Likely the last episode of Toy Bot series of games for the iPod Touch, Toy Bot Diaries 3 is also easily my favorite.  More polished and generally satisfying than the previous two iterations, it brings a sense of closure to the story - which makes it all the more memorable if you played the earlier games.

Like the original Toy Bot games, this one features touch and grapple gameplay, which means you’ll be tapping and pressing on your Touch’s screen the whole time.  This cohesiveness next to its earlier iterations is very impressive and makes it feel like a single game spread out across several releases.  It features unusual environments that alter the physics a bit, like upside-down areas and reverse gravity scenes, along with more than a few not found in episodes 1 and 2.

This one is also more challenging, albeit noticeably shorter.  Still, you can’t fault any game that makes you want to throw your iPod Touch at the wall due to sheer frustration. The story in Entry 3 is actually pretty good and you’ll likely be praising IUGO for it.  Until, that is, you realize that the tale is ripped straight out of Star Wars, in which case you’ll probably get a laugh or be seriously pissed off.

Featuring pretty original gameplay, the series definitely offers something new and different.  You can even catch a sampling if you’d like to test drive it - IUGO is offering a free iPod Touch download with a couple of levels.  Toy Bot Diaries Entry 3, like each of the previous two games, is available from the App Store for $3.99.

I hate looking for apps in the App Store.  With tens of thousands of apps currently listed (and growing), wading through the iTunes interface to find the exact one you need isn’t the friendliest experience.  In fact, I just spent the better part of yesterday looking for a few 80s-era games rendered for the iPod Touch.  I eventually found them but let’s just say they were buried deep under the heap.

With new apps jumping on the App Store on a daily basis, there has to be an easier way to find new apps that suit your needs, right?  Personally, I’m hoping that iTunes gets an overhaul to provide it.  While I’m waiting for that (in not so baited breath), I’ll probably just stick to One Juicer’s service.

One Juicer lets you receive email alerts when new apps that might interest you gets included in the App Store’s inventory.  You can filter the email according to specific ones you want by entering keywords.  For instance, when putting in “VOIP” or “voice chat”, you can get email alerts every time an app comes out with those words in its title or description.  When you first subscribe for alerts to a keyword, you’ll get an email listing all the apps currently in the store that matches it.   Subsequent emails will then be sent every time a new match is found.

While not the perfect way to get the perfect app, it’s a decent solution and a useful first step that just might come in handy.  Sure beats having to search through the interface day after day.  It’s also free and easy to setup, so there’s nothing to lose.

Whether you spend a good part of your computing time downloading torrents or just like to enjoy the occasional file you can’t get anywhere else, you’re gonna love to know that you can now engage in it right on your jailbroken iPod Touch.

What You Need

Apart from having your unit jailbroken, you’ll need to get the Cydia Installer on your iPod Touch. Cydia is basically an alternative to the Installer.app on your handset. We’ll probably do a more thorough feature on both installing and using Cydia if enough people need a primer on it.

Once you have Cydia in place, you’ll need to use it to download dTunes (which brings the Safari download plug-ins along with it) and Mobile Terminal.

Steps

1. Download files from Piratebay

Use Safari to surf Piratebay.org and download (yes, you can download now if the plug-ins installed correctly) the torrent files you want.

2. Run dTunes

Once downloading via Safari is done, open dTunes and click on the torrent file to get it running.

3. Start Downloading

Open Mobile Terminal and type command “./gettorrent”, minus the quotes to start the download. Speed is normally pretty good, depending of course, on your internet connection and the number of seeds.

4. Retrieve The Downloads

Once finished, the downloaded files will be in the root/var/mobile/Library/Downloads directory of your iPod Touch. You can do with them as you want.

Mac fans have long dreamed of a MacBook Touch Tablet.  Unfortunately for them, it doesn’t look like their wishes are in order just yet.  Instead, if the rumors prove true, they can get a supersized version of the iPod Touch in tablet form.

Set for release in the fall of 2009, the large screen iPod Touch is expected to sport either a 7-inch or 9-inch screen, about four times the display area of the smaller units.  It will also likely run the same scaled-down version of OS X currently on both the iPod Touch and the iPhone.  According to reports, prototypes are already going around and Apple is currently in talks with OEM’s in China for the gadget’s production.

I imagine this will be a hit if it were real.  iPod’s media player capabilities are simply leagues beyond their competition.  Couple that with an awesome display (for all those movies and games), a browser, iTunes and the App Store, I’m sure everyone reading through this blog will want one.  If the rumors are true, it’s even supposed to be able to run real Mac apps too, making this worth salivating over.

