File under "It was only a matter of time": The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Nevada gaming authorities are warning casinos to be on the lookout for blackjack card counters getting an assist from their iPhones. While card counting itself is not banned in Nevada, the use of an assistive technology is a felony (!), and apps like Card Counter or A Blackjack Card Counter make it much easier for the math-impaired. ABCC's 'stealth mode,' which uses vibration to alert the user when the time is right for a big bet, is particularly head-achey for casino security.

Nevada casinos don't have any instances yet of gamblers being kicked out or arrested for iPhone use -- the initial warning was from California authorities, who spotted card-counter apps in use at a Northern California casino and thought it prudent to raise the alarm. The lure of easier blackjack winnings may be too tempting for some people to pass up, but the consequence of this iCheating may be that we all have to check our iPhones before heading to the blackjack tables.

Aside from the logistical challenges of an iPhone ban in casinos ("Sure, I don't need my phone, my family knows that I'll be here at the quarter slots for the next five hours"), this is a fascinating example of how the App Store is turning us all into denizens of the Matrix, with skills and information on demand and jacked in, literally at our fingertips. Need to level a bookshelf? Fine. Want to identify local birds? Done. Get your garage mojo in gear? Can do. Learn a language? Of course. Adding the ability to move money from the casino's pocket into yours with better odds than usual seems like a natural next step... and another 'disruptive technology' is going to come into conflict with a long-established, politically and economically powerful industry. Let's watch.

Update: Commenter 'brainopera' contributed his "Matrix moment" -- have you had yours yet?

Thanks Matt

Today, I got a chance to play Mobile Age's two App Store games: Blackjack 21 and Shanghai Mahjong. As the names suggest, these two familiar classics were ported to the iPhone platform. I started off with the Mahjong, which is a solitaire game the goal of which is to remove all the tiles on-screen by matching pairs.

The game itself is beautifully presented but the interaction falls short. Rather than re-design the game for iPhone, it was ported. The tiles are tiny. When I placed my finger tip on top of the display, I covered about 6 tiles at once. The presentation made selecting individual tiles tricky and identifying them harder -- especially for one as myopic as myself. Two on-board buttons at the bottom left and right of the screen proved particularly difficult to tap. The game does not offer zooming. In the end, I was unable to enjoy playing the game.

To play Blackjack 21, you need to learn an odd swipe language. Swipe down to hit, swipe across to stay, double-tap to double-down, and so on. Although it was a bit confusing to pick up (and a little anti-intuitive, since in our family games, we double tap the table to hit and swipe our hands to stay), I soon was betting, hitting, standing and so forth. In Blackjack 21, most of the gameplay is about the animation and sound effects. There are plenty of both. I'm not a huge gambler so I can't really say much about the gameplay relative to real life. It seems to follow Vegas rules, offering you insurance, etc. at the proper places.

Neither game really blew me away. I was more disappointed in Mahjong because that's normally a game I adore. Many wasted hours in Graduate School were dedicated to multi-player timed challenges. By porting the game rather than redesigning to meet the iPhone's small interaction space, Mobile Age missed an opportunity to deliver a hit.

Blackjack 21 and Shanghai Mahjong each sell for $4.99 at the iPhone App Store and can be played on both iPhone and iPod touch.

A number of readers asked if I could try out an AT&T GSM SIM card in my iPhone. Fortunately, my sister is visiting town. After reassuring her ("You're going to do WHAT?"), she allowed me to pull out her SIM and test it in my iPhone. As expected, it was a no-go. I could not make any phone calls and I certainly was not going to let iTunes mess with her SIM card.

• I just need to get it out of the way: Words cannot describe how incredibly wonderful this thing feels to touch and hold. It is an absolute marvel of engineering. Gorgeous in every way.
• It's light; surprisingly so. Not quite as light as I remember my Samsung BlackJack being (one of - if not the - slimmest and lightest smartphones on the market), but considering how bad the BlackJack and Windows Mobile in general sucked, it's honestly a non-issue.
• Amazingly, just about all facets of the phone's software work as advertised. Switching from the browser back to the Home screen is a snap; hitting the Home button the middle of a YouTube video is also a snap.
  
• However, YouTube videos take a bit longer than advertised on TV to buffer and begin playing, even over Wi-Fi. Not too worried about it.
• Google Maps is surprisingly responsive, even over EDGE (which wide reports are saying has received a significant speed boost in the last couple days. Hmm, wonder why).
• The magnifying glass effect is quick and very, very cool. However, it unfortunately seems to negate the possibility of selecting a block of text for deleting. This would have been handy in instances like blowing away a URL already in Safari to start typing a new one; the only workaround for this is tapping at the end of the URL and holding the delete key down and waiting for each character to be deleted in succession. Kind of annoying. Update: Thankfully, a commenter pointed out the big grey X sitting in Safari's address bar, allowing for a one click deletion of an entire URL. Much handier.
  
