my iphone

XtremeMac has taken the wraps off an interesting little $80 accessory called the InCharge Home BT that adds Bluetooth streaming capabilities to any speaker or audio device with a line input.

As you can see from the image, it also acts a USB charger and comes with USB to 30-pin connector for iOS devices (it won't charge the iPad, however) and a 3.5mm jack cable. What you can't see from the picture is that the unit plugs into the wall.

If you're looking for something like this for your car, fear not, there's also the InCharge Auto BT ($80), which allows for wireless audio streaming to your car stereo, hands-free calling, and USB charging.

Both accessories appear on XtremeMac's Web site but aren't for sale quite yet (we wish they cost more like $50-$60). They're also a bit of challenge to locate on the site, which could double as a hidden-objects game.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users can now access Amazon's new Cloud Player on their mobile gadgets, bypassing the initial lack of support for Apple iDevices. It doesn't work flawlessly, but if you follow the instructions detailed below, you'll be streaming cloud music to your iPhone in no time.

Unveiled late March, Amazon's cloud-based music player lets you play music purchased and downloaded from Amazon or uploaded from your own local music collection, providing a way to retrieve your various music libraries online.

Technically speaking, the Cloud Player is geared toward PC and Mac users as a desktop-accessible service. The player also is available for Android devices through a dedicated Cloud Player app from the Android Market.

The Cloud Player was previously off-limits and unsupported on Apple iOS devices, but after some apparent change on Amazon's end, those of you with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch can now launch the player simply by running it through Safari.

To do this, you'll first want to access the Cloud Player through your PC or Mac. Browse to Amazon's Cloud Player page. From there, you can buy a song on Amazon to add to your cloud storage or open the Player directly and upload songs from your local library. You can add MP3 files and iTunes AAC files.

Once some music is in your cloud collection, you can then open the Cloud Player online through Safari on your Apple mobile device. When you try to access the list of songs that you just uploaded, you'll receive a message that your browser is not supported. Just continue past that message, pick the songs you want to hear, and they should start playing. I tried the process on both an iPad and an iPod Touch, and it worked relatively smoothly.

The requirements for the Cloud Player still say that it's optimized to run with Adobe Flash installed. That need for Flash was thought to be one reason the service didn't work on iOS devices. But apparently the Flash requirement wasn't the major issue. Or course, there are still some limitations without Flash.

You still can't upload music from your Apple iDevice to your Cloud Player or download music from the Player to your device, since those tasks require Flash. But the basic ability to store and play your music online through the Cloud Player does work as it should.

Amazon's Cloud Player starts you off with a free 5GB base plan, then bumps up the capacity incrementally, asking you to pay a buck per gigabyte per year, with plans ranging from 20GB for $20 all the way up to a terabyte for $1,000 a year. For now, customers who buy an entire album from Amazon automatically get upgraded to the 20GB plan for a year.

On a recent bus ride, I saw a guy use his smartphone to shop for a Porsche on eBay. It might sound silly, but he's not alone. Apparently, shopping for cars and car parts this way is part of a growing trend; on eBay Mobile, 90,000 parts and accessories and 2,000 cars per week sold during the first quarter of this year, according to eBay.

This week, the company released a magazine-like app for the iPhone to cater to two markets: users who want to browse and bid on cars on the go and people looking to find parts for their current ride. While consumers can--and do--already shop for cars on the regular eBay app, this new app specifically targets the car crowd.

I downloaded the free iPhone app, called eBay Motors, to see what was on the market. While a tad out of my price range, the first cars that popped up on the screen were a Ferrari going for $200,000 and a Bentley priced at $156,995. If I was interested, I could have hit a button to place a bid. But I scrolled down to see other details like the make and model of the car and a button that would allow me to check the history of the vehicle.

Steve Yankovich at eBay told CNET he calls this situational shopping: "the trend of buying an item on mobile the instant you are inspired, and not having to wait until you are in front of your computer or at the mall. When a car enthusiast is working on their car or at a motors event, they aren't in front of a computer but their smartphone is handy."

It will be interesting to see if eBay can grab new customers by reaching out to them on their phones. According to eBay, the global growth of vehicle sales through mobile phones increased more than 160 percent this quarter when compared with the growth during the last quarter of 2010. The sale of parts and accessories was even bigger, increasing more than 250 percent. Online parts sales is growing faster than online car sales and the eBay app reflects that.

So customers browsing for Ferraris can see what's on the market at their leisure. An ad for a Mercedes-Benz SLS in Two Tone Mystic White caught my eye. So far, no one has bid on it, but with six days left on the auction, there's still time. If I wanted more information, there's an option to contact the seller directly to ask questions about the car. There's a button to ask for a free history report to see if the car has been in any accidents or to see how many people have owned the car.

The app isn't just for car shopping though, especially if you already own one. Users can add cars by model and year, or by VIN. It can connect you to spare parts you really need for the current ride. Once you have your cars plugged into the app, when you search for a desired part, like a water pump, underdrive crank pulley, or high-beam replacement bulbs, you only see parts that are listed as fitting your car.

