iPhone apps - page 58

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As a smartphone, the iPhone is hard to beat, but as a tool capable of inflicting extraordinary acts of physical violence, the handset is less impressive… even when compared to Apple’s other products.

A MacBook Air, of course, can be stealthily drawn across a carotid artery, but the iPhone’s rounded, lozenge-like design makes it a poor weapon for either stabbing or slashing. Neither can it be dropped like an anvil upon an unsuspecting brain pan, like the iMac, or used as a blunt, aluminum club, like the MacBook Pro. In battle, an iPhone — at best — can be hurled at an opponent as a distraction while you sprint, comically hooting, in the other direction. It’s a bizarre misstep in Jonathan Ives’ oeuvre of gladiatorial product designs.

Still, where Apple may have failed to deliver, enter the makers to transform the iPhone into the weapon of mass destruction it should be. Christopher Rojas took the TouchOSC application and used his iPhone to remote control a fantastic, solar-powered Arduino Tank, built out of parts from Sparkfun.

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.

James Thomson of PCalc fame noted late yesterday on Twitter that the App Store’s again updated the way it deals with app sorting: “Looks like sort by release date in [the] App Store only sorts by original release date now, not update date. Say hello to page 342 of Utilities…”

Thomson’s referring here to PCalc now being housed on the penultimate page in the massive utilities section, because it was one of the earliest apps on the store, released on July 11 2008. However, the app was last updated on October 18.

Although release date sorting was open to ‘abuse’, dodgy developers regularly updating apps to move them to the top of the list, it strikes me as a bad decision to list apps by their original release dates, regardless of how often they’re updated. What impetus does a developer have to update a major app released in 2008, if no-one’s going to see the update unless Apple deigns to include it in ‘new & noteworthy’ or ‘what’s hot’? This decision could start a spate of app removals and ‘updates’ via entirely new products, reducing the likelihood of free updates for long-time users.

A simple workaround would be for Apple to provide an alternate sort option of ‘recently updated’, which would, presumably, make everyone happy. In the meantime, some of the earliest developers for the platform who care about updating their apps just got another kick in the crotch.

Touch Arcade reports that EA’s action adventure game Mirror’s Edge is coming to iPhone in January. Although originally boasting a first-person perspective viewpoint, with your character sliding under barriers, jumping across ledges, and doing all manner of death-defying leaps and bounds, it’s likely the iPhone version will be closer in character to Mirror’s Edge 2D.

Also interesting is this game will prompt a legal showdown on release. Tim Langdell of Edge Games has forced two indie iPhone games off the App Store for using Edge within their names. In both cases, Apple has complied with these challenges, which has been strictly in compliance with the DMCA, according to commentators. Accusations of mark trolling have led to EA challenging the validity of these marks (source: Kotaku), and any resolution is likely a year away.

When Mirror’s Edge appears on the App Store, Langdell will have no option but to challenge it, under the precedent he’s already set. And Apple will have no option but to pull the game, based on what it’s already done regarding Killer Edge Racing and Edge (now, temporarily, Edgy in the US and UK). It’s one thing when Apple stamps on an indie’s head, but it’s going to be interesting to see what happens when an EA game gets yanked unceremoniously from the store, due to spurious rights-infringement claims. Popcorn at the ready!

UPDATE (December 3): Edgy has been discontinued, following further legal issues with Edge Games. Mobigame says it will now await the ruling of the EA case before attempting to return Edge to the UK and US App Stores. At the time of writing, Edge remains available in some other territories.

The car-crash legal battle between Mobigame and Tim Langdell took a short detour today with the announcement that Edge is back on the US and UK App Stores, this time branded Edgy (App Store link).

As reported on Cult of Mac and elsewhere, the indie developer’s game has been the subject of a protracted legal battle against Tim Langdell’s Edge Games, a ‘company’ that seems to operate in a somewhat suspect manner. Due to threats, Mobigames pulled Edge itself once, and then Apple did so twice, the second time very recently after the indie title was rebranded ‘Edge by Mobigame’.

The latest change, to Edgy, has appeared on the UK and US App Stores without reviews and ratings, and Mobigame confirmed via Twitter that it is “a new product designed for the Amercian legal system […] you can still find the old product on all others continents” [sic]. When asked how updates would be tackled (since the new product is divorced from Edge purchases in the US and UK), Mobigames responded that there would be “no update until EA win in the US/UK, and then maybe EDGE 2. We are working on the new games here, you will love them”.

Mobigame’s reference to EA is regarding the company filing suit against Edge Games, primarily to deal with a spat relating to Mirror’s Edge, but also because “filing the complaint is the right thing to do for the developer community”. In the meantime, it appears Edge/Edgy itself is finally available on a permanent basis, albeit without any chance of updates. On the latter point, the game is stable and fun as it is, and so that’s not a problem; on the former, only time will tell if Edge Games/Langdell takes exception to the Edgy brand, regardless of previous claims that this would settle the matter between Edge Games and Mobigames for good.

