The iPhone can already be used to buy coffee; now it can sell it too. Square, a new venture from Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey, lets retailers swipe credit cards using a tiny reader that plugs in to the audio jack on an iPhone.
Using an iPhone to collect money is nothing new, and apps like Credit Card Terminal and iSwipe Pro have been around for awhile. But Square marks the first time a card can be physically swiped — and, says a post in Wired’s Epicenter, that also means the ability to accept gift cards.
Square’s website says that card swiping can begin immediately after account setup, with “no contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs.” Square also says it will do cool little things like email customer receipts and keep track of how many lattes to go till that free tenth one.
If it works as advertised, the system might spread quickly among retailers and consumer alike simply because of its elegance and ease-of-use. And as you may have noticed with Dorsey’s previous project, sometimes that’s all it takes to change the game.
Yup, it’s just that easy — Kentucky-based MHA’s new Airlock app turns your Mac into a proximity sensor that un/locks the computer’s screen when your iPhone enters a user-defined range; it can also do nifty things like run apps when it senses your iPhone enter or exit the area. And there’s nothing to install on your iPhone, it just sits there and looks pretty (and broadcasts a Bluetooth signal, of course).
Yeah. Well, that’s the theory. Unfortunately, Airlock would have nothing to do with my iPhone — repeated attempts failed to get my 3GS to even show up on the pairing screen. MHA says they’re aware of the problem, that it seems to affect newer iPhones, and that they’re working to fix it.
Until that happens, I’ll just have to laugh at the clever writing on MHA’s website and marvel at technology’s potential.
Airlock is downloadable for a limitlessly renewable three-hour trial; $7.77 will let you use Airlock without having to ask to try it every three hours.
Quite new on the App Store is Launchball, a physics game that might look familiar to you if you’ve ever played the London Science Museum‘s online version.
The Museum has ported the web-based Flash game to the iPhone, with some help from Bright AI, and the result is lots of fun.
The folks over at Instructables have a very timely winter tutorial on hacking your winter gloves so that you don’t have to freeze your digits off to use your iPhone or iPod as the temperature falls.
You’ll need conductive thread, a sturdy needle and enough sewing capability to execute a few stitches without stabbing your eye out.
While there are a bunch of ways to get the touch back into your warm woolies — like Freehands or Dots gloves — we’re talking about the cheap-o version again since this step-by-step tutorial also mentions where to get a small amount of conductive thread, instead of a $20 spool, to sew into the tips for $3.95.
At that price, you can afford to give it a go — before resorting to fingerless gloves to answer your iPhone in winter.
iPhones stolen from Belgium are appearing on the Russian blackmarket, reports iPhones.ru. Image from Instructables: http://www.instructables.com/id/Bluetooth-Handgun-Handset-for-your-iPhone-iGiveUp/
Batches of stolen iPhones snagged during the “Great iPhone Heist” in Belgium earlier this month are showing up on the Russian black market.
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.
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 stopplayingwithit. 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.
An iPhone application developer has upped the ante on criticism of Apple’s App Store approval policies with apprejections.com, a website devoted to collating “all the known examples of rejected Apps.”
Adam Martin, CEO of UK-based Red Glasses, makers of three iPhone apps (and a software development start-up with a curiously thin web presence), created the site earlier this month to document and share all known examples of “what is actually rejected” from the App Store — and he pulls no punches in his critique of Apple’s process for deciding which apps and updates make it onto the iTunes App Store.
“Apple has a secret, undocumented, unquestionable, random process for deciding which applications to “allow” onto the deck,” claims Martin on the site. Ironically, his own BrainGame Summation (iTunes link) app had an update rejected this week for using a common workaround to bugs in the official Apple APIs; the worrkaround previously appeared to pose no approval problems but has apprently been the basis for several recent rejections.
“Apple point-blank refuses to document the criteria – or even to discuss the matter on anything except a case-by-case basis,” Martin writes, though he does allow that “in most cases, rejections [are] perfectly reasonable, and/or Apple had officially warned developers “don’t do this; we won’t allow it”.
But the site does take App Store gatekeepers to task for being, among other things, “unskilled staff [who] are given a technical tool (the secret static-analyer) [sic] which they don’t understand – but trust 100%, [causing them to] reject apps that haven’t done anything wrong, but which the tool (incorrectly) flags.”
