iPhone apps - page 56

The organizers of the Indie+Relief one-day charity sale have been overwhelmed by the response from Mac software developers.

After accepting more than 140 developers in the Wednesday January 20th sale — all proceeds of which will be donated to Haiti — the organizers are now turning down offers to add more companies to the program.

“We expected people would be interested, but the response has been overwhelming and amazing,” said Garret Murray, one of the organizers. “Personally, I thought we’d probably have 20 or so companies. And in under a week we’re already having to stop taking submissions. I’ve always known the Mac community is very supportive, but even this blew me away.”

To contribute, all you have to do is buy some of the Mac or iPhone software listed on the Indie+Relief webpage. All proceeds will be donated to charities working in Haiti, including Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, the Red Cross, and others.

The sale includes well-known titles like Delicious Library 2, Instapaper Pro, MarsEdit, Moneydance, Things and Tweetie — as well as lesser-known but highly-rated apps such as Gas Cubby and Today.

Hardware makers are also getting involved. Twelve South promised to donate $5 for every BassJump Subwoofer for MacBook ($79.99) and BackPack Shelf for iMac ($29.99) sold directly on twelvesouth.com.

The effort began five days ago when Mac/iPhone software developer Justin Williams suggested on his blog that software publishers should donate a day’s sales to relief efforts. The idea spread quickly and Williams and Garrett soon had dozens of volunteers. They spent the weekend creating a single page listing all the software for sale.

The pair are now calling on everyone to spread the word via Twitter, Facebook, blog posts or by adding Indie+Relief banner to websites and blogs.

“The more awareness there is, the more software will be bought,” said Williams on his blog. “The more software that is bought, the more is donated to charity. I realize we won’t be making nearly as much money as the text messaging campaigns or other telethons, but it is refreshing to know the Mac & iPhone community has the opportunity to at least make a dent in the Haitian relief effort. Thanks for being a part of that.”

I just conducted a quick IM-terview with Murray. Full text after the jump.

Skype for the iPhone is a pretty nifty port of the venerable VoIP software, but it has two big gaps in its feature set that have had users clamoring for months now: namely, push notification of incoming calls and messages, and voice over 3G.

It’s completely shocking, then, that the latest Skype for iPhone version 1.3 patch didn’t add support for either. Instead, all the software gains is a call quality monitor, a landscape mode for instant messaging and hint functionality to gently lead new users along.

The venerable Grand Theft Auto series has been ported to almost every device in gadetry’s zoological garden, but few of the efforts were as superlative as Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars for the Nintendo DS. Realizing that the first-person style of the likes of Grand Theft Auto III and IV would be ill-suited for the DS’ control scheme and modest hardware, they instead came up with an amalgam of the frenetic, top-down 2D action of Grand Theft Auto and Grand Theft Auto 2 combined with the story and strong characters of the latter games in the series.

The result is a masterpiece: not just one of the best games in the handheld line Grand Theft Auto games, but the series as a whole. And now it’s available over at the App Store for $9.99.

I haven’t tried the iPhone version yet, but the screenshots look remarkably more crisp and detailed than the Nintendo DS version, although it retains the latter’s attractive cel-shaded top-down perspective. A failing of the DS version was afterthought touch gimmicks, and I imagine those have been ported wholesale to the iPhone version, but overall, if Chinatown Wars for the iPhone is as good as game as its DS counterpart, this is a must buy for Apple gamers.

The slavering, cannibalistic undead have shambled onto the App Store in the new Dawn of the Dead game, available now for iPhones and iPod Touches.

As a fan of Romero’s spaghetti zombies, I’m slightly disappointed to learn that Dawn of the Dead is based not on the original 1978 classic, but Zack Snyder’s execrable 2004 remake. That means fast zombies and Ving Rhames. Ugh.

Still, it’s hard to go wrong with a zombie game, and Dawn of the Dead seems like a perfectly serviceable zombie masher. Its gameplay model seems plucked from the likes of games like Dracula X, Crimsonland and SmashTV: it’s a top-down shoot-em-up, with a number of weapons and power ups.

At $1.99, you might as well pick it up: with the forthcoming zombie apocalypse as certain as the release of the Apple Tablet, you’ll need all the zombie-beheading practice you can get.

