The next time sharp-eyed citizens in Philadelphia see waste, fraud or abuse in their local government, they can report it directly to the city controller with an app.
Called Philly Watchdog, the app offered gratis for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad in iTunes has been available since April 12 but officially launched yesterday.
“When it comes to reporting fraud and waste in Philadelphia, I’m proud to say that ‘we now have an app for that,'” said City Controller Alan Butkovitz, at a press conference. “Like any investigative unit of government, we often rely on the public to help us identify waste and fraud in city government. It is critically important for government to be on the same technological page as our citizens.”
Green Cab company is using an iPads as dispatchers for its 21-car fleet in Madison, Wisconsin.
These cabs have a custom-designed iPad app called Green Light from Promet Source. The app, website and the necessary back-end systems manages most of the duties usually handled by a dispatcher, two-way radio and meter.
“When we decided to do the cabs, we looked at dispatch software and units that are out there in the traditional taxi world – big, old two-way radios,” Jodie Schmidt, Green Cab’s operations manager said in a detailed piece in Wireless Week. “So we started throwing around a couple of ideas, and decided to use a smart piece of equipment for a lot less money than a $2,000 piece of equipment that only has one use.”
Just a few weeks after various Fox and Discovery channels were removed from Time Warner Cable’s iPad app, they’re back. Not only that, but some other channels were added, such as Wedding Central and the Military History Channel.
Doubtless because creeps look indistinguishable from the pizza delivery guy on the iPhone’s tiny, standard-def screen, Logitech yesterday released an HD, iPad-version of their remote CCTV app, Logitech Alert. The app allows the user to monitor hi-def feeds, complete with “rich audio,” from an installed Logitech Alert CCTV camera system over the Internet.
While the app is free, the hardware starts at $300, and lets you observe a live feed from your iPad or iPhone; you can also view footage recorded onto your computer’s HD directly. An extra $80/year will net you the full Monte, allowing remote review (with an iDevice) of recorded footage from your computer’s HD.
The App’s page states “please use Wi-Fi for the best video and audio performance and experience,” which we’re assuming means the service will function over 3G, albeit most likely with hobbled performance.
Seriously: Imagine your kids being able to play around with all the wonders of physics — without the fear they might slice off a finger (or two), or burn their eyebrows off.
That’s the basic idea behind the brilliant Xperica HD for the iPad, a physics sandbox that lets high-school kids (or anyone, really) make sense of physics through playing with interactive experiments. The first four modules are free, with $4 netting the remaining half-dozen set of physics experiments.
While the first set is all about physics, the developer told us they’ll soon have experiment sets in other spheres of science (like chemistry) available soon, with some modules in each sphere being released for free — and that they might make all the modules free at some point (which might make one hesitant to buy the extra modules, we think, but there ya go).
Forget those china plates, iPad and iPhone apps are the new must-haves for people who want to follow the fairy tale wedding of Kate Middleton and Prince William.
To makes sure there is as much interest as possible on April 29, broadcasters and publishers are crowding the iTunes store with dozens of apps, many of them free, aimed at filling the teacups of royal watchers the world over to brimming.
Among them are the Royal Wedding Insider from BBC America (with an unfortunate ad for The Tudors miniseries in it), The Royal Wedding from Hello! Magazine as well as offerings from NBC , one from People that allows you to print your own commemorative stamp and a virtual tea towel app.
Though they’ll probably never surpass the interest in the Kate Middleton doll with its big head or the fun factor in commemorative condoms, unlike ceramics (which more or less live forever) you can dump these apps guilt-free as your interest wanes post-nuptials.
It’s no secret that the iPad 2 should open the floodgates of the augmented reality experience — and here’s another example of what the iPad 2 can do with AR.
No doubt in anticipation of Yuri’s Night, Vito Technology has just released an AR-equipped version of their venerable star-watching iPad app, Star Walk ($5). Just hold the screen up to the sky and the app will superimpose constellations and all sorts of other info onto a realtime image of the sky being viewed through the iPad 2’s camera. And that’s on top of all the other cool features, like a satellite tracker, night mode and a time-machine function that lets you see what the sky looks like on any given day or time.
Still saving for an iPad 2? That’s ok, the iPhone version has the same features (but not the awesomeness of the iPad’s giant screen), and it’s on sale for a buck till April 12 — which, not coincidentally, is Yuri’s Night.
Selling itself as the first app to help hunters find their prey, iHunt Journal may also be on target for controversy.
iHunt Journal, approved by Apple for use by anyone over the age four because it contains no objectionable material, calls itself the “ultimate all-in-one hunting app:”
Whether your focus is on planning your next hunt based on weather and solunar periods, keeping a trophy gallery and hunting journal, or statistics and research of your past hunts, this is the application you need.
We’ve been keen followers of developments at CloudEngines, the outfit behind the Pogoplug network-attached storage device, ever since we reviewed the first one back in late 2009. This month, a little over two years after the Pogoplug debuted, brings a whole raft of new offerings from the company — including one that may bring a big surge to NAS popularity in general.
