Today Agile Partners (creators of GuitarToolkit and previously reviewed Star6) released their newest iPhone/iPod Touch app, TabToolkit, the ultimate guitar tabulature resource. If you are like me, which would mean you play guitar because I do, then you don’t always remember to bring the tab of that new song that you printed out when you find yourself with a little time to play. TabToolkit manages to make this something of the past and does it with lots of style.

TabToolkit allows you to load your own tab files (in either Power Tab, Guitar Pro, text or PDF file types) and will play them back to you with a synthesized instrument as it highlights the note you are supposed to play in tab notation. Guitar Pro and Power Tab files also allow standard musical notation alongside the tab. You can also change the speed of playback from the settings menu, set up a metronome, and change the type of notation, left- or right- hand notation, and whether there is an instrument guide showing at the bottom of the screen. Speaking of the instrument guide, this is one of the coolest parts, especially for beginners (both to keyboard or guitar), because it shows you exactly where the tab corresponds to on the instrument.

This is an amazing app and even though the price is a little steep ($9.99) it is well-worth it, every guitarist with an iPhone or iPod Touch should add this to their set of tools. TabToolkit comes with a few, pre-selected tabs already installed but you can add your own by clicking on the “plus” sign at the bottom right and going to the website it gives you. You can purchase TabToolkit on the App store right now for $9.99.

I’ve been using Aardvark since they opened the doors and it is an amazing service. Not only can you get answers to your questions from multiple people (giving you the quickest and easiest way to find information when you need it) but you can also answer questions and help others. I’ve made buddies on Aardvark and I’ve also looked at questions and thought, “They should have just Google’d that one.”

Well, now Aardvark have opened another door and it’s one that makes it so much more simpler to get answers to your questions. The main tab of the app has a box for you to ask your question and it lists all the questions that you’ve asked or answered in chronological order. There’s a tab for you to view current questions to answer and to view your buddies on Aardvark.

Overall, a great, simple app that does that it should. The iPhone/iPod Touch app is out and ready to be downloaded from the App Store free of charge.

Today, Meraki released a wireless census and found out what many in the tech sector already knew — the number of Apple wireless devices have increased in the past year. This is mainly due, of course, to the demand for the iPhone.

Another mobile charger review, these are getting to be fun! This time it’s a solar-powered charger that can be attached to pretty much anything with it’s velcro, fold-over strap. Unfortunately, because it is solar-powered, it takes a while to charge; according to the instructions that came with the SolarStrap (which you can download and read on their site), if it’s a sunny day it will take 12 hours to charge, if it’s partly cloudy you are looking at a full 24-hour charge time, or if it is completely cloudy it’s going to take 5 days of charging.

To speed up the process, though, (or if you just so happen to get it when the heavens decide to rain every day of the week) they include a handy AC charger and a USB charge cable. I let mine hang on the blinds in my office at home for a day and then plugged it up that night to top off the charge.

To show the charge status of the SolarStrap you are given two LEDs, one green and one red. The green one, when a device is plugged in, will flash according to the SolarStrap’s battery charge. Four green blinks is full, three green blinks is nearly full, and so on until you have no green blinks and only the red one blinks once, which means the battery is empty. When charging the battery with an AC adapter the red LED will continuously blink and it will cease blinking when the charge is complete.

I received a few adaptors with my review unit as well, along with a generic “charging” cable I received: USB-B, USB mini, USB mini 8-pin, USB-A female, Samsung D600/A300, Samsung G600, Nokia 2.1mm, Sony Ericsson, and iPhone/iPod adaptors. There are other target specific adaptors available as well as a cigarette lighter and AC adaptor. According to the instructions you only get the strap, the charging cable, and the user guide, so you will be able to buy adaptors to suit your needs when you get it.

The SolarStrap has kept a charge very well and is pretty flexible. It’s made of some kind of a foam exterior with the wiring, battery, and solar panel glued into place between the two pieces of foam. I was assured that this was not a production unit and it had been hand-glued, which is good because in one or two places around the solar panel the foam wasn’t glued down all the way.

As for the foam itself, I don’t know how well it will hold up, after unvelcroing and velcroing a few times I could see how it could start to break up if it was used regularly. Also, if it was left out in the sun (on your car’s dashboard or in a window sill) I’m not sure how the foam would hold up.

The only beef I have with the SolarStrap is that I don’t know what the charge amount on the battery is until I connect a device to it. I wish there were a button on the battery to show charge status of the battery, or something along those lines. But, overall, it’s a great charger if you are out and about a lot but if you are like me and stuck in a windowless office all day it may not be ideal for you.

The charger is scheduled for shipping this month (August ‘09) and currently there are only a few dealers listed on their site, with only one being in the USA. The SolarStrap is priced at 29.00€ (about USD$41), for more information visit the Suntrica website.

The wonderful people over at BillShrink.com, who want to help you save money, have put together a nice infographic that compares what they consider the top 3 current smartphones.