Never one to miss an opportunity for adulation, Atebits founder Loren Brichter managed to get the new version of his superlative Twitter client Tweetie through the App Store over the Thanksgiving Holiday. And oh, boy, it’s a doozy. Download here (iTunes link) for $2.99 if you’ve somehow held out thus far.

Basically it implements every new feature that has shown up on Twitter in the six weeks since Tweetie 2 dropped — but better: Lists, new-style ReTweets, and GeoTags. It also throws in a ton of bug fixes; having used it all day long, it seems as solid as the previous iteration, if not a bit faster. Loren even threw in TweetStream break indicators to let you know when you’ve missed out on a few hours of your friends’ navel-gazing. All told, it takes the best Twitter experience on any platform to the next level without a hitch.

I said awhile ago that Tweetie 2 was the best iPhone app. I retract that now. Tweetie 2.1 is.

Via Mashable

The crowded iPhone GPS nav market is already starting to resemble a Southern California freeway on a Friday afternoon. But two just-launched GPS apps by Portuguese-based NDrive are different: they cover a much smaller area — they also carry a much lighter price tag.

The two apps, NDrive Los Angeles and NDrive New York City, cost $3.99 a pop, and are on sale during Black Friday for $2.99 each. NDrive has been outfitting our friends across the pond with GPS devices since 2005, but the two new city-cenetered iPhone apps mark the company’s first adventure into the US market

The apps look like they cover the two metropolises in gorgeous detail, with 3D-rendered landmarks, and an abundance of detail. One thing to note, though: The prices cover map licenses for one year only, which probably means forking over another couple of bucks every year.

[via Macworld UK]

The 21-year-old Australian guy who got chewed out by his parents for launching the first iPhone worm landed a job with an app company.

Ashley Towns wrote Ikee, calling it an “experiment that got out of hand,”  a worm that  switched iPhone wallpaper for an image of 80s pop singer Rick Astley. Astley, who sang the 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” who morphed into the Internet prank known as “Rickrolling.” The bait-and-switch worm replaces an ordinary video with one of Astley.

The day after the worm infected jailbroken iPhones, Towns said he had received a death threat, media attention and job offers.

The BBC reports now that Towns signed on with mogeneration, an Australian app company with four apps currently available at iTunes, two are kid distractors and two are restaurant finders.

The worm Towns created wasn’t but opened the door for a nasty worm targeting online banking customers of ING.

“It leaves a nasty taste that he has been rewarded like this, yet has not even expressed regret for his actions,” Graham Cluley of Security firm Sophos told BBC News.
Towns said he created the virus to raise the issue of security. He did not face any criminal charges.

I’m probably not anything like the target demographic of the Harry Potter: Spells iPhone game. Even so, a chance at reviewing an app that leverages the iPhone’s motion sensing abilities to let me turn my friends to stone was too good to pass up.

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. has taken an ambitious idea and executed it without much thought to gameplay.

Here’s four iPhone apps that may come in handy on Black Friday if you decide to brave the crowds. All three help you keep track of Black Friday deals from your iPhone:

• TGI Black Friday — Free. Displays BF ads from all major retail stores. Search ads, create personal shopping lists and compare prices. Powered by TGIblackfriday.com and DealCatcher.com. App Store Link.
• Black Friday Ads — Free. Listings by store. View actual ads as PDFs. Twitter, Facebook and email connectivity. App Store Link.
• Black Friday Wish — $0.99. Verified Black Friday deals “hand picked and verified.” Compare prices across stores to find best deal. Add unavailable items to wishlist and get alerts if/when they go on sale. App Store Link.
• Black Friday — Links to Black Friday deals posted to FatWallet.com forum “uncovered by other consumers like you.” App Store Link.
• ShopSavvy — Free. Scan a barcode to pull up prices at competing stores. App Store Link.
• Mall Maps — You Are Here— $2.99. Figure out where you are in the mall. Includes floor plans for major shopping malls. App Store Link.

Today’s Best Thing Ever is Lo-mob, a gorgeous new photo effects app for iPhone.

The emphasis is on decidedly retro-looking shots. There are 28 (count ’em) different effects on offer, ranging from 35mm format film to a variety of instant camera prints.

Lo-mob will take photos from your Camera Roll or let you snap fresh ones. It then takes a few seconds to generate preview thumbnails of all the different effects, and shows you a list. Pick from the list to see a full-size version (you’ll need to wait a few more seconds to see it).

Lo-mob isn’t the fastest app around, and could do with some tweaks to make it easier and faster to use. (Such as: flick left and right to move from one effect to the next; a “save all” feature to save full-size versions of all the effects; and a favorites feature so you can remove the effects you don’t plan on using.)

