iPhone apps - page 41

With the App Store’s prohibition on third-party interpreters having recently been reversed, the iOS future is again rosy for Epic Games, one of the biggest names in next-gen engine licensing whose Unreal Engine powers some of the most visually impressive games on PCs and consoles, including the Gears of Wars series, Bioshock, Batman: Arkham Asylum and Borderlands, among others.

Following the impressive release of their proof-of-concept demo app, Epic Citadel, Epic vice president Mark Rein has announced that the software development kit for its Unreal 3 Engine will soon add iOS support to the many other features available to its licensees.

This is great news for gamers: Epic Citadel was a stunning demonstration of the graphical power of iOS which was downloaded over a million times in one week… and it wasn’t even, strictly speaking, a game. Native iOS support in the Unreal Engine makes it all the more likely that developers will bring your favorite franchises to your iPhone in the future.

Now let’s hope Epic themselves follow Epic Citadel up with that Unreal Tournament iPhone port they were playing with back in December.

Swimmers of Britain, stock up on small change! You’re going to need it to pay for a locker to put your iPhone into every time you go to the pool.

And why will you be taking your iPhone to the pool? Because, damp exercise addicts, you’ll have installed Splashpath.

The Royal Mail is hoping to boost the collectibility of its stamps with augmented reality.

Pointing your iPhone camera at these special-edition stamps featuring the Great British Railways leads you to a video of Bernard Cribbins (that’s Wilfred Mott to you Doctor Who Fans) reading W H Auden’s poem, “Night Mail.”

The Royal Mail isn’t new to these kind of media tie-ins, Auden’s poem was written for a 1930s documentary of the same name about a mail train from London to Scotland.

A new app launched today should go a long way to eliminating iDevice storage limitations. ZumoCast is a free app that lets users stream content — videos, music or images — from their computer to their iPad, iPhone or iPod.

I’ve spent the last few days playing around with an advance copy, and I’m pretty stunned with how well this app is put together. Streamed movies are transcoded seamlessly on the fly in the background, and streamed music sounds fantastic — even over 3G. The whole thing is also incredibly user-friendly, works with a minimum amount of fuss and does things like automatically import your iTunes playlists. Content can even be downloaded from your computer to your iDevice, and it also allows browsing, viewing and downloading documents.

And surprisingly, it’s completely free.

Just like the crazy photo-warping effects on Apple’s own Photo Booth app that comes standard on every Mac, Real-Time Distorter can create some freaky cool images — but on an iDevice.

My nephew and I have been playing around with the app this weekend, and we’ve managed to squeeze way more fun than I’d thought from the buck I plunked down. Only four or five of the 11 effects are real winners, but that’s more than enough to play around with; not all the results end up being funny, but even the ones that lack wackiness can be interesting. Added bonus: The app can make video clips. Hopefully developer MacPhun will add Facebook and Twitter sharing in a future update.

It’s taken me 20 years to finally find a task manager I’m happy with. No variation in any PDA I’ve used has passed muster: either they’ve lacked features, or suffered from confusing interfaces, or both — and I’d inevitably end up abandoning them for a simpler system. Then I started playing around with 2Do from developer Guided Ways Technologies. Search over.

Twitter for iPhone — née Tweetie — is a wonderful first-party client with almost any functionality you could care to name, but one area in which it loses to some of its competitors is in its lack of support for push notifications.

No worries, though, because along with yesterday’s triumphant debut of Twitter for iPad, the iOS team are also working on integrating push for iOS 4.1.

Says Twitter:

We’ve been testing push notifications internally. When we launched Twitter for iPad, there was a configuration error that caused us to offer push messages to a small set of users. We’ve stopped sending push messages, but users may see an option to turn on push until we release an updated version of the app. So, push isn’t ready yet but we look forward to rolling this out soon.

