Developer Aaron Ardini pulled off the crazy feat last week of porting the classic Lemmings game from Palm OS not only to the iPhone, but also to Windows and the Mac ... in just 36 hours. That's 36 hours straight -- he liveblogged the whole process, and did actually pull it off, sending the iPhone app, which you can see above, into the App Store for approval.

There's just one hitch -- Ardini doesn't actually own the Lemmings property. Sony does, and as soon as the company heard about his port, it dropped a cease and desist letter on him, commanding him to remove all ports he's hosted and not to port any other Sony games. So there's no way, as of now, that we'll see this app in the App Store.

Of course, if Sony knows what's good for them, the company could pay Ardini to release the port for them, and we could all play the old version of Lemmings on the iPhone (and pay for the privilege). Ardini says he'll "open communication" for such a deal, so we'll have to wait and see.

We're starting off the Independence Day holiday with a bang -- a giveaway to one lucky TUAW reader of the Quirky Beamer iPhone case for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Before you enter the contest, however, I'm sure you'd like to know what makes the Beamer different and how it works. That's the purpose of this short review.

The Beamer is one of Quirky's community-designed projects. We've talked about Quirky before -- anyone can make a suggestion for a new product, and if enough people like the idea then it goes through a community design and review process. The Beamer, suggested by Canadian Jenny Tyler, solves an issue for those who don't have an iPhone 4 to complain about; it supplies a very bright LED light that is amazingly useful in taking photos with the 3G and 3GS.

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I recently tested out the new Jawbone ICON Bluetooth earpiece. It's a small hands-free earbud device that you wear in your ear, and talk while on-the-go. At a cost of US$99, the unit provides support for both calls and A2DP-based audio. You can listen to your music and podcasts via the earpiece as well as talking with others.

I found the packaging extraordinarily hard to grapple with. There are an insane number of tiny plastic pieces in the box, which has been designed to be eco-friendly rather than to provide a Jonathan Ive-like unboxing experience. All those pieces, however, easily fit into the rigid plastic portion of the package. Once you manage to get the thing open, it's pretty easy to keep track of all the parts.

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A month ago I was planning an iPhone upgrade/trickledown plan like this: I would get the iPhone 4, my wife would get my 3GS, and our son would inherit her 2G (aka "original iPhone") to be used like an iPod touch.

Today we cancelled the iPhone 4 order, my wife inherited my 3GS, the boy has the 2G, and I... well, I have a Nokia 2320 (which, despite Nokia's claims, instructs me not to hold it certain ways).

What happened? In a word: iPad.

Since the release of the iPhone I have really wanted an iPhone without the phone. I rarely use the phone (we live in an AT&T dead zone, so we have to keep a landline). In fact, my wife and I shared 550 minutes per month and recently we expired 351 minutes. My guess is that most of those few minutes we used were to call each other. In the three years since the iPhone was released, AT&T has refused to offer a voice plan with fewer minutes, even now that they're offering tiered data plans. With the advent of the iPad, I can get the mobile data that I want without the voice minutes that I don't need or use.

Read on for the rest of the story...

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Contrary to Apple's official word on iPhone 4 reception issues, an adjustment in the way signal strength is displayed may not fix dropped calls and slow data for those who are having problems. A few TUAW readers have let us know that they have gotten complimentary Apple iPhone 4 Bumpers from Apple Store managers and Geniuses when they've come in with severe 'death grip' signal issues. Why? These same Apple employees appear to realize that the bumper does indeed fix connectivity issues in low-signal areas, and offering a bumper instead of a replacement phone is making both Apple and the consumer happy.

Apple's rumored policy is to not give away the $29 bumpers to consumers, and DIY bumpers may not suit your style. So, how do you get the golden ticket, in this case the free bumper? It seems that documenting your case carefully and showing that you've performed all of the recommended fixes in advance of your Genius Bar appointment helps a lot. Click on the read more link below to see our suggestions on what you need to do to best represent yourself before heading off to the local Apple Store.

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Ah, the once mighty Power Mac G5. It used to be the envy of film editors and art designers everywhere. With a 1.6 GHz CPU, a whopping 256MB of RAM, and an 80GB hard drive, it was once the tower-iest of PC towers.

