Lonnie Lazar is a writer-musician-web designer-attorney. He writes about Apple for Cult of Mac and Mac|Life, and about VoIP and telecommunications for Voxilla. Follow Lonnie on Twitter @LonnieLazar, join the Cult of Mac on Facebook, and find Lonnie's photos on Flickr.
Just in time for the NFL playoffs, you can relive the glory days of your youth (applies predominately to American males of a certain age; your mileage may vary) with a free PaperFootball game for iPhone and iPod Touch.
Just like you did on school cafeteria tables back in the day, use touchscreen swipe gestures to try and get a triangular “paper football” to hang over the edge of the table and even “kick” for extra points. Play against your device or against a friend.
PaperFootball has pretty cool, colorful graphics and is certainly nothing more than a time waster, but in this reviewer’s humble opinion, it’s better than having your mobile device make farting sounds. And I mentioned it’s free, right?
In the meantime, a few companies have already produced products intended to ease the need for iPhone users in the northern latitudes to actually go inside to use their Jesus Phones during the winter. Click on images in the gallery below to see the Apple patent illustration and few solutions on the market today. And let us know in comments how you manage to fulfill your iPhone jones in places where chilly winds blow.
Add a new layer of creativity to the things you can do with your iPhone and your photos – with iSteam, a cool new app from UK developer consortium, Great Apps. iSteam uses features of the iPhone and iPod Touch including the accelerometer, multitouch, microphone and speakers to turn the touch screen into something resembling your bathrooom mirror after a hot shower, or a window on a winter day.
Blow on the microphone to “fog up” the surface of the phone (iPod Touch users need an external mic) and use your fingers to write messages and draw, just like you would on a steamy window. Realistic water droplets form on the image and leave trail marks that can be manipulated by tilting the device; shake it up to clear the screen and start over. iSteam even has finger squeaking sounds included.
Images can be saved to the Camera Roll using the screen capture method (hold the Home key & press the lock button) or emailed to iPhone and iPod Touch owning contacts directly from iSteam.
If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to work at Apple, out in the wild are more than a couple of tell-all accounts penned by former employees, and as the company prepares for its final Macworld appearance next week in San Francisco, the UK Guardian has one, published Friday, by Chuq von Rospach, a former Apple employee who has taken his experience there and turned it into a little cottage industry of freelance writing.
Von Rospach’s piece for the Guardian waxes a bit nostalgic for the days when Steve Jobs delivered the Macworld keynote, but he says nevertheless “still tune in with great anticipation” to this year’s speech by Phil Schiller, especially because word on the street says Apple will bow out of Macworld with a hiss and not a bang.
The piece is rather on the long side, and true to form for the genre, is more about the author than about the experience of working at Apple, but von Rospach does provide a glimpse of behind-the-scenes observations that are rarely seen in Apple’s context and, for those interested in one person’s perspective, provides a worthwhile read.
“Easter eggs” is a term that’s come to describe little screens, menus and functionalities software coders hide in their work. Sometimes these things are uncovered by intrepid users, who take as a point of pride the mission to peek behind as many curtains as they can find in an application; sometimes there’s either enough lack of interest in finding the Easter eggs or they are so well-hidden developers end up revealing them on their own.
Those wacky kids in Mountain View, CA who write the Google blog posted Friday about a “Bells and Whistles” Easter egg menu for the company’s voice-enabled iPhone app. The screen is revealed by repeated attempts to swipe upward on the iPhone’s touch screen from the Settings menu. At first glance, there appears to be nothing below the tab labelled “About” but continue swiping upward on the screen (five swipes in my case), and a “Bells and Whistles” tab will appear.
From the B&W tab you can change the app’s theme color, its default sound effect and more. OK. Now that’s out of the way, let’s see what else we can accomplish today…
7″ Screen, 1.6GHz Atom, 1GB of RAM, 32 GB of flash storage, Wifi, bluetooth, modified iPhone OS (Snow Leopard)
Flickr user tacojohn has a vision of the much-rumored Mac Tablet Apple has been said to be working on since at least September 2007.
