A Brazilian ice cream company called Kibon has come up with a cold - I mean cool - idea: sell special Fruttare popsicles with a free iPod shuffle frozen inside. In fact, Kibon is giving away 10,000 of them ice cold shuffles in their iPod No Palito promo.

Before you iPod experts jump up in protest that a shuffle can’t survive being frozen inside a popsicle even if you seal it in plastic because of the humidity, relax.

Kibon studied the situation and invented a fake ice cream that doesn’t damage the iPod shuffle. The faux popsicle, or propsicle, is safe for shuffles, and Kibon had to get the approval of Cupertino before they could go ahead with the promo in Brazil, which is currently in the throes of their summer.

The shuffle is in random propsicles, and buyers can’t tell if there is an iPod in there or not. They buy a Fruttare popsicle in one of the ten fruit flavors and take a chance if they can get a shuffle or not. Mentor Muniz Neto of Bullet Brazil, the agency that cooked - er, froze up this promo, explains how the iPods stay safe in the popsicle:

We developed a special prototype that emulates the real ice cream; it protects the iPod from humidity, and it feels like the real ice cream. It is virtually impossible to fell the difference without opening the package.”

The manual and charger can be claimed separately by calling in a code to an 800 number to get them.

Coolness.

Here’s one of those no-brainer, dead-simple applications that should’ve been in the box - a way to measure lengths using the iPhone. The nice thing about this little feature is that it actually isn’t an app, but merely a calibrated graphic of a ruler that is to accurate and to scale.

Available from a website called, interestingly enough, an error occurred while processing this directive.com, it’s pretty simple to use, and needs no wireless connection whatsover.

Just download the graphic and put it into your photo album, and when the need arises access the photo and measure away. I checked with a physical tape measure and it seems the ruler is apparently spot on and lost nothing in the translation.

A couple of unavoidable and obvious limitations, though. We can only measure three-inch or 7.5 cm objects, and those in a vertical orientation - if you turn the iPhone on its side, the picture adjusts orientation automatically because of the iPhone sensor and renders the scale useless. But hey, it’s free; we can’t really complain.

We’re not quite sure if the iPod Touch’s screen has precisely the same dimensions and resolution as the iPhone in practice so we don’t know if the ruler would be accurate on the iPod, but it shouldn’t be all that different. We’re sure someone will chime in on this soon. (Bernie?)

Nice. Would that we had things like these more often, huh?

Capped from my iPhone using iFuntastic. From TUAW’s Erica Sadun, an iPhone app called “Vista” Version 0.2. (The update from 0.1 came in just this morning, and you can’t see it here, but the cursor that comes right after “Press any key to continue” actually blinks, whereas in the previous version it was static.)

Vista is one of those totally useless but enormously fun “apps” she sometimes makes in-between her usuallly wonderful hacks and utilities. I love this girl. Vista for the iPhone is available free through NullRiver’s Installer. One variant only. Har har har.

Wouldn’t it be great to walk into someone’s house or office and get his Mac to play the songs on your iPhone or iPod Touch remotely on his big speakers?

TUAW reports that it’s possible. All you need do is install an app called Firefly on your iPhone or iPod Touch, let it build your mobile music database and you’re good to go.

Here’s how it’s done:

Navigate to http://home.mike.tl/iphone using Safari on your device. This installs a new app source onto Installer.app. Alternately, run Installer and add the url to the Sources tab.

This makes Firefly appear on your list of installables. Install and run Firefly, and give it anywhere from 5 to 10 minutes to build your database (the length of time depends on how many songs you got).

That’s basically it.

Make sure the iTunes you intend to play from has enabled Library Sharing and has wifi, and that the firewall of the Mac allows communication. Your gadget’s playlist will appear on any iTunes you come within range of, and there you go - if it asks for a password, just say “dottie”, by the way.

You learn something new everyday.

In an earlier post, I asked why there weren’t more free and useful sites around like that screen test thing.

Ha! Apparently there are!

A friend of mine, Ryan, recently had to restore his iPhone and was worried about jailbreaking it again and putting in Installer.app and he texted for advice.

Well, gone are the good old days of circuitous and tedious hacking - today, for people like Ryan its just a matter of navigating to a website with your iPhone or your iPod Touch and clicking ok to installing AppSnapp for 1.1.1.

All you need do is go to

http://jailbreakme.com

Yes, it’s that easy, believe it or not.

All the instructions and cautions are there if you’re the fraidycat, but it’s just a matter of agreeing to the jailbreak and you’re on your way to the wide and wonderful and often weird world of third party apps. Coolness.