“It seems that everyone under 40 who dies takes their cell phone with them,” says Noelle Potvin, family service counselor for Hollywood Forever, a funeral home and cemetery in Hollywood, Calif. “It’s a trend with BlackBerrys, too. We even had one guy who was buried with his Game Boy.”

Don’t get me wrong…I LOVE my gadgets.  I rarely leave the house without at least my iPhone in tow, if not also my Nintendo DS, digital camera, and Asus Eee PC.  But there’s something just a little creepy to me about making sure that among the funeral directives and wishes you put together for your family or spouse is something along the lines of “Bury me with my iPod.”  Apparently one guy even arranged for his beloved Bluetooth headset to be affixed to his ear during the showings before the funeral.  But, I don’t know…the article also mentions that it can be comforting for people to know that their deceased loved ones have something with them that they loved, much along the lines of the ancient Egyptians being buried with treasured possessions.  I can see how that might be the case.

Now the burning question on my mind is…do all iPods go to heaven?

Gameplay is intuitive and uses the iPhone’s tilt sensor to great advantage.  The goal is to match at least three of the same colored pieces in a grouping, with combinations possible that create chain reactions for super high scores, special pieces that fill in all the empty spaces on the board, and pieces that let you move around on the board exactly where you want, which allows for easier diffusion of bomb pieces and matching of locked pieces.  Once you get to a certain level from matching the pieces, the bombs and locked pieces show up to throw a wrench in the works!

I was intrigued to see that Demiforce included unlockable achievements in the game, similar to the system on the XBox 360.  My husband is addicted to the achievements, and I am starting to come around to them myself.  Demiforce has even developed an achievement system called Onyx Online that will allow any iPhone game to have achievements, leaderboards, and more.  With iPhone gaming becoming so popular, I think it would be really cool to have more online gameplay and community features.

I cannot recommend Trism enough.  It’s a solid, fun game that is sure to please any puzzle game lover.  It’s on sale right now for 2.99, which is a bargain.  Go to the iTunes App Store to pick it up here.  To learn more about Trism, visit http://www.demiforce.com/games.html.

The game will be filmed using 3ality’s special image capturing technology and streamed via satellite using Cinedigm’s CineLive satellite distribution network to theaters nationwide.  It will also be streamed live to a special invite-only CES event sponsored by Sony at the Paris Las Vegas Hotel & Casino.  Cinedigm’s network is the only one capable of streaming live, 3D transmissions–can you imagine what kind of bandwidth that must take?!

A friend of mine works at Cinedigm and is VERY excited about what her company is doing.  I think it’s really awesome, because certainly the only thing better than football in HD is football in 3D.  (And the only thing better than this year’s BCS in 3D would be Texas playing instead of Oklahoma.)  I don’t know that we’ll be doing more than watching the game in HD, but hopefully Sam Bradford and the Sooners will get a big, heaping 3D spoonful of FAIL fed to them by the Gators and Tim Tebow.

What does this mean for Macworld as we know it?  Will they be passing out Apple emblazoned tissues while the fanboys and girls bid His Steveness their final Macworld farewells?  Will they introduce a new Mac mini?  What about an iPhone nano?

All I know is that I’m never going to get to see a live keynote at this rate.  We’ll miss you at Macworld, Apple.  It almost seems pointless to have a Macworld with no…Mac.

ETA: In my haste and disbelief, I failed to realize that Steve will not be giving the keynote at all.  It’ll be Apple’s Senior VP, Philip Schiller.  What ever will we do with no Steve making glorious announcements to get us through the post-holidays January slump?!

Apparently the hack will only work on jailbroken phones with firmware 2.11 and below. Just a word of warning to jailbreakers: Dev Team is recommending that people only use PwnageTool to jailbreak, not QuickPwn, or else the unlock might not work.

I don’t have any reason to unlock my iPhone 3G, but I know a lot of people are thrilled that the day is finally at hand. It’s so difficult to get your hands on an iPhone and NOT be tied into an AT&T contract that I imagine most of the unlockers will be using their phone internationally.

Are you going to unlock your iPhone? Do you have it jailbroken? Talk back in the comments.

I’m not a huge fan of the built-in iPhone calendar–it is functional, and I have it syncing with my Google Calendar via NuevaSync, but otherwise it’s nothing to write home about.  I’m used to a much more robust calendaring setup, and I’ve really had to do some work to make this simplified setup useful to me.  I am looking forward to having my categories back, as well as other great PI features that I’m really missing.

Pocket Informant for iPhone won’t be as fancy as Pocket Informant 8 for Windows Mobile is, considering that it’s written from the ground up instead of being a direct port.  That’s really a benefit to the end user though, because 1) it’ll be more solid from the get-go and 2) it really shows that the developers care about the iPhone platform enough to do the work the right way.

