Do you remember your first words and your first steps? Probably not, but your parents surely do! Now, there are plenty of ways to help your children with their first words, and it seems even the iPhone could become a handy tool for your kids' education. How? By using today's app from Clever Coding, simply called "First Words," of course!

More than just First Words, Clever Coding came up with a First Words Lite app, both being "valuable learning tools for Preschool age children that assists children in learning using a combination of sharp animations and fun sound effects." The difference is that the last one "is a companion app to First Words that features the same animations and effects as First Words, but is limited to the number and colors sections" and - obviously - comes for free.

If you want to know more about First Words, here's the official mumbo-jumbo: "This app has been designed with children in mind. First Words is a full featured learning tool that uses stunning colors and graphics available on the iPhone to render full color pictures accompanied of everything from shapes to colors. When a child touches a picture the animated screen will zoom in on the selected item and reveal the word. The child then will hear the word spoken.. Using the combination of words and sounds children are able to easily learn new words."

If the above sounds interesting and your kid is still fighting with those first words, you may want to consider checking out First Words on App Store. Even more, there's also a Spanish version available. At last, you may want to try First Words Lite before anything else, but I just found out they pulled it off App Store for now, so...

Going through the emails we got lately, I had a sudden flashback - I love puzzles! No, no, not virtual ones, but real puzzles! I don't know who can say puzzles are not very pleasant "time killers," although Greenpeace activists may claim they are not made out of thin air, and if we hate puzzles, we save some trees... Although I think the printed press uses much more paper than puzzles, and offers less satisfaction, I'll give Greenpeace activists something really friendly - a puzzle scraper tool called "Sudoku Grab."

"UK based CMG Research Ltd today announces the release of Sudoku Grab 1.3, their puzzle grabbing and playing tool for iPhone. Designed specifically to take advantage of the iPhone's unique abilities and interface, Sudoku Grab uses the iPhone's camera to grab an image of a sudoku puzzle from a newspaper or a book. The image is then located and processed automatically using OCR. The numbers are recognized, ready to play" says the official press release, and I must confess this all sounds pretty interesting.

This iPhone app requires version 2.0 of the software to be installed on your handset, and is exclusively available through the App Store, for only $0.99.

If you want more details about it, and you don't feel like clicking the link above, here you go...

"The main screen of Sodoku Grab shows a picture of a camera lens and a newspaper. Touching the newspaper on the main screen accesses the puzzle book. From here, play one of the predefined puzzles (Easy, Medium, Hard, or Very Hard), or pick up a previously played puzzle (Current Game). Touching the camera lens displays the grab menu screen. From here the user can either browse pictures from their photo library or take a picture using the iPhone's camera.

Sudoku Grab does a excellent job of automatically locating a puzzle in the picture. However if for any reason it identifies the location incorrectly, users can manually adjust the location by touching and dragging the squares on the corners of the highlighted area.

Touching the Done button displays a screen where the difficulty of the puzzle can be set. Simply touch the appropriate star in the difficulty rating (1 star = easy, 4 stars = very hard). In addition to the "grab" feature, the application comes with over 1000 puzzles ready to play, already graded from easy to very hard. Users can email puzzles they have grabbed to their friends using the email a friend feature."

Could you imagine a netbook from Apple and AT&T that will cost only $20 more than the new iPod Shuffle? I know it sounds like a fairytale, but this will probably happen pretty soon. Anyway, I am sure AT&T will make sure to offer you a data plan with the netbook that will compensate for the heavily subsidized device. Come on, I always dreamed of a cheap Apple netbook, but $99 is not cheap - this is ridiculous!

According to a report that appeared some hours ago on the AppleInsider forum, a source that's "pretty high up in AT&T's food chain" claims a faster new iPhone, U-verse integration and a $99 3G netbook are going to come up out of a bunch of cooperative deals between the Cupertino-based company and the mobile giant.

In the same article, they say that the "$99 3G netbook will start selling this summer, and the first one won’t be a Windows OS." Heh, even if this will prove to be nothing more but a rumor, how silly would be to see Apple involved in releasing a netbook with Windows on it? :))

OK, I finished laughing, now let's finish the story, shall we?

Having such a product on the market would be a very smart move for AT&T, first of all, because I don't know how much will have to spend Apple on such a netbook. Anyway, there's no such thing as a $99 one, that's clear! After all, Milford, a forum user, made everything clear - "The standard hardware subsidy for signing a 2-year contract is around $200, and AT&T may be paying Apple more for the iPhone. Plenty of $299 or $399 netbooks exist out there." Well, he missed only one thing - none of the $299-$399 netbooks comes with the Apple logo on its back...

When talking about iMac sales, it's obvious that now, apart from those refurbished iMacs and MacBooks available here and there, some consumers are looking to get decent deals on new iMacs. If a few days ago we were talking about some speculations about the $899 iMacs, now we know this is a sure thing - Apple won't bury the 17 inch iMac, keeping it alive and as one of the best iMac sales for a wide range of consumers.

The 17 inch iMac sold for $899 is, in fact, the "education-only" model, just the same as it happened in 2002, when the 17 inch CRT eMac model was available to education markets as a lower priced alternative to the flat screen models, of which now the 17 inch model remains around the new 20 and 24 inch ones.

Now, your $899 should give you the goodies below, as the default setup:

- 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo processor with 2 MB shared L2 cache
- 512 MB (single SO-DIMM) 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300)
- Intel GMA 950 - graphics
- 160 GB Serial ATA hard drive, slot-load 8x double-layer SuperDrive
- Built-in 10/100/1000BASE-T (Gigabit); built-in 54 Mbps AirPort Extreme Wi-Fi (802.11g)3; built-in Bluetooth 2.0+EDR (Enhanced Data Rate) module
- 17-inch widescreen LCD with 1440 x 900 resolution

Unfortunately, the product is no longer available on Apple's iMac page, and you'll also have to add at least another 512MB of memory to make things right. If you spot a different setup of the 17 inch iMac on sale, please let us know...as long as it's not a refurbished one! ;)

Waiting for the next iPhone? Well, if you never had one so far, I guess you won't die if you wait a few extra months. After all, the iPhone 3.0 software revision will finally feature copy-paste! Now, the question is how many of our next iPhone hopes and dreams will turn into reality, huh? That's a pretty good question, I guess, and that's exactly why we'll talk about two next iPhone rumors...

...because most rumors must have at least a shade of truth in them, and - sometimes - we all hope there's more than just a shade of truth. Today, we're talking about the video camera for the next iPhone, as well as the increased Internet speed everyone is hoping to get.

First, one anonymous source claims the iPhone 3.0 software will come with some hardware changes, too, including a video camera, apart from other hardware changes. Apart from this being a rumor, there's also a "Publish Video" section in the iPhone 3.0 Beta software, so most chances are to see it turning into reality in a few months.

At last, we have another source claiming that the next iPhone will have a much faster Internet speed. The best looking rumor I've heard is that the next iPhone will have doubled Internet speed, thanks to a new 3G chipset, and since AT&T has been trialing faster 3G since late 2008, the carrier-related issues should also become a part of the past. Speaking about numbers, the next iPhone should be capable of a 7.2Mbps 3G speed.

That's all, folks, but we'll surely keep you updated on the next iPhone rumors showin' up. After all, I am sure there's always something missing, and so hopes & dreams can help Apple fill the wishlist for iPhone 4.0, since I am sure they won't make any major changes to iPhone 3.0 simply because I dream about a night vision-capable camera...