All the talk over the last week on the Internets has been focusing on the new iPhone 4 or the fully-enabled iOS 4 on an iPhone 3GS, but not everyone is getting a brand new iPhone 4 or already has a 3GS. This review is for those of you, like myself, who are still saddled with the aging (yet still pretty awesome) iPhone 3G. The following review will let you know what you’ll get in the new OS, what you’ll be missing, and will hopefully help you decide if it is worth upgrading.

The Good
The very first thing I played around with when it was done updating was folders. If, like many users, you have compiled 3+ pages of apps that you use frequently enough that you are unwilling to uninstall them and clean things up, then you are probably sick to death of attempting to organize your apps. Folders are like a dream come true. Although I cannot explain why it took Apple this long to integrate a feature that dates back to the original computer operating system GUIs, this is a feature that is truly welcome. Instead of 4 pages of apps that are loosely organized and a pain to navigate through and reorganize, I have managed to condense everything in to a single page with 4 main folders.

Once I was able to move beyond the excitement of having folders (Sad, right?), I popped open the mail app. The new inbox structure is great and navigating through the app just to get to each account’s inbox has never been easier. I’ve never really been a fan of a unified inbox, but from what I understand it is hugely popular and was a very highly requested feature, so kudos to Apple for adding it in. Also, for you business users out there, you can now access more than a single exchange account, so there’s that.

For those of you that do a lot of mobile web browsing, you’ll also notice that not only is Safari faster to load initially, but there are some nice new changes. For starters, you now have a choice of the default search engine and can switch between Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Along with the option of which search provider you want to use, search recommendations have been added and are powered by whichever search engine you select as your default. Supposedly there’s also better better HTML5 support and HTML compliance is extremely high, as my phone scored a 94/100 on the Acid3 Test (Note: Firefox 3.6.4 on Mac OS X 10.6.4 only scores a 93).

Are there more things that are awesome about upgrading to iOS 4? You bet, but those are the three that really stand out.

The Bad
The bad points about upgrading your iPhone 3G to iOS 4 aren’t so much as what’s wrong with it once you’re done but what you know for a fact you’re missing and won’t ever get until you buy new hardware. Most notably, multitasking, facetime, and desktop wallpapers. I understand that do to hardware liabilities multitasking and desktop wallpapers had to be disable or they would have just about crippled the phone (at least according to Apple) and facetime simply won’t work without the front-facing camera, but it still hurts to know the awesomeness that others are experiencing which your phone shall never enjoy.

The Ugly
Speed. Sure, a few of the built-in Apps such as Safari and Mail are snappier than ever, but I’ve started noticing more and more that it just seems a bit more sluggish than it ever used to. It is by no means unusable, or even anywhere close to it, but Apple has clearly switch gears to optimizing the software for the newest hardware. Even uglier is the crashing. This really can’t be blamed on Apple because it is an issue exclusively with 3rd party apps, so my guess would be this will be less and less of a concern as the app developers update their code for improved compatibility with iOS 4.

Conclusion
Overall, it is a very solid upgrade for the iPhone 3G. The addition of folders and the improvements made in Safari and Mail are enough to make the upgrade more than worthwhile. If, however, you’re concerned about some of the issues I’ve discussed above, then maybe put it off for a month or two until Apple has released the first bug fix (presumably to be called iOS 4.0.1) and more developers have had a chance to ensure that their Apps are up to date and working properly.

As the latest addition to the still rather vacant One Mayfair Place on the corner of Mayfair and Center in Wauwatosa, the Ginza Sushi Bar is in a great area and has no immediate competitors when it comes to Sushi. When it opened about a week ago, my wife and I decided to oorder a few rolls for takeout. Although I don’t recall exactly which items off the menu we had ordered, all of the rolls were fresh and delicious. Even having only been open for a day, they seem to have already mastered takeout and had our food ready fast and already packed neatly in to a brown bag when I walked in the door. Although the size of the rolls aren’t as large as what I am spoiled with at Wasabi, they are still quite good and cause a little less damage to the wallet.

Earlier today we decided to make our second trip there, but this time for a nice sit-down lunch. Both of us ordered the $13 lunch bento. The price seemed a bit steep, but they really do a fantastic job of filling you up. We were promptly brought out a fresh salad and within a minute or two of clearing our salad plates we were brought the rest of the meal. Honestly, it was more than I expected. Both of us got the teryaki chicken bento, which had a large amount of the chicken, topped with thinly shredded and fried sweet potato, a California roll (which my wife substituted for a sweet potato roll – a very good choice), a steamed veggie whose name I cannot recall, the option of either a spring roll or some little fried stuffed rice ball, and a bowl of white rice. By the time I’d cleared my plate I was thoroughly stuffed and extremely satisfied.

