iPhone apps - page 40

Look-Up is an augmented reality shoot-em-up for iPhone (not iPad or iPod) in a Space Invaders style. And it’s fun.

Swarms of 1950s-style flying saucers fly down at you from the sky – you point your phone back at them and hit the fire button. Zappity zap zap. I tried it this morning in my office in flooding-with-rain Wiltshire, but I suspect it would be more exciting to play when you’re outdoors in the sun, like the guys in this demo video:

This is ace. This is today’s Best Thing Ever. It’s called Revinyl, and it’s a one-dollar app that turns your music collection into a quiz that you can play on your own or with friends.

In “Rediscover” mode, the app will play you short snippets from songs, and show you a selection of album art. Pick the correct album – then name the song or the artist for bonus points. All against the clock, of course.

Thug Shotz is a new iPhone game where players “match the slime with the crime”  and “pick the crackhead” using real mug shots.

The app was first rejected by Apple on moral grounds, then approved. Thug Shotz ($0.99) is also available in a “Cell-ebrity” version ($1.99) where you can hook up the A-lister to the crime.

The shaudenfreude fest — in the same vein as controversial Busted! Real Mug shots app, but created by a different company called It’s Bailey Entertainment (IBE) — was first rejected by Apple on moral grounds, then approved. (Note: the screenshots are stock photos, but all photos in the game are real people.)

Cult of Mac talked to IBE Founder K. Patrick Whalen about how the app, which started as a lunch time diversion of “guess the perp,” made it into iTunes.

Although the iPhone 4 is superior hardware to even the latest iPod Touch, the fourth-gen Touch does have a leg up on its sibling in at least one area: making FaceTime calls. While the iPod Touch’s FaceTime app makes it easy to initiate video calls through its built-in app, the iPhone makes you place a voice call first.

FaceNow levels the playing field between the fourth-generation iPod Touch and iPhone 4. It’s simplicity itself. Just open up the application, add a contact from your address book and you’re ready to make a FaceTime video call to them: the app will at that point bypass all the usual steps and just make a straight video connection, no voice call required.

Interested? FaceNow is available on the App Store right now, for the attractive price of jack squat.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmF5_b40swc

I type over one hundred words per minute, and by and large, they are the words zombies taught me to type thanks to the fantastic 1999 title, Typing of the Dead, in which wave after wave of flesh eating zombies are splattered into gibs not by the rapid fire staccato of a machine gun, but by quickly typing words like ‘daffodil’ and ‘snapdragon.’

For years, I’ve been waiting for Sega to port Typing of the Dead to iOS to help me do for my texting what I once did for my typing… to no avail. But Screw Attack’s tribute title Texting of the Bread might fill the same void with twice as much cuteness: it takes the central gameplay of Typing of the Dead, adjusts it to fit the iPhone’s soft keyboard and changes the villains to bloodthirsty ginger bread men.

If you’re interested in knowing more, Touch Arcade has posted a thorough review of the game here. Texting of the Bread can be downloaded now on iTunes for just $1.99.

Well, it looks like Apple finally saw fit to let that one engineer responsible for it get back to work: after months of ignoring the iPad and iPhone 4’s increased resolution, the official Remote.app for iOS has finally been updated.

It’s a hell of an update, too. Obviously, Remote now runs in native resolution on the iPad and on Retina Display devices like the iPhone 4 and iPod Touch… but it looks particularly good on the iPad, where the larger display is taken advantage of to deliver an aesthetic remarkably similar to iTunes in portrait mode.

Other new additions include a new more iTunes 10 like icon, compatibility with AirPlay, support for Shared Libraries on iTunes and the new Apple TV and numerous bug and compatibility fixes. As always, you can download Remote for free on the App Store.

Ever since Apple finally published their long-requested App Store Review Guidelines, we’ve been seeing a lot of reversals in previously unbendable policies, with no example of that phenomena being more striking than Apple’s decision to let third-party Google Voice apps back on the App Store.

So far, though, Google’s own official Voice client has yet to be republished to the App Store. Things are looking good, though, that Google Voice for iOS may once again be on its way, with sources telling Techcrunch that Google has already submitted the application to Cupertino.

PlainText is the latest text app from Hog Bay Software‘s Jesse Grosjean.

