Today, PSFK points us to another web gem. This time it’s a post about pre-experience design. That’s (apparently) what brainy ad folk call your expectation of the product, built up by the various things you’ve heard about it. The shining example is the ubiquitous iPhone ads that made everyone want to be able to turn their phone sideways and “pinch” to zoom. Creating the experience starts before anyone buys an iPhone, the argument goes. If you really want to enjoy that wine, he suggests, you should start by buying an expensive glass.

What all this has to do with style»

The phone wars have been heating up for a while, resulting in a bumper crop of cool gadgets and racking up a few casualties along the way. First the RAZR, then the iPhone…then the Diamond?

With Motorola’s phone division a distant memory and Apple looking surprisingly shaky, Microsoft is aiming to clean up with its Diamond, a new handheld that handles all the usual webbery but possibly with slightly more panache. And a full ounce lighter, which is what has the gadget-heads excited.

More on the Diamond»

Remember those carefree childhood days of assembling kites and replacing fan belts? Yeah, us neither. Apparently we were missing out.

Popular Mechanics has a “you kids” piece (via Neatorama) about the erosion of manual skills, most notably changing tires. It’s true that we’ve rarely seen it in the relatively frequent “things every man should know” circulating through upscale men’s mags. At the same time, PSFK is warning we’re counting on computers to do too much of our thinking for us. Maybe it’s time to bust out the slide rule. We’ve got some brushing up to do.

We’ve always assumed there was nothing wrong with a dedicated follower of fashion slipping an iPhone into his jacket, but it may be time to revise that opinion. Sometimes it helps to know where you are without having to check Google Maps. And if you happen to get a flat, you can break out the real tools.

The touchscreen-only phone was a good idea. A very good idea, in fact. So it’s only natural that the rest of the world is still catching up.

Blackberry’s latest model is definitely riding in the wake of a certain much-heralded, much-reported, Jobs-endorsed model we won’t bother to mention, but it has a certain charm all its own, including a remarkably solid email platform. Which was supposed be the point…right?

Plus, you won’t have to bother with AT&T.

Although we love a good Blackberry now and then, our heart belongs to the iPhone for one simple reason: the programs.

We got an extra boost today, when our favorite tech-savvy producer weighed in. The last time we checked in he was putting out an album with his old Talking Heads chum David Byrne, but this time around he’s taking the experimental route. He’s put together a music program called Bloom for the iPhone that creates music based on the user’s touch. (Those are the high-tech controls on the left; each bubble plays its own sound.) It’s an example of Eno’s pet project of generative music, but all you really need to know is that it’s a musical toy that could only exist on a touchscreen phone, and it’ll only set you back four dollars.

Just the thing to keep you occupied until Google gets its act together.

As it turns out, this doesn’t come from Apple itself but from a very devoted Japanese farmer who put stickers on them halfway through the season. Still, it’s only a matter of time before the marketers of the world get their hands on our fruit.

Maybe we’ll just eat the logos first.

Blackberry’s touchscreen model (the poorly named Blackberry Storm) is finally out and, while we knew they were aiming for the boring-businessman demographic, we have to say, it’s a lot less remarkable than we thought.

We understand the appeal of stripped-down utilitarianism as much as anyone, but once you’re throwing in a camera and media player, there’s no good reason not to have a Pandora application and a bubbly generative music program. And, you know, a map or two.

For a while there, we were genuinely excited about internet culture. Smart phones like the iPhone and the gPhone were going to spawn small-scale apps that would be smart, entertaining, and elevate humanity forever.

But today we learned that the top-selling app on the iPhone is iFart. When you click the buttons, it makes farting sounds. And according to VentureBeat, it’s selling more than 10,000 copies a day.

Sigh.

Style has moved fast enough for long enough that no designer would have trouble making an outfit to perfectly signify 1983, 1974, or 1962. In fact, more than a few designers have contented themselves to do just that. The technology of photography has been moving just as fast, but while fashion has been dealing in nostalgia for upwards of 30 years, the photographers are just starting to catch on.

Here’s a hint: iPhones are involved»

We’re used to buying complete packages, and the iPhone certainly looked like one. Lately though, it seems more and more like what we bought was just an empty box waiting to be filled up with awesome. And they’re finally getting around to it.

