There’s a great line in Apollo 13 where the character of Gene Kranz yells out “I don’t care about what anything was DESIGNED to do, I care about what it CAN do!” So when some enterprising geek comes along and creates and application that turns an iPhone or iTouch into a piano, how can we not scream “encore!?”

Taking advantage of the iPhone and iPod Touch’s multi touch interface, the iAno virtual piano application turns a “jailbroken” iPhone into a four octave keyboard with realistic piano sampling sounds. The keys on the keyboard even animate on touch and up to give keys can be pressed at any one time. On screen navigation allows users to easily move up and down the scales by octave or partial octave.

And what’s really cool is that it can play in concert with the iPhone/iPod’s MP3 player.

But make no mistake, users who are chomping at the bit to use this great application will have to first “jailbreak” their phone (and all that implies) so that third party applications can be installed. But the good news is that Apple recently announced a third party application development kit which could mean that iAno will become a hot application in the open, for all to enjoy.

Really cool video of the iAno in action here.

Hat tip: Technobob