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Eurogamer spoke to Johnny Two Shoes (The Heist, Banana Dash), Normalware (Bebot) and Firemint (Flight Control) about how Sony’s new PSPgo platform may compete with the iPhone, and the answers were interesting:

• After an 80% price cut to PSP dev tool charges, bring the price down to $1500) it’s still much more expensive than Apple’s $99.
• Developers can’t target the existing PSP install base of 50 million, PSPgo has only just been released, and Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch have an install base of over 40 million devices.

However, Apple growing the download gaming market and PSP games traditionally being bigger and longer (as opposed to casual iPhone gaming) were seen as positives for Sony.

“In the end,” Maxwell Scott-Slade concludes, “the consumer wins for choice and developers win for a more direct access to their audience.”

[via PS3blog.net]

A daily double of ringtone makers today, this one focusing on Ringtone Expressions, from the developers behind iPhoneRingToneMake. (And for those of you with a longer memory, the developers behind GX5, which kept PalmOS looking modern longer than it had a right to).

Ringtone Expressions includes support for creating ringtones faster than ever with Drag and Drop from iTunes or right click to create ringtone, creating ringtones from songs purchased on the iTune store( iTunes plus only), sharing your ringtones to friends on Facebook and Twitter, creating ringtones from YouTube videos, creating ringtones from your computer’s mic.

Support is also included for BlackBerrys and Windows Mobile should you duel wield or otherwise favor portability.

If you try out Ringtone Expressions for iPhone, let us know how it works for you.

A daily double of ringtone makers today, this one focusing on Ringtone Studio from PocketMac.

Ringtone Studio includes visual sound editing, volume control, fade in/out, and the ability to grab ringtones from movie files.

If you give Ringtone Studio a try, let us know what you think!

Tapped open App Store and what did I see? Five fresh new iPhone 3.0 feature packed app updates just waiting for me! (Okay, four, I already updated Fring…)

Jaadu VNC [$24.99 - iTunes link] adds support for cut, copy, and paste, remote copy support, and full screen view.

AutoStitch [$1.99 - iTunes link] includes cropping and support for higher resolution out for iPhone 3GS

PCalc [$9.99 - iTunes link] highlights include 3 and 4 line display modes, more memories, option to prevent rotation (Apple needs to add this system wide!), HP48-like mode, copy tape to clipboard, “easier to read” now even easier. to. read. and button easier to press.

QuickOffice [$12.99 on sale - iTunes link] now supports iPhone 3.0 cut, copy, and paste and shake to undo/redo, access email attachments, text wrapping, aligned overflow, and user-friendly indent and align control for docs.

Fring [Free - iTunes link] now offers Push Notification.

Every week a few of us from team TiPb, bloggers and forum crew alike, will bring you our current favorite, funnest, most useful App Store apps, WebApps, jailbreak apps, even the occasional accessory, web site, or desktop app if the mood strikes us. As long as they’re iPhone (or iPod touch) related, they’re fair game.

So who’s on deck this week and what are our picks? Find out after the break!

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Macro.org, from the developer behind Tumblr and Instapaper, has a post up highlighting the latest App Store controversy — that all web-embedded apps must be rated 17+ and now don’t get Promo Codes — and comes to this conclusion:

Apple thinks reviews can take 8-30 days and web-capable apps need nudity warnings and the management interface can be buggy as s**t and they don’t need us to be able to reach them and nobody really needs to take any of this very seriously. Because it’s working for them. They’re making a killing taking their 30% commission on the 1.5 billion copies of $0.99 top-25 games that they’ve sold. Who cares if the App Store discourages good developers from putting serious effort into it? Apple doesn’t need to care. And, clearly, they don’t.

The whole post is definitely worth reading, and brings to mind the classic riff — “any incompetence sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from malice”.

Here’s the the thing, though: Apple is not only serving developers. They’re being served with lawsuits. And their hyper-vigilant legal departments are no doubt saying — perhaps rightly — that if someone uses a Twitter client that embeds a WebView and happens to see the f-word or a nipple, they’ll sue Apple.

Ridiculous, sure. A poor solution, of course. But it’s the kind of rolling triage Apple seems to be doing as the App Store grows beyond even their expectations.

Don’t get us wrong, all the problems marco.org mentions are real, frustrating, and need to be fixed yesterday. For Apple to force 17+ Ratings on these apps, and remove Promo Code functionality, is intolerable — and we wonder why Mobile Safari, Mobile Mail, iPod, etc. aren’t forced to pop up the same warning under that logic.

