Nick Wingfield with The Wall Street Journal gets confirmation that a plan is in place for Apple to remotely kill certain iPhone / iPod touch applications if they are found to be malicious.

Mr. Jobs confirmed such a capability exists, but argued that Apple needs it in case it inadvertently allows a malicious program — one that stole users’ personal data, for example — to be distributed to iPhones through the App Store. “Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull,” he says.

Apple has released v2.0.1 update for the iPhone and iPod touch that consists of bug fixes. Details of what bugs were fixed are not yet available.

Nullriver’s NetShare app, which allows users to use their iPhone’s cell ‘net connection with a laptop (also known as tethering), has once again been removed from the App Store. Last week, after about a day in the App Store directory, NetShare was removed without any notice from Apple. Then on August 1 it mysteriously reappeared in the App Store. Today, NetShare has again been de-listed from the App Store directory.

Much of speculation about NetShare’s removal from the App Store revolves around the fact that NetShare would allow iPhone users to tether their laptop to the iPhone without paying extra (about $30/month) for AT&T’s tethering data plan.

In my opinion, if AT&T is calling the iPhone data plan “unlimited”, then the way in which that data plan is used should be up to the subscriber. Otherwise, the data plan should be called “limited unlimited”.

Apple has stated that the MobileMe sync issues some iPhone and iPod touch users have been experiencing have been resolved. If you are still having troublewith missing contacts or events, see this KnowledgeBase article for the steps to take.

Check out the deal Apple has on a refurbished iPod touch. The refurbished 8GB iPod touch is selling for only $199 and the 16GB model is selling for $299.

Also check out the other deals on refurbished iPods:
Apple Store US - Refurbished iPods
Apple Store Canada - Refurbished iPods

Irvine, CA - Today, iLounge and Bowers & Wilkins are announcing the Quest for the Best iPhone App Contest, a chance for official iPhone and iPod touch developers to receive the attention they deserve, and win one of three amazing B&W Zeppelin speaker systems.

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Check out this nice example of multiplayer iPod touch gaming.

[via Asiajin]

Visit our Refurbished Macs page for the latest deals.

Apple has announced the iPhone Software 2.0 which will be released this June, but is now available as beta. The Beta includes both the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) as well as new enterprise features such as support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync to provide secure, over-the-air push email, contacts and calendars as well as remote wipe, and the addition of Cisco IPsec VPN for encrypted access to private corporate networks.

This is great news for IT administrators who need to support corporate iPhone usage.

Apple has licensed Exchange ActiveSync from Microsoft and is building it right into the iPhone, so that iPhone will connect out-of-the-box to Microsoft Exchange Servers 2003 and 2007 for secure over-the-air push email, contacts, calendars and global address lists. Built-in Exchange ActiveSync support also enables security features such as remote wipe, password policies and auto-discovery. The iPhone 2.0 software supports Cisco IPsec VPN to ensure the highest level of IP-based encryption available for transmission of sensitive corporate data, as well as the ability to authenticate using digital certificates or password-based, multi-factor authentication. The addition of WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1x authentication enables enterprise customers to deploy iPhone and iPod touch with the latest standards for protection of Wi-Fi networks.

The iPhone 2.0 software provides a configuration utility that allows IT administrators to easily and quickly set up many iPhones, including password policies, VPN setting, installing certificates, email server settings and more. Once the configuration is defined it can be easily and securely delivered via web link or email to the user. To install, all the user has to do is authenticate with a user ID or password, download the configuration and tap install. Once installed, the user will have access to all their corporate IT services.

Also of note is the App Store will will be part of the iPhone 2.0 software release. This will allow users to browse, purchase, and download third-party applications right from their iPhone.

The free iPhone SDK beta can be downloaded at http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program

In an interesting, but not entirely useful, development, ffmpeg has been compiled to run on the iPhone and iPod touch. Visit wickedpsyched.net for more details.

While the iPhone is not the most powerful device available to do video conversion, it is sure cool to know that it can be used for such.

(via tuaw.com)