One of the things I’m most excited about is that Pocket Informant will sync with Google Calendar for calendar sync, and Toodledo for task sync.  This is how the developers are getting around syncing issues and lack of access to the iPhone databases for the calendar.  I hate having to sync my phone up to the computer on a regular basis because I am very used to syncing to the “cloud” now.

I personally can’t wait for the program–I know that the delays are due to Alex & company at WebIS doing the best job they possibly can, and that the road to developing such a feature-rich app is never a smooth one.  Even though Alex has said on his blog that he’d love to have it 100% complete by the end of the month, it’s probably heading our way sometime right around Macworld (January 5-9) or shortly thereafter.  I think it’d make a great birthday present for me…so hopefully I’ll get an iTunes gift card from the birthday fairy that I can put towards it!

Pocket Informant for iPhone will retail for $19.99 and will be available for the iPhone and the iPod Touch.  For more information, visit http://www.pocketinformant.com.

There have been a few attempts at a proof of concept so far; the popular Notes replacement app MagicPad features copying and pasting between notes, but not between MagicPad and any other app on the iPhone.  Back in August, an open-source solution called OpenClip was introduced that allowed users to copy and paste between applications using a common folder that the apps could read from and write to.  However, firmware upgrade 2.1 broke OpenClip and I haven’t heard much about it since then.

Enter pastebud - an ingenious workaround that lets you copy and paste between Mail and Safari (really, the apps that I have wanted to copy and paste between) using a couple of handy bookmarks in Safari and a secret pastebud address that only you have access to.  Clipboards are deleted after five minutes to avoid any potential security issues, and the developers say they’re looking to make it even more secure in the future.  It does not require your iPhone to be jailbroken nor does it require anything to be downloaded from the App Store.  It is free to use, but users can upgrade their clipboard for $5 to remove the pastebud ad clip at the end of their copied text.

All you have to do is fire up Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch, or a web browser on a computer that syncs with your iTunes.  Then you follow the directions on pastebud’s website to bookmark a COPY and a PASTE link.  You have to edit a bit of the link, since pastebud had to be creative with it.  You cannot bookmark a javascript in Mobile Safari, so they had to put a bit of extra text on the front of the link that you just edit out after setting the bookmark.  Then, you just save your secret pastebud address as a contact on your iPhone or iPod Touch, and you’re ready to go!  I’ve tried it out on my iPhone and it’s pretty slick.

Pastebud reminds me a lot of the popular online clipboard service cl1p.net, which I have used quite frequently.  I’ll do a more in-depth review once I’ve had a chance to play with pastebud some more.

To learn more about pastebud, watch the demo I’ve embedded below or visit http://www.pastebud.com.

So, when I was planning my switch over to the iPhone, one of the first things I was concerned about was the availability of a good eBook reader.  I have tons of books in tons of different formats, and it was important to me that I would be able to read them on the iPhone without having to jump through a lot of hoops.

The app that caught my eye after the release of the app store was Stanza.  It promised support for almost every kind of eBook file one could imagine (txt, html, doc, lit, pdf, etc.) and retails for the low, low price of free.  It was the first app that I downloaded in anticipation of purchasing my iPhone…I wanted it ready to rock and roll when I brought my shiny new baby home!

Stanza has two components–the iPhone app, which lets you read books as well as download them OTA from various sources, and the desktop app, which lets you read books on your computer as well as share them over Wi-Fi for download to Stanza on the iPhone.  Right now the desktop app is in Beta and also free.

From the get-go, Stanza was great.  It reminded me a lot of my favorite eBook reader on the Windows Mobile platform, uBook.  I loaded the iPhone up with some books and have used it to read on an almost daily basis since getting my iPhone back in August.  It allows you to fully customize your reading experience with font size, colors, and more.  I prefer my reader to have a black background with white text, which is less hard on my eyes.

Recent updates to Stanza have been amazing.  Books now have cover art associated with them–if your book doesn’t have cover art, all you have to do is tap a few buttons and Stanza loads cover art for you directly from the Internet.  You can even choose from different covers if it brings up a selection.  The covers appear as small thumbnails next to the titles when the phone is in portrait mode, and in landscape mode you can browse your library in a Cover Flow-esque setup.

You can also now purchase and read anything from the eReader/Fictionwise catalog directly from Stanza.  I had some old books purchased from eReader that I hadn’t read, and I used Stanza to download them and put them into my book library.  This is a huge boon for me because I don’t like having multiple applications that serve the same function.  Now I don’t need eReader!  This also means that I’m no longer jealous of the Kindle owners who can buy a book from just about anywhere–now, so can I!

