The official app of NZiPhone.com - The home of the iPhone in New Zealand and NZMac.com - Supporting the New Zealand Macintosh community, is here!! Get the FREE app from http://itunes.com/apps/nziphonecomandnzmaccomnews

Get the latest news, forum posts, app listings and reviews, podcasts, video, blog posts and more on your iPod Touch or iPhone, with the ability to read articles whilst offline, without the need for a data connection. Built using the TapLynx iPhone development framework, this application not only keeps you up to date with all that’s happening on NZiPhone.com and NZMac.com, but has the inbuilt ability to let you share what you are reading with friends via email and Twitter.

I'm exceptionally please to be able to provide this app to you all, to access news, forum posts and more from the two sites. Even better, this app does not require you stay online to read any articles that are in the RSS feeds that are linked to...only new items or YouTube clips require an online connection.

Other features in this version include the ability to search downloaded content on your iPod Touch and iPhone, and receive a visual indication as to how many articles have not been read.

The application has been built using the TapLynx iPhone development framework. Thanks to TapLynx for such a superb development tool.

If you are interested in becoming an iPhone developer, I'll be publishing a series of five articles and two YouTube clips over the next 2 weeks related to learning how to use TapLynx and my experience getting on to the App Store. These articles will appear on the NZiPhone.com website.

Enjoy the app. Post any questions or comments about it on the NZiPhone.com website. I'll also list in the forum there about any tweaks to be applied or features that I can hopefully bring into the app in future versions.

Regards, Philip Roy

In my "Year that was" blog post on NZMac.com, I commented that for a number of reasons, I was unable to get together a New Year contest for either site, most notably because I'm swamped with study. Well, it just didn't seem right not to start the year off with something, so I've put together a contest that is easy to enter and has some gifts I bought from the Apple Company Store when I visited mid-year (this is the shop that sits next to Apple HQ at Cupertino) and some other goodies I've put together. I'm sorry it's not more, but it's still pretty good...and very easy for you to enter.

Got a Facebook account? Yeah, me neither...but I hear that many people do...and now you can use that account to register and login to NZMac.com instead of registering separate password details. It adds an extra level of security for you, as authentication (logging in) is all handled by Facebook and not NZMac.com. None of your Facebook authentication details (i.e., your email and password) are sent to or stored by NZMac.com. And the great news is that those users already registered here can convert their account login to use Facebook.

Time to give away some prizes and goodies from my trip to the Apple Company Store at One Infinite Loop, Cupertino...oh, and two copies of the Snow Leopard Upgrade when it is released by Apple. This competition will run until that date and is an opportunity to add to the site or prove to us that you're Mac geek!

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