It’s entirely Apple’s fault, setting themselves up as editors to the App Store, and then not implementing the policies or staff necessary to keep up with the content requiring editorial approval.

But we don’t think Apple doesn’t care. They surely do, and will no doubt continue to make slow, steady improvements and address developer and user concerns, while at the same time making other clumsy and what look like bone-headed decisions and mistakes. Lots of them.

Is this a triumph? Portal running on an iPhone? Not really, according to Gizmodo:

The video says the demo was made using the Unity Engine, which means they took some Portal assets and made a small demo with them. They didn’t take the full game and squish it onto the iPhone; what you see is probably the entire thing. There’s no way the Source Engine is running on the 3G. Maybe the 3GS, but not the 3G.

Not yet! But we figure they’ll keep on trying until they run out of cake… or Valve pulls an ID an actually releases a game for the new 40+ million unit iPhone/iPod touch platform. Right Valve?

Google Blogs (via Gizmodo) has announced that the long-rumored Geo-Location based services in Mobile Safari are indeed included in iPhone 3.0 and being put to use in “My Location” searches by Google.com on the iPhone.

As of today, when you visit www.google.com from Safari on your iPhone 3.0, you can choose to turn on My Location by tapping on the link on the homepage. When you tap on the “update” link, your location will be updated and displayed right there on the homepage. Whenever you want to refresh your location, just tap the “update” link. Testing this in New York, my search for “jazz clubs” returned a handful of places within walking distance. I picked one, tapped the phone number, made a reservation, and we were set for the night.

As to privacy concerns, Google stresses the service is opt-in and can be turned off via the Preferences link at the bottom of the page. Also, it currently only works in English in the US and UK, though other languages and regions are said to be coming soon.

Good news for those looking for a local burger joint, bad news for those hoping Latitude wouldn’t be stuck in the browser…

In the past 24 hours we have seen major updates to not one but two software unlocks for the iPhone 3GS. Who says competition isn’t a good thing and who doesn’t love a good old fashion hacker fight? Let’s get it on:

In the red corner we have George Hotz along with his fresh version of purplesn0w RC2.

• 3G(the network speed) issues fixed
• Now only patches one file, CommCenter
• Leaves no traces on your baseband after it runs.
• Much more clean and reliable.

In the blue corner we have the iPhone Dev Team. And since Hotz released his source code, his competition used it to create their latest version of ultrasn0w .09.

• Works on both 3G and 3GS
• Doesn’t patch any mach-o binary whatsoever. (Doesn’t require a separate patch as each new firmware comes out).
• Has no race conditions, no popups about “Missing SIM”, no network issues
• Is almost 7000 times smaller than its nearest competition

So there you have it – two software unlocks for your iPhone 3GS and one update for your iPhone 3G unlock. You have to credit George Hotz for stepping his game up when the Dev Team has been dragging their feet. It really seems to have sparked up a good rivalry that we can all benefit from.

There is one major question though, how do you score the match?

Twitbit [$4.99 - iTunes link] is a Twitter client for the iPhone and iPod touch that provides built-in push notification for @mentions and direct messages (DMs).

For those of you still reading — those didn’t immediately jump over to grab it — what this means is you get all the functionality you’ve come to expect — reading, posting, multiple accounts, start and stop following, searching, trends, user profiles, reply chains, etc. etc. and you get any @mentions and DMs pushed straight to you without the need for an extra enabler app (which most other Twitter clients currently require).

The folks at High Order Bit were gracious enough to give us a sneak peak to try out, and I’ve been using it pretty much non-stop since. And… I’ve found all the functionality I need and then some. The push works wonderfully as well. So far, so fast.

One thing I particularly liked (but others may not) is that, when you get multiple @mentions or DMs, rather than having the latest obliterate the previous text alert (fix that by implementing a genius stacking system, will you Apple?), Twitbit collates them up. You don’t get to see the contents of the latest message, but you do get to see “X new @mentions and X new DMs” (see screenshot below). At least you have some idea of volume.

Of course, iPhone notifications being interruptive as they are, there’s still a chance something will pop up while you’re watching a movie or playing a game…

Given that limitation, more granularity as to who and what Twitbit pushes would be grand — and it’s likely forthcoming in an update — but wow are these young upstart devs and apps giving the entrenched Twitter clients a race for their functionality.

If you want an amply functioning Twitter client with built-in push notifications, take a serious look at Twitbit and let us know what you think.

Tons of screenshots after the break!

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