It was a rainy Sunday afternoon when I was suddenly bewitched by the heavenly tones of a siren’s call radiating from the single speaker inside my favorite Starbucks. I was enraptured, overwhelmed with the sudden desire to find out to whom these dulcet tones belonged! Gripped in a fever of curiosity, I quizzed the barista, but — tragedy! She didn’t know! Would I never find the answer?

After I calmed down a bit, I realized, like everything else, there’s an app for that. In fact, there are two — one of which is truly outstanding.

Since late 2008, John Kooistra has been masterminding an intergalactic war—inside your iPhone. The reds and blues have been engaged in a deadly struggle, as evidenced in twist-based shooter Blue Defense and its more involved sequel Blue Attack.

Red Conquest is John’s most advanced and innovative game yet, a complex, exciting RTS that takes full advantage of Apple’s hardware. Cult of Mac interviewed John about how he got into iPhone games development and how the latest game in the red/blue saga came to be.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BP5ax1qs5o

Digg founder Kevin Rose has become an investor of the Square iPhone payment system (which was in turn created by another social networking visionary, Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey), and so he’s posted an informative video tour of the technology on YouTube.

People think Texans own the whole “bigger-is-better” thing. But just look at the size of Canada — yeah, Canadians know a thing or two about big. No surprise then, that it’s a gang from Canada who are trying to squeeze billboard-sized images from the iPhone’s wee 3mp sensor.

Yelp is kinda like that know-it-all friend who collects all those old Macs and watches Dr. Who obsessively: full of obnoxious, sarcastic comments, but more precious than gold when information is needed.

Those who don’t yet have Yelp on their iPhones, go get the free app now. It’s ok — we’ll wait.

It’s time for our weekly digest of tiny iPhone reviews, courtesy of iPhoneTiny.com, with some extra commentary exclusive to Cult of Mac.

This time, we review ToyPlanes, GOALS! Pro, Bejeweled 2, Jungle Crash Land and Boulder Dash Vol 1.

For all of its problem, $60 for a MobileMe account is still a great deal if you need to store a lot of photos or movies online… the only problem is there hasn’t yet really been a good way to take your photos or movies with you on the road.

Apple’s latest MobileMe app, MobileMe Gallery, plugs that hole. It’s a companion to the other recently released MobileMe, app, iDisk, allowing you to browse and share the photos store on MobileMe from your iPhone and iPod Touch.

It works great, with snappy performance and local cashing which allows users to view photos even when offline. All of the usual multitouch functions are supported, including pinch zooming and landscape orientation.

If you have a MobileMe account, there’s no reason not to pick MobileMe Gallery up: it’s a free download on the iTunes App Store.

Cheese, ladies and gentlemen: cheese.

Beloved foodstuff of Wallace and Gromit, primary geological building block of the moon, and cause of a surprising number of international disputes. And frequently, the main ingredient in my lunchtime sandwiches.

Anyway, if you can’t let a day pass without thinking about cheese, without wishing for a nice firm chunk of cheese to chew on, or without wondering what cheese would best accompany the cheesy dish you’re planning to eat when you get home tonight, you might wish to shell out a couple of dollars for the Fromage app for iPhone or iPod touch.

Fromage lists hundreds of cheeses from Europe and the United States. For each cheese, there’s a photo, a description, and some tasting notes.

Version 3 of the app added personalization: you can add star ratings to all the cheeses you’ve tried, and write your own notes into a built-in database of cheese history goodness.

Cheese. Cheese, cheese, cheese. Cheese.

The iPhone app Busted! Real Mugshots serves up police pics from around the US with full names, birth date, age, arrest date/time plus the offending crime.

Dubbed “Facebook for criminals” by a pithy CoM reader, the app, offered gratis on iTunes, launched January 11, generating controversy faster than an ACLU lawyer can say “FOIA.”

Cult of Mac talked to Jeff Jolley, president of the app’s maker Fountain Dew.

He told us about getting the app approved (easier than you’d think), the “bad karma” aspect, and more importantly, how to get your mugshot removed after that artsy late-night prank ended in tears.

CoM: How did you get the idea?

