Don’t forget to download your free New Years Blowout Horn and 2009 Countdown app Wednesday (if you haven’t already got this little NYE party favor).
Blow into your iPhone’s mic, Ocarina-style, and hear the party horn. See the horn unravel on the touchscreen. Play Auld Lang Syne by pressing the i button. Comes complete with a countdown timer.
What will they think of next?
News broke over the weekend that iFart Mobile, the current #1 paid application on Apple’s iTunes AppStore, netted its creators $40,000 in two days at Christmas, according to a blog post by Joel Comm, the application’s lead developer.
The two-day holiday haul was in addition to $25,000+ in profits the app generated in the two weeks prior to Christmas.
Comm’s is by no means a unique success story. Steve Demeter, developer of the game Trism, made $250,000 in the first two months the AppStore was open; Eliza Block, the developer of “2 Across” app, was reportedly earning $2,000 per day on her application back in September.
Granted these are but three names out of the more than 10,000 apps now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s not difficult to do the math, though, and when an application designed around people’s fascination with flatulence – one of dozens dedicated to the same theme – can net its creator $40,000 in two days, it would seem irresponsible of a director attempting a remake of The Graduate not to write this exchange into the script:
Mr. McGuire: I want to say two words to you. Just two words.
Benjamin: Yes, sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Benjamin: Yes, I am.
Mr. McGuire: iPhone Apps.
More Apple oriented websites felt obligated to post the news on Monday that casemaker Vaja has added an iPhone Nano category to its offerings of cases for Apple phone products. Coming on the heels of last week’s news that XSNS had done the same, the pre-Macworld rumor mill seems to indicate a strong likelihood that Apple will introduce a mini-me version of its popular mobile phone next week in San Francisco.
Is this what we’ve come to? Roughly 10 million people have bought iPhones this year. AT&T is selling refurbished iPhones for $99 and now you can buy them new at Walmart, too. Who, exactly is dying for an iPhone Nano?
I have to go on record as saying I’ll be disappointed to see Apple cave in to the mobile handset market’s mystifying tradition of churning out 1001 minutely varied executions on a theme, for the sake of what? Surely not functionality.
Prior to the iPhone you had relatively similar smartphones made by a few companies (Palm, RIM, Nokia) and hundreds of other devices that were just, phones, made by dozens and dozens of manufacturers. Even within the smartphone realm, my eyes glazed over at the number of “different ” Blackberries, for example.
The iPhone came along and changed everything. And in perfect Apple fashion there were basically two choices, a perfectly fine device and another one for those whose device must, under any circumstance be perceived as “bigger.” Hey, fine. There’s nothing wrong with a Corvette…
But now, a Nano? Something smaller? Less functional than its big brother? Less touchscreen real estate? A virtual keyboard for really tiny fingers?
Knock yourself out, Apple. I would think there are greater heights to scale.
Three men were charged with the murder of a store owner in Fairbanks, Alaska after buying an iPhone with the dead man’s credit cards.
According to court documents, the three men, two of them in the military and one discharged a year ago, allegedly killed 62-year-old Daniel Frederick, owner of Blondie’s military surplus, to hinder a military investigation.
Police tracked them down after they bought an iPhone at an AT&T Store.
One of the men paid for the high-tech phone using one of Frederick’s cards, but he added the phone to his existing account with the company, according to a criminal complaint filed in court.
It was the start of an electronics spending spree that included a computer and DVDs that court documents state totaled thousands of dollars.
Frederick’s body was later found in a wooded area. The 62-year-old man had been beaten and strangled.
Court papers say the men killed Frederick in what was described only as “a matter that military authorities were investigating.”
Via AP, News Miner
Competition in the cell phone industry is legendarily cut-throat. The major carriers will do whatever they can to retain and induce people to sign long-term contracts ad buy new phones. This often includes ludicrous stunts and special offers that ultimately deliver little value.
That’s especially true with a wonderful little deal AT&T is offering right now with the purchase of an iPhone 3G. With your two-year contract and at-least-$200 investment, you’ll receive this handsome (?) car charger for Steve’s Amazing New Device worth almost $10!
Except you won’t. It’s only compatible with the original iPhone. (a Consumerist informant claims this is an inventory-clearing tactic) This is especially funny, because I can’t imagine someone deciding to take the iPhone plunge because of a crummy car adapter. The iPhone has broken most of the rules of the cell phone upgrade cycle, mainly by making OS upgrades and the addition of new applications a mandatory part of owning a cell phone.