Ahead of Macworld next week in San Francisco, the Apple rumor mill has been busy ginning up interest to counter the let-down of Steve Jobs’ decision to skip Apple’s final appearance at the popular trade show, and Tuesday a TechCrunch report cited a trio of three independent sources close to Apple who say to “expect a large screen iPod touch device to be released in the Fall of ’09, with a 7 or 9 inch screen.”
“Prototypes have been seen and handled by one of our sources,” according to the report, and “Apple is talking to OEMs in Asia now about mass production,” the publication said. It added there were some early concerns among Apple managers over the potential market for such a device, but implied those fears have been quelled by the blistering success of the App Store:
“The difference now is the iTunes app store, which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer.”
Digg founder Kevin Rose announced his concern for Steve Jobs’ health Tuesday, but there’s always a subtext to such public displays of empathy. We’re not sure what it is in Rose’s case, but a few guesses are he:
a) puts way too much stock in what he reads on Gizmodo
b) is more worried about getting publicity for his own Internet venture
c) is a typically clueless amateur money manager
d) lives to see his name on the Internet
e) all of the above
On top of which, he’s either a very careless typist or an embarrassingly poor speller.
Gigabye Solutions updated its line of crazy 99¢ singing animal apps for iPhone Tuesday, adding the camel to a lineup that already included your singing monkey, orangutan, cat, puppy and snowman.
Singing Characters use low-level sound API’s to provide very low latency responses to nearby sounds. Advanced sound leveling technology adjusts for different speech volumes automatically.
Sit them on your desk at work and they’ll talk at the same time as other people in the office. They are a sure-fire tension cutter at that next awkward sales meeting.
Captivate 3 year-olds endlessly with the talking cat that copies everything they say.
Limitations in the iPhone SDK prevent Singing Characters from singing along to the music you have playing on your iPhone in iTunes, but they will sing along with music playing from an external device.
From Smule, creators of the internationally captivating Ocarina app for the iPhone, comes Zephyr, a 99¢ app that is part snow globe, part artboard, part multi-media messaging device, part chain letter and altogether fun.
Classified as a Social Networking application in the App Store, Zephyr invites users to use the touchscreen to draw pictures and messages rendered in snowflakes, while the app simultaneously translates touch and movement into distinctive wind sounds to complement the written message. You can erase a composition entirely by shaking the phone or erase parts with a two finger swipe gesture. When you’re happy with your creation you can send it off anonymously into the ether, where it will be received by another Zephyr user.
The chain continues when the recipient of your message expresses “love” for it by tapping a heart icon that appears on the screen with a received message. The more a message is loved, the more it will be passed forward.
You can also receive a message, see the stops it made on its way to you and decide whether or not it will continue on its journey around the world.
No word yet on whether Smule developers plan to update the app with different iconography for the changing seasons.
Blow into your iPhone’s mic, Ocarina-style, and hear the party horn. See the horn unravel on the touchscreen. Play Auld Lang Syne by pressing the i button. Comes complete with a countdown timer.
News broke over the weekend that iFart Mobile, the current #1 paid application on Apple’s iTunes AppStore, netted its creators $40,000 in two days at Christmas, according to a blog post by Joel Comm, the application’s lead developer.
The two-day holiday haul was in addition to $25,000+ in profits the app generated in the two weeks prior to Christmas.
Comm’s is by no means a unique success story. Steve Demeter, developer of the game Trism, made $250,000 in the first two months the AppStore was open; Eliza Block, the developer of “2 Across” app, was reportedly earning $2,000 per day on her application back in September.
Granted these are but three names out of the more than 10,000 apps now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s not difficult to do the math, though, and when an application designed around people’s fascination with flatulence – one of dozens dedicated to the same theme – can net its creator $40,000 in two days, it would seem irresponsible of a director attempting a remake of The Graduate not to write this exchange into the script:
Mr. McGuire: I want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: iPhone Apps.