Although I can’t (yet?) speak for the menu in it’s entirety, I am willing to pronounce Ginza a worthwhile destination if you are in the Mayfair area and looking for a good meal. It certainly isn’t the best sushi in the metro-Milwaukee area, but the food is good, the service is fast and friendly, and it is in a very convenient location across from Mayfair Mall. I will definitely be eating there again.

Here’s the address and website:

Twitter for iPhone
Category: Social Networking
Last Updated: May 18th, 2010
Current Version: 3.0 (Previously Tweetie 2)
Size: 2.4 MB
Price: Free

Once upon a time there was a @Twitter client for the iPhone named Tweetie. Although it was not a free client like some of it’s stiffer competition (Read: @Twitterrific), Tweetie was generally considered the best Twitter app available for the iPhone. Then, on April 9th, 2010, Twitter itself announced that had purchased the parent company of Tweetie and would be updating the iPhone client, re-releasing it as “Twitter for iPhone”, and dropping the price all the way down to the low low price of free.

This brings us to today, where the first and only official Twitter client has been unleashed on the world. I never used Tweetie, so I can’t really say if the differences between Tweetie 2 and Twitter for iPhone are big changes or even if there are any changes other than the name and icon, but I have been using Twitterrific, so that is my baseline of comparison. With that in mind, the new Twitter client is awesome.

Virtually anything that you can do on the web via Twitter’s website is integrated in to the client. The client goes even beyond that, though. The interface is extremely clean and easy to navigate and understand. The pull-down to refresh method integrated in the client is my personal favorite way of doing it. You can easily view top tweets, popular tweeters, view maps of localized tweets, and just about anything else you might want. You can even edit virtually every part of your profile with the exception of the web design options. If that’s not enough for you, then try swiping across a tweet. It gives you instant easy access to retweet, set it as a favorite, reply, view the tweeter’s profile, and more.

Sounds awesome, right? Well, it is, but it isn’t quite perfect. Ok, so functionally it is pretty close, but visually it is frankly a bit bland. This is where Twitter could really take a page out of the Twitterrific playbook. Twitterrific has an absolutely fantastic look two it and even offers three different style options, whereas the official Twitter app is visually the closest to Twitterrific’s most basic and likely least used style. I’m not asking for them to have a graphic designer spend the next month working full time on revamp of the App’s visual style, but spicing it up a bit wouldn’t hurt.

Despite a few flaws, if you have an iPhone and use Twitter, this is a must have. There really isn’t another free client available that offers everything that Twitter for iPhone does and you wouldn’t want to pay for something you can get for free.

One of the best uses of your iPhone or iPod Touch is to stay on top of the latest news. There are dozens of decent news Apps out there, but here are some of the best.

The Huffington Post is my preferred source of news. It is my homepage on my computer and the App is on the upper left hand corner of my home screen. The App itself delivers virtually everything the website does in a clean, straightforward manner and is easy to navigate. [iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad Compatible]

Digg‘s official iPhone App truly is the definitive App for access to Digg. There have been plenty of unofficial Apps in the past, but this one renders the rest obsolete. Aside from not being able to display sites with Flash (Can’t blame Digg for that one), the interface is almost better than the actual website. [iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad Compatible]

Mashable, for those not familiar with the website, is the premier news blog for anything pertaining to Web 2.0 or Social Media. Their official App offers all of the content that their website does with a clean interface. It even offers push notifications when new content is available. [iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad Compatible]

AP Mobile was probably the first widely installed news App for the iPhone. The interface isn’t as polished as the newer Apps listed above, but the content makes up for it. As “the world’s oldest and largest newsgathering organization”, the free content provided in the App is worth having at your fingertips. [iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad Compatible]

Public Radio Tuner is the only audio App on this list, but is nonetheless a must-have. More than simply news, it offers live streaming of just about any NPR affiliate station throughout the country as well as on-demand playback of many of their most popular syndicated programs. [iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad Compatible]

Honorable Mention:
The Onion uses a layout very similar to The Huffington Post’s App and truly is “America’s Finest News Source”. Only problem? The news is made up. As the premier newspaper devoted to reporting you the latest fake news, The Onion is always good for a laugh and definitely worth installing. [iPhone, iPod Touch, & iPad Compatible]

Do you love a news app you don’t see in our list? Leave a comment and let us know about it.

Opera Mini Web Browser
Category: Productivity
Released: April 13th, 2010
Current Version: 5.0
Size: 1 MB
Price: Free

Since the initial release of the iPhone, Safari has been the only real choice for a fully-featured web browser. That time, however, is now at and end. With the release of the Opera Mini Web Browser, iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad users now have a new option when surfing the web — and it is a good one. Opera boasts pretty much every feature that you can find in Safari and then some.

