Universal Home Entertainment will be introducing Blu-ray releases that contain iPhone and iPod touch enhanced features. Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Universal will include their pocket BLU application with Blu-ray versions of Bruno, Public Enemies, Funny People, American Pie Presents: The Book of Love, and Inglourious Basterds.
Pocket BLU will further enhance your Blu-ray experience with the following features:
- Advanced Remote Control: A sleek, elegant new way to operate your Blu-ray player. Users can navigate through menus, playback and BD-Live functions with ease.
- Video Timeline: By turning the phone to landscape mode, users will bring up the video timeline, allowing them to instantly access any point in the movie.
- Mobile-To-Go: Users can unlock a selection of exclusive bonus content with their Blu-ray discs to save to their device or to stream from anywhere there’s a Wi-Fi network, enabling them to enjoy exclusive content on the go, anytime, anywhere.
- Browse Titles: Users will have access to a complete list of pocket BLU-enabled titles available and coming to Blu-ray Hi-Def. Free previews and more.
- Pop-Up Keyboard: Enter data into a Blu-ray player with this easy and intuitive keyboard that will facilitate such Blu-ray(TM) features as chatting with friends and sending messages via Facebook and Twitter.
The application will be a free download for your iPhone/iPod touch and should be available the day the Blu-ray titles are available. With the movie studios and Blu-Ray showing the iPhone and iPod touch some love, one would think Apple would give a little back…
[Via 9to5Mac]
NAVIGON dropped us a note to say that, as promised, their latest update to MobileNavigator [$89.99 for North America - iTunes link] for iPhone is now available via the iTunes App Store, and it includes Traffic Live as an in-app purchase (currently on sale at an introductory $19.99, $24.99 thereafter). Here’s how it works:
Traffic Live utilizes crowdsourced real-time speed data from over 1.3 million drivers including other NAVIGON app users (who opt. in to participate), commercial fleets such as trucks and taxis, as well as regular drivers with a GPS system. So if for example several vehicles on a road report slow speed, the system recognizes congestion and provides an alternate and faster route.
If you add the Traffic Live service, let us know how it works for you.
UPDATE: And… it’s back with version 1.1.1 [Free - iTunes link]
ORIGINAL: Most of our readers love their Twitter, and to some of you who happened to be searching for the TweetDeck app within the App Store, you may have been a bit surprised and disappointed to see that it seemed to simply disappear without a trace.
So what exactly happened to TweetDeck? This past Friday TweetDeck version 1.1 was released and it seems as if some of the kinks were never worked out of it before it was submitted to Apple. Namely constant crashing – Oops… So the decision was then made to pull the app before the problem became widespread.
We are happy to spread the word that the app has since been fixed and resubmitted to Apple with version 1.1.1.
[Via TechCrunch]
Today the London based company, Shazam, announced the launch of its new Shazam Encore [$4.99 - iTunes Link] app on the App Store. The original Shazam is a free app that currently has over 10 million downloads so why not try to cash in with a new app that costs $4.99. Here is what you get for your money.
- Improved speed performance: making it even quicker for users to tag tracks and learn more about their music.
- Music recommendations: users can discover other music similar to the track that’s been tagged to enhance their music collection and knowledge.
- Find what’s hot and popular: Shazam music charts generated by millions of other Shazamers can be accessed to help users keep up to date with the new tracks and players in the music scene.
- Search music: easily find music by artist, album or track from over 8 million songs.
- Drive and Tag: Shazam automatically enters into car mode when the iPhone is placed in an in-car dock to make it simple to discover what’s playing on the radio even when driving.
Okay, so they’ve added some nice new features, but are those features worth $4.99? Let us know what you think.
(Settlers of Catan Forum Review by cjvitek. For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum Review Index!)
Settlers of Catan [$4.99 - iTunes link] for the iPhone. The long awaited game has made it’s debut…so how does it stack up?
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The Register is reporting that a lawsuit has been filed against an iPhone game developer for privacy violations:
The complaint claims best-selling games made by Storm8 contained secret code that bypassed safeguards built into the iPhone to prevent the unauthorized snooping of user information. [...] to access, collect, and transmit the wireless phone numbers of the iPhones on which its games are installed,” states the complaint, which was filed in US District Court in Northern California. “Storm8 does so or has done so in all of its games.” [...] [including] World War, iMobsters, Racing Live, Vampires Live, Kingdoms Live, Zombies Live, and Rockstars Live.
The complaint claims they’re violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and is seeking Class Action status. It’s not the first time we’ve heard about apps violating user privacy, hopefully Apple’s new iPhone security manager will first and foremost focus on these types of exploits. And, yeah, let the courts smite any abusive developers in the meantime…
[via Wabbit in the TiPb forums]
Posted on Saturday, Nov 7, 2009 by Leanna Lofte
File Under:App Store Apps, Apps, Featured; Tags: apps, colorsplash, DSLR Camera Remote, panorama, photo, photogene, tiltshift generator, top 5
Today’s TiPb Top 5 will be directed towards our iPhone and iPod Touch wielding readers who love photography. Just like our other TiPb’s top 5 must-have posts, all of these applications are available in the App Store. For the full overview, follow us after the break!
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Speaking of tiny, incremental improvements, Erica Sadun over at TUAW highlight a new addition some developers are seeing when entering iTunes Connect — a submission history:
Appearing near recently reviewed items, this option opens a detail table showing how your application has worked its way through the App Store review process, and on to the shelf. Stormont details this update on his site.
Sadun also states that the amber status bubbles are slightly more verbose now, adding “waiting for review” for the freshest uploads.
If you’re a developer and you’re seeing these, or any other changes in iTunes Connect, let us know, and let us know what you think about them, and what else you’d like to see.
Umpteenth verse, same as the first — Macworld turned their iPhone ebook into and app and submitted it to the iTunes App Store. It was rejected. Several times. Finally editor Jason Snell expressed his frustration on Twitter and several high profile blogs picked it up. Apple called him immediately to try and make it right.
Good for Macworld. Bad for all the developers who lack the same megaphone by virtue of their job and connections.
Granted, with 100,000+ apps, the non-sensical and erroneous rejections remain a tiny percentage, but even a tiny percentage of 100,000+ represents many developers’ time, effort, and money. It’s frustrating for them and embarrassing for Apple.
Tim Cook and Phil Schiller claim they’re making improvements, and no doubt they are. From a pure perception point of view, however, this is one issue that needs fixing sooner rather than later.
Squarespace [Free - iTunes link] is a brand new app that lets you administer your Squarespace web site — at least the blogging aspects — right from your iPhone and iPod touch.
The innovative hosted content-management system has become the darling of the technorati due to its robust online management tools and ability to scale to handle huge spikes in traffic (i.e. Digg effect). The app features:
- Posting and editing content
- Posting pics
- Multiple site support
- Site stats and graphs
- New site registration
Next on the list will be comment management, slated for version 1.1.
Note: While the app is free, Squarespace itself is a paid monthly service. But if you’re a user, and you try out the app, let us know how it works for you!