I have to admit I have been keeping abreast of technology news with one eye, sort of, during this Holiday Season. I have a family, and my one child is going to grow up fast, so I’m told. Thus, I’ve been spending more time with him since he’s off from school for the winter break.
I was a little surprised, then, to see all the hoopla frothing around HP’s introduction Monday of a new Home Media Server for automatically backing up and accessing digital music, videos, photos and documents from multiple computers on a home network. “That sounds kind of familiar,” I thought.
But there it was, all over Gizmodo and Engadget and TUAW and I said to myself, “Has the Apple community been somehow missing this appliance and its amazements?”
To be fair, some of the reportage was done in the context of wondering if Apple itself might be coming out with a similar appliance, and whether or how it might be integrated with the company’s MobileMe web services product. And, wouldn’t you know it, there’s this trade show coming up next week in San Francisco, which would be a perfect time and place to introduce just such a device. The suspense is now killing me.
But this HP baby that got all the ink? Well, it’s compatible with Mac and Windows, organizes files across all PCs on a connected network, streams media across a home network and the Internet, has a server for iTunes that centralizes iTunes music libraries on the server for playback to any networked Mac or PC running iTunes, and costs $600 with a 750GB hard disk or $750 for one with a 1.5TB disk.
Sort of like a souped up version of the Lacie Home Media Server I reviewed six months ago for Mac|Life Magazine, priced at about $150 with a 500GB disk.
Also to be fair, HP’s server plays nice with Time Capsule and Leopard, and lets you easily publish pictures and video to social networks such as MySpace and YouTube – which is not to say Lacie has not updated its software to do the same in the past six months – but on the whole, HP’s latest venture outside its core printer making business struck me as something of the very slow-news-day variety.
More Apple oriented websites felt obligated to post the news on Monday that casemaker Vaja has added an iPhone Nano category to its offerings of cases for Apple phone products. Coming on the heels of last week’s news that XSNS had done the same, the pre-Macworld rumor mill seems to indicate a strong likelihood that Apple will introduce a mini-me version of its popular mobile phone next week in San Francisco.
Is this what we’ve come to? Roughly 10 million people have bought iPhones this year. AT&T is selling refurbished iPhones for $99 and now you can buy them new at Walmart, too. Who, exactly is dying for an iPhone Nano?
I have to go on record as saying I’ll be disappointed to see Apple cave in to the mobile handset market’s mystifying tradition of churning out 1001 minutely varied executions on a theme, for the sake of what? Surely not functionality.
Prior to the iPhone you had relatively similar smartphones made by a few companies (Palm, RIM, Nokia) and hundreds of other devices that were just, phones, made by dozens and dozens of manufacturers. Even within the smartphone realm, my eyes glazed over at the number of “different ” Blackberries, for example.
The iPhone came along and changed everything. And in perfect Apple fashion there were basically two choices, a perfectly fine device and another one for those whose device must, under any circumstance be perceived as “bigger.” Hey, fine. There’s nothing wrong with a Corvette…
But now, a Nano? Something smaller? Less functional than its big brother? Less touchscreen real estate? A virtual keyboard for really tiny fingers?
Knock yourself out, Apple. I would think there are greater heights to scale.
iPhone app developers iPaguri have a new offering on the AppStore today, called Walking Tour Fierenze, a one and a half hour audio guide for, you guessed it, a walking tour through the center of Florence, Italy.
The version currently available is in Italian only, with versions in English, French, Spanish and German coming. The developers promise anecdotes, curiosities, stories and legends about the famed center of Renaissance art and culture that “others can’t show you,” a claim we’ll have to get our Italy-based colleague Nicole Martinelli to suss out and possibly opine on regarding the true value of this $10 app.
