On an iPod touch or iPhone, here's how to reach a 'better' Google. First bring up Safari and tap the address bar. Leave the Google search box blank and tap search. This automatically brings you to the mobile Google home page, which is quite handy as the mobile version fits the screen much better.

Also for the Canadian user out there (like myself), your Region Format settings under International (all under the Settings button on your Home screen) are most likely set to Canada. This means that when you use the blank Google search tip, it will bring you the .ca version of the mobile Google page. This page is, unfortunately, nowhere near as nice as the US version.

To fix this, change the Region Format to United States. The actual Region Format stays the same, but when you use the blank Google search hint, it will bring you to the US version of mobile Google, which is much nicer then the .ca version.

Ever since I started listening to music in my car from my iPhone, I've been dealing with the annoying electromagnetic interference problem (loud buzz / static / popping / digital noise coming through car speakers). I set out to find a solution today, and to make a long story short, here's what I settled on: taping two small pieces of aluminum foil on the back of the iPhone in a specific location, as seen in this picture. Here's what I did:

1. Cut out a 2" x 3" piece of aluminum foil.
2. Fold foil in half horizontally (foil is now 2" x 1.5").
3. Tape foil from the bottom right corner (on the back of the iPhone) up to the middle of the text iPhone (Picture #1, Picture #2) using electrical tape.

That's it; no more buzz/static/popping sounds coming out of your speakers!

Another solution which avoids using tape (although electrical tape leaves no residue whatsoever on the iPhone) is simply placing the iphone on a sheet of aluminum foil. This might be a better idea for people experiencing this problem in a static environment rather than a car (i.e. iPhone on office desk with nearby computer speakers). After discovering this solution, I also saw another potential solution online, using aluminum foil wrapped around the audio cable coming out of the phone. I haven't tested that method, but it looks much more obtrusive.

For me, other materials didn't work (at least not perfectly). I also tried various sizes of aluminum foil in various locations -- you could probably get by with a smaller amount of foil, but this amount works 100% (so far at least). I guess it should also be noted this solution could potentially work for other GSM phones with this issue (i.e. Blackberries, Sidekicks) -- you'll just have to experiment with the size of the foil and its location.

I know a few people who have had Hotmail address for a long time and don't want to change. They also have bought iPhones and now have no way to use the built-in client on the iPhone to read mail. This solutions lets them read Hotmail on their iPhone. (Actually, the same setup can apply for Apple Mail, too.) One catch here is that your Hotmail account must support Forwarding. You can see it is does under the Hotmail Options.

Basically these instructions help you set up forwarding in Hotmail so that incoming messages are forwarded from Hotmail to a Gmail account. This also sets up Gmail and the iPhone to make replies and new messages look like they come from Hotmail. When complete, you can read, reply, and send messages in Gmail and the iPhone as if you were on Hotmail.

With this solution in place:

• Email people send to your Hotmail address will be visible on your iPhone in the built-in iPhone Mail software.
• If you reply to a message on the iPhone or in Gmail, to your recipients it will look like it came from your Hotmail address.
• You can still check mail using Hotmail on the web if you like.
• You can also log into Gmail and see your Hotmail messages there.
• An added bonus is that you will benefit from Gmail's junk mail filter, which is excellent.
• Since Gmail supports IMAP, the iPhone and the Gmail mailbox is synced nicely as you read, delete and filter messages.

Note: While you can still read email on the Hotmail website as you currently do, there is an advantage to reading your Hotmail in your new Gmail account. The iPhone and the Gmail account will be synced -- so for example, Gmail and the iPhone will keep track of which messages you have read on either device. If you get a message and read it on the iPhone, when you check your Gmail account it will also show as read. Were you to check your mail on Hotmail.com, messages you have already read on the iPhone will show as new.

The same goes for deleting messages. If you delete a message on the Gmail site, these will be deleted from the iPhone, too. The same is true for filters. You can set up filters on the Gmail site, and this filtering will by synced to the iPhone. None of this is synced with the mail you see on Hotmail.com. So basically, if you implement this, you are better off just checking and reading your Hotmail messages in Gmail, but its up to you.

