The newest top tier organization to make their website iPhone optimized is the Associated Press. That’s right. The world’s oldest and largest news gathering source has joined the fray, making AP News available to iPhone users in a now familiar optimized version. Visit APNews from your iPhone to see AP’s Mobile News Network to stay up on the latest world news.

I have the ability to search through the news, and I can define a local region to see news from a particular area based on zip code. For example, I live in Santa Monica so I have zip code 90401 set as my primary local news preference. I spend a lot of time in San Francisco, zip code 94107, so I set it as a locale I also want news for. When I look at my local news on the AP News site, I see relevant headlines to Santa Monica and San Francisco.

News is sorted by category, and I can choose what I want to see. I enjoy the ability to customize what shows up on my home page by turning categories on or off, based on my personal preferences. News categories include: Local, U.S, World, Photos, Entertainment, Sports, Business, Videos, Elections, Wacky News, Technology, and Government. Photos and video can tell very dramatic stories by themselves, and offering them with the written news is one feature I am seeing on more sites, most recently Google News.

When I find a news story that I find interesting, funny, or compelling enough to share with someone, I have the option to email or text the story. I would like to be able to see more stories per category without having to select “More Stories”, but keeping the number of stories I see on my home page helps maintain a clean look.

How do you consume your news? What news sites do you read from your iPhone?

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America Movil announced that it will sell the iPhone in all its Latin American markets (currently 16 countries, but soon also Panama) before the end of 2008 in a short press release on its website.

The countries will be Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay. Too bad America Movil can’t sell the iPhone via its US American no frills phone subsidary TracFone.

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Download APS Episode #53 enhanced here. Enhanced by Ryan Cates

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Thanks to “Bodyguardz” (makers of protective skins for the iPhone) for supporting the Apple Phone Show, to get a 10% discount, use the coupon code “phoneshow”.

Episode 53 May 9, 2008
Apple Phone Show
Episode 53
May 8, 2008

Scott Bourne - Executive Producer - Podango Studios
Andy Ihnatko - Co-host - Celestial Waste of Bandwidth and Sun-Times
Chris Breen - Co-host - Macworld

Thanks to “Body Guards” (makers of protective skins for the iPhone) for supporting the Apple Phone Show, to get a 10% discount, use the coupon code “phoneshow”

On this week’s show:
-Andy talks about Twitter, 1937 MGM gangster movies, and Hahlo, and taking self portraits using the iPhone.
-Chris talks about AT&T Wi-Fi hotspots, foreign iPhone news, and AT&T’s $40 text accessibility plan.

Twitter. Either you haven’t heard about it or you’re sick to death of hearing about it. Twitter is a unique application of blogging software. Well, it isn’t quite blogging. It isn’t quite email. It isn’t quite instant messaging. It is something brand new and something that a mobile phone as nice as the iPhone exploits well.

(more…)

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Our foreign correspondent Achim has compiled a list of the iPhone’s international roll-out schedule. If we missed something, please let us know.

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Vodafone, which didn’t participate in the launch of the iPhone in its home country, England, has now partnered with Apple to launch the iPhone in 10 different countries. Later this year, customers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey will be able to purchase the iPhone from Vodafone. In a short message on its website.

Vodafone announced the launch, avoiding any reference to which model (2.5G via EDGE or the rumored 3G via UMTS) will be offered.

In addition Telecom Italia Mobile confirmed the news story from last week, that they will be selling the iPhone in Italy soon. Which will make Italy the first country where customers can get the iPhone from two different providers. This can be seen as a
confirmation that Apple is slowly but surely moving away from the “you can be our exclusive partner, dear telco, but you have to agree to fork over a share of the usage revenue” model and is really going for overall smart phone market share, leaving some of that nice recurring revenue stream on the table.

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Now, armed with my iPhone, I can be quick on the draw when I am challenged to “Google it!”. Having added the familiar www.google.com to my iPhone’s Home Screen, I have the added bonus of Gmail, Calendar and Reader at my fingertips in just two taps. With little effort, I also have access to Google Docs and News.

Google News for the iPhone launched on May 1, 2008, and is available to users in over 30 countries. I can now browse the front page of Google’s current news, events and stories. There is even a search box which enables me to see results of a search initiated from the News home page. Where available, many of my search results included a YouTube icon displaying associated video to compliment the written story. Clicking on the YouTube icon and video opened and played it right on my iPhone.

Ulf Waschbusch, Product Marketing Manager on the Google mobile team writes:

“Furthermore, if you use Google Apps - now is the time to use your domain name on the iPhone as well. Just bookmark http://www.google.com/m/a/YOURDOMAIN for fast one-click access to Google. Please make sure to replace YOURDOMAIN with your actual domain name.”

I am using a personalized domain, www.girlsgonegeek.tv, with Google Apps and am hosting my email there. To have access to the Google productivity suite, when logging in using my at girlsgonegeek dot tv email address, I had to configure my settings within Apps administration to have access to all of the modules (Documents, Calendar, Reader, etc.). Also a user of a separate, free at gmail dot com account, my Apps run like clockwork without any setup or permissions needing to be configured.

There is no better price than free, and Google has done a great job of building applications that work well on the desktop and now on the iPhone and iPod Touch. Bravo!

Let me know what you think of the new interface. What is the next step for Google’s mobile UI?

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