In concept, however, iPaguri could be sitting on a gold mine. I envision Walking Tour versions for every major tourist destination and gallery in the world…
If you just can’t live without emoticon functionality on your iPhone, you may have cell phone users in Japan to thank. Perhaps with a nod to the centrality of “emoji” on all mobile devices in Japan, Apple has apparently enabled their use with iPhone 2.2 firmware, according to one report, but only through the Japanese virtual keyboard.
You must be willing to enter the brave world of jailbreaking your phone using cydia.app, but once there, you’ll be able to enable “emoji” right from the phone’s settings for International keyboard functionality: settings -> general -> international -> keyboards -> japanese -> emoji
Apple may be adding useful swipe gesturing functionality to the virtual keyboard on the company’s mobile devices, according to a report at MacRumors.
Blogger Arnold Kim describes two potentially effective additions to Apple’s touch interface contained in a patent application filed yesterday with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Aside from the single finger swipes depicted in the diagrams below, multi-touch gestures (two and three fingers) could invoke other special functions. If a single finger left-swipe might delete a letter, a two finger left-swipe could delete a whole word, and a three finger left-swipe could delete a line. Similarly, a single finger right-swipe could add a space, while a two finger right-swipe could add a period. Up swipes and down swipes could also invoke different functions based on the number of fingers used.
As with Apple’s evolving multi-touch notebook trackpads, these optional functions could provide iPhone and iPod Touch users with useful and welcome shortcuts.
It’s not clear whether or not the Shogakukan Illustrated Sushi Guide would have helped Jeremy Piven with his mercury poisoning problem last week, but the company’s iPhone app is slated to hit the Japanese iTunes store any day now.
The $5 guide will contain pictures and descriptions of 82 different kinds of sushi, ideal for frequent travelers to Japan, and will sport an English appendix, according to a report at Crunch Gear.
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue and publisher O’Reilly combine to bring those of you who just unwrapped your brand-new iPhone yesterday iPhone: The Missing Manual, a $5 application available at Apple’s iTunes AppStore.
According to the publisher, the app “shows you everything you need to know to get the most out of your iPhone. Full of humor, tips, tricks, and surprises, this book teaches you how to extend iPhone’s usefulness by exploiting its links to the Web as well as its connection to Macs or PCs; how to save money using Internet- based messages instead of phone calls; and how to fill the iPhone with TV shows and DVDs for free.”
The funny thing is if you can purchase and download the app to iTunes and sync your phone so the app gets on there, you probably don’t need the manual in the first place.
Did you know the AppStore has a free app for iPhone and iPod Touch that will let you print borderless 4 x 6 photos (10 x 15 cm in Europe) directly from your device, without the need to upload them first to a computer or image processing program?
iPrint Photo, from HP uses Apple’s Bonjour technology to locate most WiFi enabled HP network printers wherever you are, letting you immortalize that once-in-lifetime capture on the spot. Printers with separate photo trays automatically select that option, and otherwise default to the main paper tray. The app is compatible with most industry standard WiFi environoments, including Apple Airport, Linksys, D Link and Netgear.
A promise to “unleash the true power of your iPhone” might not be the best marketing slogan for Snapture Flash, a xenon flash accessory with red-eye reduction for Apple’s mobile device. As snappy as it sounds, the slogan also calls attention to what is roundly regarded as the iPhone’s weakest attribute, its 2.1 megapixel, fixed focal length still camera.
The flash’s sleeve-like case is powered by the phone itself, which SnaptureLabs estimates will give you 1000 flashes on a single charge. As a bonus, the sleeve also provides amplification for the iPhone’s on-board speaker.
The downside here is that the flash is only a prototype and the accompanying Snapture camera software (which itself provides some interesting creative mods and controls for the iPhone’s camera), requires a jailbroken phone to avail yourself of its charms.
It will be interesting to see whether Snapture Labs can strike a deal to get it’s patent-pending flash technology to market before Apple comes out with a new version of the iPhone with some sort of flash built-in.