As Twitter notes, you may be able to turn push notification on under settings even if you aren’t on iOS 4.1 Gold Master, although we’ve heard reports that it may require uninstalling and reinstalling the app to get working.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, push notification service Boxcar — which does a healthy bit of business in the tweet pushing market — has just gone free for all Twitter notifications.

iPad-slash-Pogoplug users, quit yer whining that your iPad doesn’t print, find an iPad-sans-Pogoplug user and launch into an obnoxious victory dance in their immediate vicinity.

That’s right, Pogoplug has just begun rolling out a firmware update that’ll enable printing from any iDevice (so iPhone/iPt users get to shake a little booty also) to any 2005-or-newer vintage Epson or HP printer. The release says the rollout will stretch out over a week, so be patient.

All-business, pink-hating Pogopluggers and ‘Pluggers with their ‘Plugs way over on the other side of the room from their routers will be happy to hear that the $300 Pogoplug Biz (which ditches the hot pink highlights for stark grey and comes with a whole bunch of enterprise upgrades) and the $30 Wireless Extender (a USB dongle that obviously obviates the need for an ethernet cable connection) ship today. More good news: Current Pogoplug owners get the Wireless Extender for free.

An iPhone app that works as a stethoscope may change the way doctors work in a heartbeat.

So far, some three million physicians have downloaded the $0.99 iStethoscope to be able to monitor the heart rates of patients on the go.

According to creator Peter Bentley, a researcher at University College London, “smartphones are capable of saving lives, saving money and improving health care in a dramatic fashion.”

Bentley hopes that in the future smartphones could become mobile vital sign monitors, “fully fledged integrated designs capable of taking ultra sound scanners or monitor a patient’s blood pressure.”

With some 80 percent of doctors say they expect to be using a smart phone by 2012, this inexpensive app definitely quickens the pace of many. Although the heart-monitor app is undoubtedly handy, it does sound slightly awkward to use without a bit of practice.

I don’t know about you, but I’m used to being able to customize the operating systems that run on my gadgets. I like to be able to tweak a few things here and there on my Mac especially the things I have to look at all the time like my desktop background and screen saver. If I wasn’t able to do these things I think my Mac would be pretty boring. I used to think the same thing about my iPhone until now.

Apple’s release of iOS 4 introduced us to something people using jailbroken iPhones have been taking for granted for a long time — the ability to alter the wallpapers used on the iOS Springboard desktop and lock screen. Couple these iOS enhancements with the new iPhone 4 retina display and soon you’ll be feasting your eyes on some pretty amazing wallpapers.

So where do you go to find good wallpapers?

Doornail dead on the Mac for almost twenty years, Autodesk has just announced that they will finally be bringing their multi-dimension engineering and architectural design software AutoCAD back to Apple customers through a native OS X port.

Starting in October, Mac owners will again get to design their minds-eye mansions and skyscrapers without ever dropping to Boot Camp, while taking advantage of native Mac features like multitouch gestures. Of course, professional software like this isn’t cheap, and Mac-friendly architects can expect to drop $4000 for the trouble… but might be a small price to pay to migrate your architecture firm back to the Mac.

AutoDesk isn’t stopping there: they’re also reportedly working on an IOS version of AutoCAD called AutoCAD WS, a free download that will allow you to view (but not make major changes) on your iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone. Possibly a death blow to the profitable architecture paper roll and blue ink industry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxCNyR5NfmU

I’ve always thought time-lapse snapshots were a neat way to visually track change over time. Bay Area-based developer Redbot thinks so too, and they’ve created a Time Lapse Photo Journal for the iPhone that makes it easy to create time-lapse albums and share them with hapless victims your friends.

Use the app to resize and reposition each shot, set reminders to take shots of the subject and fine-tune the slideshows. The results can be shared via email, YouTube or on Facebook. No word on pricing, and the app isn’t available yet but should hit the App Store next week.

It may be somewhat hard to remember — what with sporadically poor call performance, lots of other hardware to play around with and all those apps — that the iPhone is more-or-less primarily a tool for voice communication. And there’s no better or cheaper way to use that tool than through the Skype app.