What’s not a part of owning a phone anymore? Crappy plastic add-ons used as inducements to the purchase of an over-priced and under-delivering phone from Motorola.
Consumerist via Gizmodo
iPhone app developers iPaguri have a new offering on the AppStore today, called Walking Tour Fierenze, a one and a half hour audio guide for, you guessed it, a walking tour through the center of Florence, Italy.
The version currently available is in Italian only, with versions in English, French, Spanish and German coming. The developers promise anecdotes, curiosities, stories and legends about the famed center of Renaissance art and culture that “others can’t show you,” a claim we’ll have to get our Italy-based colleague Nicole Martinelli to suss out and possibly opine on regarding the true value of this $10 app.
In concept, however, iPaguri could be sitting on a gold mine. I envision Walking Tour versions for every major tourist destination and gallery in the world…
Requires iPhone 2.2 Software Update.
Apple may be adding useful swipe gesturing functionality to the virtual keyboard on the company’s mobile devices, according to a report at MacRumors.
Blogger Arnold Kim describes two potentially effective additions to Apple’s touch interface contained in a patent application filed yesterday with the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Aside from the single finger swipes depicted in the diagrams below, multi-touch gestures (two and three fingers) could invoke other special functions. If a single finger left-swipe might delete a letter, a two finger left-swipe could delete a whole word, and a three finger left-swipe could delete a line. Similarly, a single finger right-swipe could add a space, while a two finger right-swipe could add a period. Up swipes and down swipes could also invoke different functions based on the number of fingers used.
As with Apple’s evolving multi-touch notebook trackpads, these optional functions could provide iPhone and iPod Touch users with useful and welcome shortcuts.
It’s not clear whether or not the Shogakukan Illustrated Sushi Guide would have helped Jeremy Piven with his mercury poisoning problem last week, but the company’s iPhone app is slated to hit the Japanese iTunes store any day now.
The $5 guide will contain pictures and descriptions of 82 different kinds of sushi, ideal for frequent travelers to Japan, and will sport an English appendix, according to a report at Crunch Gear.
New York Times technology columnist David Pogue and publisher O’Reilly combine to bring those of you who just unwrapped your brand-new iPhone yesterday iPhone: The Missing Manual, a $5 application available at Apple’s iTunes AppStore.
According to the publisher, the app “shows you everything you need to know to get the most out of your iPhone. Full of humor, tips, tricks, and surprises, this book teaches you how to extend iPhone’s usefulness by exploiting its links to the Web as well as its connection to Macs or PCs; how to save money using Internet- based messages instead of phone calls; and how to fill the iPhone with TV shows and DVDs for free.”
The funny thing is if you can purchase and download the app to iTunes and sync your phone so the app gets on there, you probably don’t need the manual in the first place.
Via iSmashPhone
Did you know the AppStore has a free app for iPhone and iPod Touch that will let you print borderless 4 x 6 photos (10 x 15 cm in Europe) directly from your device, without the need to upload them first to a computer or image processing program?
iPrint Photo, from HP uses Apple’s Bonjour technology to locate most WiFi enabled HP network printers wherever you are, letting you immortalize that once-in-lifetime capture on the spot. Printers with separate photo trays automatically select that option, and otherwise default to the main paper tray. The app is compatible with most industry standard WiFi environoments, including Apple Airport, Linksys, D Link and Netgear.
Via Slippery Brick
Atif Shamin, a Phd student in electronics at Carlton University in Canada, has figured out a way of reducing iPhone battery drain.
He’s replaced all the internal wires and PCBs of his iPhone with an antenna.
The swap allows a wireless connection between a micro-antenna embedded within the circuits of the chip.
“This has not been tried before that the circuits are connected to the antenna wirelessly. They’ve been connected through wires and a bunch of other components. That’s where the power gets lost,” Shamim said in an article on the University website.
He estimates that his solution uses 12 times less power than the traditional, wired-transmitter module. That means more juice for the ever-expanding choice in apps.
“It’s a common problem. There are so many applications in the iPhone, it’s like a power-sucking machine,” said Shamim.
He’s filed for patents in the US and Canada, look out for details on his hack in an upcoming issue of Microwave Journal.
