Apple today announced the release of iPhone firmware/software 1.1.3, which will be available as a free download today. For further information on functionality in this update, see our previous coverage. Also, see our warning about applying this update if you wish to retain unofficial third-party applications.

Apple has also posted a video guided tour of Google [...]

Apple has revised its home page with a teaser for Steve Jobs’ keynote tomorrow morning, using the tagline “Something is in the air.” Apple traditionally posts a streaming video version of Macworld keynotes they day after they occur (or later), but this time a stream will be available Tuesday afternoon, soon after the keynote is [...]

Although the iPhone can playback H.264-encoded YouTube content through the YouTube application, the device’s Safari browser cannot pick up and display embedded YouTube content. When it encounters embedded YouTube media, MobileSafari simply displays a blue question mark, indicative of unrecognized media. Unlike Google Maps content, which is routed through to the Google Maps application, embedded [...]

Google has once again revised its Web-based tools — including Picasa, general search, Gmail, Reader, Calendar, and iGoogle — for the iPhone. Navigating to google.com on an iPhone will lead you to google.com/m, a portal for access to all the tools. Among the enhancements, per Google’s official announcement:

Improved UI: “The applications look and feel slicker, [...]

Zami, a site that operate “community directories (aka Intelligent Yellow Pages)” for several US cities, has added a Macworld Expo 2008 directory to its iPhone-optimized site. The site offers the a typical sliding-style iPhone interface, presenting maps of Moscone South and West, as well as exhibitor listings with booth numbers and other information. For those [...]

Whether the culprit is a sink, toilet or rainstorm, getting your iPhone soaked in water or any other liquid is bad news. If the unthinkable happens, and you don’t have insurance, your best bet is to make sure the iPhone is off, swap it down with a dry cloth, then do one of the following [...]

If you’re having problems syncing or restoring your iPhone, Apple recommends that you update to iTunes 7.5. A series of recently revised Knowledge Base articles suggest the update for problems including:

Exception error when syncing with Yahoo! Address Book (could also be caused by an invalid email address present in your contact list)
Error “0xE8000025″ when syncing [...]

Doug Rodriguez never unlocked his iPhone for use unauthorized wireless carriers; he never hacked his phone by jailbreaking it and adding unofficial third-party applications; yet he was denied warranty service from Apple when his iPhone suddenly started displaying the error message “Incorrect SIM.” Rodriguez only transgression: the transfer of a custom ringtone via the “manual [...]

If you make use of unofficial third-party iPhone applications and would like their presence on your phone to persist, refrain from updating to iPhone software/firmware 1.1.3 when it is released. Early indications are that this update not only disables any previously enacted open reading/writing of the iPhone filesystem (jailbreak) hence disallowing unofficial applications to run, [...]

While the iPhone certainly isn’t the first mobile handset to suffer from freezes, its functional breadth and the fact that many of its users install unsupported third-party applications make the device, generally, more freeze-prone.

We’ve covered iPhone freezes on a number of occasions, noting that users should keep ample free space on the device and offering [...]