The iPhone home screen icon is the ultimate visual reminder for someone to revisit your web-app or mobile friendly site. I’m going to show you four simple steps to making your own icon and installing it on your site.

First

Create a 57 x 57 .png file in Photoshop or your favorite image editor.

Second:

Insert your artwork to make your icon pretty.

Third

Save the file for web & devices with the name “apple-touch-icon.png.”

Fourth

Now just upload this file to the root folder of your website. Don’t confuse this with the root folder of your web server. Now if you don’t want to have it in the root folder and you want to place it in the images folder, you can insert this code into the header of your site:

Thats it! Your done! You can now go to your site on your iPhone or iTouch and test it!

QuickTr.im is my newest small project. It’s a URL shortener that is built specifically for the iPhone or any Android device such as the G1 or myTouch. I built this because I like sharing YouTube and Flickr links via SMS with friends  and those long URL’s just can’t fit in a single text message. And the sad part is , neither tinyurl.com or bit.ly supported a nice mobile interface.

The Mobile Version

Visit the site on your iPhone or Android device and you will be shown a simple mobile interface to trim your long URL’s. Don’t want a randomly generated URL? Create your own custom name for your link. [ex. http://quicktr.im/yourock ]. Even if you don’t have a mobile phone to use, we still have a way for you to shorten URL’s. Just visit http://quicktr.im/launch/ for the full version.

Home Screen Icon

Trim alot of URL’s like me? Add a shortcut on your home screen to take you directly to the site. Hit the plus sign in your browser and hit “Add to home screen.” Then you should see the shiny orange QuickTr.im icon. Hit add!

Upcoming Features

Soon we will be adding some really cool features to make sharing pictures on the web, a cinch from your mobile phone. Have a feature request?

Please email bugs or feature requests to us at info@quicktr.im.

Today, the ShakeItPhoto 1.1 update was finally released into the wild fixing a few bugs and adding one awesome feature. The ability to take any photo from your library and polarize it. ( Thank you Nick Campbell! ) Also because of this feature, iPod Touch users can now share in the fun of polarizing their favorite photos. I’m sure this will open the door for even more awesome photos and postings!

Also, we are very close to releasing the ability to post multiple photos at once as well as a few little bug fixes. Please shoot over any suggestions or feedback you have for the site.

Keep shooting and keep posting!

Analytics App is by far one of my most used web tool applications on my iPhone. The convenience of checking the the traffic on my site WHERE EVER I am is nothing short then amazing. This app provides ALL the features that you would get on your Google Anayltics page. (Except for adding profiles/domains/etc.)

The design of the app is simple, easy to navigate and the app icon is just sexy. That was a huge plus. It may sound a little weird, but I judge an app first on it’s icon. If I don’t like it, there is a good chance I won’t even bother reading the description. Developers should keep this in mind, I’m sure I’m not the only one who thinks this way.

Features

• Quick Overview Reports for at-a-glance data
• More Detailed Reports for deeper analysis
• Supports Multiple Accounts, Multiple Sites, change login anytime
• Change date range, chart granularity by Day/Week/Month
• Custom Reports and Goals

Get a bigger feature list at analyticsapp.com!

Video Demo

Price

Analytics App is available on the iPhone AppStore for only $5.99. In my opinion it’s worth every penny. (Especially because Google Analytics is free.) I’ve tested it for 2 months and have never had it crash on me. I even have been running 3.0 software for the past week or two and there have been 0 problems and 0 crashes. Good job Michael Jensen!

Last night I got word that a torrent was flying around with the most recent 3.0 software (and you DIDN’T need to be a developer) so I went ahead and grabbed it and installed it last night. If you want to do this I suggest that you FIRST upgrade your iTunes to the latest version which I believe is 8.2. If you don’t do this, your install will fail and your phone will go into recovery mode. Don’t ask me how I know.

After downloading the .ispw, hold option and click “restore” in iTunes and grab the .ispw file where ever it was downloaded. Then watch the magic happen. After it installs the new OS, you’ll have to do another sync to get all your apps/music back on your iPhone. After it finished I did a hard restart and it took about 1:30 seconds to boot up (kinda freaked me out to be honest) but once it booted, it was MUCH MUCH faster.

Well so far 3.0 has been great. I haven’t seen any crazy crashing in any of my current apps, which range from games, to web tools, to photography apps.

Things I Loved:

1. Spotlight – Having the ability to search through your whole iPhone is awesome. It helps you find that one contact, email or even note that you needed.

2. SMS – Although I’m not able to test out MMS just quite yet (damn you at&t), I love the fact I can delete or forward certain messages. Finally I can pass on those awesome blonde jokes.

3. Email Search – I have been waiting for this feature for so long and recently started using Attassa for searching through my Gmail, but now my iPhone can do it for me. It can search “From: , To: , Subject , and All.” Thank you apple. Thank you.

4. App Store Layout – Yes thats right, they made a few changes. Now you can change and re-organize your menu buttons in your app store. And going through screen shots for an app is much slicker. No more huge loading times.

5. Copy & Paste – Simple, Easy & Elegant. Need I say more?

6. 3.0 Speed – There has been a noticeable quickness added when your leaving and opening apps.

7. Email Multiple Images – You can now send more than 1 image at a time. BUT, you can only send 5 TOTAL. Grrrrrr. This is also #1 on my things I hate list!

8. Landscape Email & SMS – My texting and email just got a little faster!

Things I Hate:

1. Email Multiple Images – You can only send 5 total images at a time? Why apple why? If I need to send more, i’ll just stick with my Multi-Photo app.

2. Push Notifications – No sign of this app yet…

3. Voice Control – Normal 3G owners won’t be able to use this.

4. Video Recording – Also, regular 3G users won’t be able to use this even though developers could pull it off.

Overall: B++

Even though a lot of these features should of been on the phone at release, we will forgive you apple. We know it’s hard being the best. Well that’s it! That is what I think. Here are some screen shots I took. Enjoy!

UPDATE: It seems that 3.0 gets rid of visual voice mail. Others have reported you get it back after some time.

If you anything like me, you love hearing and watching this stuff. There is a lot of information to digest in the iPhone 3.0 update. The features they plan to come out with, are what everyone has been asking for and more. I literally cannot wait, and I am even debating whether to use this beta software.

If you want to get up to speed, check out the definitive guide—or watch the keynote in its entirety.