App Store - page 106

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDXnYMoQB_c

If you’re inclined to use your iPhone or iPod Touch for hauling around non-natively supported files like Word documents and Powerpoint presentations, there are apps that will allow you to copy over your files… but those only work once you are out of your house. The awkwardly named Here, File File! aims to change that, offering easy access to the contents of any of your Macs, from anywhere.

Although Here, File File! hasn’t hit the App Store quite yet, the teaser video compelling demonstrates how the app works. After installing the contents of a small DMG on your Macs, Here, File File! allows you to browse, search, slurp and stream any file on your machine or its connected folders to your iPhone or iPod Touch, keeping things secure through user authentication and SSL encryption.

The stand-out functionalities of Here, File File! seem to be its effortless Spotlight integration, the ability to send emails with files attached from your host machine, and functionality for streaming movies or music from your Mac to your iPhone from anywhere, and over any connection (although, presumably, the streaming media feature only works with natively supported formats like MP4 and MP3.)

The developers claim that Here, File File! should be available on the App Store in January, although the price has yet to be announced. In the meantime, you can sign up to be notified when the app is released.

[via TUAW]

Square-Enix’s cute little RPG, Song Summoner was an adorable little time waster back when it was released back in July of 2008 for the Apple iPod. It’s gameplay was a fusion between the tactical, turn-based stategy battles of Final Fantasy Tactics and the creature creation of Monster Rancher, an old PlayStation game in which you created unique Pokemon-like monsters to fight for you by plugging CDs into your console. Song Summoner worked similarly, allowing you to pick any MP3 on your iPod and create a unique soldier to fight for you, with stats and appearance plucked by algorithm from the data of the track.

It was a game I eagerly bought and desperately wanted to love. There was only one problem: even though it was released in 2008, and the iPhone and iPod Touch had been available for over a year, Song Summoner was a click-wheel game, only available on Apple’s non-touchscreen iPod line. Fast forward a year and a half, though, and Square-Enix is finally correcting that misstep: for $10, you can now pick up an updated version of Song Summoner subtitled “The Unsung Hereos” on the App Store. It contains the first Song Summoner came, as well as a sequel that is speculated to have gone unreleased thanks to Apple ending support for click-wheel games. There’s also a free lite version available for you to try.

If you’re looking to do some gaming this weekend, give Song Summoner a shot. The original was a blast despite the control scheme; for $10, I think the touchscreen version should probably be one of the better and more content rich games to hit the App Store this month.

It’s hard to think of a more forward thinking bunch of visionaries than the true pioneers of the fastly changing frontiers of technology: hard core pornographers.

Time after time — Betamax, VHS, Laser Discs, DVD, Blu-Ray and the Internet — pornographers are the first to embrace new technology, hoping to add yet another sales channel to their already rich smut peddling arrays. Compare pornographers to industries like the RIAA or MPAA, who are hopeless to embrace new technology that might threaten their old, stagnating business models, and it’s really hard not to think pornographers are one of the few media entities out there who really get tech.

Needless to say, porn would like a piece of the App Store, but Apple’s prudish policies aren’t having any of that. But pornographers are nothing if not ingenious, and a group of them have now launched the Sex App Shop, which the press release heralds as “the world’s first legal alternative to [the App Store],” featuring a wide range of adult content from major labels like Playboy, Vivid, VCA, Wicked Pictures and New Sensation. Apps costs $0.99, and yearly memberships with unlimited downloads is available for $99.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjymDGnt3Lw

If you’ve ever wanted to transform yourself into a hydrocephalic Italian plumber sucked into a strange toilet dimension in order to battle a legion of evil, anthropomorphic mushrooms… well, amazingly, there’s an app for that.

Cleverly named after the phonetic transcription of one of the character’s hallmark stereotypical ejaculations, iRwego is more than just a sound board of noises plucked from the games of Super Mario Bros.… although it’s that too. What’s really cool about the app is that it uses the iPhone’s built-in accelerometer to automatically accompany your life with appropriate Mario sound effects.

In many ways, Pointy Head’s Knocking Live Video is exactly the sort of app Apple likes to march out in parade. The app allows any iPhone user to rap with figurative knuckles on the iPhone of anyone else with the app installed. Once notified via push that someone’s knocking on their handset, Knocking Live Video opens up, streaming live video between both iPhones.

It’s a neat idea: exactly the sort of simple, social and fun communication tool Apple and AT&T like to highlight in their “There’s an app for that” ads… whether or not — in practice — it is just likely to be used as a spontaneous pornographic transmission tool amongst frat bros out birddogging as to transmit video of your kids at the pool to a traveling spouse.

The only problem? Knocking Live Video uses Apple’s private APIs to achieve its live video streaming.