Apple iPod Touch; The iPhone Without the Phone Reviewed by Mo

Ok so first of all I'm over 50, with a pretty crap social life and like most of my generation, mobile phones reside in a blind spot of my brain. The fiddly keys, address books and ridiculous lose-ablity of the device help to keep it there. Last time I called my (£15 pay as you go from Woolies) mobile in an attempt to find it, it was answered by a lovely police officer lady at the Reading Station's lost and found.

To retrieve it she informed me to find the MIN* number on the box or ask Vodaphone for it. I had chucked the packaging years ago and on contacting Vodaphone got a blank refusal to hand over the number. A couple of pleasant emails to the Police and identifying my mum's number in the address book saw the little pest back in my hands. It's safely flat in my draw now.

It was my buddy Jan who introduced me to the iPod Touch and convinced me to get one for £164 from Amazon online. I don't part with money easily so he tempted me with the idea of writing some software for it, getting it on *The App Store and hopefully making some money at it. One thing Jobs and Co. understand at Apple is that software engineers such as myself would rather spend a whole week in a darkened room solving problems than talk to a potential customer with a wallet full of money for 20 minutes. That's how good we are at sales.

The App Store has reportedly downloaded over 1 Billion applications by being made available on iPod Touch /iPhone menu system. So without a customer in sight you can make your offering and hope for the best although it had better be innovative and entertaining to stand a chance against thousands of competitors. The The App Store concept success is being followed by Vodaphone and Nokia So I'm going to give it a go for thisisUll.com.

The iPod Touch is widely referred to as the iPhone without the phone. That's because the iPod Touch has almost all of the iPhone's features except for the phone connection and since I get less than one call a month, that's not a problem.

For me the accelerometer (apparently from a car airbag chip) is the most exciting thing about it. Super Monkey Ball, you tilt the iPhone in the direction you want the ball to roll. Although the finger user interface is small, it's clear and a nice change from a keyboard using pinch, tap and swipe movements. Youtube is loaded with videos showing how this works.

It seems the mobile phone has morphed into a miniature laptop with new devices including a GPS positioning system. This new device is likely to multiply the number of users on the internet many times, and will have a huge impact in our future lives. For example, diabetics can now use it to record blood sugar levels, advice on meal intake and get real time medical diagnosis and assistance. So unpacking the touch reveals top quality Apple engineering and design. It's a treat but the headphones are either designed for a horse or someone with big ear holes, they hurt after a bit.

The only other negative thing I can say is that Apple attempt to force you to register the iPod Touch using a credit card, to pay for the The App Store applications download I suppose. But after paying for it I was in no mood to get bills from them for downloads I had requested by mistake so I called support and found there is a way to register it via the iTunes application (in only one place) without giving my card details.

Given some time and luck thisisUll.com will have something on the The App Store to announce, but for now we have been busy on the development front and are looking at offering mobile web solutions for wireless devices. Here is one of our demos at Pizza on the Run Who would order a pizza using an internet connected mobile is beyond me though. *Mobile Identification Number or MIN refers to the 10-digit unique number that a wireless operator uses to identify the mobile phone. *The App Store is a service for the iPhone and iPod Touch created by Apple Inc. which allows users to browse and download applications from the iTunes Store.

Heres a video of it ordering a pizza, sorry the quality isn't great..

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