There is now an official conference for iPhone developers: iPhoneLive, from the O'Reilly group, is already offering early bird discounts for $625.

The conference will feature talks by some leading iPhone developers such as DemiForce, the makers of Trism. There is also an area called "launchpad" where selected iPhone apps can demo at no cost to them - the Techcrunch50 formula.

Appcraver will probably attend the conference; let us know and we can catch a beer in San Jose.

When it rains, it pours. Since reviewing Talking Phrasebooks we've been inundated with requests to review other translation apps. We gave BdTranslator passing marks in our review earlier today. Next up is Linguo from Edovia Inc..

Linguo is the best translation app around. Features include 400 preset phrases in four languages (French, German, Italian and Spanish) with audio clips for each, custom translations in 20 languages, and the ability to save translations for future use. The UI is simple and intuitive. Inverting the "from" and "to" languages can be done with a single click.

Some reviewers have complained about the quality of the translations. As I have no knowledge whatsover of 17 out of 20 of these languages, I can't really comment. Machine translations aren't perfect; it's probably a mistake to use any of these translation apps for more than translations of simple phrases.

In any case, Linguo is the best translation app I've seen to date.

AppCraver reviewed translation app Talking Phrasebooks recently, so when Alan Cook from Bad Dog Apps sent us a free test version of BdTranslator, another translation app, I thought we'd take a look at it and compare it to Talking Phrasebooks.

BdTranslator allows for translation of phrases in 16 languages to any of those other languages and features saved translations of 250 common phrases. The only language I speak other than English is Spanish (and badly) - the app seemed to accurately translate to Spanish anything that I entered in English. 

The app has some UI issues. For example, the default had the "language in" as Spanish and the language out as English. When I tried to set the language in as English, it told me the langugage in and language out couldn't be the same. To reverse the two, you need to set either one to a third language before switching each to the language of choice.

Another problem arises when using the common phrases section. When you select a common phrase, it sends you to the translation screen. As far as I could see, there is no quick way to return to the common phrases section immediately from the translation screen. If you need to use the common phrases section several times in a row (as I imagine would generally be the case if you were engaged in a conversation with someone in a foreign language), having to return to the main screen, click on the favorites section, then click on the subfolder with the phrases you're looking for could get very tedious quickly.

A last quibble - unless I'm missing it, there is no sound button allowing you to hear the phrases spoken aloud. This is a major drawback compared to the Talking Phrasebooks series.

At $4.99 BdTranslator is more expensive than the Talking Phrasebook apps, though BdTranslator has the advantage of packing 16 languages into one package, and allows you to enter your own phrases. Some reviewers have complained that since the app requires a WiFi or 3G connection, if you're using the app abroad you may run up some nasty roaming charges. Bad Dog Applications claims that roaming costs are minimal as very little data is sent in each translation. As I have not used BdTranslator abroad nor checked my plan to see what the foreign roaming charges are, I can't speak to this either way, but is something any buyer of the app should consider prior to purchase.

All-in-all, BdTranslator is another solid entry in the increasingly-crowded iPhone translator app space.

According to inside sources at Ars Technica, the "Let's Rock" Apple private invite only event will include the much anticipated release of iPhone firmware 2.1.

Among the list of expected improvements:

- a solution to apps repeatedly crashing the iPhone (and sometimes resulting in the Apple Screen of Death)

- preliminary support for push technology allowing apps to get background info

- new GPS functionality -- possibly allowing background GPS notification, as intimated by loopt

One disturbing aspect:

"We were told that, aside from what we already know about iPhone 2.1 from leaked info on the web, there are other parts to 2.1 that were specifically removed from developer seeds in order to keep them secret from the world."

As usual, Apple is carefully managing the release of information...

The "health and fitness" area of the AppStore is filled with extremely bad calorie counter apps (such as "Total Fitness" -- which should be totally avoided). With the self-proclaimed tagline "Serious Weight Loss Comes to the iPhone", MyNetDiary promises more - and delivers.

First of all, this is a combo webapp/iPhone app - a formula i think we will see a lot more of in the future. The website is a great ajax-driven web 2.0 application. Enter a few letters of a food, and the website will find all related food choices - and organize it for you by day and meal. Its easy to go back and fill in entries that you might of missed. At the end of every day, the "analysis" feature tells you how you are doing relative to your plan; the "nutrition" graph breaks down the nutritional value of your diet.

As for the iPhone app -- it's also first rate. Entering meals or activities is easy -- and the day Nutrition Summary allows you to easily see if you are above or below plan -- and how much more you can eat that day.