In case there’s any doubt about whether the iPad has ushered in a post-PC era in mobile computing, Zen Viewer is one app to consider on your path to enlightenment.
Made by the Skins Factory, Zen Viewer is a feast for the eyes, drawing on iPad’s generous screen real estate and graphics capabilities to make document management on Apple’s flagship iOS device a nearly sublime experience.
Choose from a half dozen customizable themes to suit your prevailing technical chakras and let Zen Viewer organize and balance the files on your device with its fully searchable file system, document reader, image viewer, audio and video playback device and audio recorder.
The app is fast and responsive, a wonderful showcase for the iOS touch navigation platform, with its colors and graphic elements lending a rich gravitas to the otherwise mundane realm of file management. Audio and video playback are flawless and the recording feature should be a boon to anyone still having trouble with the touch keyboard.
Some bugs and glitchy performance with WiFi transfer look like they need some polishing, which Skins Factory support says is being addressed, but for $2.99 and such an early version release (1.6.6 is the latest, updated 3/29), Zen Viewer has great potential.
There’s been a lot of press lately about Time Warner Cable’s foray into portability by offering its subscribers access to their programming via their iPads.
Y’know how you’ll be chugging along on a game and get to a point where, for hours, the gameplay is just sod-awful boring? And you want to get up and watch TV, but don’t want to leave the game for fear something actually exciting — like crashing into a mountain — might happen? Well, there’s an app for that. In some instances, anyway.
In this case, clever app FSXFollow saves countless faux pilots from the numbing monotony of piloting their faux Cessnas over the Midwest, by shunting all the data to their iDevice, so the pilot can walk off and get a latte or watch TV. Definitely limited appeal to this app (and frankly, if the simulation or pilot is too hardcore to employ a simple time-lapse feature, I’m not sure getting up to watch TV or do laundry in the middle of a flight is any better; but then I’m not down with all the current FAA rules), but the concept is cool — using a handheld as an integral part of a much larger experience on the desktop.
FSXFollow works with apps like the superb X-Plane and Microsoft’s Flight Simulator X and costs $6. There’re more examples of this kind of mobile/desktop symbiosis, of course; anyone got a favorite?
When it comes to iPhone photography, some folks are Hipstamatics while others are Instagrammers. For the latter bunch there’s now a new app for iPad called Instagallery (iTunes link) that lets users do all kinds of fun stuff with the Instagram API.
Users can view all Instagram photos as a gallery on the iPad, see popular photos, or sign in to to see photos from those people they follow. They can view their own photos, “like” photos, read and add comments, see what users their friends follow, and more.
Instagallery was developed by InfinitApps, costs $1.99 and is available in the iTunes App Store.
A new iPad app for Cosmopolitan magazine, expected to debut later this week, drops the pretense that women read it for the articles: it features an interactive sex quiz with men groaning and lots of pics of shirtless guys.
Fashion bible Women’s Wear Daily got their hands on the magazine app featuring hot hunks and steamy sex advice to find that the $2.99 new app, called “The Showcase Edition,” contained only two articles.
Instead, there’s an interactive feature, already a favorite with magazine staffers, called “Decode His Bedroom Sounds,” which promises to help women understand what a “load moaner” really means — and whether she’s got one — by emitting what was described as “unholy sounds.”
Vito Technology, developers of the wildly successful iOS astronomy app Star Walk celebrates the company’s 10th birthday this week with an update to its more recently released geography app, Geo Walk 3D World Factboook — and especially for Cult of Mac readers — an iPad2 giveaway.
Geo Walk is one of those apps that, while engaging and interesting enough on the smaller iPhone screen, finds new life and greater dimensions of engagement when used on an iPad.
Like a lot of people, I have mixed feelings about Craigslist. It’s like Ikea: in theory, you’d rather patronize mom-and-pop shops or get your stuff elsewhere. But somehow on a rainy Saturday afternoon: there you are.
Craigslist can be a pain to use or search – but if you’re looking for a garage sale, love connection or that elusive floor lamp with a table in it – you end up there.
Beloved teen detective Nancy Drew is racing her blue roadster into the digital age with a new interactive iPad game.
Called “Nancy Drew Mobile Mysteries: Shadow Ranch,” it’s a game/story hybrid. Aimed at girls age 9-14, the interactive gamebook app lets players decide how the story unfolds as they play games and solve mysteries, both big and small.
The next time you buy a couch, a car or a caffelatte, you can tell management what you think of the service with a stroke of your iPhone.
The Tello app lets you give a quick thumbs up or thumbs down and add comments on the fly as well as share your service woes or whoahs via Twitter and Facebook.
It runs on the iPhone, iPad and there’s a mobile version, too. Tello’s interface is clean, simple and has a database of 14 million businesses and if it can’t find your bodega, you can easily add it.
A more efficient, less costly government sounds like a pretty good idea no matter where you sit on the political spectrum.
Whether devices like iPads – small, portable devices that allow lawmakers to read lengthy documents without printing them out – are a good way to do that has been open to debate.