Not only does it compare the total price you would pay (including Phone price, Unlimited Usage Plan prices, Average Usage Plan prices, and total costs for Unlimited and Average Usage plans over 2 years) but it also compares 10 other points of interest.

There’s also a good comparison of just the iPhone 3G S and the myTouch side-by-side on the site.

Ever had the desire to create your own samples, maybe DJ a nightclub for a photoshoot? Well now you can, and it can be done with your iPhone with Star6!

All in all this looks like a really cool app, I wish I had bought the iPod Touch with a speaker now so I wouldn’t have to plug in headphones to use this app. Everything works with a simple press of the triangle-shaped buttons to either use presets or your own samples. You can modify the parameters by tilting your iPhone back and forth to raise the Pitch, Speed, Gate, Sample Order, Sample Size and Randomness. Then, when you are all finished and you have the most awesome beat, press record and upload it to your PC and share it on the Star6 website.

Star6 is available now on the Apple App Store at an introductory price of $6.99.

Sometimes the emails I get in the TML inbox are strange and I know that it is probably even more strange for the Public Relations people who mass send these emails out. So far, in the year I have been running TML is the weirdest thing I have come across though.

The internet brought with it a lot of faster, easier ways of doing things. Getting news, keeping in touch with friends and family, shopping, and having an affair. AshleyMadison.com has announced their new iPhone and Blackberry applications that let you stay connected to “your lovers throughout the day…on the train coming into work, waiting at the airport, or even late at night while your spouse is more focused on the TV than you,” says Noel Biderman, Ashley Madison founder.

Very rarely do I get the chance to go hands on with some of the items that I read about daily but this time I was pleasantly surprised to be allowed the chance to review a great accessory to any mobile device from Digipower — JumpStart, the end-all to your mobile charging needs.

The Skinny
I was contacted by a representative of JumpStart and asked to do a review of the product a few weeks ago and after agreeing to it I was sent my own JumpStart. The first thing I noticed, after pulling it out of the box, was that it was in a clamshell package. I HATE clamshell packages and I nearly cut myself trying to get the product out more than I cut the package itself.

I finally got the product out of its package and was surprised at how lightweight it was, the packaging claimed it was 2 ounces and I can believe it. The size of the JumpStart reminded me of a lighter and could easily be slipped into a pocket or purse and barely noticed. There is a button on the side of the casing that is marked “TEST” and pressing it lit up 3 green lights on the top. Below the test button is a USB Mini and USB A port (marked IN and OUT, respectively). I plugged the JumpStart into the wall to charge and 4 lights came on, I’m not sure why but I left it that way for a while and they never changed.

The company claims that the JumpStart will hold a charge for 1 year and can recharge a “typical” cell phone 3 times before it needs recharging (more on that later).

Seven adapters came with JumpStart, a few I knew right away (Mini USB, 5-pin micro USB, Nokia, Samsung) but the others I couldn’t figure out. There was no iPhone charging adapter but as long as you carry your iPhone cable you will be able to use the JuumpStart. Also, the charger came with a retractable USB cable with a proprietary end for the adapters and an AC adapter with a USB A plug to plug in the USB cable.

My Impressions
I had the chance to really use this charger the other night when I lost power at my house for about 9 hours. I needed my phone fully charged the next morning, since I use it as my alarm clock, and my wife needed hers charged as well. As far as I know the JumpStart was fully charged when my wife plugged up her phone (an HTC Titan). She charged it to 80% and then I checked the battery status on the JumpStart, it had two lights so I plugged my phone up to it (an HTC Touch) and let it charge until the JumpStart was all out of power — I had about 50% charge.

Now, neither of our phones are “typical” and we both had data turned on, so take the statement that it will charge a typical phone 3 times with a grain of salt.

I plugged the JumpStart back into the AC adapter and it charged again in about 2 hours. (As charged as it can get, I figure. Once again it had 4 green lights and they didn’t do anything after that, so I’m not sure if it was complete or not.)

According to Digipower, the device will be available this month (June) from select retailers and will sell for $49.99. If you drain your phone’s battery while on the go then this product should definitely be your next purchase.

Over at The Consumerist today they have a great article about a nice iPhone app by Verisign (only iPhone for now, doesn’t support iPod Touch) that lets you secure your transactions on Paypal, eBay, and a few other sites. There’s also a step-by-step guide on how to set up your PayPal account to work with the iPhone app.

Note: In the comments, tvmitch pointed out that you can also have PayPal send you a six-digit code every time you want to login in case you don’t have an iPhone, just click the option that Chris Walters marked with “not this one!”.

In about 2 and a half hours MobileCrunch is going to start giving away iPhone app promo codes. They say that there will be promo codes for “dozens of applications, each worth anywhere from 99 cents up to $30 bucks.”

Basically it’s going to go down like a Woot-off: the promo code will stay up on the site until they give away all they have for that app, then the next one will show up. If you want to grab a few free apps make sure that you keep refreshing this page from 9 AM EST until they are done, because once the codes are gone they are gone forever.