A line ran down the street at the downtown San Francisco Apple store as Steve Jobs announced customers would have to wait an entire month for the new iPhone 3G, Mobile Me, GPS and video games at the nearby Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). Some customers had reportedly been waiting for days.

July 11th has come up fast, but that didn't stopped other third-party companies from doing their iPhone modifications early. It may be a good idea to look at what else is available, as not all of the awesome products and software announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will be out exactly on Friday.

In fact, some innovations are already happening on the video game front. At the WWDC we saw Super Monkey Ball as well as a slew of other work-in-progress puzzle, action and adventure games.

The visuals were impressive and the response time seemed decent. However, the companies were rather reticent when it came to actual release dates - as in none were announced.

And as interesting as the "upcoming" titles are, the previews pale compared to the bootleg games coming down the pipe, games that, because of legal reasons, may never be available directly through Apple's distribution channels.

For instance, temper4iphone emulates the NEC TurboGrafx-16 on the iPhone. Released in the late '80s, the TurboGrafx-16 was a technically advanced, but often forgotten system competing with the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. (It played the proverbial Sprite to Coke and Pepsi.) The system had many notable games, including the mascot-filled Bonk's Adventure, the pinball classic Alien Crush and the first version of the groundbreaking brawler Street Fighter.

Currently in early limited beta phase, temper4iphone seems to successfully emulate the 16-bit machine. Based on a recently released YouTube video (see below), temper4iphone stays accurate to the original games audiowise and visually, though the audio did seem to drop out at times.

A semi-translucent control pad scheme appears on the bottom half of the screen (like the original, it is composed of a flat crosspad joystick a la Nintendo, two option buttons and two action buttons). The top has the compressed video game screen. It can run horizontally or vertically, but, according to the preview, it runs slower in landscape mode.

More info on the temper4iphone is available here.

On a more mundane (and legal) level, Google started beta testing its new Reader for iPhone. Previously covered in this column, the new Google Reader will have more robust item scanning - for specific news clips and blogs. It will also allow item management all from one page. The current version requires flipping through multiple screens to delete, save or retrieve posts.

You can test drive the beta version at www.google.com/reader/i/, though there is no word on how long it will be available or when the final version will be done.

Barnes & Noble has, at last, actually created a mobile store. Available at www.bn.com/mobile, it simplifies the book-finding and buying process into three items: Category, Search and Store. First, choose the Category, which includes Book and ISBN (a 10-digit code on the back of the book the equivalent of a UPC) as well as DVD, Music and Video Games. Search is the keywords you'll use to find it. Press the Search button to look up the item. You can then refine your search or, if you find the item, press on it to learn more, buy the book or save it on your wish list.

Buying books, putting in credit card numbers and such, may be a bit much for the mobile space, but the Store option is valuable. Simply type in the zip code and you'll find the Barnes & Noble stores closest to you. Also, once you find the item you need, you can do the Store search and find out if your local store has it in stock.

About the Author
A regular writer for Playboy and New York Post, Damon Brown wrote the "Pocket Idiot's Guide to the iPhone" (Alpha/Penguin Books), the first book on the iPhone. His next book, "Porn & Pong: How Grand Theft Auto, Tomb Raider and Other Sexy Games Changed Modern Pop Culture," will be out September 2008.