Jesse, as many of you will know, is the genius behind several other apps for iOS and the desktop, including WriteRoom and TaskPaper.

PlainText is very similar to, but not exactly the same as, another of his apps called SimpleText. Where SimpleText was built to sync with a home-made service called simpletext.ws, PlainText has been built from scratch to sync with Dropbox.

PlainText is a simple text writing tool for iPhone and iPad. It will sync with Dropbox, and includes support for TextExpander snippets if you use them. It’s free, supported by adverts. If you want to switch them off, you can for a one-off payment of $4.99.

There are a few Essential Apps that handle themselves so well on the iPhone they quickly eclipse the website they evolved from; apps that, once installed on the iPhone, completely replace their browser-based ancestors.

Essentials Yelp, The Weather Channel and Twitter clearly fall into this category. But Facebook’s app is different. It doesn’t just replace — it hooks.

We’re giving away a very sophisticated bundle of apps this week. We’ll start out in the study, browsing through and listening to the Classics. Then we might dabble in a little alchemy with the flaming Professor Helsing! We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps and if you want a chance to get your hands on some these iPhone apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. Like us on Facebook AND Like Appular (you have to do this to complete step 2)
2. Tag us both in your status : “Cult of Mac and Appular are throwing one classy iPhone App Giveaway!”
3. Your status tag will be your entry into the giveaway, only ONE entry is allowed per person, and the giveaway will last until 11:59pm tonight. We’ll contact the winners on Tuesday or Wednesday about how to get the codes!
4. Optional step – Tell us what you think about these apps if you own them already in the comments section.

Special Thanks to Appular for helping us put together these app code giveaways! If you’ve got a mobile app that you’d like marketed effectively, contact the good folks at Appular!

Here’s a look at the apps we’re giving away:

We haven’t…uh…tried this yet (primarily because Cult editor Leander Kahney refuses to get back into his fencing Mexican-wrestler costume after last year’s Halloween fiasco) but it looks pretty damn cool, or something.

Sonic Speed Ball sets up a Bluetooth connection between two iPhones (or BT-equipped iPods), then simulates a virtual ball that can be smacked around using an iDevice as a paddle. Different gestures affect the virtual ball in different ways, à la the Nintendi Wii controller.

Sonic Speed Ball is $1; leash not included.

Earlier this month saw the debut of Awareness, an app that should make life considerably safer and less embarrassing for people who (like me) walk around with earphones semi-permanently attached to their ears. And now, it’s on sale.

You know me, you know I love my iPhone photography toys. One of my favorites is QuadCamera, which I last mentioned here back in 2009.

The app has undergone a steady series of updates since then, but the latest adds support for both of the iPhone 4’s cameras. Now you can take multi-shot photos of yourself, or of anything you might wish to hold above the iPhone 4 while it’s lying face-up on a table. I decided to spare you the horror of my own unshaven, sleep-deprived, stress-ridden visage in favour of some shots of my MBP, but I’m sure you get the idea. There’s always Flickr.

(If you’ve upgraded to iOS 4.1, make sure you check for and install the very latest QuadCamera update, otherwise you’ll encounter a bug that prevents the app launching.)

Many other photo apps have come and gone, but QuadCamera is one of the small handful that’s remained on my iPhone ever since I bought it. It’s quick and it’s fun, and well worth dropping a couple of bucks on.

More and more, the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines is starting to seem like it might be a promise of the end of arbitrary app rejection. Following the surprise about course by Apple when it comes to allowing Google Voice apps on the App Store, it now appears that they’ve also rescinded their long-standing ban on App Store ringtone makers.

Pretty much since the App Store’s inception, applications that allowed users to make ringtones from the songs on their iPhone have been verboten. Exactly “why” has always been up for debate: although Apple did sell ringtones through iTunes, they clearly didn’t mind users rolling their own, as evidenced by GarageBand’s Export Ringtone feature. Whatever the reason, though, it was plenty hard to sneak a ringtone maker by Apple up until recently. Since the publication of Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines, though, no less than five ringtone makers have gone live on iTunes… seemingly ending the arbitrary blacklisting.

The popular question-answering search engine Ask is due to submit their official iPhone application to Apple, which is designed to answer your questions on the go.

The app will let you ask questions either by typing them in, or by speaking them, and then offers up the most likely answer based on its index of more than 500 million question and answer ‘pairs,’ from hundreds of thousands of web sources.

