We knew the iSaw was a hoax, but we had no idea just how awesome and clever a ploy this really was, with a truly worthwhile message. If you placed a pre-order, here’s the message you received:

I would have to say that the number one reason for the iPhone’s dominance is the sheer usefulness that the apps provide. And here’s another useful trick that the iPhone has up it’s sleeve: You can use it as a hearing aid.

The $10 SoundAMP app lets you use the iPhone to enhance the sounds around you. CNET’s Rick Broida spent some time with the SoundAMP and he says that all you do is fire up SoundAMP and plug in a pair of earphones, then just raise or lower the oversize slider until you get the volume you want. Apparently it even has a kind of “audio DVR” feature that lets you replay the last 5 or 30 seconds of a conversation just by tapping an onscreen button.

Anyone who owns an iPhone will tell you the best thing about the device is the App Store and the slew of free and paid games and applications available to add to the iPhone experience. The App Store has been so successful that most every other smartphone maker is now offering its own application store.

Sirius XM Satellite Radio has announced that its iPhone App is now the top free app in the music category. The app has been downloaded 1 million times in the two weeks since it was available starting on June 18.

Great news for Apple TV users. The iPhone 3.0 version of the Remote app now supports Apple TV controls with gesturing, which will give you a lot more flexibility than the standard little Apple Remote you already have.

According to Techcrunch, the entire experience is dramatically improved, allowing you to slide around on the phone to move the screen, while the keyboard makes it handy to type searches in quickly.

Well that didn’t take long. Just the other day we reported that Palm had reached 700,000 downloads and today we are up to a million. That’s pretty amazing. Especially when you consider that less than 30 applications were available from the App Catalog for a single device, which is available only on Sprint in the US.

While we don’t have any official numbers from Palm, the figure comes from industry analysts who suggest that 150,000 Pre devices were shipped since the June 6th retail introduction. That’s an average of about seven apps downloaded per phone.

Printers are fairly boring, but HP is looking to shake things up with the “world’s first web-connected printer.” The Photosmart Premium features a 4.33-inch front panel dubbed the Touchsmart Web, a touchscreen interface with several bundled, online apps to accommodate all of your paper-friendly tasks.

It even has a full-on HD Apps Studio just in case downloading new apps on your printer really takes off. The API’s being made open for the entire realm of developers, but it remains to be seen if the interest is there. It will cost you $399.

There is an app for everything on the App Store for the iPhone. You can find free games, applications to keep track of your finances, and applications to keep track of how many calories you eat each day. If you are trying to get fit and want to use your gadgets to meet your goals, the iPhone can do that too.

Men’s Health has announced a new iPhone app called Men’s Health Workouts that is available now on the App Store for $1.99. The App offers 18 exclusive workouts and over 125 exercises from the world’s top strength coaches, athletes, and fitness experts.

Email ‘N Walk is a new iPhone app that’s designed to replace the plain white background of the email application into a live view of the camera. It’s for those types who write email while walking. Great for watching where you’re going through the camera lens.

That will help you to not walk into lamp-posts, capture the cute rear of a girl in front of you, or get a shot of that rare rogue chicken that crosses your path before it crosses the road. There’s also the occasional roadkill, which will look great as a background.

iVisit is working on an application called SeeScan that can help blind people identify everyday objects around them, which we take for granted. The program uses your cameraphone to detect objects using image recognition software, while reading aloud what the phone identifies it as.

There are many practical applications, like telling the difference between denominations of paper money for example. It could certainly make life easier for the blind and may help them speed up some of their activities during their typical day.

On the heels of RIM adding a push API, Google is enabling some BlackBerry users to get their Gmail and Google Calendar stuff on their handsets. Don’t jump for joy just yet. There are some shortcomings that limit its usefulness. Like the fact that users have to be connecting to BlackBerry Enterprise Server instances, and those instances have to be backed by Microsoft Exchange.

Also, only 250 users per Enterprise Server instance can get their mobile Gmail on, changes made to appointments on a handset cannot be pushed back to Google Calendar. Plus, searching for Gmail messages still requires a separate app. Updates and improvements are on the way, but until then this is what you get.

Someone created an application to detect metal using the Android G1. This isn’t because the G1 is so much more awesome than other smartphones. It’s done through clever use of the built-in compass. A compass detects the magnetic field of the Earth.

Sadly it won’t help you find treasure at the beach. Think of it more like the ones they use in airports. The kind that let you magically pass your hands over someone’s body to see if they are hiding metal somewhere. Which is great I guess. If you are security in the lowest budget airport ever.

It’s been pretty quiet on the whole Wii video in Japan front, but finally there’s some news. Japanese Wii users will soon be able to try it out for themselves. The service is ready to launch in Japan on May 1st.

It’s being called the “Wii no Ma Channel,” and features advertising from Denstu, both free and paid content. What really caught our eye though, is word that a free DSi app will be launching at the same time. The app will allow you to download video from the Wii to your DS, and do other stuff like download coupons from advertisers, which can be scanned directly from the screen.

iPod Touch and iPhone owners have been busy over the last nine months. Who would have thought back then that you guys would buy so many apps. Of course it’s hard to resist such gems as the wobbly boob app and iBeer. Obviously it doesn’t take much to get the public’s attention.

Now it’s up to Windows Mobile, Symbian, Android, BlackBerry and the rest to catch up. If we can offer some advice to these other app stores…Games and productivity apps are all good, but put an emphasis on farts, beer and booze. You’ll catch up in no time.

Looks like some photos of the Palm Pre in the wild have cropped up today on Twitter (via lo_toney) and have since been removed. As you can see, the pic above shows it running what looks like a YouTube videos application.

The YouTube video app looks similar to the same app that appears on Palm’s Treo Pro. We have no idea if the pic is real or not, so you tell us what you think.

Any parent knows the type of toys LeapFrog makes. The company has a line of educational toys that teach kids of all sorts of things like phonics and math. My kids have a set of refrigerator magnets they play with constantly from the company that teaches phonics. If I hear “every letter makes a sound” one more time I may snap.

LeapFrog is now moving from the refrigerator onto my iPhone with the introduction of the company’s first iPhone App called Number Rumble. The game is a math quiz program that helps kids six to ten years old learn addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.