January 27 - 10:40am EST   VITO Technology says it has added meteor shower data and other updates to its iPhone stargazing app. Star Walk 1.2 now includes links to Wikipedia articles on planets, stars and other celestial bodies. The company says it has also improved the way stars are displayed, so that larger, brighter stars appear more distinct in comparison to smaller ones. [full story]

July 16 - 8:20pm EDT   Shiny Development has released Speakapedia 1.0, a Mac utility that converts WIkipedia articles into spoken words, and "seamlessly manages them as tracks" in iTunes. The application uses an article's main photo for iTunes album art. The utility allows knowledge-hungry users to "listen" to articles on their Macs and iPods, and has obvious benefits for those who are sight-impiared. [full story]

July 16 - 3:45pm EDT   eMusic will try to improve its standing against iTunes and fellow web-based store Amazon MP3 soon by adding a social component to the music, the music service's chief David Pakman tells Fortune. Taking advantage of the need to buy music through the web portal, eMusic hopes to draw in buyers by providing deeper and constantly changing artist info through Web 2.0 sites. Musicians will frequently have Wikipedia pages for their biographies as well as relevant Flickr photo albums and YouTube videos. [full story]

February 7 - 8:05pm EST   Magnetism Studios, the company behind Insanely Great Tees clothing, has unveiled Springlets, a collection of home-screen functions for the iPhone and iPod touch. The collection of six icons allows users to jump directly to a number of online search databases, rather than having to load Safari and perform a Google search. Users can jump directly to Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" search, IMDb, Chowhound, and Wikipedia. Springlets are downloadable through the iPhone and iPod touch only. [full story]

January 5 - 12:55pm EST   Efiko Software recently unveiled iClueless for iPhone and iPod touch users, a web-based software suite that enables users to find near anything on the internet. iClueless can find both the standard and mobile versions of a web page, enabling it to customize the browsing experience for either WiFi or the 2G network. The application can search Google, Yahoo, Wikipedia, ESPN, Amazon, and many other service listings. iClueless is available free of charge, and works through the embedded Safari browser on either device. [full story]