On downloading the application, users will automatically be enrolled in Ask’s social Q&A private beta, which allows you to approach the Ask.com community for answers to more complex questions.

One of its most interesting features, however, won’t be introduced until version 2. It’s called ‘Nearby Answers,’ and uses your location to allow you to ask questions about places nearby. For example, you can ask a question about your local theater or restaurant, and your question will be routed to people nearby, or people have answered similar questions about those places in the past.

Also planned to feature before the end of the year is the ability to ask questions of your friends on social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

It certainly sounds like a fantastic application, and I can’t wait to see how it works. We’ll be sure to let you know when it’s available for download.

[via TechCrunch]

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The highly rated Springpad “remember anything” service is rolling out several nifty new features — starting with mobile notifications that will alert users to events, news and special offers.

Springpad is a free lifestyle service that makes it easy to save digital content — everything from news stories to recipes, email, wine labels, restaurant reviews, travel tips and so on.

It rivals similar services such as Evernote and Backpack, but value adds by analyzing saved content and layering it with metadata like special deals, nearby retailers, and useful links. If you save recipes, for example, it can automatically generate shopping lists of ingredients. Scan the barcode from a bottle of wine, and it’ll give you info and also find a local retailer.

“Anytime, anywhere, anyhow — it makes it drop dead simple to capture stuff you want to remember,” said Springpad CEO Jeff Janer in a phone interview last week.

Saved content is synchronized across iPhone, iPad, Android and Web apps. The service was recently named one of Time magazine’s 50 Best Websites and favorably reviewed by the Wall Street Journal.

On Wednesday, the service is adding alerts to its mobile app — event reminders, news alerts, to-dos, price drops, coupons, and special offers, etc. If you show an interest in Apple’s iOS, for example, it will alert you if Apple issues a software update.

The company is also releasing an extension for Google’s Chrome, which will make it easy to add content without leaving the browser. An extension for Safari will follow in about 30 days, Janer said. It is also adding push notifications to Android (available today) and iOS, which will available in about a month pending Apple’s approval.

Here’s a video of the new features in action:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REssNBbtmjc&hd=1

Google Earth has long been one of the most impressive apps on iOS, but the software just got an entirely new and subaqueous dimension: in Google Earth 3.1 for iOS, you can now explore underwater landscapes (or, as Google calls it, “ocean bathymetry and ocean layer content.”

Dive below the ocean’s surface to explore underwater canyons, or travel to the ocean’s deepest point, the Mariana Trench. Once underwater, simply swipe the screen with two fingers to “look around.” You can always reset your view by clicking on the north arrow on the iPad, or on the compass on the iPhone and iPod.

First person out there to spot R’lyeh, please let me know the coordinates: it seems like I’ve spent all morning searching the Pacific depths for the non-Euclidean city in which dead Cthulhu “wgah’nagl fhtagn.”

Google Earth is a free download on the App Store.

Last week, Twitter announced a serious overhaul of their website. It might mean diddly to iPhone users though, who usually access Twitter through any one of a growing heap of mobile Twitter apps — all of which are equipped with a vastly superior set of features compared to Twitter’s site (at least, currently).

Now, I’ve always held that selecting a Twitter app is a highly subjective, personal process, kind of like picking out a bicycle saddle — you just sort of squish around on it for a few days and see if it feels right. Personally, I currently tend to favor HootSuite over any other Twitter app, even though I’ve installed, and sometimes use, half a dozen or so others. But one Twitter app has foisted itself to essential status: Twitter’s own official app. And it’s above the rest for one key reason, really.

Massively multiplayer online games, or MMOs, pander to the obsessive. There’s always another dungeon to explore, another raid to launch, another auction to cash out. Unfortunately, it’s that very addictive quality of MMOs doesn’t mesh well with a mobile, connected lifestyle… given that so much of an MMO’s gameplay is unsuitable for mobile devices, how do you let obsessive players feel connected with their in-game avatars from their iPhone or iPad?

The upcoming MMO Guild Wars 2 by ArenaNet has an answer for that… and it’s an app. Their application will let players stay connected to in-game chat even when on the road, while also allowing them to help out their fellow Guild Wars 2 buddies by guiding them towards quest destinations, cities and towns.