But those are minor niggles. I really love this app and haven’t been able to stop playing with it. There are a lot of effects apps on the App Store, but none of them have yet managed to offer anything very different (CameraBag remains the best of the bunch). Lo-mob does offer something different, and deserves a place alongside CameraBag on your iPhone.

To give you an idea of what it can do, I’ve taken screenshots of all the different effects.

Here’s the original photo:

These are the “Classic Vintage” effects:

AppShopper has the full list of iPhone/iPt Apps on sale for Thanksgiving.
Highlights include:

Terminator Salvation : The official game — $0.99 (normally $4.99) App Store Link
Brothers In Arms Hour of Heroes — $0.99 (normally $4.99) App Store Link
The Sims 3 — $4.99 (normally $6.99) App Store Link
SimCity — $2.99 (normally $4.99) App Store Link
Trivial Pursuit — $2.99 (normally $4.99) App Store Link
Wolfenstein RPG — $1.99 (normally $2.99) App Store Link
Command & Conquer Red Alert — $6.99 (normally $9.99) App Store Link
Star Trek — $0.99 (normally $1.99) App Store Link
CoPilot Live North America — $19.99 (normally $34.99) App Store Link
Scrabble — $2.99 (normally $4.99) App Store Link
Tetris — $2.99 (normally $4.99) App Store Link
Shoppee — Free (normally $2.99) App Store Link

Here’s the Top 5 Secrets for making a killer website to showcase your iPhone app, courtesy of the WebDesignerWall blog.

“To compete with thousands of iPhone apps in the App Store, having a good app icon is not enough. A nicely designed website for the app is very important. A beautiful website helps to drive traffic in and also makes your app stand out from the crowd.”

Here’s the list:

• One Page — Your app’s site should be one page. No more, no less.
• iPhone Image — Use an image of an iPhone running the app as the main design element. Drop shadow or reflection optional.
• Apple App Store Badge — The download button should be Apple’s App Store badge. Easy to spot and instantly recognizable.
• Animated Screenshots — All sites show screenshots of their app, but animated screens show it in action.
• Display Pricing — It’s frustrating for prospective customers to not know the price up front.

Link.

More Thanksgiving iPhone app sale action.

At 8:00am ET tomorrow, the CoPilot Live turn-by-turn GPS navigation app will go on sale for $19.99. The app is normally $35 and has got generally good reviews. Gizmodo calls it the best cheap GPS app (it has some quirks, but what do you expect for $35? I mean $20?).
The app features pretty 3-D maps, text-to-voice directions and monthly map updates. Maps are stored locally on the iPhone/iPt (weighing in at about ~1.3GB), which means no blackouts in the boonies.

The sale lasts all weekend. The app is fully functional, the company says, and there’s no additional fees for updated maps.

App website.
iTunes link.

The iLingual app is clever translation software that speaks foreign phrases with video of your mouth saying the words. Launch the app, snap a picture of your mouth (or someone else’s) and hold the iPhone in front of your mouth. The software animates your mouth to make it look like you’re actually talking French (or German and Arabic). Well, sorta.

Either way, it’s a lot of fun and it’s free (sponsored by the Emirates airline). Great way to break the ice with the locals, who always appreciate tourists trying to speak the language. Watch the app being tested in Paris in the video above.

• iLingual French.
• iLingual German.
• iLingual Arabic.

Via 9to5Mac and Gizmodo.

It’s not just HDTVs that are on sale this Black Friday. Lots of iPhone developers are dropping prices for the holidays also.

App Cubby, for example, maker of the popular Gas Cubby app for tracking gas mileage, is dropping the cost of its apps by 30 percent through the Thanksgiving holiday. Several other developers have also temporarily dropped prices, including DOOM Resurrection and BeejiveIM.

A good way to track apps on sale is to check App Shopper’s “prices” view. There’s a lot of crap, but to spot the good stuff, keep an eye on an app’s icon. A good icon generally means a good app. A good icon

Here are some links for apps on sale:

• Gas Cubby — iTunes — AppShopper
• Trip Cubby — iTunes — AppShopper
• Health Cubby — iTunes — AppShopper
• DOOM Resurrection $2.99 — iTunes — AppShopper
• BeejiveIM $6.99 — iTunes — AppShopper
• Tipulator $0.99 — iTunes — AppShopper
• Mathemagics: Mental Math Tricks $0.99 — iTunes — AppShopper

Please let us know if you see other good ones we should highlight.

The season finale of Larry David’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm” reunites the Seinfeld cast. Larry is watching an episode of Seinfeld set in 2009. George is an iPhone developer who made a fortune with “iToilet,” a GPS app that tells you the location of the nearest public restroom. Unfortunately, George lost it all by investing with Bernie Madoff.

Via The Raw Feed.

