For anyone who has an iPhone you probably already know that there are plenty of iPhone apps at the iTunes App Store. For those new to owning a iPhone, some apps come at a cost while there are many others free to download.

I have close to 50 apps loaded onto my phone, but in reality there are only a handful that I use on a daily basis.

As the App Store is about to hit 1 billion downloads, here are “5 Must Have Free Apps” that I find to be great.

• TwitterFon – Yes Twitter is just about everywhere nowadays. From P. Diddy, to your local News Channel it seems that everyone has a Twitter account. The great thing about TwitterFon is that you have a menu bar on your screen which lets you sort through your Friends, Replies, Messages, Favorites and an option to Search. View profiles, see timelines and be able to retweet makes this my go to Twitter app.
• Google – Even if you don’t have a Google Account to make use of the Gmail, Calendar, Docs etc. features, just installing this app for the the Google Search feature is worth it. If you search using the google search bar using the iPhones built in Safari browser you will see the same results as you would on your computer If you use the Google App search you will get results tailored to your location. Not to mention search by voice is pretty cool.
• Fandango – Need to check what’s playing at your local theatre? Pop in your Zip Code and you are all set. Never tried to buy tickets through it but it is an option if your theatre supports it.
• Free Wi-Fi Locator – Using your current location this little app returns the nearest locations that offer Free Wi-Fi. This is not to be confused with other apps such as WiFinder which just searches for the nearest Wi-Fi locations.
• Pandora – Streaming music to your iPhone based on your choices. Listen to a song or two and Pandora will start to recommend music based on what you just heard. Create specific stations for different genres and enjoy free streamed music.

The above are only a handful of great apps so also check out: Skype, Mint.com, Facebook, AIM, Brightkite, Urbanspoon, Yelp and iTalk, you won’t be disappointed.

Have an app that you love? Please leave a comment and let me know, free or paid I love downloading and testing out new apps!

Uh, oh.

Those were the words that came out of my mouth this morning when I checked my email on my iPhone. For those registered to Adjix you may have received an email from the company announcing their new advertising format in which Twitter users will be able to embed an ad at the end of their Twitter Tweets in order to monetize off of their number of followers.

Adjix’s current ad program is based on link shrinking and including a text link on the top portion of the site as long as you are logged into your account on Adjix when shortening your link.

What’s actually useful about Adjix is that they offer several features such as the ability to track the number of clicks your unique shortened link receives. Not only are stats recorded for links with ads but there is an option to shrink a link without an ad, and yes you will still be able to track clicks for that URL.

Do people actually use the service for click tracking and not to serve ads?
Yes. More importantly one of the Twitter elite, @guykawasaki uses the Adjix service very frequently(to shrink and record stats) and if you visit his Twitter stream you will see that most, if not all of his links begin with http://adjix.com.

Adjix has a video demo of their new feature as well as details on their blog outlining Advertiser Info, Twitter User Info and how to install their bookmarklet in order to start embedding ads into your Tweets.

Luckily for me the only person I follow that uses Adjix is @guykawasaki, but the thought of monetizing on Tweets to a large list of followers may cause several to sign up and start using Adjix’s new ad embed. If so, we very well may see more Tweets as the mock put out by Adjix.

If you are on a shared hosting plan with 1&1 it’s relatively easy to create a new MySQL Database for your WordPress installation.

Creating Your New Database
Just sign into your account and navigate to Web Space & Access and then to MySQL Administration. Click on “New Database” and you will be prompted to name your new database along with the option of choosing between MySQL 4.0 and MySQL 5.0 for your new database. WordPress Requirements state that WordPress need PHP 4.3 or higher to function properly although a few plugins require that you use PHP 5 to function. Choose PHP 5 and your database will begin setup.

Since we created a new database and chose the option of MySQL your database is using PHP 5 right? Unfortunately that’s not the case.

Checking Your PHP Version by Creating a phpinfo.php File
1&1 will have your new database running PHP 4.4.9. Easiest way to check what version of PHP you are running is to create a phpinfo.php file and insert the following.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Upload this file to your directory and open phpinfo.php in your web browser.

The information at the top of this window will display the version of PHP that you are running.

Forcing 1&1 to Use PHP 5
It only takes 2 lines added to your .htaccess to force 1&1 to use a version of PHP 5. Add the following to the first 2 lines in your .htaccess file.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php
AddHandler x-mapp-php5 .php

Once you make the edits to your .htaccess upload it to your directory and once again open phpinfo.php in your web browser. You should now be able to see that your database is using PHP 5

I held off on updating several WordPress installs to due to the fear of a few plugins not being compatible.  I updated one installation today only to have my stomach hit the floor when I received an “Error 500 Internal Server Error” message once the update was complete.

Luckily the site was still functional but I could not access the admin section.  A quick search and I was able to find an article by Ajit Gaddam surprisingly enough called Solution to Error 500 after upgrading to WordPress 2.7.

—
Ajit’s fix:

This seems to be a problem for WordPress blogs which are hosted by 1&1
The solution to the Error 500 – Internal Server error
1. Create a file called “php.ini” in the /wp-admin/ directory of your blog
2. In the file add the text “memory = 20MB” without the quotes

—

What is odd is that I have installed a fresh install of WordPress 2.7 on a 1&1 server with no issues, but experienced this error only when upgrading to WordPress 2.7.