Martin acknowledges that the fledgling site has only just gotten started, but writes that he’s “been following reports on app-rejection for over a year,” and aims to catalog everything unusual and unfair about the mysterious process for joining the 100,000 (and growing) iPhone apps available now on iTunes.
It’s now gone from “easy” to “tricky” to avoid having your App rejected by Apple, according to Martin.
4iThumbs is a $14.95 overlay for the iPhone screen that provides tactile feedback when using the on-screen keyboard. It has little bumpers placed right above the virtual keys that provides the feedback.
If you previously owned a Blackberry, typing on an iPhone might be a pain for you. Even though the on-screen keyboard is pretty responsive, it lacks the tactile feedback that you get on devices like BlackBerry Storm 2 etc. Now with 4iThumbs, you can fill that gap. The company boasts that the typing experience should become much better within just hours of use. As an extra feature, it also acts like an anti-glare screen protector.
However, it doesn’t look like an ergonomic option. The overlay is required just while typing and becomes a hindrance when doing other stuff like playing games. Thankfully it’s removable but taking it off and putting back on every single time is even worse. Also, carrying an extra screen every time in the pocket isn’t something that people like.
Currently, it’s the only option if you are looking for a way to have tactile feedback from your iPhone keyboard. Even though their commercial depicts just the portrait version, a landscape version is also available.
Tired of all the ringtones the iPhone comes with, and can’t stomach loading a Kenny Chesney tone onto your phone? Here’s your salvation: The ringtone upstarts at San Francisco-based iRingPro are tossing out free goodies for Thanksgiving — namely, a free, tri-pack sampler of their sangfroid-inducing ringtones.
We ran a post in August pointing out what makes these quieter, more civilized tones so cool.
The sampler includes one ringtone from each of their three theme packs: Zen, Tek and Origin. The last is my personal favorite of the three, as the complete tone is split into three pieces and plays progressively with each ring.
The theme packs are $9.95 for anywhere from 22 to 31 ringtones. The free sampler is, well, free.
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
It’s dangerous and illegal, but I like listening to music when I’m riding my bicycle. Nothing like a bit of techno to get the blood pumping on a foggy morning. Trouble is, sound-isolating earbuds — the ones you jam deep in your ear canals — can get you killed. They sound great, but they block that firetruck running a red light with sirens blazing.
Altec Lansing’s Backbeat 906 Bluetooth headphones, which have great sound quality, don’t isolate you from the environment, and best of all, have no wires. Paired with an iPhone, they can be used for music and phone calls, even on the bike.
It’s vey liberating. Once you go wireless, it’s hard to go back.
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.
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.
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.
George Dearing‘s three-year-old son got his hands on dad’s iPhone and – oops – found himself staring at the App Store. While it was still logged in to dad’s iTunes account.
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
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.
Maybe you’re a budding musician working at a nightclub and don’t know what to do with all the misplaced iPhones left behind. Or maybe you’re just brilliant and a wee bit inebriated.
Either way, we figure this is how you might be spending your time (uh, just don’t forget to activate “Airplane Mode” on ALL the phones). And unlike other hey,-watch-me-turn-a-phone-into-a-musical-instrument performances, this one doesn’t seem quite so much like a peek into Bizarro World.
Next up: Chef Ramsey hosts a Hell’s Kitchen episode where the only cooking utensils are iPhones.
“You know, if you saute scallops on a non-stick iPhone screen, they won’t stick. That’s why it’s called fucking non-stiiiiiiiick!”
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.
‘Tis the season: Italian magazines are chock full of ads for this sleek iPod dock and bedside lamp called “Diva.”
Designed by Dante Donegani and Giovanni Lauda for Italian firm Rotaliana, it’s an LED light and music system whose polycarbonate, anodized aluminum curves are all in the right places.
Clutter phobes will appreciate the retractable docking station and arm for the light. The docking station, suitable for iPods and iPhones, has four 6-watt speakers, plus an FM radio and USB socket if you’d rather play music from a flash drive. The whole shebang can be commanded via an infrared remote control. She comes in black, gray or white.
At €360 euro (circa $535) one would have to offer molto proof of saintly behavior to Santa for this one.
