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Confession 1: Soon as the App Store opened, I started downloading. Free apps mainly, but I bought more than I thought I would as well.

Confession 2: I don't use most of them regularly. I mean, I use the built-in apps all the time, daily if not near-constantly in the case of Phone, Mail, and Safari. But the App Store stuff? Eh.... A couple have become regulars but most are occasional at best and some I no longer even bother to store on the iPhone (i.e. they've been relegated to iTunes purgatory.)

60 million downloads, 30 million in sales, and Steve Jobs thinks it could be a billion dollar business. So somebody must be using them, right?

If you're interested in following the Olympics on your iPhone, you could do worse than the free Lenovo Summer Olympics 2008 (App store link) application.

A classy Olympics app is postworthy, sure, but what makes this app very interesting is that it's been developed by Zumobi -- note the tell-tale 'Z' in the screenshot, note also that, ah, Zumobi is the developer. Why is this significant? Zumobi is a company that specializes in creating a neat 'tiled content' app for Windows Mobile. Ok, so?

Lightning Reviews are back with a flash (get it?). Today's review: a review of Absolute Fitness ($14.99 in the App Store) by smileyboy. Smileyboy will receive a 25% off coupon to our iPhone Accessories Store. Want to win just such a coupon yourself? Find out how here. The folks at the store tell us that their selection of iPhone 3G cases is really ramping up now -- just be sure to select what kind of iPhone you have in the upper-left to ensure compatibility.

One of my favorite things to do is to workout. I love staying in shape and using technology to do it. Before the iPhone, there were various Palm and WM apps that I would use. The process became very tedious. Sometimes the device would reset, the programs were incomplete at times and so on.

I stared using the iPhone and I went back to my notebook and a pencil at the gym, because there were no apps. That is until the 2.0 software and the AppStore came out. The first app I tried was Fit 1.0. I can't even begin to explain how incomplete this app is. I began another search. I found Absolute Fitness.

This App is perfect. Read on to see why!

Phishing attacks, where a bad guy tries to fool you into giving them personal information such as financial account logins, are nothing new on the 'net. Fake emails leading you to a fake bank site to enter your information so that they (increasingly organized crime, often in Russia or China) can log into your real site and transfer out all your money, then steal your identity and sell it off to second and third tier hackers for other nefarious uses.

David Friedman writes in to let us know he's thrown his hat into the 'This is how I think Apple should implement cut-and-paste' ring. His idea is simple, intuitive, and doesn't look to interfere with the current magnifying glass insertion point UI.

Point your iPhone to http://translate.google.com to check out the new, iPhone-optimized version of the translation service from Google. Pretty slick, eh? It's the full Google-translate, including all of the languages you'd find there.

Disappointing. Disgusting. Shocked. Offended. You pick the negative emotion and we're pretty much feeling it right now. I mean, how could they, right? How could Virgin Mobile Canada stoop so low...

...As to carry the Crackberry?

What? Oh, you thought we meant the blatantly misogynistic, awkwardly pandering, positively Neaderthal-eque pseudo-sexual advertising that rankles the puritanical roots of Americans but barely raises an eyebrow across the pond in Europe?

We had originally reported that the iPhone was the most popular camera phone on Flickr, the popular photo sharing website, way back in May, pre-3G. Well, it lost that title for a brief moment and only re-gained it recently. I'm only guessing but it probably had to do with the 3 million iPhone 3Gs that took the market by storm. Either way, the iPhone being the King of Flickr should force Apple to take notice and improve the camera already.

Update: Both MobileMe and Gmail seem to be back up and running. (I had to force quit Mail.app and restart it to get it functional again). Was this a DDoS attack? Brown-out in San Fran? Downtime while some changes to prevent DNS cache injection were made? The intertubes are on fire with rumors. Feel free to make up your own!

Yup, Apple's on-again, off-again MobileMe service is currently off-again, at least as far as email is concerned. Poorly planned? Ill-conceived? Just plain cursed? Probably none of the above, but it sure can't catch a break from the breakdowns, now can it?

Human on iPhone crime is out of control. First they were shooting iPhones. Now what? Beating them to death? Once again, I have to believe these iPhones were drugged first, otherwise I'm certain the beatings would have decidedly gone the other way. BAM! Mike Tyson overhand right. POW! Georges St-Pierre tackle. BOOM! Steve Jobs MobileMe-drop for the kill!

Check out Gizmodo for the whole mellow-harshening gallery... if you can stand it.