The app is part of eBay's attempt to reach users outside its traditional online, bread-and-butter business, by going after more niche markets such as automobiles (and fashion) to get mobile customers to purchase stuff more impulsively.

When users do get that dream car, the app can let the world know by sharing purchases to Facebook friends and Twitter followers.

While the app is certainly convenient, I personally would want to take a Porsche out for a test drive before I commit. To be honest, I doubt anyone really buys a Porsche impulsively. But I can see people using the app to browse Ferraris they dream of one day owning, while shopping for car parts for vehicles they already have.

You've probably seen some of the video masterpieces filmmakers have created using nothing more than an iPhone. Of course, most of those clips, commercials, and shorts were shot with a single camera. Impressive as the results can be, aspiring videographers would no doubt appreciate the option of multiple cameras shooting at multiple angles.

CollabraCam is a potentially game-changing app that turns your iPhone into a multicamera control center, one that's linked in real-time to as many as four other iOS devices. This is better seen than described, so check out this info vid:

Cool, right? What's really amazing is that you can create your multicamera movie more or less on the fly, choosing the best shot from the available sources, putting camera operators on standby so they can frame the next angle, and editing your video in real-time.

Now for the bad news. CollabraCam requires a Wi-Fi network; it can't create an ad-hoc one among the various iDevices. Although that seemingly limits your ability to shoot "on location," you can use a mobile hot spot, a laptop-powered ad-hoc network, or any wireless router, as long as it has power. (An actual Internet connection isn't necessary.)

The bigger bummer is that CollabraCam can't record at 720p; its maximum resolution is a mere 640x480 pixels. Thus, your movies won't be nearly as sharp as they could be. I'm assuming this is a bandwidth limitation, but I'm also hoping developer Apptopus will find a way to support HD recording.

With a price tag of just $5.99, CollabraCam could be a serious boon to filmmakers on a shoestring budget (read: all filmmakers). I'll be checking it out the moment I can lay hands on a second camera-equipped iOS device. (Curse my cameraless iPad 1!)

Android increased its lead over Apple's iOS in April as the top mobile platform tracked by ad network Millennial Media.

Releasing its April MobileMix report today, Millennial Media found that Android accounted for 53 percent of all ad impressions on its network last month, a gain of 10 percent from March. That marked the fifth consecutive month in which Google's mobile OS was the leader.

Android's growth in April came at the expense of both iOS and Research In Motion's BlackBerry OS.

For the month, the share of ad impressions for iOS fell to 28 percent from 31 percent in March. Apple had seen a surge in March following the debut of the Verizon iPhone. RIM's share inched down to 16 percent from 18 percent in March.

Looking beyond the OS to the mobile-device makers themselves, Apple retained its dominance last month, accounting for 32 percent of all ad impressions--a number that included the iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Second among mobile devices for the third month in a row was Samsung with a 15 percent share. For the first time, Samsung's Nexus S smartphone found its way on the top-20 list of mobile phones, landing on the No. 4 spot.

HTC took third place with 11 percent of all impressions, an increase of 10 percent from the previous month. With seven of its devices among the top-20 mobile phones, the company scored the highest number of handsets on the list.

RIM followed in fourth place with 10 percent of all ad impressions for the month.

Smartphones continued to surge as a result of rising consumer demand. For the first time, the top-20 mobile devices tracked by Millennial Media included only smartphones and no feature phones. Since April 2010, ad impressions among all smartphones have risen by 51 percent.

Overall, smartphones accounted for 68 percent of all the mobile devices tracked last month, with feature phones snagging 16 percent share and connected devices (iPad, iPod Touch, mobile game consoles) grabbing 16 percent as well.

Apple customers downloaded more than 5 million games each day in March from the company's App Store, say market researchers Distimo and Newzoo, and that's just among the 63 million users tracked for a recent survey.

Combining their individual data for a single report, Distimo and Newzoo found that games are the single biggest category of apps on Apple's App Store, accounting for half of all downloads of both free and paid apps. Tracking a total of 63 million iOS users in March across the U.S. and six countries in Europe, the two research firms discovered that each user downloaded on average 2.5 games for the month.

Based on Newzoo's National Gamers Survey, between 6 and 7 percent of online users in the U.S., U.K, France, and Germany own an iPhone. That number drops to between 3 and 4 percent in the Netherlands and Belgium. But overall, the percentage of iPhone owners who play iOS games is between 50 percent and 75 percent. Further, almost 15 million gamers in America and 7 million in Europe who play games on mobile devices use an iPad.

Just like in-app purchases have generated more revenue for app developers, in-game purchases have kicked up more cash for game makers. Although about 88 percent of the top 300 downloaded games are free, in-game purchases within both free and paid games brought in around two-fifths of total revenue for developers. In-game purchases on free games accounted for 40 percent of total sales from iPhone and iPod Touch owners and 32 percent from iPad users, according to the report.