That all happens with the iPhone’s built in music player (the actual iPod part of the device).

So what if I want to listen to some streaming radio, like the Last.fm app?

The problem with any app that isn’t the built in iPod is that it can’t run in the background, so if a call comes in, the app closes. I tried closing and reopening Last.fm to see if it would resume play, and it didn’t; instead it started by asking me what station I want to listen to. So how can I still benefit from all this hands-free goodness if I want to listen to streaming radio? I had assumed that I simply couldn’t, but I hadn’t tried. Today I tried, and I was surprised at what I found.

One thing that Last.fm has going for it is that whatever app gets closed during a phone call, gets reopened when the call is done. It also turns out that the only time Last.fm asks what station you want to listen to is when you close it by hitting the home button. If it closes by any other means, e.g. by a call coming in, then when it reopens, it does in fact resume playing whatever station you were listening to when it closed.

There are a few other benefits that the built in music player enjoys from the hands-free interface of the iPhone, like being able to tell the iPhone to play the next song, or selecting a playlist or artist. You can also start and stop the built-in iPod with the button on the earbuds. Other music apps don’t seem to be able to tie into these features. That aside, the bottom line is, if you want to enjoy all the benefits of music discovery and online social listening through Last.fm while shopping for milk and eggs or driving to the doctor, your iPhone never has to come out of your pocket while you’re doing it.

For those of you who can’t wait for 1.2 to start writing with the landscape keyboard (believe me, I feel your pain), if you have $4 to spare, you don’t have to. iNote was just released today, a simple notes application that operates in landscape mode, and also includes the ability to group notes into categories. One thing that it lacks, as some people have noted in the ratings section on the App Store, is the ability to sync notes to your desktop or notebook. This might render the application useless, except for one thing: you can send your notes via email. While this obviously isn’t a satisfactory solution for many people, for some writers, including myself, who need a tool to write on-the-go, and a way to get first drafts onto their main machine, this will do for now, especially since it’s only $4, and it’s currently the only working writing application on the iPhone with the wider keyboard.

iNote works well enough. It’s a little buggy when pulling up the keyboard. Sometimes the keyboard covers the typing area, but after playing with it just a bit, I found that this is caused by certain actions, and there are easy ways to prevent it. I’m my opinion, it’s definitely worth the $4.