My netbook is great and all, but I’m trading it in for one of these in a heartbeat.  I assume this will be quite pricey, however, with current 32GB iPod Touch units selling for $399.    Packing four times the screen real estate, (most likely) three or four times the disk capacity and better processing power, this baby can easily fetch four figures - okay, maybe my netbook replacement can wait a little longer.  In the meantime, I’m keeping my fingers crossed for the price.

We’ve all had this experience with our portable gadgets - losing charge while you still need it for a couple more hours.  When you get used to having music to listen to on-the-go, it can really be unsettling when your iPod Touch suddenly loses its charge while you’re still out and about.

If you run into the same situation, you can do a few things to make sure your battery survives long enough to see you through until you either get home or find a place to charge up.

Sleep Mode

Always turn off your iPod Touch when you’re not using the device.  Not only will it save battery charge throughout the day, it can prevent you from accidentally pushing buttons on the screen.

Dim Your Screen

Adjusting your screen to a dimmer backlight should extend battery charge for a good amount of time.  It will also make sense to turn your Autobrightness on throughout the day, so the phone can self-adjust depending on current lighting conditions.

Turn Off Connectivity

Since you’ll only be listening to saved music, turn off both the Wi-Fi and BlueTooth options.  Additionally, try to refrain from using EDGE (use Wi-Fi instead) throughout the day - it tends to use up more power.

Turn Off The Equalizer

I know, you love your sound settings.  If you don’t turn it off, however, your iPod Touch might not last you through the day, especially if you begin losing charge a good few hours before you can plug in again.  Make do with the default recordings for now - unless you’re listening to bootlegs, they should sound fine anyway.

If you got in during the free download frenzy for Simplify Media earlier this year, lucky you. For iPod users who clued in late to the “First 100,000 Downloads Free” promo, though, shelling out the $3.99 listed price is still an absolute bargain.

Designed for both the Touch and the iPhone, Simplify Media is an awesome software that lets you tap into your entire media collection from a single source. That means if you have a couple of networked PCs at home plus a media server, for instance, you can give your Ipod Touch access to all media files in each PC without having to download them one by one.

Each home machine will need to be installed with a desktop component for the app, which is available free for Windows, Mac and Linux. Once set up, all playable media on each machine should be available on your iPod Touch unit, by connecting either via WiFi, EDGE or 3G.

You can browse through the listings 9jump navigation is supported) or sort them by various fields such as artist, album or genre. iTunes libraries for up to 30 of your friends can also be accessed via the web, as long as their computers are online. Cover art, artist bio and lyrics can also be accessed for all songs.

I had a similar app before for my iPod Classic and that thing cost around $40, if I remember it right. This below-$5 utility is a serious must-have for every iPod Touch user - all that functionality and price just can’t be beat.

Do you have trouble sleeping?  I know more than a few people who do.  Before shelling out for one of those pricey sleep aid supplements designed to ease you into slumber, why not try this app you can use with your iPod Touch that claims to dissolve all your stresses?

While most software that claim to take you into the depths of dreamland usually fail to elicit their claimed results, Pzizz manages to do so.  I should know - it puts me right to bed most every time I use it.

Of course, it sounds a little weird, like one of those meditation aids with soft music playing, waves crashing in the background and some chilly-voiced dude mouthing words designed to put you out of wakefulness.  The onscreen menu for Pzizz gives you two options, one module for going right into deep sleep and another for an energizing powernap that you can download to your iPod Touch’s playlist.  You can customize the length and equalizer options for the music.

The sleep module I use consists of a 30-minute soundtrack playing on my iPod Touch that I’ve never ever listened to in its entirety as I’m usually knocked out within five minutes of it playing.  The “Energizer” option, though, is a little strange for me, as I’m not a big fan of powernaps.  It will sound off with a very loud buzzer at the end to rouse you out of the brief nap - and yes, it’s damn irritating.

According to Pzizz, the app can mix the sounds, words and music integrated in the software into over one billion combinations that both help put you to sleep yet keep your subconscious active, leading into a very refreshing respite. It’s not cheap though - a copy of Pzizz costs a steep $49.95.  If you find it hard to get to sleep, though, it’s a small price to pay for what is a really effective piece of software.

The iPod Touch is basically an iPhone clone sans the cellular and SMS functions. Of course, the iPhone costs $100 more for the unit itself and requires an ongoing service to be used for that end.

While most everyone and their mothers likely has a cell phone and an accompanying service for it, it still would be pretty cool to take what is otherwise a PMP in the iPod Touch and use it to make phone calls. It isn’t that hard to do either.

You actually have two options if you want to utilize the Touch to make low-cost, budget-worthy calls.

1. Hack It

You can actually poke around your gadget yourself and tweak it to allow phone calls over wi-fi. All you’ll need is a jailbroken iPod Touch, a VoIP app and a pair headphones with mic. Make sure the mic works specifically for the Touch - iPhone’s headphones don’t.