It seems like a great step to connecting MMOs to devices that aren’t quite powerful enough to run them… yet. Of course, an approach like this is probably going to be irrelevant in a few years, when someone finally makes a mobile MMO that challenges World of Warcraft’s numbers. Until then, ArenaNet’s approach to bringing the iPhone into the MMO experience is refreshingly useful.

If you’ve ever wondered what killed off AT&T’s unlimited bandwidth plans, look no further than the App Store.

The study was performed by Finnish analytics company Zokem, which analyzed the mobile web usage of over 10,000 smartphone users across 6.5 million sessions in sixteen countries over the past year.

What Zokem found was that while a smartphone’s mobile browser — Safari, in the case of the iPhone — is still the biggest bandwidth hog on most smartphones, apps are now taking up 50% of mobile data volume. Predictably, the most popular apps across all smartphones are Facebook and Twitter.

Keep in mind that this study was not aimed at any particular platform, so iPhone users were lumped in with Android, Palm and Windows Mobile customers as well. Given how well-developed the iPhone’s App Store is compared to its competitors equivalent marketplaces, though, I wouldn’t be surprised if iOS device users use up an even larger percentage of mobile data through apps. At the end of the day, though, the disparity between app and browser usage is only going to get more profound as more media — and perhaps iTunes itself — enters the cloud.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-naRP6vllXc

Whether Infinite Lives’ forthcoming Contra-inspired shooter Moral Decay gets pushed live on the App Store has a lot to do with how Apple’s reviewers decided to view the game’s central protagonist…. a bearded man in sandals and Messianic robes who can fly on a rainbow, shouts “Oh my father!” when he’s shot and spends most of the game using an AK-47 to transmutate a constabulary of sinners as multivariate as sumo wrestlers, extraterrestrials and Satan into big, spattering chunks of gelatinous gore.

Here’s the question: will Apple’s reviewers subscribe to Infinite Lives‘ pretense that their protagonist is, in fact, an unassuming dude by the name of Christ T? Or will they decide that Chris bears an uncanny resemblance to Jesus Christ of Nazareth and should therefore be censored based upon the sheer principle of the thing?

My guess is the latter, in which case I hope Infinite Lives quickly gets a Cydia release: as long as you like your gaming violent, full of chiptunes and almost panoffensive in its 8-bit religious sensibilities, this looks like a hella fun game.

[via Pocket Gamer]

Over the years, Napster has pupated from an illegal peer-to-peer music sharing network to a streaming audio subscription service, and today marks another surprising evolution in a brand that has, over the past decade, meant all things to all men: it’s now an iPhone app.

10-4, you heard that correctly: Apple has finally approved Napster on iTunes as a free application. Weighing in at just 1.8MB, Napster will stream over 10 million songs to you on your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch, provided you’re willing to give a Hamilton a month to Napster LLC (which the App Store listing proudly reminds us is “a Best Buy company”) for their Napster plus Mobile Access subscription.

Okay, it’s not the long delayed U.S. launch of our favorite streaming music service, Spotify. None the less, it’s great to see so many options for streaming your music start hitting the App Store, and I think it heralds great things for Apple’s own entry into the Cloud: clearly, whatever Apple’s got planned, they don’t think existing services like Napster or Spotify are a threat. iTunes Live, when it comes, is going to do things we didn’t even know we wanted.

Today’s Best Thing Ever is also my favorite new appquisition of the week, and it’s called the Accidental News Explorer, and it was built by Brendan Dawes

It’s news, but not as we know it. For a start, there’s no list of headlines. Just a search box.

Much as I love Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead series of tongue-in-cheek horror films, and much as I have tried to emulate my virtues after that of its protagonist Deadite slayer Ash Williams, I have never found any of the myriad efforts to translate Army of Darkness‘ appeal to the video game form to be worth anything besides a derisive snort.

So I feel a little foolish getting so excited by word coming from Backflip Studios that they will be releasing a game based on Army of Darkness to the App Store early in 2011.

There’s almost no details so far, except that it will be a tower defense game, which is a surprising but remarkably appropriate choice, and you can expect several hours of Bruce Campbell’s snarling, macho and downright hysterical catch phrases as you blow hole after hole through the medieval dead with your trusty boomstick. Don’t bone this up, Backflip!