“In some embodiments, an optical sensor is located on the back of the device, opposite the touch screen display on the front of the device, so that the touch screen display may be used as a viewfinder for either still and/or video image acquisition. In some embodiments, an optical sensor is located on the front of the device so that the user’s image may be obtained for videoconferencing while the user views the other video conference participants on the touch screen display. In some embodiments, the position of the optical sensor can be changed by the user (e.g., by rotating the lens and the sensor in the device housing) so that a single optical sensor may be used along with the touch screen display for both video conferencing and still and/or video image acquisition.”

I don’t know about you, but this sounds really awesome. Video conferencing was probably the number one feature on my wish list before the iPhone 3G came out. As you can imagine, I’m sure the $199 price point would have been much higher if this type of feature had been added. And I’m sure there would be an additional data charge from AT&T for this “iChat” feature.

A new patent application (as detailed by AppleInsider) by Apple reveals that Apple has been working on the ability for iPhone and iPod touch owners to wirelessly stream content from their iTunes library at home.

At the minute, to access your library you must sync your iPhone or iPod Touch to your Mac or PC via USB. This patent could change that. Apple is saying that your music library could be streamed over WiFi or cellular networks.

New versions iTunes and the iPhone Software could theoretically eliminate this problem by syncing only the metadata — or tiny files containing the barebones attributes of each media item or playlist but not the content itself — from a user’s iTunes library to their portable devices.

This basically means that none of the actual songs or videos would be stored on the device, just information about each song. When the song is then accessed, the device would then connect to the library and start playing the song. Keep your eyes peeled for something like this in the future.