Yes, folks, I was one of the suckers eager buyers of the 2nd edition of the Kindle. My pain is your pleasure, though, as you can get some early screenshots of the app already loaded up with books via Whispersync.
As you may have just read in our previous post, Amazon has just released Kindle for iPhone for free in the App Store (iTunes link), you cannot buy Kindle books directly from the app. Instead you can purchase inside Mobile Safari, from your desktop, or from a Kindle
The text is nice and readable (and you can resize as well). The app keeps a “page metaphor,” meaning that instead of being able to scroll up and down, you swipe left and right to switch pages. A single tap on the screen bring up a menu to give you back, bookmark, text-size, and a sync button to sync your last page read with a Kindle.
The Whispersync tech works exactly as advertised — books purchased show up as “Archived” and you can then download them directly to your iPhone.
Amazon’s Kindle App for iPhone and iPod touch is now live in the App Store. It allows access to hundreds of thousands of Amazon Kindle format e-books (we assume the whole 200K plus library).
The Amazon Kindle for iPhone app is FREE (iTunes Link), but it looks like books need to be purchased from Amazon directly via PC or Mac and transferred over, or from the iPhone via Mobile Safari. Most e-books should run $9.99. Like with the Kindle device itself, you can sample first chapters for free, adjust text size and bookmark. You can’t annotate but you can view Kindle annotations.
Whispersync is also enabled so you can start reading on the Kindle, switch to the iPhone, and basically go back and forth without losing your place. Books you’ve already purchased for the Kindle, of course, can be placed on the iPhone or iPod touch as well.
Note: Per Dieter, this doesn’t seem to be showing up on the iPhone App Store app yet, and — of course — it’s not available (yet?) in the Canadian App Store (or any international App Store?)
Any Kindle users out there ready to test this out and let us know how it’s working?
Confession: I bought the Watchmen comics as they came out. I remember my jaw dropping as I finished issue 11, and the interminable wait for issue 12 to come out. That, along with Dark Knight Returns informed a lot of my early thinking about deconstruction, dialog, and dramatic endings (yes, back then the actually considered and built to endings!). I’m a huge fan of writer Alan Moore (Wikipedia link) in general (Watchmen, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, V for Vendetta, and too much more to name.) And while the derivatives of those works, including the movie adaptions thus far, are the palest of imitations, and while Moore himself has begged, pleaded, and finally insisted his name be removed from any and all adaptions, the geek in me is still mind-blown to see the video above (and that’s as close to a Harry Knowles intro I’ll ever write).
By using its patent-pending CloudMMO technology running on Amazon’s Cloud, Last Legion were able to create a persistent world for the iPhone in the Watchmen universe. Players can roam the city streets, chat with total strangers, battle with people on the other side of the country, and ride the subway to another part of the city to continue their crusade against crime, all in real-time. Watch what happened when developers from Last Legion Games brought Watchmen: Justice is Coming to our office recently, and hit the Read More link for the full press release.
So, who’s interested in not only Watching the Watchmen — but living in their world?
Aqua Moto Racing offers racing with an unprecedented sense of speed on the platform. With state of the art handling and graphics this game truly puts your Jet Ski riding skills to the ultimate test. Race in the beautifully rendered American locations; Emerald Bay, Everglades and Long Beach Port. Start off with participating in a Championship for beginners. Perform stunts and keep a tight line around the buoys to power your boost. Collect medals in the Time Trial mode by beating set target times. Register a profile and compare your race results with friends all over the world. Race against Aqua Moto Racing Lite World Records through Ghost Play.
I know most of you are probably thinking we have more than enough less than stellar racing games available in the App Store. Hopefully Aqua Moto Racing is a good sign of things to come. Where most of the other racing games have failed, this gem of a game succeeds. With good graphics, great control, virtually no slow down, no crashing, etc… This game is a keeper for $2.99.
While Big Media wants you to stay off their lawn (i.e. not stream their content to your TV’s), it looks like they’re increasingly okay-ish with their streaming it to your PC and… iPhone. Macworld brings word of the latest content streamer to hit the App Store, TV.com (iTunes link):
Most of the content consists of clips, interviews, and promos, but you’ll also find full episodes of some TV shows, such as “CSI: Miami” and the aforementioned [MacGyver] mixed in (well, to be honest, there weren’t many other shows I could find full episodes of at first glance). Full episodes are presented as multiple clips instead of as a single video. You can search for shows using the Search box at the top, or tap on the Shows and Channels buttons to browse in other ways.
Of course, a few more things need to happen to flesh out this category. Getting other networks on board via apps for Hulu and other services is one. Also, realizing it’s the 21st fraken century and NOT restricting streaming apps from international users would be grand. (TV.com is US App Store only).