Exhibit A: the Coachella app that keeps you up to date with all the showtimes and lets you plot your own course through the madness of the festival. If only there were some kind of social network…

Exhibit B: The best work we’ve seen from Trent Reznor since those videos that terrified your parents. We’re talking about the Nine Inch Nails iPhone app, which brings together just about everything you could want.

Let us count the ways»

Street art has always been a bit too politically prickly to fit in with the web 2.0 crowd…but that’s no reason to stop trying. After all, populism is populism, and if street artists managed to make nice with auction houses, who’s to say they can’t fit a few iPhones into their repertoire?

Adidas’s new Urban Art Guide (via NotCot) is one of the first tries, and it handles it as well as could be hoped…at least, if you live in Berlin.

More on the Urban Art Guide»

Principles: In this one case, we will relax our no-tolerance stance on ripped jeans. [Denimology]

Obie, Won: The Off-Broadway theater awards are much, much saucier than we thought. As in, NSFW. [Gawker]

Yes We Cannes: The Moment’s Cannes Diary, as we see it, reads something like this. Pedro Almódovar is fantastic, Willem Dafoe is very cool, and Lars von Trier has lost his damn mind. [The Moment]

Sound Bombing: An iPhone app takes music generative and viral at the same time. We’re not sure what that means either. [PSFK]

Radio has had a lot of fun jumping into the internet age, but Sirius XM has come surprisingly late to the game. Their satellite radio app is gradually making its way to the iPhone, which is good news for anyone who’s already a subscriber, but the timing could be a bit better.

By now, Pandora and a few web radio apps have already staked out the iPhone’s music section, along with the iTunes, which enjoys a pretty serious home-court advantage. Sirius has volume on their side—hundreds of channels broadcasting 24 hours a day adds up to a lot of tunes—and enough resources to put together something genuinely exciting. As to what they’ll come up with…we’ll have to stay tuned.

Apple just finished their annual developer conference, where they rolled out a new line of MacBooks and the iPhone 3GS, but otherwise the pickings were pretty slim.

There were a handful of new features that non-Apple firms have been refining for years (voice commands, MMS, and remote medical tech among others) along with a long string of incremental updates, but the most impressive function was something they picked up from a 30 Rock episode. Absent-minded techies: your time has come.

Find out why»

Say It Is So: In the wake of the apparently real Leighton Meester sex tape, Alex Balk makes sense of it all. [The Awl]

Revenge of the Fallen Critics: Surprisingly, the emerging critical consensus on Transformers 2 is less than sunny. [Movieline]

On Vibrate: The first iPhone vibrator makes it to the Apple store, and the world will never be the same. [Gizmodo]

Back in the Day: Refinery29 puts together a father’s day gallery with some of the previous generation’s best specimens. Apparently Phil Oh’s dad was a badass. [Refinery29]

It’s Hard Out There For a Model: Jezebel’s formerly anonymous model is beautiful. Also, disillusioned. Where’s Antonioni when you need him? [Jezebel]

If You Outlaw Nudity, Only Outlaws Will Be Nude: Scantily clad women finally make it onto the iPhone, courtesy of Sports Illustrated. [TechCrunch]

Are You Ready for the Country: The turbulent genius of Mr. George Jones. [A. V. Club]

The Commitment Drug: Party people pop oxytocin, also callled the trust hormone. But who knows who you’ll wake up engaged to? [BoingBoing]

You can usually count on Apple to be at least one gadget ahead of everyone else. So now that iPhones are rendering the average iPod obsolete, it’s a pretty safe bet they’ve got a third item up their sleeve ready to change the game yet again.

It’s all still guesses, but the smart money is on a tablet computer dropping just in time for Christmas, codenamed Cocktail and resembling either an enormous iPod touch or a hyper-intelligent dinner tray. (The above pic is an unofficial rendering, naturally.) It’s a gadget type that’s been seen at press events for years now, most notably from Microsoft, but they’ve never quite made it into stores. More importantly, it’s the ideal tool for the artsy endeavors Apple specializes in—graphic design, software editing, digital collage, and so on—provided they can convince their users to get rid of that keyboard.

It’s the human condition: We spend our lives in pursuit of happiness with no guide or direction as to what will fulfill us spiritually. We waste time on shallow pleasures, stumbling blindly towards a suggestion of joy, but lacking the means to even comprehend our own needs.

Clearly, this is a job for the iPhone.

