All Articles in Apps

We’ve talking about i.TV here on TiPb before, so what could get us to do it again? How about Netflix. How about built in? How about now!

Justin writes in to tell us about the awesomeness:

Netflix integration on [brings] a catalog of over 100k DVDs to our popular iPhone application. In addition to this, users can now manage their Netflix DVD and instant streaming queues straight from their iPhone or iPod touch.

Mark wrote in to tell us about Arcade Hoops, and was gracious enough to share some great info:

I think one interesting thing about the game is its back story. It was developed by Garry Kitchen and David Crane. David was a co-founder of Activision and Garry co-founded Absolute Entertainment. These guys worked together on some famous old school games like Donkey Kong for Atari, Pitfall and Decathlon.

They’ve decided to put these skills to work in a very new medium, and I hope you’ll be impressed with the results.

The other story is the quality of the game and the intensity of the game play. You can look at virtually any review online, either on the iTunes site or off- they are all glowing. People are really amazed that this game is available for $1.99. I think it’s because of the soundtrack, the 3D imagery, and the speed of the game play - plus some extra touches like a trash-talking jumbotron.

Any giving it a try? Let us know what you think!

Now after watching the above video, it seems as if Google has made one heck of a voice recognition app. But where the heck has it gone?!

It’s pretty clear Google loves the iPhone, that is something we all know. Now why would Apple go ahead and delay their latest App Store app, Advanced Voice Search? Or have the reports of a Friday release been greatly exaggerated? The app was “expected” to make it’s appearance in the App Store this past Friday. TechCrunch is now telling us to look for it tomorrow!

Google was under the impression that the application would be live on the App Store on Friday (obviously, since they pushed all significant press attention to it). Sometime Friday they found out Apple wouldn’t be pushing it, despite the fact that Google submitted it for review earlier in the week and got a thumbs up for Friday. One source says they’ve had little direct contact with Apple during the review, instead getting their updates via the standard iPhone developer tool, which has said “in review” for the last few days.

So what is your take on this? Why did Apple delay this app from Google? Or do you think it was never slated to be released this past week at all?

Sound off in the comments!

[Via Techcrunch]

Sure, Microsoft’s online Live/Mesh/Azure strategy is just a tad less complicated than n-dimensional string theory, but it looks like when the next version of Office (14) ships with it’s GoogleDocs/Zoho competing Office Web, it will include support for not only Mac OS X… but for the iPhone’s MobileSafari browser as well!

According to Macworld, neither release date nor price point are known, but it should be a companion to Office 14 which is slated for 2009(-ish?)

iPhone developer extraordinaire Erica Sadun over at Ars reveals that Apple has expanded on the iPhone SDK samples, and with some pretty nifty new stuff.

While I can’t claim to understand it, included in the update is aurioTouch and oalTouch for scilloscope and positional audio, Accessory and TouchCells which (apparently!) give greater options in tables and cells, and URLCache and Reflection which focus on Web-based data and image reflections respectively.

Says Sadun:

The iPhone Reference Library is an amazing resource for developers. It offers access to sample code, guides, and release notes. The new items I listed here augment Apple’s already rich iPhone sample code suite. Make a habit of stopping by the library page; Apple will often add new items there without announcement.

Check it out!

Forum Review by cjvitek For more Forum Reviews, see the TiPb iPhone App Store Forum!

Note: This review was requested on the review request thread.

Search Dial is just that…a searching program for numbers to dial. But it adds a little more functionality into just looking through your contact list.

The Search Dial interface is very straightfoward. When you start the program, you are presented with a screen to select “call”, “SMS”, or “Email”. You then start to type a persons name (first or last) and as your type, contacts that match the description start to appear. The more you type, the more specific you are, and the more it narrows down the contact options. Let’s look at each of the options one at a time.

Read the rest of this entry »

Chief TWiT Leo Laporte just streamed live from his iPhone via the official (non-Jailbreak) version of the Qik App, which he says should be available in the App Store soon.

All the rage last year in the blogsphere, many iPhone users were stuck carrying around a Nokia 95 just for Qik live streaming. Perhaps, no longer!

Check out the recording to get an idea of the quality. Looks like it doesn’t handle motion very well, but is otherwise fairly decent. Still, we have to wonder, what will this do to AT&T’s “rabbit ear” 3G network?

Either way, we can’t wait for this App to drop!

The New York Times (via Giz) is reporting that Google’s love for the iPhone is about to hit epic, Shakespearian proportions with the release of their ground-breaking “advanced voice search” App:

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

Will it be perfect? Nope. It will sometimes return nonsense, and indeed the researchers behind it claim it will never reach 100% — but they’re aiming to make it as good as it can possibly be.

This caps off several weeks of Google announcements for the iPhone, of course, including OS 2.2 updates for Street-View, Transit and Walking Directions, and Location Sharing for the Maps App, the release of Google Earth, and an optimized version of the Google Search page for the iPhone.

So, when’s this hitting the App Store, and aside from candy, flowers, and a lobster dinner, what could possibly be next?!

Developer Gonzalo Oxenford wrote in to let us know the story behind Truco, a South American card game for the iPhone. These are the types of developers that make us so excited about the future of the platform!

Since we decided to start making iPhone Apps, we realized that we had to take a lot of care in the interface design, and graphic arts. We think this new platform is an amazing approach to virtual reality, and that’s what we’ve been doing while designing Truco.

If you take a look at the card games now at the App store, you will see that not even the one made by Apple takes care of that. The wood textures, the card size, the beauty of the cards. All other card games have so small cards, that makes you think you are playing an 8 bit game. And you are not supposed to, since these games are running inside of one of the most advanced mobile OS on Earth.

It’s very important for the user to feel the cards, to move them. Cards must be big enough so you can appreciate the beautiful illustrations on them. And this is what the real Truco player loves.

Other interesting aspect of the game is the AI (artificial intelligence) it has. The game of Truco is actually played by tricking your opponent. The AI we developed can make things like raising the stakes and bluffing which can put pressure on you, and might cause you to fold. So we let the user to choose the computer skill level, making it easier or harder to play…

Truco can also be played in multiplayer mode via Wi-Fi. It takes advantage of Bonjour, Apple’s technology that lets two devices communicate in a local network with zero configuration. Truco just sees other Truco installed in your friend’s iPhone and they arrange a multiplayer game automatically, it’s so beautiful how it works.

Odasoft is a 3 people company. Tons of years playing video games have help us a lot. We work at our homes during our free time. We are Mac users and nerds. And we just invested our small tiny savings on this project. We love what we do, and that’s the key that let us wake up sunday mornings at 7 AM to start working on this, while most people keep sleeping…

Thanks Gonzalo!

I will admit I am not the biggest fan of Photoshop but I am into all of these compositing apps in the App Store and this new application, Juxtaposer, [iTunes link] is one you can really have some fun with, especially if you like taking pictures of your friends and family and making them look ridiculous.

Along with all of that fun comes ease of use as well:

First, load in any two pictures - perhaps one of your dad, and one of your dog. Next, use your finger to erase around your dog’s head. Quickly zoom in and out or move around using two finger pinching gestures. To cut out your dog’s head exactly, first zoom out and make a rough outline, then zoom in, and erase or un-erase with pixel-accuracy. Switch to move mode and use two fingers to move, re-size and rotate your dog’s head into place over dad’s. It’s easy, intuitive and fun, and you’ll have a great new Dog-Dad in about a minute.

The app will run you $2.99 but for that price you are getting the best compositing application in the App Store. Period.

[Via TUAW]