I read an interesting article this weekend that taught me something about these spanking-new expensive Apple iPhones that I didn't realize; that users can save a link to any website as a shortcut on their "home" page, just like any application or the like. In fact, according to Apple's official documentation on the subject, site owners can even create a custom icon if they want that will show up on a person's home page just like any other when such a shortcut is made; otherwise the iPhone in question will simply take a 50x50-pixel screenshot of the website in question to use as the icon, which as you can guess ends up appearing as a tiny little blur in reality. Anyway, it's simple as pie to do (simply add a 57x57 PNG file to the root of your website, named "apple-touch-icon.png"), so I went ahead and did it; that's it you're seeing above.

Of course, whether one's iPhone will smooth my square icon out into the usual fancy-schmancy rounded box remains to be seen; and to that end, if any of CCLaP's readers with an iPhone (or iPod Touch) would like to actually take a photo of the icon on their device, I'll run it here with a credit and much thanks. (You can just email it to me at cclapcenter [at] gmail.com.) Anyway, hope this adds yet one more sparkle to the otherwise already magical existence of you iPhone owners, and all your space-age "Look, look, I'm enlarging the photo by flicking my fingers" crap. Sigh. Wish I had one!

UPDATE: Success! Heard from CCLaP reader (and old college friend) Beth Clauss just an hour or two after posting this; she sends along photographic proof of the CCLaP iPhone icon working in the wild (along with a cute photo of her son), which as you can see in the lower-right corner of the phone even appears with the Apple-patented Space-Age Rounded Corners™ and everything. Klasse, Clauss! Thanks very much!