I really have nothing bad to say for that app other than the price point -- 9 dollars per month, billed directly -- as opposed to through the appStore ($7/month if you buy 6 months) .But, unless somebody else comes up with a cheaper version of the same functionality, I think anybody seriously interested in weight loss will want to try out myNetDiary.

I was getting the Apple Screen of Death repeatedly on my phone last night, so I had to do a complete restore. This morning I was confronted with this:

Nice way to start a Saturday.

Lots of changes at Appcraver. We're proud to present our new updated Editors' Picks tab. In this area of the site, we'll showcase apps that we think are particularily worthy -- things that we think you should at least try out and probably will want to keep in your iPhone's permanent collection.

We're also working on a Top Free Apps page. We realize that a lot of you are on a tight budget -- this page represents our selection of the best apps available free of charge.

The team at Appcraver hopes you will enjoy the new additions!

Shovel is an app that lists the top stories from the Digg news service on your iPhone. It is run by a seperate company (not Digg itself), which makes it somewhat likely Digg will shut it down somewhere in the near future. After all, why should shovel earn a dollar per download for what is essentially the Digg experience on your iPhone?

As far as the app goes, the experience is well designed -- in fact, it feels exactly as if it was designed by Digg itself -- with the caveat that there is no way to digg or bury stories from your phone. The reason for this is that Shovel uses the digg api, and there is no way to digg a story from the api.

I'm somewhat upset that the app is paid. I would give it higher marks if it were free, but payiung $0.99 just to access Digg without the added interactivity of being able to vote on stories strikes me as wrong.

The Talking Phrasebooks apps from UK application developer Coolgorilla offer basic phrases and dictionaries in six languages (Spanish, French, German, Italian, Greek and Portuguese) with over 350.000 downloads so far and Spanish being the most popular language.  Although competitors iLingo (benchmark product of application developer Talking Panda) and Lonely Planet both offer phrasebooks in a wider array of languages with a slightly broader range of phrases and words, they both charge $9.99 per app while the Talking Phrasebooks apps from Coolgorilla are free, thanks to the sponsorship of online travel retailer Lastminute.com.

The great advantage to a paper phrasebook here is the sound button, which allows you to hear the phrases that you are translating.  So you can either try and repeat what you hear or if in a pronunciation bind you can simply hold your iPhone up and let it do the talking for you.

This is obviously not for anyone who is trying to seriously learn a language but on a quick trip abroad this app can turn out to be a great companion.

We caught up yesterday with Tony Chen from Elite Web Central over email. Tony is the developer of Daily Wallpaper, a web application for the iPhone.

AppCraver: When did you start developing web applications for the iPhone?

Tony Chen: Our site was launched about a month ago, and our first web application, "Daily Wallpaper" was launched two weeks ago.

AppCraver: What was the inspiration behind Daily Wallpaper?

Tony Chen: We have received many comments from readers telling us that how much they love our wallpaper collection. The inspiration for the web app was to allow our users to access our wallpapers and download them using their iPhone.

AppCraver: Can you explain how a web application for the iPhone works?

Tony Chen: There are two types of iPhone web applications - one uses Apple's SDK function, and the other is no different than a normal web site. iPhone's SDK is very powerful and easy to use. Developers can easily create some cool effects for their web apps (like the slide effect). Developers also can build their web apps using a standard HTML/CSS combo.

AppCraver: Roughly how many users do you have?

Tony Chen: Roughly around 1000 - 1300 users daily are using the iPhone to access our "Daily Wallpaper" web app at the moment.

AppCraver: Is your company privately owned? Venture backed?

Tony Chen: At the moment, we are just a group of people who are keen to develop something useful for iPhone users. We would love to develop some iPhone web applications that can entertain iPhone users in their spare time as well.

AppCraver: What are some iPhone apps that you like?

Tony Chen: There are many iPhone apps that we like. Some of our favorites are Twitterrific, Palringo, Tap Tap and Aurora Feint.

AppCraver: What's the development cycle for iPhone web apps like?

Tony Chen: I think the development cycle for iPhone web apps is the same as the development cycle for other standard web applications. We just need to pay more attention to the relatively small screen size. And also, we need to take extra care of the bandwidth usage of the iPhone web apps.

AppCraver: Are you working on any other web apps that you will be releasing soon?

Tony Chen: Yes - you will be seeing them very soon. I am sure people will love them!

AppCraver: Thanks Tony!