When you first open up Opera, you will notice the “Speed Dial” screen which displays a grid of 9 configurable website thumbnails to quickly and easily access the sites that you frequent. Like the contact list on your phone, you can have a long list of bookmarks, but the speed dial page allows you to choose the 9 pages you access the most for quick access. The very next thing you’re likely to discover is how much more awesome the implementation of tabs is over Safari. Switching back and forth between multiple tabs is both intuitive and easy, which is exactly how it should be. Another feature that took me a bit longer to discover was something that has been sorely lacking in Safari: The ability to save a picture from the Internet on to your phone. As someone who makes frequent use of the WordPress app, this will be quite the useful little tool. Which brings me to its speed. Everything about it just seems faster, from loading a page to switching tabs and pulling up contextual menus everything is very snappy, even if you aren’t using a 3GS. Even if everything else were on par with Safari, this alone makes Opera stand out.

The few features I just covered are by no means the definitive list. There are plenty of other great things about Opera that make it worth installing. After on a day of use, it has already supplanted Safari as the primary browser on my iPhone and is the very first 3rd party app that has earned a coveted place on my dock next to such rock-star apps as “Phone”, “Messages”, and “Mail”. If you haven’t installed it already, do so now. It is free, easy to get accustomed to, and a huge improvement over Safari.

iPad reviews are coming in from marjor news sources all over the Internet with one overwhelming theme: They like it. The New York Times, USA Today, PC Magazine, Wall Street Journal, and TIME have all gotten a sneak peek at it and all have great things to say. The absolutely only consistent flaw that reviewers touch on is the lack of Flash, but that was known from the initial announcement and has been a constant complaint about the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Walt Mossberg, writing for the Wall Street Journal, even goes so far as to predict that it is the first step towards the death of the mouse:

For the past week or so, I have been testing a sleek, light, silver-and-black tablet computer called an iPad. After spending hours and hours with it, I believe this beautiful new touch-screen device from Apple has the potential to change portable computing profoundly, and to challenge the primacy of the laptop. It could even help, eventually, to propel the finger-driven, multitouch user interface ahead of the mouse-driven interface that has prevailed for decades.

Expect to see a lot more reviews just about everywhere you look as of the iPad’s official release this Saturday, April 3rd. I don’t personally plan on buying one, but I will spend some quality time with it at the Apple store and post my initial impressions as soon as I can.

Anyone who’s ever played multiplayer online games enjoys them and this is no exception when it comes it iPhone and/or iPod Touch (and soon to be iPad) gaming. The following 5 free games are all internet-enabled multiplayer games that any serious iPhone gamer will enjoy.

Words With Friends Free is in a league of its own. As we’ve said previously, this is easily the absolute best word game available for the iPhone today and the online play earns it the top spot on this list. Don’t let the title deceive you, this should be installed even if you don’t have friends.

Chess With Friends Free comes from the same people who brought us Words With Friends, but instead of a Scrabble-esque game, you get to play chess with friends, random opponents, or I suppose even your enemies. If you’re looking to learn this classic strategy game or just practice your chess skills, this is the app to do it with.

Mancala FS5 Free is a hugely addictive version of Mancala for your iPhone. This classic game of who can get the most beads is hugely addictive and the online play is very competitive. If you liked playing this game as a kid, you’ll loving having it on your phone where you can play against AIM buddies, the computer, or just random players.

Live Poker is pretty self explanatory. Play poker, live, against other people. This ties in with the hugely popular version for Facebook, allowing you to play against your friends. It gives you 1000 free chips a day to play with, so don’t worry about going broke. The interface is clean, easy to use, and makes online free poker a fun time-waster.

Cube is one of the first and arguably the best first person shooter available today for the iPhone platform. It can be both single- or multiplayer and provides fast, fun gameplay. The controls take a bit to get accustomed to, but once you’ve got them down you’ll be fragging with the best of them.

For the past week, I have changed by default browser on both my home and work computers (Apple iMacs running Mac OS X Snow Leopard) to Google Chrome. I have not previously used Chrome and have been a long-time loyal user of Firefox, but I’ve heard good things and figured I’d give it a shot. Knowing I wouldn’t get much out fo it just downloading it and surfing for a half hour, I decided the best way to really get to know it is to not use other browsers and exclusively use Chrome.

The Good
The absolute first thing I noticed when I opened it up is that if I had blinked, I would have missed it. When it comes to opening speed, Firefox is, well, slow. I had previously thought Safari was quick to load, but Chrome even makes Apple’s default browser seem sluggish. Beyond just opening, page loading is also speedy and smooth. Also a terrific feature is the ever-growing selection of extensions. This is something that I’ve always enjoyed about Firefox and is a great first step if Google wants me to switch over to their offering. Even the interface itself is clean, intuitive, and simple to use. Overall it is a very appealing browser and is constantly being updated with new features trying to stay ahead of the competition.

