Like most people who’ve had an iPhone 3GS in their hands, we’ve been extremely impressed with the video capabilities of this little device. Not only Does it take near-HD video, it has excellent basic editing software and video can be uploaded to YouTube over Wifi or the cell networks. Among other things, it is the most useful video camera in the world today. No wonder the video camera market is shaking in its collective boots.

Thank God those iPhones are so expensive, and Apple will only sell 20 million or so of them in 2009. If Apple added cameras to its line of iPods, there would be another 3+million of them hitting the market per month, and the low end of the digital video camera market could be crushed.

Uh oh.

That’s exactly what we’re hearing is going to happen. One of our sources in Asia say that Apple has placed an order for a massive number of camera modules of the type that they include in the iPhone. These are inexpensive cameras, in the $10 range. And the size of the order, our source says, means they can only be used for one thing - the iPods.

Oh look, outrage. It’s been a few minutes since we last ran into outrage. This time: an evil plot, hatched by the Missouri University School of Journalism, that, in effect, lets students cover the cost of their iPhone or iPod touch with federal student loans. Someone call Superman, or at least Daredevil.

There have been around 1,736 (give or take) Apple netbook rumors in the last year. The latest rumor to add to that count comes from Digitimes and is a little lite on details,

Foxconn Electronics (Hon Hai Precision Industry) is in the running to land orders for a netbook from Apple, according to a Chinese-language Commercial Times report citing sources from the component supply chain.

Could be a Netbook, huge iPod touch, or something only Steve Jobs type invisionaries dream about. We’re bound to find out sooner or later though.

To completely rip off Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Sundays are for watching TV, playing video games and building up your BitTorrent ratio. As it turns out, Sundays are also for finding out that the iPod touch is being used in American military theaters, helping troops translate from one tongue to another, taking photos and showing them to locals (“see, your town’s mayor is really does like us!”) and any number of other, high-techy things. Hooray for Sundays, then.

Trip Hawkins founded Electronic Arts in 1982. Then he left. In 2003 he started a new game development company called Digital Chocolate. In 2009 Hawkins finally realized that the iPhone is useful to game developers, so much so that Nintendo (DS) and Sony (PSP) are “freaking out.” Well!

If the earlier news from LG didn’t whet your appetite over new Apple hardware then BGR’s tidbit of news will certainly send you into a frenzy. One of BGR’s many “ninjas” was sifting through the 3.0 restore ramdisk and found a string of code that may or may not allude to multiple new devices. According to the “ninja,” Apple historically IDs their iPhone and iPod Touch in chronological order and found within the ramdisk are upwards of six new hardware IDs.

The short version is provided here, but the entire string can be found over at BGR.

Ahoy hoy, MGS fans, who might also happen to own an iPhone and/or iPod Touch, Konami has pushed out Metal Gear Solid Touch today. So, go download the 87.3MB game and pony up $7.99. The game already has over 50 reviews with a 4.5 star rating, so it must be good!

iTunes

One of the most anticipated games for the iPhone/iPod Touch has to be Konami’s Metal Gear Solid Touch. Konami released a handful of screenshots and some scarce information on the game last week. Today the company announced in Japan that Metal Gear Solid Touch will be available in the App Store on March 19 (both in the US and Japan).

Now that nobody on planet Earth is buying cars anymore, Sirius XM has to find a new way to promote itself to would-be buyers. It used to be that buyers of new cars would get a couple free months of Sirius or XM included; but what now? If yesterday’s conference call is any indication, Sirius XM, which was rescued at the ELEVENTH HOUR by Liberty Media last month, will really begin to promote itself to fancy-pants iPhone and iPod touch users. A Sirius XM-developed (remember, that third-party Star Player was killed last week) application will help spread the gospel of Howard Stern, Opie and Anthony, Oprah and TonsOfSports.

The Dev Team has released a seven step process to jailbreak the 2.2.1 iPod touch firmware. Sure, it’s not packaged up in a nice and pretty app, but the steps don’t look to hard. Just follow ‘em to the letter and hopefully - *fingers-crossed* - you will be able to run jailbroken apps.

Really? This is getting out of hand, no? The onslaught of Obama clad doodads has begun. This stuff is going to sell like hotcakes!

Here’s an iPod mount for your trusty sniper rifle — sure, why the hell not? I mean, the life of a sniper is mostly waiting, right? Might as well catch an episode of The Office or play a quick game of Sim City while you’re waiting for your target to emerge from his super secret meeting inside some fancy hotel.

The infamous Dev-Team dropped a big hint in the form of an image a few days ago that the hacker group was developing an iPod touch 2G jailbreaking app. Now, not only did the group confirm that the iPod touch 2G was the target device for redsn0w, but have gotten a bit closer to the goal. It seems that the process has been done but is still too manual for geeks like us. They plan on packaging and releasing a convenient GUI version shortly; no official ETA has been announced however.

Numbers from two online firms show that iPod touch usage “exploded” on Christmas day. That’s a roundabout way of saying that Apple must have sold a ton of the things during the holidays.

Hewlett Packard announced their iPrint Photo applicaiton for the iPhone and iPod Touch, “the first application available on the Apple App store to print photos directly from an iPhone or iPod”. It’s a free download from the app store, so what are you waiting for?

We’ve got this from three independent sources close to Apple: expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ‘09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen. Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources, and Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production.

Apple has been experimenting internally with large form tablet devices for years, one source says, but there was concern that users wouldn’t like the device. The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer. Apple says more than 300 million applications have been downloaded since the App Store launched in July 2008. Combine the App Store, iTunes and a browser and you have one heck of a device.

Looks like the iPod Touch had a good Christmas, as App Store downloads on December 25th increased three-fold or more for most titles.