Searching and selecting recipients for SMS on iPhone can be a bit tedious if you regularly text certain people. You can create a sort of SMS favourites list by pressing Clear when viewing a message from your favorite recipients. This button doesn't (as I assumed) delete the whole SMS (like deleting in the inbox does), but rather clears the only the conversation. The 'person' remains in your SMS inbox easily accessible.

Admittedly this is not much better than leaving the conversation but looks a lot neater and helps you see there is no outstanding action associated with a message. Perhaps of some use to neat freaks and productivity nuts.

Now with the ability to create new ringtones in GarageBand, just record yourself saying the names of the people calling you most, then create ringtones with you saying that name, and add a ringtone following that in GarageBand. Share that as ringtone, and then assign the ringtones to the respective people on your iPhone. And voila, suddenly the iPhone will audibly announce the boss is calling or it's mommy!.

I have a server that I use for, among other things, downloading files with bittorrent. I usually start these torrents by downloading them on my primary computer and then dropping them onto an alias to my server's torrents folder, which my bittorrent client (Transmission) monitors so that it can start the torrents automatically. I occasionally wanted to use my iPod Touch to start these torrents, but Mobile Safari refuses to download torrent files.

My solution was to use Javascript to alter the torrent link to send its URL to my server for download rather than trying to open it. A PHP script on the server could then download that URL to the torrents folder. With both scripts in place, and the permissions of the torrents folder modified to allow Apache to write files, all I have to do is run the Javascript as a bookmarklet before clicking the torrent link, and click the link to download the torrent file. The modified link will pass this URL to the script to download it on the server.

In Safari on OS X, you can view all RSS feeds from a folder together in one feed. Sadly, this feature is missing from Safari on the iPhone. If you want to regain this functionality, all you have to do is open Safari on your desktop, open all the feeds together, and then add that newly-created page to your bookmarks, then sync. Now you can view all your feeds in one go!

I think it's a real shame that the iPhone doesn't have an Exchange Rate widget. Perhaps someday there will be, now that Apple is opening up the platform. In the meantime, I looked for a Exchange Rate web-app for the iPhone at the Apple site. I could only find one, which isn't too bad, but I was hoping for something with charts, etc., a la the Stock widget.

Then it struck me: since the Stock widget is getting its feeds from Yahoo!, I should be able to use their special codes for the FX market. Voilà ! Here are the ones I use:

• GBPUSD=X $US / £UK
• GBPEUR=X €EU / £UK
• EURUSD=X $US / €EU
• GBPINR=X Indian Rupees / £UK

There's loads more if your needs are different.

[robg adds: You can find more codes using Yahoo's currency page. You can also use these codes in the Stocks widget -- as of 10.4.11, it's now using Yahoo as well.]

According to some posts on tuaw.com (here and here), it's now (once again) easy to add your own 30 to 40 second (maximum) ringtones to the iPhone.

Just trim down a song or sound (using iTunes, GarageBand, Audacity, etc.), save an AAC-encoded version, change the .m4a suffix to .m4r, and drag the file into the Ringtones folder of the iTunes library (you may have to delete the original .m4a file from the library if it's already in iTunes).

Y ou can add songs longer than 40 or so seconds to the iTunes ringtone section of the library, but they won't sync to the iPhone or show up in ringtones tab of the iPhone sync page in iTunes.

I'm not sure how long this has been around; I'm expecting since 1.1.2 released. If your iPhone locks (sleeps) when it's inside of any application, you can quickly return to the home screen without extra button pushes:

1. Lock your phone while in an app, like the iPod.
2. Press the Home button to wake it.
3. Immediately swipe to unlock. Speed is key; usually the swipe has to be started before the screen lights up.
4. When the iPhone unlocks, the iPhone returns to Home screen instead of the iPod. (Some apps seem to be tougher to do this with than others.)

This doesn't happen when the phone is awakened with the Lock button, and it's clear that the application isn't crashing, because you can occasionally grab glimpses of the retreating application's animation and the Home screen's animation.

A quick poll of my two iPhone-owning coworkers think it's a bug, but it's a slightly useful one.