The iPhone port of EA’s hugely awaited “Spore” game titled “Spore Origins” was released yesterday, the game managed to find it’s way into Today’s “Let’s Rock” event as well. Steve Jobs used it to showcase the iPhone as a mobile gaming platform and talked about how everyone loves Spore. So after a day of game play around town on the iPhone, how good is it?

It’s good, it’s real good! Spore Origin’s focus is on the first stage of the PC/Mac game where you are a simple multi cell organism swimming around in a microscopic world. The goal of the game is pretty straight forward, eat or be eaten.

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Saurik the creator of Cydia which appears to be the new defacto standard for installing 3rd party homebrew apps on your jailbroken iPhone, has released ‘Cycorder’ a free iPhone video recorder App, opting to use on-screen text ads rather than charging users. It’s a great alternative to the buggy ‘iPhone Video Recorder’ App which requires you pay after you’ve recorded 30 videos limited to 30 seconds each. The previously reviewed Qik will capture audio & video for free but requires you to be connected to a WiFi connection to steam the video to their service.

Cycorder can be installed via Cydia in the ‘Multimedia’ section.

Cycorder offers 6 - 15 frames per second depending on lighting and movement using MJPEG compression at 384×288 (4×3) screen resolution. This gives Cycorder an edge when it comes to video quality by sacrificing the small file size offered by the competition. You can watch videos on the iPhone itself or to really see the quality of the video you can download them to your computer. MOV extension video files can be found in the ‘/private/var/mobile/Media/Videos/’ folder on your iPhone. Unfortunately audio is still in the works and is expected in a future release.

Click the ‘more…’ link to see an example video, the latest in the Alias420’s boring apartment video series.

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Recently the power button on my iPhone failed, luckily I was able to use the iReboot app to turn off the unit or lock the keypad (reboot springboard). But this made doing things like DFU or Restore mode a real pain in the ass. Noticing a company advertising in our Google AdSense ads with the link ‘Toronto iPhone Repair’ I clicked through to investigate (who knew those ads could actually be useful?). The link landed me at TechKnowSpace.com. To my great fortune they are located about 2 blocks from my home and could replace the power button within an hour for $89CAD.

I took the long 5 minute walk over to Front st & Spadina st right in the downtown core of Toronto and dropped my phone off. 1 hour later I returned and they had my newly functional iPhone ready to go. I was impressed they were fast, friendly and most importantly got my beloved iPhone back to it’s original splendor.

If you live in or around the Greater Toronto Area and need to have your iPhone repaired I would recommend them. I inquired whether they serve people online wishing to get their iPhones repaired. Unfotunately they aren’t setup to process orders via their web page but you can feel free to make arrangements by phone and send your iPhone in via courier or snail mail.

BTW: I have received nothing for endorsing these guys.