Jeff Jolley: We read an article on the popularity of mugshot pages on newspaper websites
and thought that could be extended, in a more interesting, mobile and viral manner, to the iPhone.

CoM: How do you get the photos?

JJ: We search the Internet for publicly available (and regularly updated) mugshots, and then make them available for use in the app.  We continue to look for new sources to expand the available repository of mugshots.

CoM: Are the mugshots storeable and searchable?

JJ: Not at this point.  You always stream the photos and you always start with the most recent mugshot available.  This could be a good future feature.

Ever have that feeling that you’ve had a rotten night’s sleep, and the last thing you want to do is get up out of bed?

Yeah, me too.

Sleep Cycle is an iPhone app that says it might be able to help.

Creating an iPhone app is one thing, but making something that stands out in an increasingly deep, expansive crowd is something else entirely. And yet Tapbots have managed just that. Describing their trio of apps as “robots for your iPhone and iPod touch,” Tapbots has managed to infuse the most utilitarian of concepts with genuine personality, and this is largely down to playful and innovative interfaces. We caught up with Paul Haddad (“the programmer”) and Mark Jardine (“the designer”) to find out more about how Tapbots was born, the thinking behind its apps, and what their newest creation, Pastebot, can do for your Apple device.

Keeping to the straight and narrow often sucks: bloviating co-workers, passive- aggressive clients and hobbling back to the homestead to an empty fridge after a long day.
Still, it’s not as bad as being in jail. Or arrested, for that matter.

Busted! Real Mugshots, offers some handy, much-needed schadenfreude for the working stiff, as per the description:

“Real people! Real Arrests! Real Mugshots!”

The iPhone app, gratis on iTunes, serves up police pics from around the US with full names, birthdate, age, arrest date/time of arrest as well as the offending crime. (At least in the first release, it doesn’t give location and does not appear to be searchable).

GigaOm’s been releasing a slew of admirable, Apple-oriented infographics lately, leading with a fantastic look at the money at stake if AT&T loses the iPhone, and now following with a through vivisection of the thriving App Store economy.

Here’s the jist: 28,000 developers have generated over 133,000 apps to date. Surprisingly, the average approval time is only a little under five days,which is shockingly lower than the collective complaints of Internet developers about long App Store turn-around times… although it’s worth noting that that statistic only applies to apps that are approved, not ones that have been rejected.

In general, the average iPhone or iPod Touch user downloaded 3.7 apps in December, only 25% of which were paid apps. Ninety nine cents is the most popular price for paid apps, although the average app price goes as high as $2.59. Even given the low margins on most apps, though, December saw renuews of $500MM, with $350MM of that going to developers.

As usual, it would be downright rude to just slurp up and regurgitate the whole graphic, so click through to check the full thing out.

LAS VEGAS — The audio fanatics over at Blue Microphones have popped out the second-gen Mikey, a major overhaul to their plug-n-play iPod microphone.

The original Mikey was a plug-n-play, $80 microphone with on-board software that turned any iPod into a recording device. But it had several drawbacks: It didn’t play well with the iPhone unless you switched on airplane mode and it was only adjustable in one direction (it didn’t swivel). The second-gen Mikey is now $100, swivels, has a USB pass-through and works seamlessly with the iPhone; and like the original, it’s equipped with a three-way sensitivity switch. It’s also even lighter than its predecessor.

As a bonus, Blue Microphones has introduced Blue Fire, a free, feature-rich recording app available from the App Store that can be paired with Mikey to maximize performance.

LAS VEGAS — Peter Sisson is the CEO of Toktumi, a San Francisco company with a cool app that adds a second phone number to your iPhone. He kinda looks like Roger Sterling, the silver-haired, hard-drinking, hard smoking character from Mad Men.

Except Peter isn’t smoking, and he isn’t drinking. But he’s certainly got the same moxie. Sisson borrowed someone’s badge to gain entrance to an exclusive, invite-only CES event so that he could pitch a new version of his iPhone app to some of the hundreds of press in attendance. I’m glad he did, because it’s a doozie.

LAS VEGAS — Businesses must have a mobile app. That was the message from a CES panel discussion of iPhone apps and their impact on culture, technology, advertising and entertainment.