Anyone tried it yet? If so, how was the quality? Would you use this over your laptop for TV to go? Over your TV for viewing in general?
Seems Emoji aren’t the only thing being scrubbed from the App Store today! MacRumors is reporting that old reviews made my users who hadn’t actually downloaded the app they were reviewing are also being removed. Apple stopped non-users from reviewing apps a while back, this is just retroactively applying the new policy to the old reviews:
Several long standing apps have seen dramatic decreases in their review counts. SEGA’s Super Monkey Ball count dropped from 4197 reviews down to 3710 while Namco’s Pac Man dropped from 395 to 122.
Most everyone involved, from developers tired of no-good-nicks trying to game the system, to users tired of sorting through gamed or off-topic reviews, will likely appreciate this move. Maybe this is one rejection Apple’s done right?
Lots (and lots) of you have become smitten with Emoji, the cute, extra smiley-faces that come to us from Japan and work quite well on the iPhone. That is to say, they work quite well if you’ve hacked them on or downloaded one of the several apps that turns them on on-the-sly.
Sadly, that latter option is no longer going to be available. Ars Technica is reporting that Apple has issued a global take-down notice on any app that enables Emoji on non-Japanese iPhones. More specifically, they’ve told developers with apps that enable it to immediately remove that functionality:
Existing applications that offer Emoji enabling beyond their base functionality have been ordered to remove Emoji support. Fung told us that Apple has required an immediate update to his Typing Genius program with the Emoji support removed. This same order appears to have gone out to all developers whose App Store marketing text mentions an Emoji feature.
The good news is that if you’ve already installed one of these apps or otherwise enabled Emoji, the little guys should still work just fine for you — that is, until Apple decided to use their best-of-class software updating system for the iPhone to push out a new ROM that, one assumes, will break it.
Google recently announced their Latitude service, which lets you and your friends share your location, and while they’ve made it available to some platforms, the iPhone version hasn’t surfaced yet… Or has it?
A tipster has sent us a photo of what looks to be Latitude integrated into the iPhone Map App. Now, we know that Apple, not Google created the Map app. Based on Google’s back-end data, to be sure, but Apple made the interface. So, if Latitude is coming by way of Maps, Apple is going to have to be the one who releases it — and that means it won’t be until another firmware update (2.3 at the earliest, 3.0 at the outside).
However, last we heard Google was going to release it themselves, as part of their awesome (yet controversial) Google Mobile App. If that’s the case, unless they’re planning a massive redesign that happens to look just like the Maps app, then we’re not sure what we’re really looking at up there.
What do you think? Real? Real fake?
And either way, would Latitude be better combined with Maps than with Google Mobile?
The great folks at Redwind Software have been gracious enough to provide TiPb readers with a fun Oscar day give-away. Know your trivia? Prove it right here and you’ll win promo codes (US only, sorry!) for BOTH their Movie Challenge AND their Movie Challenge: Oscars® Special.
UPDATED: We’ve opened it up with a new way to win, check it our here!
That’s right, 1 give-away, 2 games, 10 winners. And all you have to do to win is… answer some trivia questions!
We’ll post 1 set of questions at a time (10 sets total), and the first forum member to answer the set will win 1 copy of BOTH games. Then we’ll post the next question, until we’ve posted all 10, all 10 have been answered, and we have our 10 winners.
Ready for the first set of questions?
1a: What actor was cast as Marty McFly in “Back To The Future”, and even filmed for a few weeks, before ultimately being replaced by Michael J. Fox?
1b: For which movie did Steven Spielberg win his first Best Director Oscar®?
Pinch Media, who provide metrics/analytics for iPhone users recently gave a presentation on “AppStore Secrets” that highlighted what they’re seeing in terms of free vs. ad supported vs. paid, and usage patterns over time. They try to provide developers with some useful number crunching on how and when to determine if their application is “sticky” and modulate price and ad support, but they also show some things that are interesting from the user perspective:
We don’t use free apps that much. Sure, we download them by the gigabyte-full, but after a few tries, it’s buh-bye. If we pay for it, we probably need/want it more, and hence use it more.
We keep using games longer than any other type of app.
Things rings true for me. Of all the apps I’ve downloaded (and they’ve been many, free and paid), about the only ones I use consistently are casual games and communication clients (IM, Twitter, etc.) The rest of the time, I’m using built-in apps like Safari, Email, iPod, etc. And even among those “sticky” apps, when I’ve had my fill of one game, I move on to another. When a new Twitter or IM client comes out, I switch to it (and sometimes switch back and forth).
What about you? Do you stop using free apps faster than paid? And what apps do you keep using?
