Zinio, that wonderful source of online versions of your favorite magazines, is field-testing (or as they say, “incubating”) The Zinio Mobile Newsstand, a service made specifically for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, and makes use of the graphics and multi-touch features of these gadgets.

At the moment, all you need do is head on to zinio.com/iphone on your device to get full, free (for now, otherwise it’s US$5 per issue), hi-resolution and fully readable copies of your titles.

Available ones include Popular Mechanics, Car & Driver, Men’s Health, Playboy, Penthouse, Esquire, PC Magazine, Popular Photography, Elle, Technology Review, Reader’s Digest, Macworld US and Macworld UK.

Read them while they last! (And if you know how to tweak Safari to pretend it’s an iPhone, you can read these mags on your Macs as well, in full desktop mode. Heh.)

UPDATE: I’ve gotten more questions about how to tweak Desktop Safari to pretend it’s Mobile Safari for iPhones than is comfortable, so here’s the secret, once and for all: Go to Safari Prefs/Advanced and check the box to enable the Develop menu. Then go to Develop/User Agent and select Mobile Safari iPhone. Have fun.

One of the most anticipated things later this year (aside from the obvious new iPhone iteration announcement), is the flood of new apps borne of the release of the SDK, to be made available through the iTunes Store. A lot of these new apps likely were first discussed in iPhoneDevCamp.

Last year, the iPhoneDevCamp was a hotbed of new and innovative ideas, and this year the madness continues with iPhoneDevCamp 2. The gathering is meant to encourage development and stimulate creativitity and ideas for app creation and development for the iPhone and iPod Touch using the SDK and web standards in a non-profit, collegiate atmosphere. Think camp for geeks.

iPhoneDevCamp 2 this year will be held August 1-3 in San Francisco at the Adobe Systems Headquarters, for those of you curious, or want to somehow participate. For regular updates, follow iphonedevcamp on Twitter.

Apple seems to be softening up on its one-provider-fits-all policy for the iPhone in other parts of the world.

Recent announcements reveal that yes, it is now possible to have different providers sell the iPhone in the same markets, particularly in Europe. For example, Deutsche Telecom has had the exclusive right to distribute the iPhone in Austria, but now Orange is getting in on the action there as well. In Italy, Vodafone and Telecom Italia are now both distributing the iPhone, while in Egypt and Portugal, Vodafone and Orange both have their fingers in the Apple pie.

In the US, the five-year exclusivity contract between Apple and AT&T apparently still stands, but T-Mobile USA has recently started providing wifi service in Starbucks cafes alongside AT&T. Hmm.

In the Doodler’s home country, it was recently announced that Globe, one of the two dominant telecom providers along with Smart, will be releasing the iPhone in the Philippines this year through its partnership with Singapore Telecommunications, which has acquired the rights from Apple for the region.

So it isn’t impossible to see a Smart iPhone in the future as well, after all.

Well, as we say here in my country, the more, the many-er.

The chief executive of Intel Germany has revealed that Apple is developing a touchscreen device similar to an iPhone, but larger, and with a bigger touchscreen.

Hannes Schwaderer made the statement at an event held in Munich, Germany that this alleged tablet-device-phone-pda-something will be using his company’s new Atom processor for mobile devices. This supports rumors circulating the net that Apple is indeed developing a tablet gadget for general computing that may or not be a new iPhone model. Whether this announcement is based on fact or on one too many brewskis is yet to be determined.

Can you say Newton 2.0?

(Via Electronista)

Two pieces of great news for my country, the Philippines! One is, I’m back, and the other more important one is that Engadget reports that Globe Telecom is releasing the iPhone in the Philippines!

Well, apparently not all credit goes to Globe. According to Engadget’s EIC Ryan Block, it’s actually Singapore Telecommunications which secured the rights, and is releasing it through it’s partly-owned subsidiary Globe.

According to Engadget:

Singapore Telecommunications (aka SingTel) announced that it’s secured agreements to distribute the iPhone in Singapore (on SingTel Mobile) and its partly-owned subsidiaries in Australia (on Optus), India (on Bharti Group), and the Philippines (on Globe Telecom). Vodafone’s also distributing the iPhone in India and Australia though, so we’ll have to wait until later this year to find out who gets to shoot first.”

No news as to when though, nor any other details yet, but knowing it’ll actually happen is the important thing. I’m hoping it’ll be announced at the WWDC next month.

(Thanks to Jason for the heads-up!)

UPDATE: Globe Telecom has made the announcement (tersely though; Engadget had more to say) on its website. Question now is, what’s longtime rival Smart going to do? I don’t think they’ll take this sitting down.