The Bad
I’m not a big fan of the search box and address bar merger. I have a ton of different search engines that I use regularly and the ability to rapidly toggle between them. Chrome, sadly, does not make this an easy task.

The Ugly
There were more than just a handful of sites with nagging visual errors that just simply are not there when using Firefox or Safari. I can overlook just about every other issue I have with Chrome, but incorrectly displaying pages that I frequent is a dealbreaker.

After a week, I will admit I am impressed. Although Google Chrome will not be usurping Firefox as my primary browser, it has earned a spot in my Applications folder and I will be continuing to use it as a secondary browser.

For those that use virtually any type of online chat service, Adium is there to serve all of your online chatting needs. There are plenty of Mac applications out there to allow you to chat with your friends, but Adium stand tall above the rest as the best chat client available for Mac OS X. Based on the multi-platform open-source library Libpurple, Adium is a user-friendly chat application designed exclusively for Mac users. Adium supports all of the most common chat protocols, including AIM, MSN, Yahoo Messenger, Google Talk, and Facebook Chat, as well as at least a half dozen others.

Where the program really shines, however, is not the long list of protocols it can use but the visual interface; Just about everything about the way it works and looks can be customized. The look of the contact list can be tweaked to one’s liking in just about every way possible, making it easy to find your online buddies. Message windows can be individual or tabbed in a single window and they way they display the messages also has several options to suit ones needs from a very professional appearance to something more along the lines of iPhone text messages. Even the icon on the dock can be set to various different colors or you can easily import your own.

Did I mention it supports Growl notifications? For those unfamiliar with it, Growl integrates with many programs on your system to show you little pop-up notifications of what is happening in the background without making you Cmd-Tab back and forth. Adium integrates with Growl perfectly and allows you to see when your buddies come online or go offline, when you get a message, when a file transfer is completed, or just about anything else within the program that you might want a notification about.

Just about the only feature that I truly wish Adium had that it does not have integrated is video chat. Many of the chat protocols it has integrated can support this, but the program itself does not (yet?) support it.

Sounds like a great application, right? Well, I’ve got more good news. It’s free.

If you chat online via one of the various popular chat programs out there or even multiples, then this is the application for you. It blows just about any other chat program out of the water and will make your Windows-using friends jealous that they can’t get it.

Words With Friends
Category: Games
Last Updated: November 1st, 2009
Current Version: 3.0.4
Size: 2.7 MB
Price: Free ($2.99 For Ads-Free Version)

Words With Friends is quite possibly the most addicting and fun online game I have yet to play on the iPhone. Easily the hands-down best word game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, Words is a must-have for any fan of word games. Although there is still room for improvement, as I will touch on later, this game takes the classic board game of Scrabble, of which I am also a huge fan, and mixes things up a bit to presumably avoid getting sued. Essentially, the rules are exactly the same as Scrabble, but the double and triple letter and word tiles are rearranged and some of the letters have different values. There is of course an offline mode allowing you to hand your phone back and forth and play with a friend, but where the application really shines is the online play. If you have friends with an iPhone you can send an invite to them through your contacts list (It searches your contacts’ emails to see if they have a matching email on record with a game account) or you can enter their Words username. If you don’t have friends who can play or are just looking for a challenge, you can also have the game automatically search for an opponent and assign you to someone random. Games can be played at a very quick pace or sometimes you only end up making a move every once in a while and the game can stretch over days. For those slower-paced games, it even uses push notifications to alert you when it’s your turn, if you so desire. Don’t worry, though, if an opponent takes too long to play they will automatically forfeit after several days of inactivity. If you’re as hooked as I am and get impatient waiting for an opponent to play, you can also play multiple games at once, up to 20 simultaneous games – a number which makes my brain hurt.

To be fair to an otherwise incredible game, I will be touching on the improvements that I briefly mentioned earlier. First and foremost would simply be an option to mute the game’s sounds without completely silencing your phone. Aside from that, any other improvements would simply make an already great game even better. For starters, some sort of statistic tracking would be fantastic. Even if it isn’t something along the lines of a global leaderboard, just seeing some local stats such as your own win/loss ratio, your best scoring word, and other similar stats would be fantastic. It would also be nice to have a published word list or for them to simply just use the TWL that is accepted by clubs and tournaments across the country. It would also be nice to see the potential score of your word as you are placing down the letters and maybe highlight the placed letters in red if they do not form a valid word. Last, but certainly not least, would be the ability to more easily rearrange your letters when it is your turn and allowing you to move them and test placement while you are waiting for the other player to make their move.

Aside from the improvements I just mentioned, some of which are hopefully already being worked on by the developers, this game is absolutely fantastic. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch and are looking for a good time sink, install the Word With Friends. You will not be disappointed.