Apple has managed to keep the buzz on its iPhone going by offering a tidbit on YouTube. It’s popped up on the Apple site and been reported on by Reuters. From the Apple site: “iPhone has a special YouTube player that you can launch right from the home screen. So now you can access and browse YouTube videos wherever you go. And when you find a video you want to send your friends, iPhone can even create an email with the link in it for you.” From Reuters: “YouTube has begun encoding its videos in a new format to improve quality and save battery life when viewed over wireless devices…The iPhone will be the first mobile device to use the new format”. The new format appears to be 3GP (as we noted a few days ago) so saying that Apple is the first to use the format is a complete furphy, since many phones have the format and the YouTube service is available on the mobile web. If there’s any details that explains how Apple goes beyond this I haven’t found them.

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Also, the big thing about the iPhone in terms of web access is WiFi, so why wouldn’t the user just go to the general YouTube website? After all, 3GP is designed to reduce bandwidth and storage requirements for 3G phones—which ironically doesn’t include the iPhone. Nine days to go… what next to keep the buzz going?

Nintendo: No Heat has also started a rumor that Nintendo plans to license games for the iPhone to be sold at $29 a pop. There’s no source given for this so it’s definitely in the “unsubstantiated rumor” stage, but if so I think it would be the first case of a Nintendo game on a mobile phone in the US.