Many of us have been waiting for the release of an updated Skype app to allow for multitasking.  On Wednesday the 21^st, the update was released along with some good news for mobile Skype users.

The newest Skype Update allows Skype to continue working while running in the background.  This means that if you have an iPhone and use Skype, you can start the app then move on to other things while letting Skype run in the background.  If you get calls or messages from friends, you will be notified real-time and will be able to answer or respond immediately.

Welcome back to another week of Top iPhone Apps.  This week we’re bringing you a review of one of the top five rated free apps in the App Store, iBooks.

We want to make each of our standard segments as useful as possible, but need your feedback to provide the best and most helpful content possible.  If you have any specific apps or categories of apps that you’d like us to review, please leave us a comment with your feedback.  We want to hear from you.

At about noon CST, Apple released the iOS 4 upgrade for iPhone 3G, 3Gs and iPod 2nd and 3rd generation owners.  In order to obtain the new OS, you need to plug in your phone to iTunes 9.2, click on the name of your phone in the left side panel, and then click the upgrade button under the Version heading on that main screen.

After that you can track your progress on the downloads area of the Store section on the left hand side of your iTunes application.

Yesterday many of us received some good news and a reminder that the highly anticipated release of Apple’s iOS 4 for the iPhone 4, iPhone 3Gs and 2nd & 3rd Generation iPod Touch is happening on Monday.

Apple notified developers a little over a week ago that they would start accepting updated apps that allow for the multitasking functionality of the new operating system.    At the time, many of us were concerned that the time developers would need to update their apps and the time Apple would need to approve those updates would mean that multitasking apps might not even be available for Monday’s launch.  However, we didn’t take into account that fact that developers have been working off of the iOS 4 SDK since it was released back in April.  The likelihood that most developers would wait until the last moment to update their apps was pretty low considering what a huge release multitasking is.

Apple released the latest update to their iTunes software, version 9.2 on Wednesday. Generally, we wouldn’t take the time to write about a software update, but this update is a little bit special. iTunes 9.2 is the update that will allow iTunes to sync with the new iOS 4, scheduled to release next week on Monday the 21st of June.

iOS 4 is the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad operating system that will allow iPhone 3Gs and iPhone 4 users to use multitasking, folders, better mail integration, iBooks, and many other features.  Apple made their iPhone OS 4.0 announcement back in April and then renamed the OS to iOS 4, to allow for the fact that it doesn’t only run on the iPhone, a couple of weeks ago.

It looks like Apple is embracing social media and facebook in particular.  There are snippets of code in the iOS 4 master build which developers are using to create content for the device.  iOS 4 could allow users to upload full 480x480p at a rate of 30fbs direct to facebook.  Apple’s other devices may jump on the bandwagon in the near future via HTML5 file format that Apple has been pushing instead of allowing Flash.  Once perfected, we expect to see Apple’s Steve Jobs mentioning this functionality to the press.

We all know that iOS 4 is set to include multitasking for iPhone 4 and iPhone 3Gs.  It looks like it could be a pretty good rollout and that Apple has put it together well.  It’s been the talk of the tech world for a couple of months now, but how well it will be implemented is not something that anyone can really say with certainty.

The next generation is here and its name is iPhone 4.  Steve Jobs spoke at the introduction of Apple’s WWDC conference today and he unveiled the phone we have all been waiting to see.  He appeared to be having a good time and cracked a few jokes.  As he unveiled the phone he even said “stop me if you’ve seen this.”  An obvious reference to the Gizmodo / Lost iPhone debacle that we reported on extensively over the last couple of months.