iPhone - page 468

Here’s an iPhone concept sent in by an anonymous Cult reader overnight. Looks pretty fly to me, but then I’m still on a PowerBook G4 and an original iPhone.

What say you, dear reader?

Two stories in the iPhone developers ecosystem Thursday illustrate the challenges of navigating the path to fame and fortune on the back of a cleverly written app and its AppStore sales.

First comes news from AppCubby, whose experiment with 99¢ pricing we reported on a few weeks ago, saying, indeed, selling apps for 99¢ and depending on voluntary donations to cover the gap between success and failure is, for AppCubby anyhow, unsustainable.

Blogger/developer Erica Sadun relates how Apple’s own Department of AppStore Security is quashing some innovative developer marketing efforts and refusing to approve any app that advertises a contest or promises prizes or awards in the app itself or in its AppStore description.

Sadun uses the example of iFartMobile’s currently selling app, which advertises a $5000 prize to one lucky user for submitting a winning video of the app in action, saying Apple’s lawyers want no part of being named in potential suits against developers who may fail to deliver on contest prizes advertised through the AppStore. Developers are now being told no app using contest or sweepstakes marketing will be approved.

With the news this week there are now more than 20,000 apps on iTunes, it’s clear a lot of people out there are hoping to strike it rich panning for AppStore gold.

One can hardly blame Apple for trying to police the panhandlers, though, as Sadun points out, it can be frustrating for developers when the policing lacks transparency.

I’m one of those freaks who much prefers listening to radio than watching TV. Consequently, I like to have radios around me. I have one in my office, one in the kitchen, and one in the bedroom. I really need to get hold of one for the bathroom.

FStream and the BBC Streams web site have jointly come to my aid.

It’s not exactly Shazam for fonts, but WhatTheFont is a pretty cool new app in the AppStore that will identify or make pretty darn good suggestions for identifying almost any font you find in the wild.

Using the iPhone’s built-in camera, users can photograph the text in question (or choose an existing image from the camera’s photo albums). The app allows you to crop the image, focusing on only the important parts before uploading to the WhatTheFont web-based identification service.

After confirming which characters are used in the image, the app provides a list of possible matching fonts, which users can either e-mail a link to a MyFonts page with more info on that font, or open the page in the iPhone’s built-in Safari web browser.

iPod Touch users can even get in on the action by using any image saved from apps such as Safari and Mail.

The app is free in the AppStore.

Via MacMerc

Om Malik, a notable technology blogger, gave up on his iPhone Wednesday.

Citing ongoing and ultimately insurmountable frustration with AT&T’s network, Malik decided to ditch the iPhone and opt for a T-Mobile BlackBerry Curve 8900 for email and SMS. “I also signed up for a plain-vanilla voice service from Verizon Wireless. And I already have a 32 GB iPod Touch for surfing and music,” he said.

Admitting all that is probably not an ideal solution, Malik – wiith over 1800 friends on Facebook and nearly 20,000 followers on Twitter – found solace in the fact his new devices “can all be charged using the USB port of my Macbook, thereby obviating the need for extra chargers.”

Given that his decision rested solely on the deficiencies of AT&T’s network in the San Francisco Bay Area – ungodly stretches of time “searching” for the network, slow download speeds of web pages, problems with email, static, dropped calls and shoddy call quality – and he professed love for the iPhone, it’s a wonder he didn’t just jailbreak it.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6BrtXI9Da4

If you’re one of the many out there who lives wild and free with a jailbroken iPhone, this is a big week for you.

First we reported on the availability of some serious porn for you, and now it appears you can have turn-by-turn voice navigation, courtesy of the dev team at xGPS.

xGPS uses Google’s map data and driving directions, adding a real-time navigation readout and a voice engine.

If you expect you might lose your data connection during the drive, you can also select a map area to download ahead of time.

Watch the ModMyi video above to learn more.

The app also supports a number of external GPS units, so 1st-gen iPhone and iPod Touch bad-boys and girls can get in on the fun too.

Via Gizmodo

httpv://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=jCHU4ZHq15Y

Oh, the fun you’ll have with Fracture. Created by Visuamobile, it finally gives you the chance to find out what it would be like to smash your iPhone to pieces – without actually doing so.

I very nearly put this in a WTF iPhone Apps Of The Week post, but then I thought – actually, no. This might be quite entertaining, especially for the kids. My son loves smashing stuff up (I blame Power Rangers, myself) so I think he’ll get a kick out of destroying my iPhone. Over and over again.

Fracture is, as they say, “Coming soon” on the App Store.

Maybe I’m just out of touch with college-level humor today, because the animated dig at iPhone produced by the Flash technicians at College Humor strikes me as, well, kinda like a skit on SNL – pretty good idea; too long by a lot.

If you manage to sit through it to the end, though, the last 5 – 10 seconds is pretty funny.