Sending cutesy virtual crap to your friends on Facebook is so 2008: dial into the Bartab iPhone app instead and send them cheap, real drinks.

Picking up the tab has never been so painless. Download the free app or go to bartab.com. (Not all your pals have iPhones? There’s an Android version, too).

Pick the person who you want to offer a pint — or Pisco punch or shot of Peppermint Schapps — and the bar where you want to send it, pay a buck and pow: your friend shows their iPhone screen to the bartender at a participating water hole and gets a drink. They also have to pay a buck to redeem the drink coupon, it’s apparently due to some annoying state regulations.

Cult of Mac has been going nuts with iPad and iPhone app giveaways lately, and today is no different! Today, we’ve got some great apps for your iPhone and iPad. We’ll pick 5 random winners to win 4 great apps. If you want a chance to get your hands on some of these sweet apps this week, then follow the instructions carefully below:

1. “Like” Us On Facebook (you must do this, if you’re not a fan of us, we can’t contact you if you win).
2. Post a link to your favorite Cult of Mac article from the past week on our Facebook Wall. Make sure you post it on OUR wall, not your own.
3. Your wall post 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 later this week and explain how to get the codes!
4. Optional step: If you want to go the extra mile, you can post it in your Facebook status and status tag us. Do it ’cause you love us.

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:

Keeping the dozens of keyboard shortcuts necessary to be competitive in Blizzard’s new multi-faction, space RTS Stacraft II mind mapped can be difficult for even the most caffeinated South Korean pro gamer, but if you’ve got an iOS device, pulling off a successful Zerg rush is about to get a whole lot easier, thanks to the Starcraft II Gameboard.

Developed by Daniel Hellerman, the Starcraft II Gameboard turns your iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad into a dedicated control pad, from which you can easily issue orders and build new units. Essentially, it syncs with a program on your computer and allows you to send complicated keyboard hot key combinations just by tapping an icon with your finger. You can even look up information in a Starcraft II unit encyclopedia while you’re at it.

The Starcraft II Gameboard is expected to arrive in the App Store in September for $2.99. The only problem is, the client software needed for the program to run is for Windows-based systems only… which seems like a huge oversight, given Starcraft II‘s excellent native Mac port.

My dad was a magician at sniffing out great places to eat. We’d drive by some hole-in-the-wall we’d never seen before, and he’d point and say, “that’s where we’ll  eat, it’s good.” Then I’d scramble to check out the hole-in-the-wall’s rating using the Yelp app on my iPhone, to see if he was right. The result was always the same: me shaking my head in disbelief as Yelp’s vast community of raters would invariably agree with him.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t have a magic nose. But that’s ok — we’ve got Yelp.

This week’s must-have iOS games features plenty of zombies, addictive games galore and some fantastic bargains guaranteed to keep you entertained this weekend. There’s also two retro classics thrown in for good measure. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorite games from the past week after the break!

This week’s must-haves include applications to view and manage your CloudApp account, keep track of your to-dos in style and translate tweets from your foreign friends. Check out Cult of Mac’s favorites from the past week after the break!

On the wild, anonymous Internet, you just can’t always trust a glowing review… but at least the iTunes App Store has gotten a little more trustworthy, after the Federal Trade Commission slapped down a California marketing company that was employing people to write positive App Store reviews without full disclosure.

In a statement on Thursday, the FTC said that they had reached an agreement with Reverb to remove the offending reviews from iTunes, as well as barring them from doing any more fraudulent reviews in the future and forcing them to to fully disclose their relationship with their clients, which includes Digital Leisure, Harmonix and MTV Games. A monetary fine was not disclosed.

On Reverb’s part, they seem pretty petulant and unrepentant about the whole thing, casting themselves as the victims.