Cult of Mac talked to a city council member in Ridgecrest, California who has been bringing his own device to work to speed things up.
The Catholic Church has formally blessed a new iOS app called Confession, which lets followers keep track of their sins. No, I’m not making this up!
The $1.99 app was created by an outfit called Little iApps and has been approved by Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne in Indiana. It guides Catholics through an examination of their sins, so when they visit a real priest for the Rite of Penance in a real church they’re ready for the ordeal.
The app guides users through each of the 10 commandments, where they can tap a check box if they’ve, say, coveted their neighbor’s ox or murdered someone.
The app also serves as a cheat-sheet for what sinners are supposed to say in the confessional. For example, when the priest says “Give thanks to the Lord for he is good,” the app cues the user to say: “For his mercy endures forever.”
It even has a database listing acts of contrition and prayers.
Landing in the iOS App Store tomorrow is Index Card v2 for iPad, a multi-touch version of the corkboard-and-index-cards system popular with screenwriters and others who need to arrange multiple ideas within a project.
Inspired by the Corkboard feature of Scrivener for Mac (the Scrivener people know), Index Card allows users to move cards around, label by color, and even write on the back of cards (the ‘flip’ arrow changes color if there’s something written on the back).
This latest version adds a trio of new features: Stacks, customizable label names, and the option to export notes with the rest of your project to RTF for Word or Final Draft.
Testing the app last week, I found it to be responsive and easy to use. It does exactly what it it promises.
That said, at least on the surface, Index Card is very much about the needs of screenwriters. Developer DenVog would do well to add options in its next release to make the app more appealing to general productivity users. More backgrounds than just cork and solid black would also be welcome.
I can’t say I use index cards in my daily life, but for those that do, Index Card should prove practical. The app already counts a couple of Emmy-nominated producers as users.
William N. Fordes, a Co-Executive Producer/Writer on Law & Order, tells me that he finds Index Card “superb” and “well thought out”.
“The ease with which the individual cards can be moved around is terrific, and makes rethinking the shuffle of scenes so much easier,” he says.
If you’re like me, you probably can’t watch TV without a computer in your lap. And if you’re be watching the Super Bowl on Sunday, there’s a pretty cool iPad app that will enhance the game — and the commercials.
Wanna talk smack on Twitter? It includes a Twitter client, as well as FaceBook and chat. There are news feeds from ESPN and other sources, Twitter updates from the locker room, Flickr photos from fans at the game, and instant replays (both plays and commercials) – plus a bunch more.
The idea is to have an easy way to do all the things we now do while watching TV (Twittering, checking the news). The company plans to roll out more apps for upcoming sports events as well as popular shows like American Idol and Glee. I think it looks pretty cool. Here’s a quick video tour I just got from Kevin Brown of Stage Two:
With the launch of The Daily yesterday, Apple revealed a new subscription model for iPad publications.
You can currently check out The Daily for free for two weeks, then subscriptions run $0.99 per week or $40 a year. This model is currently only available for that publication, but is expected to be expanded soon.
The next time you download on iTunes, you’ll be asked to agree with the updated terms of service about in-app subscriptions.
The 347-word TOS specifies that subs are non-refundable, automatically renew and may hand over your personal details to publishers – which, to me at least, sounds like the same kind of hassle faced with analog magazine subscriptions.
Are you pleased that Apple has created a new, uniform model for subscriptions or are you going to stick to paper?
A dad whose daughter ran up his credit card while playing the Smurfs’ Village app has launched a Facebook group to convince Apple to ban in-app purchases in kids games.
The fledgling group – as of this writing, it has 20 members – started after Tobias Feldt’s daughter bought a load of Smurf extras by accident.
Feldt says Apple refunded the purchase immediately, with no questions asked – as it often does in these cases – but he decided the incident shouldn’t end there.
Feldt has tried to teach his two children to play games responsibly. His oldest daughter, age nine, was “devastated” when she found out that she had run up a bill playing the game.
SAN FRANCISCO, MACWORLD 2011 — If there’s one thing we’re hearing over and over at Macworld this year, it’s the word “enterprise.” There’s a lot of companies getting ready for a huge wave of iOS deployments by enterprise in 2011.
One company ready to jump on the enterprise bandwagon is FileMaker, whose FileMaker Go iOS app allows FileMaker databases to run on the iPad or iPhone. That means businesses can make custom database apps — everything from email clients to iTunes clones — without going through Apple.
“A lot of people think they have to develop their own app to do something but its not necessarily necessary to do an app,” said FileMaker spokesman Kevin Mallon. “If you’ve got FileMaker Pro, you’ve got an app.”
According to FileMaker, its database software is currently the only way enterprise can get custom apps on the iPhone or iPad without coding a custom solution and submitting it through the App Store.
The pharmaceutical company Merck, for example, created an iOS app to share the company lexicon of drug names, special acronyms and competing drug companies’ names and terms.
“You don’t have to be a serious programmer to do an app,” said Mallon. “It’s dead easy.”