Random House also offered a selection of free eBooks this week, again directly accessed through Stanza on the iPhone.  I must confess, they all looked so good I downloaded every single one!  Who doesn’t love free?

Once Stanza is out of Beta, it will reportedly cost somewhere in the vicinity of $15 (I assume for the desktop application).  I personally can’t wait to give Lexcycle some of my hard earned cash, because they deserve it for writing such fantastic software.  Stanza may very well be my favorite iPhone app…it has a coveted spot on the front page!

For more information on Stanza, please visit http://www.lexcycle.com.

After that I tried Twittelator, Twinkle and TwitterFon, but none of them really did what I wanted them to do.  Twittelator flat out never worked on the iPhone no matter how many times I tried it.  The other two just didn’t really feel like they offered anything more than Twitteriffic did.

I hesitated on buying a Twitter app when Twitteriffic was perfectly functional and for the very reasonable price of free, but I decided that as much as I use my iPhone, I needed a more robust app to do my Twittering and Twitter reading.  I surfed around for a bit and did some custom searches, and decided that I would give Tweetie a try for 2.99.

Boy am I glad I did!  Tweetie has every feature I could have wanted–the ability to load as many tweets as you want, picture posting, location posting, DM and @ replies, retweets, auto-shrinking links, trend watch, custom searches, being able to follow or unfollow people right from the app, the ability to look at your followers and following screens, and MORE!  Plus, it was stable and speedy from the moment I installed it.  It’s been a day or so now and I’ve already used Tweetie more than any of the other Twitter apps I’ve tried.  I love it when an app turns out to be worth every cent of what I paid for it.

For more about Tweetie, visit http://www.atebits.com/software/tweetie/.

I had done quite a bit of research on the iPhone cases out there, and of course none of the ones I really wanted were available at the Apple Store the morning after our iPhone purchases.  The only one they had that I’d looked at before was the Agent18 Eco Shield, which did not impress me in person at all.  The plastic looked cheap and dull, and I didn’t want to put my baby in a cheesy looking case.  One thing I had also realized was that I didn’t want to put my iPhone in a bulky case.  It’s a sleek design that fits great in my hand, and I didn’t want to add a lot of heft to it, even in the name of protection.

It’s quite funny–as we were searching for cases, I noticed an empty-looking box that had been opened and put back on the rack.  In the name of being a good Samaritan, I took it to the nearest Apple genius and explained that I had found this empty box over in the case section and I wanted to bring it to their attention.  The guy thanked me, looked at the box and said, “Oh, actually the case is still in here!  See, it’s right there!”  He held it up and I looked a little closer than I had before–what I thought was part of the plastic insert that held the case WAS the case.  It was so thin I hadn’t even noticed it!  Needless to say, I was intrigued–so intrigued I bought it!

The case in question was the Power Support Crystal Air Jacket for the iPhone 3G.  The Air Jacket consists of a back piece that snaps on to protect the plastic back of the iPhone and 2 full screen protectors (crystal and anti-glare) that cover everything but the Home button and the earpiece.  It comes in both Crystal, which I got for my white iPhone, and solid black, which Shawn got for his black iPhone.

The Air Jacket adds only 0.7mm to the body of the iPhone–the plastic back is thin but feels very protective.  I have noticed that it scratches easily, but you can’t really tell until you take the back off the phone.  And hey, it protects my iPhone from getting scratched, so it can scratch all it wants!  There are small, sticky clear plastic “dots” that you put in strategic places on the back of your iPhone to ensure that the plastic back fits without being too tight, which creates little gray pockets of trapped air that are harmless but unsightly.

I have quite a bit of experience with screen protectors given my background with PDAs, and I have to say that both the crystal and anti-glare screen protectors are among the best I have ever used.  I had issues getting mine on the first time (per usual) so I just cleaned it of hair and lint by running it under the tap, shaking off the water until it was mostly dry, and using the corner of a paper towel to barely touch the protector and soak up any remaining water droplets.  It went on very easily even after being cleaned, and after a couple of tries I got my protector on perfectly.  I used the crystal screen protector and Shawn used the anti-glare, and I think we’re both very happy with them.  I like that the case comes with both the crystal and anti-glare so that you can choose your favorite and also have one in reserve.  If you already have a case, the screen protectors can be purchased separately in packs of two.

The AirJ acket will not, of course, protect your iPhone from a steep drop or something really abrasive, but I think it does a great job of protecting from every day elements without adding bulk.  I have been really happy with my choice and I highly recommend both the Power Supply case and the screen protectors.