iPhone - page 466

You’re only supposed to use it to make jokey text messages from famous people or, according to the people who made it , “spook friends pretending to get texts from their parents or girlfriend/boyfriend” (it’s apparently aimed at 12-year-olds), but this iPhone app could become the cheater or slacker’s best friend.

It’s easy to imagine using Fake Text app to head out early for cocktails or a Playstation tournament knowing you have a text message from your boss or spouse as back up.

At $.99, it’s a steal.

Via Textually

AP Photo/Mark Duncan

One mayor of a small town in Kentucky devastated by a killer winter storm last week ended up using his iPhone to communicate vital emergency and disaster recovery information to the citizens of his community.

“I wish I could say I had some great epiphany I was going to use this to communicate with my citizens, but I didn’t,” said Madisonville Mayor William Cox, who charged his iPhone in his car to keep his messages flowing. “I just got my phone out and started typing, and I haven’t stopped.”

Cox used the iPhone to log into his Facebook account and posted rapid-fire updates to let his constituents know what was going on:

“Will is glad to report that power in parts of the South Main and Grapevine areas is back on. Slowly but surely …,”

“Will asks people with frozen water meters to PLEASE not use a torch or build a fire inside the meter box. This WILL damage the cutoff and meter!”

“Will was just advised by the Hopkins County School System that there is NO school on Monday or Tuesday.”

At the height of the ice storm, more than 1.3 million homes and businesses were left without power in several states, and thousands still don’t have it back. The storm knocked out landline phones and forced some cell phone companies onto backup generators. In many cases, wireless Internet worked when cell phones didn’t get through.

Wonder if Mayor Cox would have reached more or fewer constituents using Twitter?

Thanks to reader JayDee for the tip

A confession: as a teenager, I got involved with amateur acting and ended up doing a great deal of improvisation. Every Sunday evening a gang of us would get together in a tiny theatre just yards from the beach, where we would play improvisation games until we fell over.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember those games, to conjure up just the right one for just the right moment.

Enter stage right: iProv, the improvisation database for iPhone. It contains over 250 improv games. They’ve been sorted using tags, you can search through the list, and create your own list of faves by just tapping a star. Feeling lucky? Open a random game idea by just shaking the iPhone.

iProv is free on the App Store, although you can make donations at the web site if you want to support ongoing development.

Google’s Book Search Project launched mobile editions of its 1.5 million book virtual library Thursday, immediately turning iPhone and iPod Touch into compelling options for those looking for a good eReader.

Of course handy free apps for Apple’s mobile devices, such as Stanza and eReader have already established iPhone and iPod Touch as viable competitors to Amazon’s pricy Kindle and even more costly next-gen readers such as those from iRex and Plastic Logic.

Even those apps, however, are predicated on the idea of consumers buying “books” to read on their mobile devices, and offer access to something like 50 – 60 thousand titles. Google has opened the doors to a library with over a million and a half public domain books, a catalogue that’s growing as fast as Google’s scanners can scan, and the reading is free.

Free is always compelling.

Check out this cool video from Stimulant, the San Francisco design house and creator of XRay, an app that takes the awesomeness of Microsoft’s Surface and the amazing abilities of the iPhone and creates something rather stunning.

From the Stimulant desciption:

What you see here is a prototype that takes advantage of Surface’s object recognition capabilities to recognize the position of one or more iPhones on the Surface, and allows those phones to “see through” the images and reveal a second layer of information.

The possibilities here are fairly extensive; what’s most interesting is the potential for adding a layer of personalized information on top of a public computing experience.

This could enable users to capture content and take it with them, or to have the system display a personalized information layer (translated text/larger-print type/private messages) for individual users of a multi-user system.

iPhone was the first mobile platform we dug in to, but we’ve also got XRay working on Android-based and Windows Mobile-based phones as well.

Via Ars Technica

Lim Ding Wen, a nine-year-old from Singapore, has written a free art application for iPhone, called Doodle Kids. The app has been downloaded more than 4000 times since its release on Feb. 1.