Basically, you’ll need to install the app (Fring seems to be the most popular, ATM), set up an SIP or VOIP account (Skype, Freecall, any other service that is compatible with your app) for outbound calls and set up an inbound number via another web service (CallCentric, IPKall) so you can receive calls.

There is a more comprehensive (albeit older) guide on Lifehacker about how to do this.

2. Use TruPhone

TruPhone is a relatively new iPod Touch app available for free download on iTunes that allows users to make and receive calls over VoIP. It’s still pretty limited, though, with no support for Skype and MSN VoIP users, although the developers have announed those two services are in order. Also on the near horizon are outgoing calls to landlines. For the price of free, however, and a relatively easy setup, it’s a pretty easy sell.

The Free IPod Video Converter is a wonder tool that helps you convert videos into MP4 files which function efficiently on IPods. This converter can work its magic on almost all kinds of files. The formats supported include AVI, MPEG, WMV (ASF), RM, RMVB, DivX, and ASF. The convertor also works with VOB files. This means that you can convert your DVD and store it on your hard drive. After this you can convert VOBs to MP4 format and play it on your Ipod. If you own an iPod and you like to enjoy watching videos, even while on the go, then the free Ipod video converter is meant for you. And what more, as the name says it, it’s for free! The only downside of the process of converting your files is that you end up with quite a lot of MP4 files, depending on how large the DVD which you are converting is. But don’t worry too much about it, as you can merge the MP4s together by using a freeware program called Yamb.

The free IPod Video converter is also easy to operate and you don’t need to a technological genius to figure out how it works. The process of installation actually just takes four clicks. First step is to convert the files. This is completed in batches, and depending on the number of files you have, may take some time. The second step is to select the size of the pixels of the videos. The third is to set up the sliders. This will show you the estimated size of the file. The fourth and final step is to type a tag for your video file. This makes sorting and selecting the files an easy task.

This program offers amazing ease-of-use and is very reliable. It is really appreciable that the makers have kept the free IPod video converter a very simple task. There is sheer simplicity to the way the free iPod video converter can be used. There is no fuss with profiles, different byte rates, frame rates, aspect ratios, etc. These attributes makes the free IPod video converter irreplaceable. The program is quick and efficient and does not pose any audio/video synchronization problems. We have seen a lot of video converters which promises to help you convert your videos and make them compatible with your IPod. The main difference here is that this is a converter that does the job and also comes for free.

Features Include:

• The free iPod video converter convert DVD, TiVo, DivX/XviD, AVI, WMV, MPG/MPEG, dat(VCD), rm, rmvb, VOB, dvr-ms, MOV, etc to iPod videos.

• It offers easy video splitting, customization of the video quality and size, before you actually convert the video.

• The free iPod video converter allows you to change the subtitle and audio language through the DVD menu.

• The free iPod video converter also offers easy video crop and aspect ratio adjustment

• It features high quality video in H.264 and MPEG-4 format. It also supports iPod to TV.

• It offers Dolby, DTS Surround audio support

• The free iPod video converter is fully optimized for Dual Core, Hyper-Thread processor.

• The free IPod video converter is fully compatible with new iPod 30G/80G

Try this Powerful Free DVD to Ipod Coverter:

If you’re looking for a fun musical diversion on your iPod Touch, Band might prove an affordable yet adequate application.  While it doesn’t quite carry the same power as more expensive beat sequencer apps, it’s easy-to-use, seriously entertaining and could easily make way for hours of creative play for children and adults alike.

You can play five “instruments” in Band:

• The Rock Kit, a 12-piece electronic drumpad
• Funky Drummer, a virtual trap kit featuring eight drum loops
• Grand Piano, a virtual acoustic keyboard
• Bassist, an electronic bass mode
• 12 Bar Blues, a shuffle-beat setup with a complete rhythm and lead section

As you might have guessed based on the instruments available, the modes are designed for playful composition instead of serious music-writing.  With that goal in mind, though, Band is a great success, literally drawing you in for long periods of tinkering and a wide variety of musical outputs.

You can record all the music you create and save it to your iPod for later retrieval.  You can even dub new music over previous recordings, along with adding applause and cheers from a live audience.  The instruments themselves are pretty good with the only caveat being you can’t alter the type of sound.  For instance, there’s no option to play the acoustic grand piano as a synth keyboard or the electronic bass as an upright four-string.

Save for that, however, the $10 Band app is a great value for hobbyists looking to create some easy tunes off their iPod Touch.  For professional musicians looking for serious composition apps, though, getting Intua’s Beatmaker or something similar should be more fitting.