Via Gizmodo

Yes, it’s true. There is a man who swapped his iPhone for a Blackberry. In some respects, I greatly admire Ben Ackerman. Not because of his choice of smartphone, but because he was brave enough to own up to his change of heart in public. Not many self-confessed members of the “giant Mac fanboy” club would be prepared to do that.

But Ben has. He prefers the Blackberry, as he explains in a slightly contradictory post on his blog.

I say “contradictory” because Ben is clearly caught between a rock and a hard place. He’s the first to admit that the iPhone:

(a) is “prettier”

(b) has better apps

(c) and better web browsing

… but he *still* prefers the Blackberry. Why, Ben, why?

Because, it seems, the Blackberry is (in Ben’s opinion), simply a better mobile device. It does things you’d expect a mobile device to do, like, you know, MMS and copy-paste. The basics. That’s what it does, and it does superbly: the basics.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why the iPhone doesn’t appeal to Ben and many thousands of other people. It’s because Steve Jobs, Tim Cook, Jonathan Ive and the rest of the Apple gang just don’t consider “basics” to be part of their remit. They leave basics to everyone else. Their products go above and beyond.

So, two questions for you:

(1) Do you agree with any parts of Ben’s argument?

(2) If you ever ditched your iPhone for a Blackberry (or, God forbid, your Mac for a Windows PC), would you have the guts to say so in public?

PhotoCanvas, a new image editing app from Big Canvas, Inc. could make Apple’s eventual decision to enable MMS functionality on the iPhone and iPod Touch a moot point.

While many have decried the iPhone’s inability to easily send photos and graphic images in text messaging, a relative few in the US may be aware of Big Canvas’ flagship application, PhotoShare, the free service that allows users to stay connected with their private or public networks through visual social networking.

With a few simple touches users can easily take images captured through daily life and distribute them to all PhotoShare users or to family and friends. After its release in July 2008, PhotoShare quickly became a “must-have” social networking application in Japan, where consumers are already familiar with an always-connected lifestyle, generating over a quarter million comments and photos per month.

Now PhotoCanvas joins a line-up of three other Big Canvas apps that let users personalize photos taken on the go with the iPhone and iPod Touch and, with PhotoShare, enjoy sharing them with others as easily as if they sent them in a text message.

“We are still in the very early stage of a true ‘mobile computing’ era enabled by the iPhone,” Satoshi Nakajima, CEO of Big Canvas told us. “The mobile phone started as a voice communication device, and evolved into a text-based communication device with SMS (texting). This is the beginning of the ‘visual communication’ era, and the large number of photo applications on the AppStore are proof of this.”

Unlike some of the more sophisticated photo editing apps that have shown up, such as Light and Photonasis, PhotoCanvas is a simple, easy to use tool for adding backgrounds, frames, text and drawing to an image, taking the everyday and turning it into something unique for sharing with others, using a few simple taps and strokes on the iPhone’s touch interface.

Creations can be saved to the iPhone’s camera roll and uploaded on the go to a user’s PhotoShare account, where family, friends, and other PhotoShare users can comment and respond to an image, creating an interactive, visual communication experience.

“One of the great things about PhotoShare is people share images in real time – it’s like a visual version of Twitter,” Nakajima told us. “It’s clear to me that the number of users who will edit their photos on mobile phones will eventually exceed the number of PhotoShop users on PC. PhotoCanvas is the beginning of our serious attempt to participate in this innovation.”

PhotoCanvas offers a number of preset backgrounds and photo frames that can be customized with drawing and text rendered in 48 colors and two dozen font faces, all of which are accessed and applied through an easy-to-use, intuitive UI that makes good use of Apple’s mobile platform design.

Available now in the AppStore for $1.99, PhotoCanvas is a great complement to the free PhotoShare service for anyone wanting to add some flair to their visual communication on the go.

Steve Jobs’ worst-case scenario is about to come true.

From the earliest days of the iPhone and iPod Touch, Apple sought to assure consumers its mobile devices would not become handheld smut emporiums, and yet the adult entertainment industry began steadily chipping away at such promises almost as soon as they were made.

Comes now Variah, with a brand new mobile “gaming” app exclusively for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touch that lets users interactively touch, strip and stroke beautiful models to climax.

Apple’s mobile devices are soon enough going to be definitely NSFW, and we’re not talking anything near as tame as iBoobs, either, let me tell ya.

Variah’s UFookMe app not only offers interaction, it also scores players on foreplay technique, the number of erotic surprises they discover and the quality of climax achieved.

The first title, UFookTanya, features porn star Tanya James, a tall, blonde, girl-next-door who definitely reveals more than anything you’ll see in even the AppStore’s relatively risqué apps, such as iGirl or Wobble.

A brave new world is coming for iPhone and iPod Touch users and some of it will be clothing optional. Ҭ

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