If an iPhone with Ocarina makes sweet music, how about three iPhones?
That may be the thinking behind a trio of iPhones (the third is peeking out from under the back — for some thumb action, maybe?) mounted to a laser-cut body found at the Maker meet-up in Japan.

No reports on what comes out when you blow into the mouthpiece, but the idea is sounds good, though perhaps not good enough to justify the three-device cost.

Via Make

BusinessWeek ran late yesterday an interesting article interviewing Phil Schiller about the App Store. While it’s good to see Schiller again talking publicly about the approvals process, it’s sad to see Apple still ignoring key issues.

Cover Up is a new $0.99 iPhone app that masks embarrassing bathroom noises with other bathroom sounds, like running water, a hand dryer or blow dryer.

Trying to mask the sound of a giant anal raspberry is like spraying deodorant to mask a pooey smell: it never really works. But it may be useful if you’re known to the person in the next stall.

More info at Coverup.me.

Ninja Assassin the movie is an anticipated Hollywood swords and sandals epic from James McTeigue, director of V for Vendetta, with a story from J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon 5 and the only Spider-Man comic in which Dr. Doom cries (though the artist allegedly came up with that last bit).

It’s also now an iPhone game, and a quite nicely produced one, at that. It might, in fact, be the bloodiest game to ever come to the platform, if that’s your thing. Seriously — you get measured on the number of successful decapitations per level.

This is what you’re about to ask: Is Star Wars: Trench Run so good that it’ll have you wondering how magically your iPhone becomes an X-wing fighter? Answer: No. It’s better — it’s actually so good, you’ll be trying to figure out why your X-wing looks suspiciously like an iPhone.

There are iPhone-controlled cars and beds — now one company plans to integrate iPhones/iPods in its wheelchairs for a new kind of accessibility.

Dynamic Controls developed a system to connect an iPhone or iPod Touch to the wheelchair system via Bluetooth; it mounts on an adjustable arm and has a recharger, too.

In addition to music and all the other stuff you can do with an iPod/iPhone that might come in handy — compass reading, maps — it has an app that can be used for some controls on the chair, showing chair information in real time, including speed, and a diagnostics feature for when things go awry.

“We recognized the iPhone has revolutionized the way people communicate and saw the opportunity to develop this solution for wheelchair users, taking full advantage of Apple’s ‘Works with iPod / Made for iPhone’ developer program,” Charlotte Walshe, CEO of Dynamic Controls, said in a press release.

Lee Kwok, a wheel chair user in Christchurch, New Zealand was also quoted in the presser, saying says he thinks it will be fantastic to be able to buy an off-the-shelf product that has so many features for powered wheelchair users: “Having access to mainstream technology via a wheelchair is a huge advantage.”
The new feature is expected to launch in April, 2010.

I’ve often suspected the staff at Cult of Mac of being significantly more attractive than bloggers at sites that don’t care how attractive their bloggers are. And now I can prove it.

Eighteen-year-old English entrepreneur Ed Nash has come up with a 99-cent iPhone app that claims to use Fibonacci’s golden ratio to scientifically determine whether or not a face is aesthetically pleasing. Just snap a photo of the hapless subject, adjust the anchor points, hit the button and viola, instant decision.

Fit or Fugly’s App Store page suggests you use it “to break the ice at dinner parties.” Sure. But we’re going to suggest “the ice” isn’t the only thing that’ll get broken when your iPhone decides the girl sitting next to you is “fugly.”

We recently wrote about JBMJBM, LLC — a one-man app factory with 87 approved ones so far — on the eBay block for  $100,000.

Top-selling titles include Friday Night Lights, iSpy Game, iReferee, Pet Peeves (a social network for griping pictured above), iSexyRef2, Pro Rodeo Fan, Sit Up Counter and Shake 2 Count.

CoM had a quick word with owner Brice Milliorn about the sale, what’s next for him and how he sees the future of apps.

CoM: Was JBMJBM sold?

BM: No, I have not sold company or apps yet.  I am in talks with one guy about buying me out via stock, but it doesn’t look promising.

CoM: What plans to you have to sell it now?

BM: No plans to sell again, just going to continue doing what I am doing and do more freelance work as well.

CoM: What changes would you like to see in Apple’s app store?

BM: I don’t have a problem with Apple, you follow their guidelines you get things approved, simple as that.  The few items that I have had issue with them, they called explained, I fixed and it got approved.  I even wrote the number down and called the guy back a few times when I was having issues and within a few hours it was fixed.

CoM: Where do you think the future of app development is headed?

BM: I think the future of the iPhone is opening it up to Verizon.  That will be another huge influx of potential app buyers and I look forward to this happening.

I also believe all this hype on the Droid and all those other handsets that will ultimately never get to the level of the iPhone.  The only company to match the iPhone and better it is Apple itself.