“It became apparent that we would never agree on the facts of the situation,” she said. “Rather than continuing to spend time and money arguing, and laying off employees to fight what we believed was a frivolous matter, we settled this case and ended the discussion.”

The official Netflix streaming app for iPhone and iPod touch hit the App Store this morning. The free download allows anyone with a monthly Netflix subscription of $8.99 or more to watch unlimited streaming movies and TV on the iOS device of their choice.

I’ve been playing with it since I woke up today, and I’m quite impressed — video looks phenomenal on my 3GS, and performance over both WiFI and 3G have been great (which, as a San Franciscan who resides in a neighborhood AT&T ignores, is very impressive).

Netflix iPhone App Video from Netflix on Vimeo.

My two minor quibbles with the app are both interface-related: NetFlix opted to represent titles to watch with large icons, which makes it a labor to scroll through. Worse, it doesn’t provide a thumb on the right side to provide any sense of where you are in the middle of a long list. Search works very well, however.

But these are minor complaints. Frankly, this puts HuluPlus to shame. Better selection, better performance, and no ads. Download the crap out of this. Get it here.

For those of us poor souls still feeling for the ghost of Google-gobbled SimplifyMedia and looking for a way to easily share our media across our computers and social networks, Libox has stepped in to fit the bill.

Think of Libox as a personal P2P streaming application for your media. You simply download the software for the PC or Mac and let it scan your computer for media like movies, music and images. Once it’s done, any medial then be available for streaming on any computer you own, or even on your iPhone or iPad through a free (and attractive) universal app.

Want to share your media with friends? That’s easy enough too: just add them as contacts and they’ll be able to play any media you select to share. You can even selectively share media: Leander can take a look at my movie collection, sure, but he’s not getting access to the porn directory.

The iPhone 4’s new 720p video recording capabilities and the fantastic iMovie for iPhone app make shooting beautiful movies on the run an absolute snap, but sharing them is another story. The second you try to upload your gorgeous, high-def movie to YouTube, the iPhone 4 crunches your video down to a low-quality 360p clip.

What the heck, Apple? Don’t you want us to show off your phone’s video capabilities? That forced compression is plenty irritating, but an enterprising App Store developer has now remedied the problem in the form a free application called 720Tube, which does exactly what it says: makes sure your videos are shared in the same quality they were shot.

[via GigaOM]

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that a Dallas man, Vincent Hunter, who was visiting relatives in Hartford, Conn. watched the in-progress burglary of his home after receiving an alert from his iCam app (iTunes link) running on his iPhone.

The app warned him that motion had been detected in the house. It turned out that two burglars were attempting to get into the man’s home and eventually made entry into the home by throwing a brick through a glass door.

He immediately called the police and officers were immediately dispatched to his home. The app alerted him to the arrival of the officers and as he watched via webcam they made entry into the home with guns drawn.

The story wasn’t clear about whether or not anything was stolen, but the combination of iCam, some webcams, and the iPhone certainly did their job — advising the home owner of the in-progress burglary.

Forget iOS’ execrable Notes.app: the best way to keep your post-its in order between your iPhone, iPad or Mac is the incredible Simplenote, which allows you to easily take notes on pretty much any device under the sun and sync it on every device you own.

Now Simplenote has gotten even better, thanks to a beefy update to both the free iOS app and the web backend.

What’s new? For one, tags, similar to Gmail labels (or, if you’re a blogger, your WordPress tags), which allow you to dynamically categorize your notes as you take them. You can also pin commonly accessed notes to the top of your list, making sure it’s always easy to open.

Another cool new addition is the ability to share a note to other Simplenote users, allowing them to edit a simple collaborative document in realtime… with new versioning ability allowing you to easily track changes… and if you want to share your note with someone who doesn’t have a Simplenote account, you can do it through email or the web too.

It’s a big update, and there’s half-a-dozen more new features to play with as well. If you’re not using Simplenote, what are you waiting for? It’s a free download. You’ll never use another iOS note-taking app again.