(via TUAW)

Via TUAW, the 2010 edition of the MLB At Bat iPhone app will allow you to stream audio in the background while you accomplish other tasks on your iPhone.

While Apple doesn’t allow 3rd party apps to run in the background on the iPhone or iPod touch,* Silicon Alley Insider notes that you can listen to audio in Mobile Safari while using other applications. It’s this trick that MLB exploited with At Bat 2010. With the tap of a button, At Bat will push an audio stream to Mobile Safari.

Note that MLB didn’t come up with this trick, nor is their app the first to exploit it. ESPN Radio does it, as well as Scanner911 and FlyCast. Still, it’s nice that MLB’s devs acknowledged that some users might want to check email or hop onto Twitter while listening to game, and made it easy to do so.

Dear Apple: please make this available sans-jailbreak and sans-hack.  Thank you.

If this is an upcoming trend for car manufacturers, I say please and thank you!

There are no badges on any icons on myPhone’s homescreen. Almost always, I have a badge on Mail and Todo, and often on Messages and Phone. Today, though, none! Closing out the year with a clean slate!

UPDATE: the clean slate only lasted a few hours. I have a badge again:

It’s made of cardboard, costs 99¢, and Case-Mate offers free shipping:

Tough times call for tough cases and that’s where the recession case comes in! The recession case lets you keep cash in your pocket without sacrificing on unique design for your beloved iPhone!

And if you need an iPhone dock, you can make one for virtually-free!  Out of paper, too!

Just print-out the template and follow the instructions!

(Nod: What’s on iPhone and The Dieline, respectively)

Over the Labor Day weekend, I was in New York City (photos forthcoming) with some friends from graduate school.  One of the mornings, we were walking around, and I said, “I wonder where the United Nations building is.”  One of my friends said, “Ooo yeah!” so I launched the Maps app and searched.  As you can see below, we actually weren’t that far away and were headed in that direction anyway.  Had we just kept walking east on 42nd Street, we would have eventually ran right into it.

From and back to Connecticut, I took the Metro-North train to NYC.  On my return day, I wanted to make sure I knew when a train left Grand Central, so I checked the PDF schedule on the Metro-North website.  Because I’m not aware of a method on myPhone to save a PDF file from a website, I took a screenshot of the schedule, thus giving me the ability to check the schedule in myPhone’s camera roll instead of having to reload the website and PDF every time.

Finally, myPhone came in service when I had no service: on the subway.  There are two free NYC subway apps which are just simple, scrollable maps of the subway system—but are much better than pulling out a folded, paper hey-I’m-a-tourist map (although the camera around my neck took care of that one).

Now THIS is good news!  The much-anticipated and much-needed Facebook 3.0 iPhone app has been submitted to Apple by developer Joe Hewitt.  TechCrunch notes:

Facebook has submitted v. 3.0 of their iPhone application to Apple, Joe Hewitt says via Twitter: “Just uploaded Facebook for iPhone 3.0 to the App Store for review. :)”

Hewitt also says he’ll post screen shots and more detais on this Facebook page for the iPhone app next week, and that he’s looking forward to getting started on v. 3.1 tomorrow.

Previously, TechCrunch reported Hewitt posted this list of new features:

1. The “new” News Feed
2. Like
3. Events (including the ability to RSVP)
4. Notes
5. Pages
6. Create new photo albums
7. Upload photos to any album
8. Zoom into photos
9. Easier photo tagging
10. Profile Pictures albums
11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call

For avid users of Facebook (Joe = guilty), having features currently available on the web-version of the site soon-to-be-available on the iPhone-version of the site is a huge victory for usability and consistency.  Woo!

(Nod: Just Another iPhone Blog)

The only applications loaded in by default were SMS, Calendar, Photos, Camera, Calculator, Stocks, Maps, Weather, Notes, Clock, Phone, Email, Safari, iPod and Settings. While the list may seem impressive typed out, there weren’t even enough applications to fill the whole screen. There certainly weren’t the 50,000 applications that are available today.

Steve Jobs and company told us from the beginning there wouldn’t be an SDK. Instead developers were encouraged to write web apps, taking advantage of the iPhone’s great mobile browser. Obviously people weren’t happy with this arrangement, and jailbreakers (including our own Erica Sadun) got to work shoehorning in native applications with no help or documentation from Apple.

I can’t wait to see what’s in store for us iPhone geeks next summer!

I downloaded it and, after I had to sign up for an account on PIzzaHut.com, played around with the app.  Very impressive and fun to use.  The ad says the app is a “revolution in mobile ordering.”  I agree, and I’d love to see more of this.

(Nod: Lifehacker)

Smartphone users just don’t know what they want. One of the biggest, loudest complaints about all-touchscreen phones like the iPhone is its lack of a hardware keyboard, and now a survey shows Pre users most want a soft keyboard.

The lack The beauty of not having a hardware keyboard on the iPhone is that it’s there when you need it and gone when you don’t—without you needing to physically alter the device to get the keyboard as the OS on the iPhone hides and reveals the keyboard for you.  No pesky sliding that you may or may not be able to do with one hand, no worries about switching the language on your device should you need to and not having the proper keyboard to match, no reason to manufacture separate devices with keyboards for specific languages, etc.

(Nod: Just Another iPhone Blog)