The Vudu XL, which offers 1TB of storage, is now available.

(Credit: Vudu)

Apple TV has gotten a lot of press since its recent 2.0 upgrade added the ability to rent instant-on movies from all the major studios directly through its on-screen interface. But start-up Vudu--whose set-top box offered all of those features months before Apple's--is still kicking. Just weeks after dropping the price of its entry-level product to $295, the company just rolled out its version 1.3 software, which adds some improved interface and functionality tweaks. Most notably is the "Vudu Vault." The company says that the feature lets users archive some purchased movies (and all purchased TV show episodes) to a "secure area on Vudu servers." In fact, it appears to just flag the title as "owned," so the user can free up space on the Vudu's hard drive for additional downloads, while still being able to stream the "Vaulted" content again at any point in the future. (The Vault feature as well as the interface tweaks were already up and running on our Vudu review sample as of today.)

Two other Vudu announcements of note: the Vudu XL--the $1,000 Vudu announced at CES that packs a 1 terabyte hard drive--is now available to custom installers. Vudu is also making the IR dongle included with the XL model available as an add-on to its existing boxes for $39. With the dongle in place, the Vudu--which includes an RF-only remote--can be controlled with standard universal remotes. (Previously, the company said that the dongle would only work with the XL model, so the wider compatibility will no doubt be welcome news to current Vudu owners.)

A quick scan of Vudu's inventory today listed 5,075 movies--101 of which are in high-def. See our earlier Crave posting to see how that compares with offerings from Apple TV, Xbox Video Marketplace, and Amazon Unbox (available on TiVo). Also of note: Gizmodo's recent video quality shootout between the first three.

Unlock its secrets.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

This week I perused the demo version of an upcoming product that promises to unlock the secrets of the iPhone by telling you about all sorts of secret tips and tricks. It's About Time to learn iPhone, as the product is called, is offered by a small Silicon Valley company that exhibited at last month's Macworld. I met Saied Ghaffari while I was there and he told me about an online demo, which I only now got around to trying (the GSMA World Congress got in the way).

The demo only showcased a selection of tips for the Safari browser but a couple were interesting. Some were obvious, I already knew how to bookmark a Web pages and open multiple Safari pages, but I didn't know about the one-step process for getting to the top of a Web page or how to use the convenient shortcut for including a link in an e-mail. The instructional process is very easy to use. Saied himself appears in a little window and guides you through the steps using an onscreen iPhone graphic.

It's About Time to learn iPhone will be available in Apple stores by early April, or you can download it off the company's Web site around that time. The price will be $29.95. Once it comes out, I'll give it a full review to see all the tips it has to offer.

Want an iPhone, but have a BlackBerry? You ought to look at bPhone for BlackBerry, a theme whipped up by 25-year-old computer programmer Matthew Rogers one afternoon last September.

(Credit: CNET Networks)

You'll most appreciate the iPhone-like essence of one of Rogers' three theme layouts in the start screen, though the theme does also extend into the style of the context menu. "Icon" is the most typical theme, and the one that Rogers most prefers. "Zen" drops icons into a side bar, and "Today" makes a day planner of the home screen. You can install any or all of the themes, and activate them from BlackBerry's Advanced Options menu.

bPhone's default aquatic background (you can change the wallpaper) is overlain with rounded-corner box icons reminiscent of the iPhone. Rogers confided he built all the icons from scratch, though he borrowed from iPhone's looks, and had to compromise some style (a partially transparent BlackBerry menu) with functionality (it crashed Google Maps) while implementing the Plazmic Content Developer's Kit.

Third-party apps don't have icons, so if you're not into a dual-themed display, bPhone may not be for you.

bPhone is free, as are Rogers' other themes, though he'll gladly accept $1, $2, $5, and $10 donations.

Skyfire's start page, plus a browsing toolbar for touchscreen phones.

(Credit: Skyfire)

Skyfire, the latest mobile browsing upstart, has been touted as faster, cleaner, and smarter than its competitors, and that's before it was released in private beta. It's easy to praise an app when it's first being demoed, and another story when users and reviewers can get their hands on a living specimen. Frankly, the hype is overblown. While Skyfire has its perks--very nice ones--it hasn't won the competition yet.