While many kids his age are content to simply play games on the iPhone or PSP, Ding Wen is all about programming in ActionScript and JavaScript. He also understands five other programming languages and is already hard at work on his next app, a game called “Invader Wars.”

Ding Wen’s efforts stem from his father’s devotion to the Apple IIGS, which he calls “one of the best computers Apple had ever produced.” His dad maintains a website “to bring back the fun and excitement of Apple IIGS programming for all the young children,” with sample codes and a Virtual GS disk available for download.

Kids today. Kind of gives one hope for tomorrow.

Via Engadget

This isn’t your gran’s sideboard: a sleek, minimalist iBoard provides a dock for your iPod or iPhone, functioning as a de facto stereo with a sound range of up to 100 meters.

From Swiss company Schubinger Möbel, the iBoard (plexiglass case not included, though if you want to keep sticky mitts off the device, it’s not a horrible idea) sends 2.4 GHz radio signal to a loudspeaker system that can handle a full audio range including an 8-inch subwoofer and four loudspeakers, and a 100-watt digital amplifier for  quality sound.

Price not listed, for more info Schubinger Möbel

Via Born Rich

The Reuters news organization brings news of 9-year-old Lim Deng Wen of Singapore, quite possibly the world’s youngest iPhone developer. His signature program is Doodle Kids (app store link), a rather abstract drawing game that he developed for his little sisters. It’s been downloaded 4,000 times so far, and it’s free.

What the article fails to mention is that Lim’s programs were initially written for an Apple IIGS emulator before porting to iPhone, which might just be the most interesting transition between Apple platforms this millennium. Does anyone have an Apple /// program that runs on the AppleTV?

Via Digg

The much-maligned iPhone camera keeps getting more awesome software written to enhance the things you can do with it.

Last week I wrote about Light, something to give your pics a pro touch, there’s another one I’ve been playing with coming out of embargo shortly and the latest is an app called TimeLapse, which lets you time a photo to be snapped as infrequently as every 24 hours, or as often as every 10 seconds, which is about as fast as the phone can snap and store a image in the camera roll.

Once you’ve collected your pics, you can easily dump them into iMovie or QuickTime Pro and make a simple time lapse movie.

You can also set a delay to allow the photographer to get in the frame for a group photo. And TimeLapse works as a rudimentary surveillance camera, too. While it’s running, a display lists when it started, the time of the last picture taken and the approximate time of when it will stop.

A happy early adopter has a handy tutorial here.

Now you can go make a movie and get famous like that guy Matt. Well, not exactly, but what do you want from a camera phone?

Via TUAW

The state of Maryland has proposed a ban on writing, sending or reading text messages while driving.

One lawmaker, however, is concerned if the bill becomes a law it will mean he can’t make any more calls using his iPhone touchscreen during commutes.

Saqib Ali, a delegate for Montgomery County, told a panel of colleagues yesterday that he uses his iPhone all the time.

He’s worried that tapping the touch screen to make calls would violate the ban proposed by delegate Frank Turner on writing, sending or reading a text message while operating a motor vehicle.

Turner’s bill doesn’t target talking on the phone. Just thumb jockeying instead of keeping your hands on ten and two.

Ali wonders how a police officer would know he was dialing his phone and not texting while driving.

Hmmm. Is this splitting hairs or should drivers be forced to keep their hands on the wheel and off their phones, period?

Image used with Creative Commons license, thanks to Mike Kline on flickr.

Via AP

Woohoo! A bumper issue of WTF iPhone Apps this week, thanks to the ever-increasing avalanche of bobbins and foonity spewing forth from the App Store.

Let’s not dally! Onwards! With the craziness!

First up this week is Angry Scot: “Learn the Scottish way to say No! This application will help you summon your inner Scotsman to give you the courage (and words) to solve your problems in these trying times. Each response is carefully crafted and then spoken by an authentic Scots person in his native tongue.”

Daft, but we can live with it. Can things get worse? You bet they can. We’ve not even started yet.

This free iPhone, iPod app from 1-800-flowers.com could come in handy, the idea of using a meeting deadzone to order a forgotten birthday gift (sorry mom!) appeals to me immensely.