Track Your Happiness (via PSFK) is an iPhone app that spot-checks your general well-being at random points throughout the day and after a few months, produces a fully rounded assessment of your emotional hot spots. You may discover you’re fairly reliably buzzed a few hours after a gym visit. After a six-hour Twilight Zone marathon? Not so much.

Use it right, and it might just lead you to a more balanced and fulfilling life…provided you can stop playing Tetris long enough to work it out.

Hey, Blondie: The JC Report sings the praises of Ms. Debbie Harry. [JC Report]

I Wish I Could Quit You: Michael Arrington has had enough of the iPhone. Expect some blowback from this one. [TechCrunch]

Bat Boy Lives: The Weekly World News archives go online. [Gawker]

No Bark: Creature featurer Guillermo del Toro on the enduring appeal of the vampire. Apparently Lord Byron has a lot to answer for. [NYTimes]

iPhone art is still a pretty new game, but so far the big innovators are coming from Madison Avenue, not Silicon Valley.

This GeoArt app was cooked up for MoMa by a tech-minded ad man named Daniel Shapiro, but it’s more the kind of thing you’d expect to find in the portfolio of an up-and-coming developer. Load it up the next time you’re out for a walk and it’ll trace an etch-a-sketch line along your exact path. After a few weeks of walking, you’ll end up with a haphazard, arbitrary and intensely personal set of scribbles, printed out bearing the MoMa logo and the slogan “Art is Everywhere.” It’s a cool gadget that managed to slip through the cracks under the guise of advertising, a trend we’re hoping to see more of as the ad world limbers up. How does it help out MoMa? We’d call it the Medici business model…

These EarPollution Timbres have been out for a few months, but they’re just now rising to the top of our audiophile pile, for a couple of reasons. For one, those wooden nubs aren’t just for show: They act as anchors for the mini-speakers, providing acoustic backing that allows for a thicker mid-range, bass that’s present without being overpowering and…well, better sound.

But more importantly, they’re equipped for the new generation of player/phones. If you’ve got the Timbres plugged into your iPhone and your boss happens to call in the middle of a drum solo, you can carry on talking thanks to a microphone planted on the cord at chin level.

Which leads us to the most recent addition to the gentlemanly code: As with all Bluetooth headsets, if you aren’t using it right this minute, you should probably take it out of your ears. Consider yourself warned.

So far, iPhone cases tended towards the organic. We’d wager that most of the sleeves you’ve actually seen in use are either leather, woodgrain or some variation on matte black.

Which means the world of the iPhone case is ripe for a little new wave jolt.

This jagged black-and-white shell comes from Gareth Pugh, with a little help from Colette and AnOther magazine and a laptop case in tow. It manages to avoid both the usual organic patterns and the friendly-alien aesthetic you find at your friendly neighborhood Apple store, in favor of something that might be more at home on an album cover.

Let’s just hope your mp3 collection can keep up.

Chalk it up to the long tail if you want, but niche tastes are starting to get their due on the iPhone. It started with ambient museum pieces…but now developers have worked their way around to something a little more fun.

Outsider troubadour Daniel Johnston just released his first iPhone app, a Mario-style platform-jumping game featuring characters from his artwork, music from his recordings and the same sense of addled optimism that pervades just about everything he does. The froglike main character should look familiar from a mural or a t-shirt or two, but this is the first time we’ve actually seen him jump.

If you’re looking for it in the iTunes shop, the game is titled “Hi, How Are You,” after the mural’s inscription. (We’re guessing “Jeremiah the Innocent” wasn’t catchy enough.)

See the trailer»

Nice Pants: Also, a certified health counselor. The more you know… [The World’s Best Ever]

Off the Board: The National Film Board of Canada takes a break from inspiring ambient techno to produce our new favorite iPhone video app. [LifeHacker]

He Had it Coming: Dave Bry recounts being punched in the face at a Pixies show in 1991. [The Awl]

Forever: RZA makes the book tour rounds, continues to be the coolest person alive. [A.V. Club]

The ad world is still figuring out exactly what to do with the iPhone, but an early test case was unveiled last night. Instead of a print campaign or a TV spot, the campaign for the new Volkswagen GTI is leading off with an iPhone game.

Real Racing GTI is a standard 3D racer—remarkably similar to the unbranded Real Racing, except that winning enters you into a weekly sweepstakes and every car in the game is Volkswagen’s new 2010 GTI. That means you’ll get a firsthand, mobile look at the dashboard, and no matter how you drive, a VW always wins.

