iPhone Guru

You don’t have to wait for the iPad to be released to enjoy iBooks. You already have the iPad Nano (ahem, your iPhone or iPod touch :) in your hand anyways. It’s time to experience the beauty of the epub book standard with Stanza app. The iPad is revolutionary because it uses the open epub book standard so hopefully we will be able to use millions of the ebooks provided free online which exist in the public domain. Until the iPad is released you can gear up for the big day with Stanza. Stanza helps you browse and download free ebooks from programmable sources. Stanza is wonderfully easy to use. Just launch Stanza, add some virtual libraries such as epubbooks.com and download free classics such as the Brothers Grimm. Then relax and turn the virtual pages…ah, literacy. The fonts are editable and Stanza had a slew of options I have yet to play with. The iPad will come out on top as an e-reader once it’s finally released, but until then enjoy some free ebooks with Stanza on your iPhone or iPod touch. Stanza is free and is available now from the App Store.

If you use the Safari browser search bar on your iPhone a history of your searches is compiled over time. These searches are offered via autocomplete on any future subsequent search queries. You can clear your iPhone search history by tapping Settings then Safari. Clear history, cookies and cache. Then choose Yahoo as your preferred search engine and clear history and cookies and cache again. Choose Google as your preferred search engine again and your history of past searches will no longer appear in iPhone Safari browser.

The ability to rate songs is a great feature for rediscovering hidden gems buried in your iPhone playlists. The procedure to rank songs in the iPod is rather simple really. On your iPhone tap iPod and then start playing any song. Tap on the cover art of the song or on the default cover art musical note icon while the song is playing and the cover art will flip over, exposing the album playlist. Above the playlist you will see a white star. Just tap the star and drag it to the right and you have just ranked your music using your iPhone. Happy stars!