Via Make
A promise to “unleash the true power of your iPhone” might not be the best marketing slogan for Snapture Flash, a xenon flash accessory with red-eye reduction for Apple’s mobile device. As snappy as it sounds, the slogan also calls attention to what is roundly regarded as the iPhone’s weakest attribute, its 2.1 megapixel, fixed focal length still camera.
The flash’s sleeve-like case is powered by the phone itself, which SnaptureLabs estimates will give you 1000 flashes on a single charge. As a bonus, the sleeve also provides amplification for the iPhone’s on-board speaker.
The downside here is that the flash is only a prototype and the accompanying Snapture camera software (which itself provides some interesting creative mods and controls for the iPhone’s camera), requires a jailbroken phone to avail yourself of its charms.
It will be interesting to see whether Snapture Labs can strike a deal to get it’s patent-pending flash technology to market before Apple comes out with a new version of the iPhone with some sort of flash built-in.
The kind Apple fanatics at iPhone Savior have done the great public service of creating Apple and Steve Jobs-themed Christmas eCard templates and posted them over at Flickr for anyone who still has a few last minute greetings to get out.
You can use a pre-made card like the one above, or choose from two styles of hi-res blank cards and add your own graphical text message to express your holiday sentiments and your love for all things Apple in the same vehicle.
As they put it over at iPhone Savior, “Sincerely wishing everyone an iPhone 3G for Christmas and some sweet dreams of Steve.”
Via iPhone Savior
Seismometer is the iPhone app that can not only let you know if you’re in an earthquake (and how bad it is at your personal epicenter), but also records and displays the movement energy of just about anything.
Seismometer uses your iPhone’s built in accelerometer to measure movements in two axes, calculate the resulting energy and draw the results on a rolling scale.
Version 1.1 updates feature noise filtering, expanded frequency settings (20, 40 , 60 and 200hz), and choice of output to logarithmic or linear scale.
99¢ buys you fun for the whole family; no additional premium charged to iPhone users located on major fault lines.
Last week I asked Cult readers for their nominations for new Mac app of the year. Things, 1Password and Dropbox seemed to be the consensus choices, all of them excellent new software products.
It got me thinking, though: how has my computing behavior changed during the last 12 months? What new software am I using that I wasn’t using last Christmas, and why?
57 Varieties of Fart-oriented applications are approval worthy in the eyes of the inscrutable AppStore gatekeepers. But iBoobs, a demo of which can be seen above, apparently violates a threshold of taste beyond which Apple is unwilling to go.
It’s nice to know there is a standard one must meet as an app developer, though, personally, it seems to me iBoobs at least uses the accelerometer to somewhat realistic effect.
Via Edible Apple
What would an impending Apple-oriented convention be without some rumor-mongering to pique the interest of the faithful and get tongues a wagging? Ahead of Macworld 2009, slated for January 5 – 9 at San Francisco’s Moscone Center, one of the more persistent rumors has involved the supposed announcement of a smaller form-factor iPhone, dubbed the iPhone Nano.
TUAW reported an interesting escalation of the iPhone Nano rumor Monday, showing evidence of an iPhone Nano case being marketed by XSKN, a company that began selling iPhone 3G cases in mid-May of 2008, almost 2 months prior to Apple’s release of the phone. In early September, XSKN was showing off new 4th Generation iPod nano cases, prior to the Let’s Rock event where they were officially unveiled.
As you can see from the screen shot I captured tonight from the XSKN website, the company is taking orders for cases for a product called iPhone Nano.
If that’s not enough to whet your whistle, how about the photo, below, which someone submitted late Monday on the down-low to MacRumors.
Wonder if Phil Schiller will use the traditional “one more thing” phrase on this item or if perhaps Apple has something else up its sleeve.
In the hustle bustle of modern urban life, especially during holiday seasons fraught with travel delays, white-knuckle driving on treacherous roads, crowded shopping districts (though maybe not so much that, this year) and kids on vacation underfoot, a little bit of peace and tranquility can seem like the greatest of gifts.
Now you can give such a gift to yourself, a friend or loved one, with Freeverse’s Tranquility app for iPhone and iPod touch.
For just $1.99, drift off to sleep or catch a few peaceful moments during a stressful day. With a beautiful visual interface and new audio tweaks in the recently updated version 1.3 (requires iPhone 2.2 firmware), you can choose from a full 60 minute relaxation and meditation track, or from other themes such as Flowing Water, Ocean Waves, Desert Wind, Gentle Rain or Thunderstorms, even Pink Noise – an enhanced form of white noise.
Tranquility is the other side of Freeverse, the award-winning app developer responsible for Moto Chaser, Burning Monkey Casino and Big Bang Sudoku, among many others. Available now in the AppStore.
Writing Monday for the eWeek blog, AppleWatch, Joe Wilcox gave the iPhone a D in telephony and a C for battery life, saying he simply could not recommend the device as a phone. Despite singing the praises of Apple’s mobile platform he gave it an overall grade of B- and seemed mighty pleased to announce that everyone in his family has rejected the iPhone in favor of an iPod Touch + some other cell phone.
I find Wilcox’s assessment curious and wonder how many of the other 8 – 10 million iPhone owners feel their device is so disappointing from the telephony and usability standpoints that they’d actually prefer to carry two devices around instead of one. Follow me after the jump to learn what Wilcox thinks is so bad about iPhone and where my own assessment takes me in response.
The iPhone app formerly known as Exposure has just been updated to version 1.5 and now has a new name: Darkslide.
Developer Fraser Speirs explains what it’s all about on his blog. For the uninitiated, the app is an iPhone-friendly environment for your Flickr account. It lets you keep track of your photos, your contacts’ photos, and check what images have been taken near your current location (which comes in extremely handy when you’re at a tourist attraction and you want to try and shoot something a bit different).
The big new feature in Exposure – sorry – Darkside 1.5 is, in Fraser’s own words, “Upload, upload, upload”. So, it does uploads now.
(I’ve not been able to test it yet, because my App Store is refusing to acknowledge that Exposure has been updated to anything other than Exposure. I expect it’ll all update itself in a few hours.)
Dimensions is a virtual toolbox offering a bakers’ dozen of functional tools animated with gorgeous 3D graphics that turn your Apple mobile device into something far more useful than any other cameraphone/musicplayer/gamestation-computer could hope to be.
Among the things you can do are:
* Use the caliper to measure to a precision of 0.156mm or 0.006 of an inch.
* A flexible tape measure lets you measure interior furniture, fabric and more up to 2.5 meters or 8 feet.
* Another tape measure handles interior and exterior distances up to 5 meters or 16 feet.
* A third measuring tool uses the iPhone’s camera to measure distances up to 25 meters, or 82 feet.
* Distances over 80 feet, up to a mile, can be calculated with the measuring wheel.
* The podometer uses GPS location services to measure thousands of miles or kilometers.
All calculations can be rendered in metric or Imperial scales. Dimensions was 2008’s best selling app in AppStores France and Italy, the #2 seller in Japan, Belgium and Switzerland, according to advertising placed by its developer, pocketDEMO.
And here we are in the US spending all our money on Sim City and Pull My Finger – it’s no wonder we’re a laughingstock in Europe.
$2 at the AppStore. C’mon, people – get to work!
There are many fine and useful offerings coming out of the Freeverse development shop and I recommend a visit to the website, but I want to talk right now about a couple of their iPhone/iPod Touch games – Flick Fishing, which you can see in the video above, and Flick Bowling.
When I got into this gig, I didn’t intend on becoming an iPhone game addict, but I’m beginning to understand why some people chase the mobile handset dragon.
Ancient wisdom in fishing circles holds that the worst day fishing beats the best day working. Well, Flick Fishing is an app that will give you a mighty realistic taste of a day on the water during that smoke, or coffee, or lunch break on a day when you’re stuck at work.
Choose from 6 locations, 9 types of bait and tackle, a dozen tournaments and dozens of unique species of fish, for a far more satisfying virtual fishing experience than you’d think 99¢ might buy. You can even use Network and Hotseat play to compete against your friends and show off your trophy catches by email with the “Brag” feature.
If you’d rather kill some time with a virtual indoor experience, you could do a lot worse then Flick Bowling. There are a couple of other bowling games on the AppStore, but Freeverse’s 99¢ program knocks ’em down in the first frame.
Excellent 3D animation and realistic bowling alley sounds, along with great music – and customizable bowling balls in the latest version – make Flick Bowling an oddly relaxing way to feel good about doing nothing in particular. You can choose from varying levels of difficulty and bowl solo, against your friends or against a built-in opponent. Between frames you can switch over to iBeer and come back to pick up where you left off.