At the session — iPhone Apps-Change Agents-App Breakthroughs, Video, Games, Mobile Engagement and Advertising — panelists urged companies to get working on mobile apps. Not just for the iPhone, but Android and Palm as well.

“It’s like 10 years ago when the debate was: ‘do I have to get a website or not?’” said Walker Fenton, GM of NewsGator’s Media & Consumer Products. “People were unsure, but these days, the answer is obvious: if you’re not on the Web, it’s like you don’t exist.”

Fenton added that companies must be on the iPhone.

“It’s almost a requirement,” he said. “You’ve got to be on the iPhone; same as you’ve got to be on the Web.”

He concluded: “If you are wondering about whether or not to get on the mobile, the answer is ‘yes’.’ Get on the mobile now.”

LAS VEGAS — The movie ticketing website Fandango is adding paperless movie ticketing to its iPhone app, an executive said at CES.

Fandango is currently testing an app upgrade that shows Fandango’s ticketing barcode on the screen of the iPhone, instead of having to print it out.

“We’re testing it now,” said Darren Cross of Fandango at a session on iPhone apps. “It’s not too far away. We’ll have it pretty soon.”

An iPhone app that could get you into movie theaters is a big step towards the long-promised ticketless future.

Right now, tickets purchased through Fandango’s site must be printed out at home, and the ticket’s barcode scanned at the theater. It’s pretty painless, but it would be much easier to simply display the barcode on screen.

However, tickets purchased through Fandango’s iPhone app (which is actually easier to use than the website) must be picked up physically at will call. It’s a minor inconvenience, but undermines the electronic nature of the transaction.

Here’s a good idea for virally marketing apps that Apple should think about — wirelessly beaming apps to other iPhones like the Zune’s music sharing feature.

Microsoft’s Zune is mostly a me-too product, but it’s one great feature is being able to lend music to friends Zune-to-Zune via Wi-Fi. Shared tracks can be played three times, after which they must be purchased from the Zune marketplace. It’s a great idea but tragically underused because there are so few Zunes out there.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aDE5GcriHc

Even though Apple isn’t part of this year’s CES, the floor has been buzzing with news of new hardware accessories for Apple’s multitouch devices. One of the most interesting of these is the AR.Drone, a quadricopter that you can control via iPhone or iPod touch.

As you can see from the video, the four rotors that give it lift are selectively turned on and off as you move your iPhone, and via the chopper’s forward-facing camera, the game positions killer robots for you to fire rockets at through the touchscreen. There’s even multiplayer for AR dogfights. No word on pricing yet, but looks like a heck of a lot of fun to fly if you’re on the floor.

Parrot — AR.Drone

Although it’s been promised for awhile, a new update to Facebook’s popular iPhone app has hit the iTunes App Store, finally bringing push Facebook notifications to your iPhone.

As soon as you update the Facebook app to version 3.1, you’ll be given the option of turning on push notifications, which will pop up on your phone anytime someone send you a new message, writes on your wall, requests to be your friend, lurid new sexts, tags you in a photo or… jeez, whatever Facebook kiddies are doing these days… throwing vampiric llamas at each other, I guess. However, if you don’t want your iPhone chirping in your pocket every time your mother buys a new sheep in Farmville, the selective push notification options seem robust.

The 3.1 update also adds contact syncing to the mix, which adds Facebook profile pictures and links to your contacts automatically, although it seems buggy and prone to duplication right now. I’d personally recommend holding off on enabling this little feature, although it would be nice to see this functionality continue to improve, given the growing role of Facebook as a subscribable, automatically updated address book for smartphones.

There’s little reason not to grab this one, so hit the update button in the App Store now.

PocketHeat is an app that has recently been pushed to the iTunes App Store designed to keep your hands warm in the winter. For $0.99, the app will push your iPhone or iPod Touch to its maximum CPU capacity.

It’s rather mystifying that this app got through the App Store approval process, since pushing your iPhone or iPod Touch CPU to the point of meltdown seems risky, to say the least.

Still, it has given me my own killer idea: an exfoliating iPhone app that works by making a user’s handset physically explode. Any developers out there want to help me make it happen?