You can order stuff from the site, namely  flowers, plants, balloons, plus cookies, cakes and wine and cheese, some for same-day delivery.

Caveat: the first few user reviews are on the low side, with one person having to go through customer support to access an existing account, so you might want to make sure you’ve taken it for a spin before Valentine’s Day next week.

Available on iTunes.

You may know there are now 2,345 fart-oriented applications on the iTunes AppStore, but were you aware of the growing number of ways the iPhone and iPod Touch can help you keep track of your own or (more likely) your mate’s menstrual cycle?

Yes, Apple’s amazing mobile device can help you keep your relationship together, plan a family, or just avoid unnecessarily broken household objects.

Choices include:

* the free uPMS, an app directly aimed at guys “suffering the monthly Pychotic Mood Shifts from their better halves;”

*PMS Tracker, which, for a buck lets a user quickly track the approximate time each woman in his/her life will have PMS, using a green, orange, red coding system to indicate the likelihood of turbulence on any given day;

* iPeriod is an app aimed at busy women who need a little assist with “doctors appointments, event planning, and knowing when to leave the house prepared,” which could be a handy little $4 tool. It even predicts a user’s next 12 periods, fertile days and ovulation windows;

* another $4 app, MyMate seeks to help the sensitive man “organize information [he] frequently needs but can never remember.” It calculates period and ovulation days for up to six months and also provides means for tracking favorite color, song, perfume, “Don’t Likes,” gift ideas and sizes (with convenient European conversions);

*the high-end Woman Calendar is a $10 tool for family planning that logs biological data including cycle days, basal body temperature, ovulation dates, weight, and other customized personal records. It’s got a module for journaling and allows a user to export data from a date range to a CSV file for backup and use with other desktop applications. Comes with password protection or data security;

* last, but not least is IAmAMan, the $2 “private life planner” that lets a user stay abreast of the cycle probabilities for several women. The record and existence of each person tracked is password protectable, so no one need find out who or how many people a user is tracking, and it has a handy click-to-call feature that dials a woman up just by tapping her name.

That’s just a quick round up of a few apps I found after reading about PMS Buddy a web app that’s reasonably popular on Facebook and reportedly headed to the AppStore.

As these things go, there are likely more coming down the pike.

Via Cnet

Texas native Jesse Jane is on hand for the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas, where she talked tech with the Canadian Broadcast Company.

For the last six years, she’s been making movies for Digital Playground, one of the bigger U.S. adult entertainment companies, which prides itself on being one of the first of the early technology adopters.

Jane gave a heads-up on where the porn industry is going with tech, with a nod to the iPhone, Twitter and iChat:

Q. Besides high-definition, what other technologies are you seeing that are notable or interesting?

A. There’s always new stuff going on. Just in toys, they’re always coming up with these inventions like Sybians and crazy machines to have sex with or get tied up with.

Now we’re shooting on the Red [digital HD] cameras I think Digital Playground is the only one and we have all the Blu-ray coming out. I’m learning with my little camera and my website, where I’m able to upload daily diary videos, which is fun. Technology is getting a lot easier to make things more personal with your fans. They like the daily clips.

Now we can watch porn with our iPhones, and in the next month or two, with Digital Playground we’re going to be able to stream, Twitter and live iChat on our website from our iPhones.”

Jane also hearted her iPhone, which she calls a lifesaver during downtime.

“I love my iPhone because I can sit there and check my e-mail and update my website from my phone while I’m sitting there waiting at the airport.”

Via CBC

Accomplishing what Apple has so far failed to do, Google has now created a todo list that syncs perfectly between your desktop, the web, and your iPhone.

Michael Bolin, one of the engineers who works on the Tasks function in Gmail, announced a new iPhone-optimized Tasks site that you can visit at gmail.com/tasks.

I’ve been playing with it this morning and so far, it looks and works great in Mobile Safari. And hey, get this: I can add a todo to the list while I’m out and about, and it *magically* appears in Gmail when I return to my computer! How about that?

It’s worth pausing for a moment here, and reminding ourselves that Apple STILL has not supplied iPhone users with todos or text notes that sync with their Macs. I’ve come to the conclusion that Steve Jobs, Tim Cook and the rest of them simply don’t have anything to do, and therefore don’t understand why anyone else should need a sync-able todo app.

