Best Buy Innovates... A Tiny Bit

One of the biggest frustrations of working at the Apple Store focused on iPod/iPhone cases. People would look at cases in their shiny packaging, and ask if they could open it up to try it. At the time, the policy was no since that would then be open merchandise. It was annoying for the customers, and led to unpleasant interactions at times for employees.

Best Buy of all people may have found a solution. If only it worked. Best Buy now offers the mobile "fitting room", allowing you to try cases on your iPhone before you buy. There's a large bowl of cases that a Best Buy employee can get if interested (check for a sign in the cell phone area of your local store for availability). Then, presumably, you would get to try these cases on your iPhone.

I tried out the service while looking for a case for the iPhone 3GS. There was one of those slick cases that doubles as a battery, and I asked if I could try it. They had it in the basket, but then the Best Buy employee warned, "That's the one we don't let people try because it's really snug." Hmm.. I came back with another, more pedestrian case, and tried again. "I don't have that case, but I have this one that's like it." "That case is hard, I think this one is soft," I replied. "Yeah, but it's not much softer than this one."

I was 0 for 2 in actually trying cases on the phone before purchasing. Maybe another retailer could implement this a little more elgantly...

Toki Tori iPhone Review

After a brief break, our iPhone app reviews are back, and we're starting off with Toki Tori. Toki Tori is a puzzle and scroller game in one. In the game, you play the title character, a bird looking to collect eggs from each level. A simple matter of tapping around the screen at first, the game becomes progressively more challenging, as you begin to use items like bridges and teleporting to move around the play field. Toki Tori combines fun graphics, and great sound to create an enjoyable gaming experience. There's a light version if you're still not convinced:

TDL Live This Week: Apple, Twitter, and iPhones, Oh My!

If you didn't get to catch it live last night, well thank your lucky stars as this is your chance to see TDL Live this week. Jamie DeGrazio continues to sub for Adam Ford (watch for the "Where in the World is Adam Ford?" game soon), and Carolyn stops by to help us give thanks.

Oh, and of course we round up the tech news including of course the iPhone 3G S launch, green laptop claims, and the love/hate world of twitter:

The Palm Pre: Your Thoughts

At the D: All Things Digital conference (a conference which always seems to spend an inordinate amount of time talking about old media) more details of the Palm Pre were announced. Most tantalizingly, the Pre will sync your music through iTunes. Well done, Mr. Rubinstein! In one fell swoop, Palm avoided one of the biggest hurdles: people simply are not going to leave iTunes. If you can't beat em...

But the question is, what do you think of the Pre as we slowly approach launch date? Has Palm one-upped Apple? Is the Pre a viable iPhone competitor? Does the iTunes syncing make you more likely to give this phone a second look? Let us know in the comments.

TDL Live This Week (5/4/09)

Another week has come and gone, which means another seven days of tech news need to be placed in a fishbowl and read in a random fashion. Enjoy this week's TDL Live. Oh, and Adam might be contagious: