If you think that you may have a sexually transmitted disease (“STD”, which used to be known as “VD”, or venereal disease or – as it’s known in the UK – sexually transmitted infection or “STI”), such as syphilis, herpes, chlamydia or gonorrhea, or even HIV, and want to get yourself tested without having to leave your house, well, now there’s an app for that. Or, there will be, once the eSTI project goes from prototype to drug store.

The Handy Light iPhone app was an iPhone flashlight app with a difference: it enabled iPhone tethering. Tethering – using your cell phone as a modem to connect your laptop to the Internet – is one of the most demanded features on cellphones and, being not allowed on iPhones, has long been the Holy Grail among iPhone owners. In fact the desire to tether with an iPhone is one of the main reasons that users Jailbreak (root) their iPhones.

As we discussed earlier, Consumer Reports has issued a “can’t recommend” warning for the iPhone 4, based on the reception problems. However, in the process of testing the iPhone 4.0 issues, they did find a quick, cheap fix for the problem. It’s not pretty, but apparently it does work.

While Apple has been trying to pass the buck on the iPhone 4 reception problems, no less a venerable institution than Consumer Reports itself has said that it has tested the iPhone 4.0 hardware and found it to blame for the iPhone 4.0 reception issues that have been widely reported. In a blog post entitled “Why Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone 4”, and subtitled “Apple iPhone 4 design defect confirmed”, on the ConsumerReports.org website, Consumer Reports says “It’s official.”

It was only a matter of time before the legal world and the iPhone app world merged. There are now several iPhone applications that purport to help you to get divorced, by providing information, calculations and, at least by inference, advice (although of course they can’t call it legal advice without risking being hit for unauthorized practice of law – or, as we in the biz call it, UPL).

In a much-hoped for move, Skype and Skype Out now work with 3G, at least on the iPhone and iPad. The bad news is that Skype-to-Skype calls on 3G will cost you money (after a free period that lasts through at least August, and maybe through the end of the year).

iPhones will join any old hotspot so long as it claims to be an attwifi hotspot, says a researcher who discovered the security hole this week. This security hole can lead unsuspecting iPhone users to give up all sorts of personal information to anyone who knows how to change the name of their wireless access point.

By now everyone knows the story: Last week a person who was supposedly Apple engineer Gray Powell supposedly lost what was supposedly an iPhone 4G prototype, in a bar in Redwood City, California (a mere stone’s throw from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters). Then a third-party supposedly found the alleged iPhone 4G test model, and then somehow it got to Gizmodo, where they tested it, disassembled it, pronounced it the real deal, and blogged about it, complete with pictures. Now Apple has sent a demand letter, demanding the unit back. This proves that the story, and the phone, are real. Or does it?

Judging by the searches we get for iPod Phone and Zune Phone (and even “I Phone”), it’s clear that what people really want more than anything is a truly convergent device – one device that does it all. It’s an iPod, it’s a phone, it’s a video player, it’s a radio, it’s an email device – it’s Wonder Phone! While the iPhone (I Phone) is essentially an iPod Phone, people are still wanting something more – will the much-awaited Zune Phone (and rumoured Zune store) really statisfy their cravings? Read on…

“This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons”, the ominous error message reads. What does it mean? Well, it’s no secret that Apple hates it when people jailbreak their iPhones (of course if Apple would give them what they want, they wouldn’t feel compelled to have jailbroken iPhones – jailbreaking iPhones happens when iPhone owners can’t get at the things that they want, that they know the phone can do, but which Apple has crippled). Now people with jailbroken iPhones are starting to receive the “This Apple ID has been disabled for security reasons” error message, and have confirmed that their Apple ID (which, among other things, gives you access to the iPhone app store) has been disabled. So, what it means is that Apple has started denying access to iPhones which have been jailbroken.

Dan Woolley, an American who was trapped and buried for nearly 3 days (65 hours, to be exact) when the hotel that he was staying at in Haiti collapsed on top of him, says that he owes his very life and limb to the emergency first aid application that he had on his iPhone, to setting his iPhone to sound an alarm every 20 minutes, and to the flash on his camera.

ATandT has responded to the Fake Steve Jobs’ Operation Chokehold which exhorts AT and T users to protest ATandT’s lousy data network service by clogging the service with solid data usage for an hour this Friday (tomorrow) from noon to 1:00 p.m. PST. ATandT’s response reveals that decent 3G network coverage isn’t the only thing lacking from ATandT’s lineup – they also have no sense of humor.

In response to AT and T begging their iPhone customers to stop using so much data as it brings down their substandard network, the Fake Steve Jobs has suggested that everyone participate in “Operation Chokehold”, a national hour of using as much AT and T bandwidth as possible, to force AT and T to say “Uncle” and do something about their network. Although the Fake Steve Jobs says it was all in jest, the joke may be on AT and T if enough people participate in Operation Choke Hold, spoof or not. Operation Chokehold is scheduled (or not) for this Friday, December 18th, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m., PST.

Just this past week we told you about a vulnerability that all jailbreaked iPhones are at risk for, due to there being a default root password for SSH that most people who jailbreak their iPhones don’t (know to) change. Now, taking advantage of that same ‘default root password’ issue, countless jailbroke iPhone owners are finding Rick Astley’s mug on their iPhone, as jailbroken iPhones get “rickrolled” by the Ikee worm. (A “rickroll” (“rick roll”) is a fad that started a couple of years ago when, inexplicably, the video of Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” became the visual punchline to tricks played across the Internet, with links to supposedly topical content actually taking the user to the Astley video. To get so tricked is to get “rick rolled”.)

A Dutch hacker has demonstrated that jailbreaking your iPhone opens it up to a hack that allows your jailbroken iPhone to be easily accessed and remotely controlled. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you shouldn’t jail break your iPhone (or that you should, we pass no judgement on the act of jailbreaking an iPhone), but it does mean that if you are going to jailbreak your iPhone, you need to know how to close the security hole you will create (or already have created) by jailbreaking your iPhone.