Therefore, I propose that henceforth this should be known as Give Apple Management Things To Do Day, or GAMTTD. If Tim Cook’s any good with a hand drill at the top of a ladder, my gutters could do with replacing. Any time this week would be good, Tim.

Can this Casio phone give the Palm Pre a run for its money?

It features dual screens. On one side is the traditional screen many cell phone users are accustomed to, with a full phone keyboard. But twist the screen around, fold it down, and the phone becomes a touchscreen multimedia device similar to the iPhone.

With a 5 megapixel camera, microSD card slot, Bluetooth connectivity, and video recording, it’s got features and specs Apple’s mobile computing device can’t touch. It’s scheduled for Japan release in February, though there’s no word yet on pricing.

They’ve sold a lot of watches over the years, haven’t they?

Via DVICE

Great story over the weekend from a TUAW reader who related how being able to produce evidence of his auto insurance saved him from getting a $200 ticket and having his driver’s license pulled after being involved in an auto accident somewhere in the snowy Midwest.

Seems the poor guy couldn’t produce an insurance card for the county sheriff who showed up to investigate the fender-bender, but while Johnny Law was writing up the paperwork, the quick-thinking iPhone user logged into his GEICO account and was able to satisfy the officer’s yen for documentation by having GEICO email a PDF of his insurance card, which the lucky driver produced on his iPhone touchscreen. The cop accepted it as proof of insurance and did not issue the citation.

When the technology historians look back on the development of the iPhone, they will surely remember this as a golden age. Not only have the last few months seen the arrival of dozens of flatulence generators and “flashlights,” but today, we have an application devoted solely to the exploits of MC Hammer.

Just in time. HammerTime, if you will. The new app (iTunes link) has lots of incredibly useful features, including streaming versions of Hammer music videos, his Twitter feed, upcoming events and his official blog. It’s like becoming best friends with Hammer — except he doesn’t put all his friends on the payroll anymore (bankruptcy will teach you some hard lessons). All that, and it was developed by the creators of iFart. Visionary.

When you look on its gorgeous UI and well-thought-out logo, can you possibly deny that this was the very reason the iPhone was created? Of course not. Welcome home, Hammer.

Via Gizmodo

The Contra Code is the most famous video game cheat code ever – Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left Right, B, A. eBattalion, developers of the puzzle game FLIP, have built it in to their iPhone and iPod touch app, allowing savvy players to unlock all the levels in FLIP’s “Puzzle” and “Speed” modes.

Full disclosure: I got off the video game train shortly after it pulled out of the Pong station. I think I was trying to get someone with ID to buy me a beer in the PacMan station, and I turned around and all of a sudden, the train was gone and I just never got back on. I know. That makes me both old and non-conversant with something like 80% of the people on the planet.

But I came across this at Macenstein and I think it seems like something that could maybe be built into more than just one of the AppStore’s thousands of games.

So tell us, Cult of Mac gamers, is FLIP the only iPhone/iPod Touch game that can be unlocked using the legendary Contra Code?

Surely there are other hidden gems and “easter eggs” out there, for Apple-oriented developers are nothing if not whimsical and versed in the historical arcana of game and software lore.

Let us know what you’ve found in comments and we’ll feature the best bits in another post.

This post has been edited to correct the author’s error transcribing details of the Contra Code in the original. Thanks to commenters who pointed it out.

The iPhone and iPod Touch take another step toward recognition as legitimate atristic tools with the introduction of an app called Lignt, from Digital Film Tools. The app allows users to introduce realistic lighting and shadows to any photograph using digital versions of the gobo library created by Gamproducts.

Normally used in front of lights during photography, gobos, or patterns, are widely used by lighting designers in theatre, film, photography and television to create atmosphere, project scenery, and generally enhance the visual impact of their lighting.

With Light, these same exact patterns can be applied digitally to an entire image or inside a selected area. Gobos from the Gamproducts collection included with Light are arranged into categories designated Breakups, Foliage, Lights, Sky and Windows, and are controlled with sliders affecting light position, rotation, and size. They even built-in accelerometer functionality so that a shake can produce a random effect or reset effects to the photo’s original state.

