Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
Failure is not an option: the official NASA iPhone app is here
Yeah, I'm a bona-fide space geek and proud of it, so I was thrilled to hear that the official NASA iPhone app [iTunes Link] is now available free of charge. The app was created by the New Media Team at NASA Ames Research Center, and for their first app it's surprisingly robust, bug-free and full of features.
The front screen of the app provides a window into current and future NASA missions. Along the bottom of the display are buttons for missions, images, videos, and updates. The updates are fairly current -- there were 11 posts about various Earth and space missions today alone -- and often include links to videos.
I found that the app worked best when I was downloading the videos over Wi-Fi, so be sure to keep that in mind if you're trying to get watch a launch video while on 3G service. Check out the gallery below for screenshots from the app.
On July 20th, 1969, I was an 11 year-old nerd who loved space. Along with billions of other people in the rest of the developed world, I sat in rapt attention in front of the family TV set watching the ghostly figures of Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin taking the first steps on the moon.
Viewing earth-orbiting satellites, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station with the naked eye is a blast. I've been hooked on watching satellites since my folks pointed out 
Remember that iPod storage calculator 
Apple offers their own advertising-friendly estimation of how many songs each model of iPod can hold, but those numbers are based on fairly unrealistic standards of 128Kbps AAC songs that are a mere 4 minutes long. Toss in a few tracks from Phish or Beethoven's 5th, and you can easily hurl this song estimation into the realm of 'anyone's guess.'
Continuing their new 
SpaceDaily has a story out of Australia about a company called 
iWeb Optimizer
is a simple Automator app that allows you to easily compress PNG images inside your iWeb site into JPG files, but it
maintains the same file name so it doesn't break any of your links or images. Simply drag and drop the site folder that
iWeb creates (be it in your iDisk or an exported directory you specified) onto iWeb Optimizer and let it work its magic.
The handy little utility will also parse all your subdirectories, making sure no PNG is safe from a little JPG
compression.
Sometimes even his Steveness is guilty of having too
much time on his hands. Apparently, Mr. Jobs won an abandoned mineral mine in Australia in a game of poker (or so the 
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
