1. Open iTunes and sign out of your current iTunes account. Note that it’s easy to swap between accounts and you won’t lose any of your content doing this. Click on iTunes store but you will want to navigate to the US store. Move to the bottom right of the store, click on the UK flag, then select US store to open the US iTunes store.
2. Next, find a free app that you want – any app will do as long as it’s free. Click Buy and you will be prompted for a login. At this point select ‘Create New Account’
3. After accepting the terms and conditions, enter your details including an e-mail address different to your current iTunes account. Click continue.
4. You will now be asked for a payment method – click None on the right hand side of the payment options.
5. You will then be asked for an address. Enter a US address – Google or Bing maps are your friend. Search for a hotel, business – anything really as long as you can get the address and post code (or zip code as it’s known over there).
6. The next step is to verify your account. You will receive an e-mail from Apple with the obligatory click on the link step to authenticate the address. Once done you have a US iTunes account.

That was painless. Obviously, if you have a credit card with a US postal address you can set up payment details. If you really need a pay for app from the US store, then you can buy iTunes gift cards online either from eBay (be careful though – reports of quite a few scammers) or more reliably via Maximus Cards.

The US account isn’t just accessible via iTunes on your home computer. Fire up iTunes on your iPhone or iPad, logout of your current account and enter your US account details. You can then download directly to your device and it will be synced back to your home machine at the next sync. You can grab content from multiple accounts and sync to your devices without fear of losing any. So what app’s are worth grabbing?

Well, BBC news is a pretty obvious one. A universal app that works better on the iPad than the iPhone, it’s more visual, like Pulse adder, to give you quick and easy access to today’s news. Bing app gives you quick access to a variety of search options. One useful addition is visual searching similar to Google Goggles. Scan a barcode or front of a book or DVD and search results with a variety of prices will be returned. There is also voice searching but it is not as accurate as Googles voice search. Speaking of voice, Dragon Dictate will turn your voice notes into text. I’ve had mixed success with the app but I put that more down to Glaswegian dialect than the app as it’s got great reviews.

So there you have it – with just a few simple steps you can access app’s even if they aren’t available in your region.

Spotify are really stepping up and offering something different to the current digital music stores. Stream for free in lower quality with ad’s or pay for great quality music that you can access from anywhere, offline or online. Not only that but with the addition this week of PayPal as a payment option they are making it easier than ever to subscribe to their service. Couple that to 4 million tracks available via search and many great playlists available online and you’ve got a very compelling service. It’s enough to keep me subscribing for another month after the launch of their iPhone app a few weeks ago. Over to you Apple?

Every week Apple release a single of the week which can be downloaded for the princely sum of £0.00, free, nada, nothing. From the few times I’ve checked, the music usually comes from unknown or upcoming artists and bands. This can be an excellent way of building up your music library for free and also for discovering new music. It’s also beneficial for the artists and bands as it provides them with exposure to the iTunes community helping them build a fan-base. In addition to the single of the week, there is additional content also available for free. This varies, but can consist of more music downloads and videos.

I tried this week’s free single, 40 Day Dream by Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, and thought it was pretty good. I was also very surprised to find the first four episodes from series 2 of The Inbetweeners, also available for free! The remaining content was a mixed bag consisting of featurettes from shows like Lost, Friends and Scrubs and a couple of short films. Hopefully the content is updated on a weekly basis like the free single and I’m really looking forward to the next update. I’m not sure why I haven’t tried using this feature more but I fully intend to from now on.

Caught this snap on Sunday (I think) so I’m not sure if we were higher than this at some point. Call us stat whores – we were delighted! Easily pleased even though we’ve no idea how iTunes calculates it’s charts. Hopefully we won’t become obsessive over this though as I fear a fall in the near future if we do.

One thing we will be trying to do is make the podcast a bit shorter, more punchy. One snag – new iPhone this week. Someone gag me now.