In an interesting twist that I haven’t seen mentioned anywhere else, the free Skype App for the iPhone is now available to Canadian users of the iPhone and iPod Touch. For reasons that nobody could adequately explain to me, the app was initially only available for US based users. I was therefore very surprised when I came across it in the app store on iTunes yesterday. I wonder if this has anything to do with the recent purchase of Skype by a conglomerate that includes the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board??

Skype is a very cool app that allows iPhone and iPod users to make voice calls over the internet, using either the 3G network (iPhone only) or a WiFi connection. Calls are free to other Skype users and inexpensive to landlines and mobile phones. The Skype service also includes additional features such as instant messaging, file transfer and video conferencing; however, only some of these features are currently available with the app.

This is very exciting because the iPod Touch can now be used as a phone (if you have an add-on microphone) anywhere that a wireless internet connection is available. For many users that will be all day long in their home and office locations, or even at McDonalds and Starbucks locations that off WiFi service to their customers.

How long will it be before WiFi is available everywhere? That would eliminate the need to carry a mobile phone and/or to pay for an expensive data plan.

I love my iPod Touch and I use it all the time. Before I actually got one I had been coveting it for a long time.

Without doing all that much research on it I naturally assumed that it would consist of the exact same hardware as the iPhone, and would be missing only the ability to make and receive phone calls. I was quite surprised to discover that the hardware was actually quite different; the Touch was smaller and lighter, and, most significantly, did not have a built-in camera.

Fast forward about 18 months to the launch of the iPhone 3Gs which included not only an improved still camera, but also video camera functionality. It also received a wide variety of software upgrades in the form of the iPhone OS 3.0. At that time there was no corresponding launch of new hardware for the iPod Touch, but the existing device got a de-facto upgrade since it was compatible with the OS 3.0 upgrade. Everyone naturally assumed that Apple was simply stalling in order to ensure high demand for the upgraded phone, and that new hardware for the Touch would follow a few weeks of months later.

This finally happened this week when Apple released a whole new lineup of iPods.  This release also came with a major update to iTunes 9.0 and also to the iPhone OS 3.1.  Some of the highlights of the release include:

• new colors and lower prices for the iPod Shuffle
• a massive 160 GB hard drive in the iPod Classic
• a faster processer in the iPod Touch (the same as in the iPhone 3Gs) and a new 64 GB model
• a video camera (with microphone and built-in speaker) and FM tuner in the iPod Nano

What?  The Nano gets a video camera, but the Touch doesn’t? 

Video is king right now and I can see why apple would want to shove a camera into all of their iPods.  But never in a million years did I expect to see it in the Nano before it was in the Touch.  The iPhone already has it so it seemed like a lock that the Touch would get it next.  My 32GB 2nd gen iPod Touch is plenty fast enough and without a camera in the new generation I’m really not sure why any existing iPod Touch owner would upgrade to the new model.  Even new iPod buyers should be able to pick up some great deals on the 2nd Generation devices.  For me this announcement is just plain odd.

Oh well, maybe bext time.

The music player for the iPhone and iPod touch has been dramatically improved since the iPhone OS 3.0 Software Update with a couple of simple but dramatic changes.  The simplest change was the addition of three new icons on the “Now Playing” screen, including an option to send a link by email to anyone that might be interested in the file you are playing, a playback speed control that gives the option to play the current file at 1/2x, 1x, or 2x the normal playback speed.  I’m not sure about the usefulness of the email link, but the option to change the playback speed is pretty cool and could be very useful to help find your place in a song  or podcast that was forced to restart, or even to play a boring podcast a little faster in order to get it finished! They also added an icon to skip back wards by 30 seconds.  This is also very cool in case you missed something and want to hear it again.  I used this today while listening to a podcast.  I was very surprised to hear what one of the announcers said, and I had to jump back to make sure I had heard it correctly. (I had)

But wait, there’s more!

The absolute best new feature in the new iPhone software is variable precision scrubbing!  This now feature allows the user to quickly and easily navigate through a media file by changing the scrubbing rate depending on where you finger is on the screen.  If you swipe your finger across the media bar it will be the same old high speed scrubbing we were used to hating.  There are now three additional  scrub rates (Half, Quarter, and Fine speeds). The more precise the scrubbing gets, the easier it is to navigate to a specific spot in the track.

I used to complain about how fast and imprecise the scrubbing was before.  It seemed that every time I lost my place in my playlist I simply couldn’t get back to the exact spot I had been at in the media file that I was listening to.  This will help with that problem in a big way!

I listen to lots of podcasts on my iPod.  I’m geeky that way. I spend lots of time in my car while driving to and from work and I find that podcasts really eat up time way faster than music ever does.  And I get to learn something too, so that’s always good.

I also listen to music, but I usually just hit the shuffle button or create a quick Genius playlist, so this doesn’t really impact me there.  Back to podcasts…  When I listen to a podcast, or a playlist full of podcasts, I rarely get through all of one episode before arriving at my destination, and I basically never get through an entire playlist.  If I hit pause when I get out of the car, and then don’t use my iPod until I get back in the car then I can simply wake it up, hit play, and roll on.  But if I change to a different playlist, which of course I do because nobody else wants to listen to my podcasts, then I lose my place in my previous playlist.

Which brings me to my point.  Why doesn’t hitting pause while playing media from a playlist get treated as a “playlist pause” rather than as a “file pause”?  Essentially I want my iPod to remember exactly where I was in my playlist and just start up from there the next time I use that playlist.  Doesn’t seem like rocket science to me.  Maybe there’s an app for that?

Anyone have any good ideas to make this work?  Apple, are you listening?