One probably needs to have an advanced sense of lighting design or a least a little training to make truly effective use of Light’s capabilities, but for $2, anyone can take a whack at turning blah and boring into striking or alluring just by experimenting with different effects.

Light is a great example of the many applications being developed to drive the evolution of Apple’s mobile device platform. As iPhone’s drawing and photography options become more varied and its output is more accepted, look for a new wave of visual and multimedia creative talent to come from its millions of users.

You remember the exploded iPhone t-shirt from earlier this month, surely. Well, artist Kevin Tong has gone it one better, with a schematic design inspired by Leonardo DaVinci – the iSteamPhone t-shirt.

$20 at the linked website, with US and International checkout options.

Via Daring Fireball

This Shel Silverstein inspired iPhone sticker is bound to bring a smile to anyone who grew up on his quirky tales like “Where the Sidewalk Ends” and “Falling Up.”

CoM reader Flunkycarter made the sticker inspired by Silverstein’s 1964 “The Giving Tree,” a tale about a boy who enjoys the fruits (including apples) of a tree without giving back…

He even wrote an an Apple-update of the work:

But soon the boy grew older and one day he got on the iPhone and said,
“Can you make me some money, iPhone, to buy something I’ve found?”
“I have no money,” said the tree, “Also, no copy, no paste and no MMS”
“But you can take my SDK, boy, and make apps to sell them in the store”
And so he did and…
Oh Steve Jobs was happy.
Oh Steve Jobs was glad.

He’s now “obsessed with getting a green case, to match the real book cover more and also printing the branch that is tossing the apple to the boy.”

Don’t know, I like it as it is. Can think of a few people I’d like to give this to…

Image used with permission.

If we ever do become a paperless society, Houdah Software’s ACTPrinter apps for Mac, iPhone and iPod Touch are likely to be among the solutions credited with helping to get there.

With a Mac running OS X Tiger or Leopard and an Airport/WiFi card installed, ACTPrinter Mac (a free DOWNLOAD) works in concert with ACTPrinter 1.1 ($1.99 for iPhone or iPod Touch) allowing you to “print” from any application which uses the standard “Print” dialog. On the Mac you simply “Print to iPhone” and documents (emails, web pages, letters, and more) are sent wirelessly to your iPhone. With this app, documents have finally become mobile.

Aside from being a handy way to store important papers on your mobile device, one of ACTPrinter’s most effective uses stems from the fact that bar codes embedded in documents can now be scanned directly from the touch screen.

The US Transportation Security Administration is currently testing a pilot program at 13 US airports, with the intention of standardizing the electronic boarding pass nationwide in about a year.

Follow after the jump for a list of the participating airports and airlines, and for a full list of features included in the latest ACTPrinter 1.1 update.

The DC Public Library’s first-in-the-nation iPhone App giving users access to card catalog and reservation systems almost cries out for an “if they can do it in Washington” joke.

On the other hand, we’re not talking about the Library of Congress.

Still, it’s pretty cool DC residents have access to (indeed, anyone in the world can have it) vital library information, with an iPhone app providing 24 hour a day, on the go access to the Library’s card catalog and reservation systems. One might think any forward-looking City in the nation would want to have one of these in the AppStore in no time.

There’s at least a few jobs in that gig all over the world, right?

Can’t afford an iPhone? Me neither. That’s why I was so excited to see this photo of a Nokia phone dressed up as a Mac on Flickr. My old phone could use some panache.

A quick search through the comments shows that this is a theme from Dan Schwartz, and it’s compatible on quite a few different phones. It’s hard to find on his website, tucked into the About pages, but you can get the theme for your Nokia phone here.

Source: Dan Schwartz

The theme imitates the Mac without interfering with the phone’s functions. Dan used the application icons from Mac OS X’s system and one of the gorgeous Apple default backgrounds to give you the full experience. The theme even goes so far as to closely imitate the fonts used in the Mac system. All in all, these themes are an excellent escape for those of us who want to keep a little Apple with us all the time.