Did you know your iPhone and iPod Touch may contain the inscrutable wisdom of the Spheres? Two free applications on the iTunes AppStore promise to take the guesswork out of hard decision making, with the same whimsy and clarity offered by the once wildly popular Magic Eight Ball you might remember from your youth.
The Magic iBall app borrows its name and a similar look from the classic Eight Ball, and offers a choice of “themes” - from the standard black ball to a gold “bling” ball to a smiley face ball. It also offers a choice of answer “themes” - classic fortune teller, zen, weird and more - that are somewhat confusingly accessed and enabled from your device’s Settings menu and not from within the app itself.
Not as groovy looking as Magic iBall at first blush, in the end I think I prefer the look and feel of My Answers, which features a multi-sided triangle die floating in dark liquid, similar to the old Eight Ball decision-making assistant.
Both apps work on the same principle: turn the touchscreen face down, ask your question, and turn the device over - your answer appears, like magic. Another attractive feature to My Answers is its 20 fully customizable answers. You can stick with the default yes, no, maybe-type answers delivered in “fortune teller lingo (Signs Point to Yes), or make up your own personal directives.
These apps could come in handy this week at Macworld. Will there be an iPhone Nano? Will there be a new Mac mini? Is Steve Jobs really OK? The Magic Eight Ball knows all…
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Philippe Starck, one of the most famous and prolific designers alive, has made these monumental iPod speakers.
Called Zikmu and designed for Parrot, these sleek, wireless “couture” speakers stand 2.5 feet tall with a docking station for an iPod or iPhone on top. Audio can also be streamed from a PC or Mac via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, and the speakers emit sound from both sides.
They’ll be in available in spring 2009 and cost $1,500.
If British tab The Sun is to be believed, 18-year-old Gavin Brooke stayed awake listening to an iPod as surgeons removed a brain tumor.
The teen had a tumor in a tricky place that surgeons didn’t want to damage, so the boy had to stay awake during surgery.
Brooke was given an anesthetic to numb the pain, but the head surgeon let him hook up his iPod Touch to give him something to do.
What was on the playlist?
The first tune Brook played on his iPod was “Apologize” by Timbaland Featuring One Republic, the rest were garage and R’n’B tracks that kept him occupied during the six-hour surgery. The iPod was plugged into the operating theater’s sound system and the volume was low enough so that Brooke could carry on conversation with the surgeons.
The tumor was removed and Brooke has since recovered.
You yourself might not be an actual superhero, but with Earthcomber, a free GPS-leveraging search/mapping/social networking app for iPhone and iPod Touch, you can have “superhuman awareness,” according to developer Jim Brady.
Preloaded with a comprehensive database of restaurants, movie listings, events, historical sites, local information and more, the app lets users tag their interests - for example, Greek cuisine, historic buildings, hot chai tea, or free WiFi access. They can also add their own items, and invite friends so they can find them as well.
Earthcomber then scans an area for any matches, using the iPhone’s GPS. Any place that has anything of interest is announced by an optional chime.
Earthcomber is different, according to Brady, because it utilizes multiple technologies so the user doesn’t have to jump from one application to the next to accomplish related tasks. “That’s the whole point,” Brady said. “We don’t have to turn off our eyes to start up our ears, and we sure don’t have to fill out a search box for our brains to work. Earthcomber uses mobile technology as a powerful extension of our natural abilities, so that we can be constantly aware of what’s right around us.”
Earthcomber won Nokia’s 2008 Mobile Rules! competition for “Best Infotainment” application. The company provides USA service today and plans international coverage with a coming update.
A little bit old school, a little bit new school: the Record 001 app lets you work the image of a vinyl record with your fingers in a shout out to turntable days.
Digital DJs can backspin, pause and scratch like they would on a real record on an iPhone or iPod touch screen.
Record 001 has mixed reviews so far — the first release comes with just two oddball tracks “World Peace” and “The Fashion Song” — calling it a quirky demo app but not regretting the $1.99 price tag.
See if you don’t get a smile out of the video, though.
In a nod to Apple, the world’s first MP3 recording guitar is a sleek, all-white number called iDea.
You can record riffs as you play, along with vocals on a built-in condenser microphone or use the built-in MP3 player to add backing tracks. It holds up to 100 minutes of music.
A USB port lets you transfer your music to a Mac or PC. The iDea comes with pre-loaded tracks, plus six lessons and an amp. The whole shebang is controlled from the top side of the guitar, no word on whether there’s a left-handed version, too.
Tech-strummers Ovation created the guitar, it comes with a $600 price tag.
If you love the idea but are more of a Mac-loving DIYer, you may want to check out this hack Brian Green made by adding two iPod Touch devices to his guitar, calling it the iTouch guitar.
Rapper Lil’ Wayne recently launched an iPhone, iPod touch app designed to give fans a taste of what it’s like to be him.
Well, what it means to look a little like 25-year-old Dwayne Carter, or to paraphrase the old cosmetics slogan: “You, only blinger.”
The app developed by Lil’ Wayne and his record company Universal Music, comes from epictilt, the makers of iPhone app ESPN Cameraman.
The Lil’ Wayne app adds gold jewelry, his trademark teardrop tats and oversized hats to your pics. If you’re unsure you want to pop $0.99 for it on iTunes, you can check out a photo gallery here. The app allows fans to check out other Wayne-ified photos and buy his music.