Just seven short years later, it's reduced to grating cheese in some nondescript office environment. Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

Actually it's just the case doing the grating -- you have to admit, with all of those tiny holes for ventilation, the case works pretty well. It does make a mess, though, and there's quite a bit of cheese still left on the unit. It may not be able to run 10.6, but the old G5 will spruce up your salad if you so choose.

Thanks, sivil!

Those with kids and iPads will notice that the latter find the former irresistible. When connected to the Internet, they provide access to all that the Web and App Store have to offer, some of which is decidedly not for kids. Here's how you can use the iPad's built-in Restrictions settings to limit their access.

Open the general settings and click Restrictions. You'll have to create a special 4-digit pass code; pick one the kids can't guess. From there you can disable access to Safari, YouTube, iTunes, location notification and the ability to install apps.

In addition, you can disable in-app purchases and limit TV shows, movies, podcasts and apps by rating or explicit content warning.

It's not perfect and won't deter determined kids for long, but setting this up will offer some peace of mind.

GoodReader was one of a handful of apps which had figured out how to do USB syncing to iPhones, but their solution was in violation of Apple's iPhone SDK rules. Apple eventually required all 3rd party iPhone apps to remove this functionality. Some apps, like GoodReader, could sync via iTunes but it was very limited. Wi-Fi syncing was also an option, but it was slower and prone to configuration issues.

GoodReader has released a free utility named GoodReaderUSB which, as the name implies to any who haven't suffered a traumatic blow to the head, allows you to connect to GoodReader via USB. The software is free and available for Windows (XP, Vista, and 7) and Mac OS X (10.4, 10.5, and 10.6).

The interface is simple enough, and if you have more than one iDevice you can connect more than one at a time. In my initial testing it worked as expected. The UI is fairly straightforward and allows for drag & drop access, folder creation, and deletion.

GoodReader is available for iPad and iPhone/iPod touch. There's a free "lite" version but the app is easily worth more than the $0.99 asking price. One of the "hidden gems" of GoodReader is that it's not just a reader, but will allow you to download just about any file to your iPhone or iPad by pasting in the URL. I use it for downloading PDFs and then sending them to iBooks on the iPad.

Here's an awesome little tidbit. Apple fan Laurent Bourrelly, who runs pomme-c, was rooting though his pile of Apple goodies when inspiration struck. Why not build a USB flash storage device out of a spare key? The result is the gizmo you see at right: a USB Command key.

If you'd like to build your own, you can follow Lauent's simple step-by-step instructions here. If French isn't your thing, check out Google's English translation. Actually, the photos alone are clear enough, so you probably don't even need to worry about the written instructions.

Well done, Laurent! We love it.

The Pulse News Reader for iPad (US$3.99) gained some notoriety last month when the stylish app was released, then promptly yanked from the App Store by Apple at the behest of The New York Times. The Times did not want their RSS feed featured in Pulse; changes were made and the app has been back in the App Store since about June 8th.

Now comes word from developer Alphonso Labs that a new version of the app -- Pulse News Mini ($2.99) -- is now available for iPhone and iPod touch. It's iOS 4.0 tested, and from a quick look at the app, it does an amazing job of putting the functionality of Pulse into a smaller form factor.

As you can see from the video above, Pulse News Mini looks quite similar to the iPad app. Of course, the individual pieces of the Pulse "mosaic" are smaller, but the way that users interact with Pulse is identical. Up to 20 news feeds may be added, with the ability to search by keywords to find those feeds. A tap on a story expands it to fill the screen. The rest of the stories in the feed are listed below, but can be hidden with a touch.

I was pleased to see that Alphonso Labs took one of my suggestions to heart. As a writer, I like to see who is writing posts for various blogs. The initial versions of Pulse did not have this feature, but Pulse News Mini shows the author byline in the feed.

In the currently shipping version of Pulse, 1.0.1, photos associated with posts did not appear to load properly. I'd love to see some way to sync the feeds on the iPad and iPhone versions to avoid re-entry of feeds between devices. If the developer responds as quickly to this request as they did to the my previous suggestion, we should see that feature implemented quickly.