I’ve written a couple of times how in Japan seeing a wayward iPhone is rarer than it normally is elsewhere. That’s because hack-and-kracks don’t work there (their system has different requirements that the iPhone hardware does not have yet). So seeing one in Apple-crazy Japan is not too common, and the craving seems to have given rise to odd things - like this Sony Ericsson slider that someone there modified to look like an iPhone:

Gizmodo calls it the “saddest iPhone” they’ve ever seen. I agree.

(I’ve known this trick for some time and have actually been teaching it to friends ever since, but it never occurred to me to post the darn thing. Taught it to Game Magazine editor Howard Paw the other day and realized I haven’t even mentioned it here. Well, better late than never.)

Apple has left out cartloads of basic features, apps and utilities that should be no-brainers to add. Even worse, they even forget to mention things that are actually already there for you to use right out of the box.

One of the things they forgot is how to find out currency rates in real-time over the net, quickly and easily without going to websites when all you want to do find out what the rate today is. Don’t worry, there’s no specific icon for it; you didn’t miss anything. It’s built into the Stocks widget that comes with the iPhone.

Updating the rates of currency worldwide is done through Yahoo online. All you need do is run the widget and add the “stock” of your selected currency manually, and every time you update it’ll check the current conversation rate for your preferred coin. Finally, a use for Stocks that those of use who don’t dabble in the market will find way useful. (Remember, it’s not a currency conversion calculator, mind you - someone else can invent one; this just gives you the current conversion rate. You can use the built-in Calculator to find out how much you’ve made or lost, which is now a snap because you know the current rate.)

Run the widget, then tap on the “i” icon on the lower right corner.

Then tap on the “+” or add button on the upper left corner, which is supposed to let you add stocks you wish to monitor.

In the text window, type the currency equation in this format: yyyzzz=x, where yyy is currency you’re asking about and zzz is your home currency.

Thus, to use an example, to find out how many Philippine Pesos (PHP) one US dollar (USD) can buy, you type USDPHP=X.

The proper abbreviations for currencies that the widget understands can be found on the Yahoo!Finance Currency Converter page (where you can actually do this and calculate specific amounts - which is better, really - but that’s not the point of this tip.)

Once you type in the argument, the iPhone will locate the proper “stock” and show it in the window below. Tap on it and it will add the “stock” to your list of monitored stocks.

Tap on “Done” and you’re all set. Every time you run the widget, it’ll consult Yahoo!Finance and give you the real-time exchange rate of the currencies you’ve selected.

You can add as many as you want (and while you’re at it, you can remove the pre-installed stocks Apple put in to save on screen real estate - me, I left Apple on to see how Steve and the gang are doing, just out of curiosity.)

So there.

Those of you who own a regular 5 or 5.5Gen iPod video but secretly covet an iPod Touch with its wifi and multi-touch interface - well, you’re SOL: you’d still need to either buy a Touch or get over it; no hack’ll solve your problems.

But if you want to settle for just a similar looking interface, you’re in better luck.

The same kooks who brought you the hack that gives your iPod video the iPod Classic’s interface has created a new hack that gives iPod videos the same menus and look of the iPod Touch - if not the multitouch capability.

It’s a bit involved, but the guys at iPodHacking.com assure us there is no way the hack will brick your iPod video, so you can rest easy and hack away with impunity.

Free download link and instructions are here.

Once again, Mac-A-Doodle would like to remind everyone that we’re just passing on the info, ok? Hax0r beware.

Long ago, to remove Digital Rights Management from my music tracks, I started with the rigamarole of burning them to a CD from iTunes then re-ripping them back to iTunes, fresh, sparkling clean and DRM-free.

After I had a accumulated a small stack of CDs I never used from this method, I thought of just reusing a CDRW, erasing and burning over and over, even if I just had one track to clean - I didn’t have to wait to fill up a CDR with DRMed songs just to save a little money.

5thirtyone.com shows us an even easier way that doesn’t involve burning digital media at all, and is so simple I smacked myself on the head and said, dang, why didn’t I think of that?

One caveat - you’d need to have iMovie HD on your system.

The basic idea, in a nutshell, is for your to import the DRMed track into iMovie as a soundtrack, export it to iTunes as AIFF, then convert it to AAC within iTunes then just manually adding back the meta data and artwork. A little tedious, but no more ripping and burning to CD. And easier, as 5thirtyone.com points out, to create an Automator sequence to do this by the numbers every time you need to strip DRM from a track.

More detailed instructions and explanations from 5thirtyone.

Folks at Monster & Friends have confirmed something we all knew - that video recording is possible on iPhones, and Apple’s just been stingy enabling it from the get-go (likely holding back so they can introduce “new” features down the road months after release of the phone).

They just shown off a beta app called Drunknbass, which records 5-second bursts of video running at 10 frames per second, with a two megapixel resolution; after shooting, the app plays the 5 seconds back once. As of now there is no way to save it yet, nor any other interfaces, but it’s just a matter of more time on the drawing board until there is no limit to length recorded other than the physical memory limitation of 8gb.

You won’t find Drunknbass on Installer just yet. You’ll need to do things manually if you want to have the feature. All we know is a more full-featured version is coming soon, and that it’ll just be a matter of time when Apple includes the “new” feature in a forthcoming update.

(Via Gizmodo)