With only five shopping days left until Christmas you’ve probably just got enough time to take care of your last minute stocking stuffers to make the Mac or iPhone lover on your list say “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy!” with a protective skin that’s also a work of art – from San Francisco-based Infectious.
Choose from 43 eye-catching, original designs like the ones above for your iPhone, or a selection of 85 from the laptop gallery, to personalize your Apple gear in style. Infectious features designs from artists all over the world and has ongoing open submissions if you are an artist who sees any blank surface as a canvas.
Infectious makes adhesive art for walls and automobiles, too, so don’t let your Apple gear limit your imagination. The skins are easy to install and easy to remove when you’re ready for a change. The iPhone skins, which include device backing as shown above as well as a complementing strip of art for the phone face around the home button, regularly sell for $15 but are on sale for the holidays at 1/3 off.
See the website for details.
‘Tis the season for Holiday parties and overindulgences of many kinds, not the least of which can sadly include having too much to drink. It’s fitting then, that December is National Drunk Driving Awareness Month and we wondered how our iPhone might help us avoid the embarrassment and possible tragedy of too much drinking and driving.
Cheers! is a handy app from Addison Hardy that will help you estimate your blood alcohol content (BAC) over time, as long as you remember to add each drink you consume into the program. It factors in weight, gender and the time of each drink to help you make a reasoned estimate of your BAC after you’ve had last call and are ready to head for home. An excellent feature of this $3 program is that it will use your physical location to help you call a taxi if you’ve had too much to drink and drive.
A similar app that comes at the problem from a different angle for just a buck is Drink Timer, from Simpsonics. With Drink Timer you enter your drinks and a calendar wheel tells you when you’re estimated to have zero alcohol in your system from the time you stop drinking. So if you’re out on a Friday night and being good about entering your drinks into Drink Timer, and you look down to see that calendar reading, say, Monday, you may want to throttle back a bit and have a nice warm cup of tea when it comes time for the next round. No Taxi services with Drink Timer.
r-u-drunk? is a game you can use to approximate the embarrassment and shame you’d face if a cop pulled you over driving in that condition. With 5 tests, including a balance test and a straight line test that make use of the iPhone’s accelerometer, it also has an alphabet typing test, a hand-eye coordination test and a simulated breathalyzer. Given the hit and miss nature of typing on the iPhone’s virtual keyboard, you might want to start out with that one and if you can pass it, have another glass of champagne. The developers at MobilityWare market this $3 app as a companion to drinking games and it falls under the AppStore’s 17+ rating category.
Last but not least is iMeter, a 99¢ app that could actually help you save lives with its big graphic “meter” you can use to show your drunk friend that he is in fact talking too loud and that his BAC is at danger levels. Simply announce what you’re going to measure and when the meter loads on the iPhone’s screen, you control the “level” the meter will read out using a slider similar to the one used to unlock the phone. Comes complete with funny sounds and pop-out animation for maximum meter readings.
Please remember that drinking and driving is not a laughing matter and it is never fun to play games when real lives could be at stake. The Holiday Season is a time to celebrate with friends and family and to enjoy the spirit of giving and togetherness that make being part of a “cult” special. Drink responsibly and remember that Taxi feature if you use Cheers!
It’s probably a good bet Phil Schiller is not going to introduce an iPhone with a built-in video camera in a few weeks at Macworld. In the meantime, Sol Lipman and 12seconds.tv have created a 99¢ app for the iPhone that lets you take 3 photos (either on the fly or choose from your camera roll), record 12 seconds of audio, which it ties into a multimedia masterpiece “video slideshow” you can then share with your friends and an unsuspecting world.
Slideshows are automatically uploaded to servers at 12seconds.tv, where users have an account from which they can manage their body of work. Every video has its own page (sort of like Flickr) and any video can be emailed, downloaded or embedded.
One of the 12seconds dev team told us, “we tried hard to keep the app simple and straightforward and fun.” From all appearances, they have succeeded. The slideshows make effective use of the “Ken Burns effect” that will be familiar to anyone who’s made a slideshow in iPhoto, and the recording quality of the iPhone’s microphone is surprisingly good.
Another consideration behind limiting the final output to twelve seconds was that “twelve seconds is about the ideal amount of time for most user-generated content,” according to David Speiser, who consulted with Lipman on development of the app. “The goal is to keep the barrier for consumption really low – no matter how badly a video might suck, you know you’ll never waste more than twelve seconds of your life watching it.”