As a game, it’s not much to write home about; but as marketing, it’s one of the bolder moves we’ve seen this year. VW drivers are a pretty tech-y bunch to begin with, giving away a car a week will draw a fair number of them to the app, and in the process both the GTI and the iPhone will get a whole lot of converts. Maybe the Android folks should give Vespa a call.

The iPhone’s been ruling the gadget world for upwards of two years now, but it’s finally got a worthy competitor. As of today, it’ll be splitting the gadget-obsessed market share with the Motorola Droid, a Google-powered, open source contender for the title of Best Phone Ever.

The big additions are a Blackberry-style physical keyboard for those tired of touchscreen tapping, along with a supercharged navigation system courtesy of Google Maps, but the real pull is a chance to get a little techier. Unlike the iPhone, the Droid lets you customize just about everything about the interface, with the help of third-party apps, downloadable skins and old-fashioned tinkering. If you feel like making the gadget your own, it’s easy to do—unlike the iPhone, which will always belong to the folks at Cupertino.

If you’re looking for a more thorough blow-by-blow, we recommend this one…but at this point, you might as well just see it for yourself.

Print magazines have been having a pretty rough year, but by our lights, the glossy-pic-and-glossy-ad formula still has some life left in it. Especially if you’ve got an iPhone.

A high-fashion aggregator called Distill just launched their third issue and their first foray into the world of mobile magazining, currently available for a comparatively steep $5 in the iTunes shop. Inside, you’ll find a bundle of editorial wisdom drawn from magazines like Vice, Interview and Acne Paper, along with ads from Swatch, who’s footing the bill. The business side is still a little bit murky, but if it pays off, you may be getting a lot more of your style wisdom on the go.

Of course, we’ll always have a sentimental weakness for blogs…

The road trip is one of the most enduringly low-tech pastimes—all you need is gasoline and patience. But if you had an iPhone handy, it probably wouldn’t hurt.

On the Road is a website/smartphone app designed specifically for highway meandering, offering location-pegged blogging tools to map out every last memorable spot for in a 21st century travelogue. You’ll be able to upload pictures, video and whatever musings you can muster via their iPhone and Android apps, or just blog-worthy text messages for the low-tech. Fair warning: This does not mean you’re too cool for postcards.

If you left Inglourious Basterds with a free-floating desire for Nazi blood…you’re not alone.

Stranded without a game version—something about “cinema,” we’re not sure—a group of free-floating basterphiles has taken a vigilante approach to the problem, creating a side-scrolling scalpfest for the iPhone that allows players to shoot and slash their way to 100 Nazi pelts. Sadly, they aren’t working their way towards a theatrical finale—really the setting and scalp fixation are the only things in common with the film—but it should still be good for keeping any holiday flights interesting…and bumping Tarantino a few notches up in your yearly top 10 list.

High Marks: We’re guessing this picture was taken somewhere in South America. [BModels]

Give ‘em the Boot: Mark McNairy and Engineered Garments join forces for an Alden-esque high boot. Awesome stuff. [A Continuous Lean]

The Electronic Bay: A gentleman’s guide to shopping on eBay. [Put This On]

Shiny Things: The last colorful iPhone case you will ever need. Shouldn’t they be moving onto the Nexus by now? [CoolHunting]

Miranda Rights: We’re joining the campaign to save the job of a banker caught looking at Miranda Kerr pictures online. Specifically, this Miranda Kerr picture. Passion is not a crime! [Boing Boing]

I Watch for the Ads: 38 Years of Superbowl commercials at your fingertips. [AdLand]

Chill Out: Empire names Batman & Robin the worst film of all time. Apparently, they’re just not fans of “freeze” puns. [Empire Online]

Let’s Get Lost: A gentleman’s guide to turning your iPhone into a small, pixel-y television. [Lifehacker]

Contortionists: The girls in AnOther Magazine always look kind of uncomfortable. [Fashion Copious]

Fare Thee Well: The final Alexander McQueen men’s line. Chavvy stuff, but in a good way. [ViewonFashion]

The Terrifying Future: Much like the champagne room, there is no sex on the iPhone. [TechCrunch]

The Tumblr of the Week: It’s pretty much what it sounds like. [BabieswithLaserEyes]