Like Opera Mini (see video), Skyfire uses a proxy server to help render pages and control text flow. Also like Opera Mini, Skyfire utilizes a mouse and takes advantage of zooming to jump from a microscopic full-page view to a legible text size by navigating the rectangular zoom field to a starting point before activating it. After that, scrolling takes you around at the same zoom percentage until you click something else.

Zoomed in on Wikipedia.com.

(Credit: Skyfire)

Skyfire's start screen is a simple, attractive triple-tiered header that makes use of a search bar, bookmarks, browsing history, and features tab, the latter whose contents include pre-chosen links for popular sports, news, social networks, and video sources. Think CNN, eBay, and YouTube and go from there.

You can do the usual URL entry, bookmarking, and refreshing, but one differentiator is Skyfire's quasi search egalitarianism. Not only does a search yield Google and Yahoo results in separate tabs, it also has tabs for searching images, videos, and maps.

So, how good is Skyfire's Flash video playback? This is Skyfire's triumph, but also its weak point. A YouTube video was slow to buffer and rather pixelated. Automatically tipping the video on its side would have at least made better use of screen space; instead it played in only the top portion of the screen, an inch-and-a-half diagonal on my test phone. The fact that Skyfire doesn't yet recognize your hardware and adjust video size accordingly means that users with a vertical rectangular screen see a lobbed-off picture when zooming in to a horizontal video.

Pint-size videos chug along on small screens.

(Credit: Skyfire)

Overall, Skyfire does achieve a relatively comparable desktop browsing experience. With the exception of two unobtrusive soft keys on a keypad phone and an additional toolbar on a touchscreen phone, all signs of the browser disappear in page view. There's a lot the browser doesn't do yet that the much more established Opera Mini does, but there's also tremendous room for sophisticated growth.

To try Skyfire on Windows Mobile phones versions 5 and up, sign up for the closed beta on Skyfire's site. Symbian users, we hear it's your turn next.

Related articles:
*Skyfire brings desktop-quality browsing
*Will Opera Mobile perform for free?

Not all games have been optimized for the iPhone equally. In fact, I found quite a few clunkers that seemed to exist only to take your cash, advertise dubious services, or bombard you with cut-rate graphics. Shudder. These five games, added just this month, test your strategy and timing while offering above-average graphics.

Don't forget to review the games on CNET Download.com, or serve up your own favorites in the comments below.

501 Darts is a two-player strategy game that pits you against your cutthroat iPhone. The goal is to roll down your points from 400 to zero by lobbing darts where it counts--in the highest point zones possible. Tap the red button once to set your horizon and once again to choose the vertical axis. Then watch the arrows fly. The game is fun, but lacks settings to change the game style, pause or save a game, or even reduce the points if you want a shorter game.

501 Darts is free, supported by a banner ad that doesn't obstruct the graphics, though it certainly won't beautify them either.

The same publisher, Ion Games, brings you Golf Driving Range, which uses similar horizontal and vertical bars tirelessly vacillating between extremes to set the direction and strength with which you hit. It behooves players to also pay attention to wind direction and the course schematic while planning their shots. The iPhone's timing eluded me for the first two games, but as I started getting the hang of how to plan my taps, frustration melted into personal challenge.

You can always tell Sudoku sovereigns by their intense, withdrawn stare. Addicts of the Japanese puzzle game can solve a daily conundrum for free, and ad-free, with Radworkz Daily Puzzles. Insert a digit into the appropriate square by tapping the square once and selecting from the number wheel.

Sometimes the simplest game is the most satisfying. Connect4 touch is one of those. The iPhone-generation's high-tech take on the classic two-player game again matches wits with your Apple's AI to see which player can line up four colored circles first. This one is ad-supported, but once you click the "play" bar below the ad, the game is nuisance-free.

A new day, a new puzzle--that's iFreecell's philosophy. Each day, tiles of three designs are shuffled into a 64-square grid. Your job is to remove the tiles by clicking the designs--but those social tiles only disappear when they have a companion. Use your noggin to click away the adjacent or stacked tiles without leaving any singletons behind.