just came along at the right time, as the market matured to a suitable place.

At £10 a month it rivals the price of buying a new CD per month - with around 80% of the other music in the world thrown in as a bonus, although it is always disappointing when they don't have something - and as the Chimp iTunes is loaded with pre-release stuff it often seems a little behind. New releases generally become available as soon as you can buy them however, and a simple small auto-playlist from iTunes could fill the remaining gap.

I was a little unsure of the sound quality at first, though suspected my fading headphones to be the more guilty party - and Hot For Teacher sounded better and clearer than ever. While listening over 3G there were minor delays between tracks and it dropped out in a couple of notorious 3G black spots en route to work, but generally it's very acceptable. Changing the way you think about using the app can certainly improve things and offline syncing of playlists is a simple task - but it's the playlists themselves that highlight the main issue with both the desktop app and the phone version - the organisation of music. If you could sort and search within playlists like iTunes, you could easily build up favourite playlists, ratings and dynamic playlists too. Importing your owned music from iTunes would also be a major bonus.

With the desktop version of Spotify only at version 0.3.19 however, it's a very reasonable assumption that there's plenty more to come - and any success is bound to be met with a retaliatory offering from Apple, or at the very least Napster and Real Rhapsody - both of which allegedly have mobile versions under development. Exciting times.

P.S. Since launching the iPhone version, Spotify has reverted to an invite-only service in the UK. We have 2 invites for any struggling listeners in UK, Spain Sweden, Norway, Finland or France. 

In the app store now. Test drive coming soon, on a day pass if possible.

UPDATE: Day pass is not possible, so I guess a more thorough test is coming soonish.

UPDATE: I'm up and running - just need to remember to use it now. I have two invites if any struggling citizens in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France or Spain are on the sniff.

Apple have said Spotify can come over and play. It's been accepted for the App store and will be available 'soon' for premium users.

Meanwhile, Sony have commented that Spotify brings in more income for them than the iTunes store...

iTunes 9 seems likely to arrive next week, with added social networking features. Let's see if Apple also come up with a service to compete with Spotify, which wouldn't be hard for them.

The music iPhone mash-up continues to find its feet. Check out this Ziggy Stardust app, bringing together some David Bowie with an archive of 600+ of Mick Rock's photos from the period.

The GPush application finally went on sale today, bringing Gmail instant-notification push email belatedly to the iPhone. £0.59 well spent in the App Store - get it here.

Of course, this makes it very likely that Google will flick the switch to enable it by default, as they have with the Android handsets and the Palm Pre...