• The reader.mac.com app seems a little misleading - all it does is display a message on the iPhone instructing you to add a direct URL for a site's feed in Safari, in which case it will display that feed much like Safari RSS on a computer. It isn't a web-based app at all from what I can tell. Unless Apple has something more planned for reader.mac.com, I'm calling this another fumbled addition to the .Mac family (though, for the record: I'm a happy .Mac customer, I just increased my storage to 2GB and I fully plan to renew my account in October).
• Have I mentioned yet that this seems to be a device designed and engineered by angels? Because it is.
• Changing the ringer/phone volume or toggling the vibrate switch elicits a translucent Mac OS X-like volume feedback.
• Seeing translucency on a phone with this gorgeous of a display is nearly worth half the price in and of itself.
• The SMS app looks like iChat and almost sounds like iChat; it features a different sound for incoming SMSes, but the default iChat sound for sending SMS messages. My only question is: where is iChat!
• YouTube H.264 videos look as gorgeous on the iPhone as they do on the Apple TV (remember: Apple got YouTube to convert a portion of their catalog for the iPhone and Apple TV into H.264 from the original uploaded files; this isn't a conversion from original > Flash > H.264). Note to YouTube: drop Flash, switch to H.264 video for your entire catalog. Now.
• Snapping a picture on the camera features a virtual shutter that snaps shut and open again once the picture is done being snapped and saved. Kinda silly, but more entertaining than a 'saving' or 'please wait' message.
• The 160 dpi display is even more gorgeous than in the videos and up on stage in a keynote.
• According to John Gruber, the iPhone's UI is all done in Helvetica, which I am definitely a fan of. I also agree that Notes being done in some icky Comic Sans-y type is... weird.

That's about it for now. We'll hit up more of the (predominantly) wonderful impressions as soon as we can roll them out.

It is ironic that I just recently found this new beta of Missing Sync for Windows Mobile, as a BlackBerry Pearl is arriving today to replace my Samsung BlackJack, which I can no longer stand. Nevertheless, I know there are plenty of Mac users out there who are rollin' with Mark/Space's Missing Sync to get their Windows Mobile device to sync with Mac OS X, and I thought y'all might be interested in a new beta that takes Flight Mode out of the picture. Though it isn't specifically listed in the release notes for this current version (3.0.2b6 as of this writing), Windows Mobile users no longer have to shut off the phone radio (what is known as Flight Mode) to perform a sync over Bluetooth. This is great news since turning off the phone radio, as handy of a UI as it may be, is still a clunky and annoying process. Support for a few more devices has also been added, as have the typical batch of bug fixes, so check out Mark/Space's testing page for a download link and release notes with more details.

Now, where's FedEx with that Pearl...

About a month ago I swallowed the poison and picked up a Cingular BlackJack, a new Windows Mobile Smartphone (I know, I know). I had been looking to step up to some sort of a PDA phone so I can surf and keep on top of WIN/TUAW business without having a MacBook sewn to my head, and so far it's been working out well. The one thing I haven't been able to figure out yet is how to use this cutting-edge HSPDA phone (a new high-speed wireless data network) as a modem - until now.

While cruising Smartphone Thoughts (a good resource for other WinMo5 users in the audience) and their forums, I found this post at Mobility Today by David Ciccione that describes how to use a BlackBerry 3G Driver (of all things) to tether a BlackJack to a Mac for getting online. It isn't a simple process, but I just went through the paces and can confirm - it works.

Now before you run off and start tethering your BlackJack to your Mac all over the place, I want to add a few things to Mr. Ciccione's awesome work so everyone in our diverse audience knows what they're getting into. First off: if you don't have the proper data plan with Cingular, I have no idea if or how much they'll charge you per KB or MB for connecting, even if you're just testing this out. Try this at your own risk - we can't be responsible if you connect and start downloading movies from the iTunes Store, only to get a $300 bill for data next month. Call Cingular, like I did, before you goof around with this to make sure you have the right data plan. For what it's worth, I have the $20/month Smartphone unlimited data plan, which gets to fly under the radar of their ~$50 PDA data plan since it's a 'Smartphone' instead of a full-blown Pocket PC phone or data card for a notebook.

Continue reading after the jump for some add-on tips and gotchas to make this a smooth and worthwhile process.

As further evidence to support my theory that Apple should make a gaming iPod to compete with the Gameboy, Nintendo DS, and Playstation Portable, iPod Downloads has created a blackjack game for the iPod that runs off of the iPod's Notes feature.

According to the site, "The beta version allows you to generate about 10 games, which is a bit limiting but it lets you get a feel for the game. Once you have finished the games, you can simply connect your iPod and run the program again to get more new games. " Not quite as fully-functional interactive as one could hope, but still pretty cool nonetheless.

[via MAKE]