The kind Apple fanatics at iPhone Savior have done the great public service of creating Apple and Steve Jobs-themed Christmas eCard templates and posted them over at Flickr for anyone who still has a few last minute greetings to get out.
You can use a pre-made card like the one above, or choose from two styles of hi-res blank cards and add your own graphical text message to express your holiday sentiments and your love for all things Apple in the same vehicle.
As they put it over at iPhone Savior, “Sincerely wishing everyone an iPhone 3G for Christmas and some sweet dreams of Steve.”
Seismometer is the iPhone app that can not only let you know if you’re in an earthquake (and how bad it is at your personal epicenter), but also records and displays the movement energy of just about anything.
Seismometer uses your iPhone’s built in accelerometer to measure movements in two axes, calculate the resulting energy and draw the results on a rolling scale.
Version 1.1 updates feature noise filtering, expanded frequency settings (20, 40 , 60 and 200hz), and choice of output to logarithmic or linear scale.
99¢ buys you fun for the whole family; no additional premium charged to iPhone users located on major fault lines.
Is there any social dynamic the iPhone cannot be leveraged to transform somehow?
Here’s a six minute video from digitalJournal TV detailing a “social taxi service” that San Francisco-based Avego Shared Transport hopes will one day expand the public transit system by enabling every private vehicle to operate as a public transport vehicle.
This free iPhone app has the potential to dramatically reduce wasted seat capacity in cars, reduce the costs of commuting and expand commuting options for riders and drivers alike. This is definitely not your father’s hitchhiking experience.
Using the iPhone 3G’s GPS capabilities and web services, Avego seeks to enable a cross between carpooling, public transport and eBay, by matching a driver’s wasted seat capacity – those seats which are unoccupied – to passengers, reducing commute costs for all participants. Avego automatically apportions the cost of the commute, providing a financial incentive to commuters frustrated by high gasoline prices.
The company is quick to point out that the arrangements it facilitates clearly fall under “carpooling” laws that exist in nearly every jurisdiction in the US since the oil shock of the 1970s, and financial transactions are carefully limited so that participating drivers only recover the expenses associated with providing transport and do not cross the line into making them commericial transport operators.
For the nitty gritty on how Avego works, see the further information page on Avego’s website, but definitely take time to watch the video here and marvel at yet one more example of how Apple technology is changing the ways people interact with each other and with the world around them.
Brazilian designer and Apple fan Victor Anselme has a few ideas about how the Mac mini might evolve into a useful and desirable product.
From his description, helpfully translated by Google from the original Portuguese, as amended by your humble correspondent:
The case would be done in mostly aluminum; the largest piece would be the top along with the four sides. The bottom is black plastic similar to the back of the iMac, with a lever here to open the case, enabling easy upgrades to memory or the hard drive.
Air circulation is much higher now and is pretty much like the MacBook Pro, and this Mac Mini now comes with internal speakers.
In keeping with configuration of new Apple products the Mac mini will no longer support FireWire (note: say it isn’t so, Victor!) and the new Mini Display Port is used for output of digital audio and video.
iPhoneSavior reported on Anselme’s concept the other day, noting it appears inspired by a recent Mac Rumors report showing evidence that a refreshed Mac Mini would be based on the NVIDIA MCP79 chipset.
Along with rumors of an iPhone Nano, detailed below, talk of a refreshed Mac mini and iMac, as well as a 32GB iPhone 3G dominate pre-Macworld chatter leading up to the actual event kickoff on January 5.
57 Varieties of Fart-oriented applications are approval worthy in the eyes of the inscrutable AppStore gatekeepers. But iBoobs, a demo of which can be seen above, apparently violates a threshold of taste beyond which Apple is unwilling to go.
It’s nice to know there is a standard one must meet as an app developer, though, personally, it seems to me iBoobs at least uses the accelerometer to somewhat realistic effect.