One guarantee: you get to look fierce but avoid Lil Wayne’s real-life arrests with corresponding mug shots.
iBend marketing materials call it “the thinnest stand for the iPhone and iPod Touch.”
$5 gets you what appears to be two pieces of plastic or maybe laminated card stock (the website doesn’t say) cut in such a way they could be mistaken for “Snidely Whiplash”-style fake mustaches, but that, when “bent” just so, will hold your device in place on any flat surface so you can look at it (and the video or slideshow you’re watching on it) without having to hold it in your hand. The iBend is thin enough to fit in your wallet, pocket or purse.
iBend is patent-pending and manufactured in California.
Apple released the 10.5.6 update to Leopard on Monday with a feature that makes it impossible to jailbreak and/or unlock an iPhone or iPod Touch using PwnageTool or QuickPwn, according to a report at iPhoneAlley.
Blogger Erica Sadun explains in more detail that engineers at Apple propagated to all 10.5.6 loaded Mac systems USB kexts (kernel extensions) that prevent a Mac from recognizing an iPhone or iPod in Device Firmware Update mode, a high level communication protocol used for firmware restores among other things.
The battle between Cupertino and a dedicated band of Apple users who believe the company’s mobile platform should be opened for general use and development outside the limitations of the AppStore has been going on since the original iPhone was unlocked weeks after its initial release in June 2007. Subsequent updates to the mobile firmware have ben decoded within days of their release.
Many, though not all users who jailbreak/unlock their iPhones do so to enable them to operate on cellular telephone networks other than AT&T, the exclusive authorized service provider in the US. Others see the advantage of an unlocked phone that can run software developed for it that has not otherwise been approved by Apple for sale and distribution in the iTunes AppStore.
Sadun confirmed with sources inside Apple that the current roadblock to unlocking efforts was deliberate and both she and iPhoneAlley suggested those wanting to operate jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches ought to wait to install the 10.5.6 update on their Macs until developers working to maintain the open mobile platform have devised a workaround.
One possible avenue around the DFU mode restriction has been suggested by Phone developer Steven Troughton-Smith, who told Sadun the problem relates to devices plugged directly to Macs. He relates that DFU mode can be used with a unit connected via a hub and can be pwned as normal, even with the 10.5.6 update.
Rogue Amoeba Software added to its lineup of innovative audio software titles Monday with the release of Radioshift Touch, software that lets users listen to internet radio anywhere on their iPhone or iPod Touch.
Powered by RadioTime, an internet radio catalog with thousands of stations from around the world in its database, Radioshift allows users to browse by genre, search by keyword and view listings for thousands of specific radio programs as well.
The app leverages iPhone firmware’s GPS capabilities to serve up local stations based on the user’s location and uses a feature called “SmartStream” to point to the most bandwidth-friendly stations, depending on the connection. Users can access Internet radio via, WiFi, EDGE or 3G.
Radioshift Touch is available at the iTunes AppStore for $9.99.
Given the host of free and low cost music programs available on the AppStore, including the ever-popular Pandora, and ClearChannel’s iHeartRadio, it will be interesting to track the success of Radioshift, with its relatively expensive price tag. Paul Kafasis, lead developer at Rogue Amoeba, has a sterling reputation for developing useful, high quality audio software for the Mac, so we invite Cult readers who try Radioshift to let us know what you think.
We recently wrote about iBreviary, an iPhone and iPod Touch app that gives the morning prayer, evening prayer and night prayer or complines for the day.
The Italian priest who had the brainwave for the app, Don Paolo Padrini, informed us that the 1.2 version of the prayer app, which he says has the blessing of the Vatican, is now available in Spanish, French, English and Latin (for those, like the Pope, who want a return to pre-Second Vatican Council days) and a version that follows the Ambrosian Rite, for the five million Catholics or so in the Milan area.
iBreviary costs $0.99 on iTunes and now also comes with a how-to page to help those unfamiliar with daily prayer rituals. The original Italian-language version was gratis, Father Padrini says the price of the app is a contribution for the developers.
Don Padrini also says an app is in the works for Facebook called that “Praybook” that will let groups use the Breviary via social network.
I probably shouldn’t be saying this on a Mac site, but reputation be damned: I’m quite interested to see Windows 7. Let me explain why. (Hang on while I put on my flame-proof jacket. There.)
THING THE FIRST: I want a netbook. I want a cheap, tiny, low-power little computer that does text editing and web [...]
It seems that suing Apple is no longer just the sport of crazy chicks allegedly denied their dog-given right to resell iPhones at extortionist rates because Apple discounted them. Instead, we have crazy patent campers who think that 25 years after Apple pioneered the use of the GUI in personal computers, they’re entitled to [...]
Steve Jobs in January 2008. Picture by Macinate. Creative Commons.
In the wake of Apple pulling out of Macworld — and the prospect that Steve Jobs may leave the company — many are wondering if Apple will survive without him.
The answer is yes, Apple will definitely survive without Steve Jobs. It may even thrive.
Here’s three reasons [...]
News broke over the weekend that 
iPhone app developers 
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?
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.
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. 
You yourself might not be an actual superhero, but with 
