All Articles in Quick Apps

NetNewsWire [Free with ads - iTunes link] and NetNewsWire Premium [$1.99 - iTunes link] for iPhone, the mobile version of NetNewsWire for Mac and FeedDemon for Windows, have just hit 2.0 and brings a lot of compelling features to the table — especially for RSS geeks:

• Google Reader sync including Starred items synchronization
• Twitter integration – send articles as tweets
• Instapaper integration
• Latest News view –
• New article view
• New up and down arrows for navigating through news list
• Title and date of most recent item on Feeds screen.
• Excerpts and dates on news item lists
• Send articles via email without leaving NetNewsWire

It’s enough that I’m finally going to go all in on Google Reader and NNW 2.0 (at least for the next week — we’ll see if it sticks).

Screens after the break. If you give NetNewsWire 2.0 a go as well, let us know what you think.

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SmartScreen provides widgets for your iPhone lock screen — provided you’re jailbroken, that it. The demo above shows calendar, stocks, and weather, but the developer will be making an SDK available so other apps can get in on the widgety goodness. Conceivably Twitter updates, IMs, to-dos — any information snippet really — could be added.

On behalf of non-Jailbreakers, Gizmodo asks Apple to bake this type of functionality into the official firmware, and let’s face it — they need something for iPhone 4.0 next year. Does it complicate Apple’s current, zen-like lock screen? Sure, but that lock screen is currently so informationally sparse, maybe it could use some complication?

If you try out SmartScreen, let us know what you think.

[Thanks angelrat101 for the tip!]

RedLaser [$1.99 - iTunes link ] scans barcodes, identifies the item your scanning, and then presents Google Product Search and Amazon shopping results for that item.

Sound familiar? It should, it was one of the few things we really lusted after when Google demoed the original Android G1 almost a year ago. Go into Barnes & Noble, see a book you like, snap the barcode, and instant price comparison. Boom. You can decide whether you need to buy it immediately or if you prefer to to order it and wait a little.

Both the iPhone 2G and 3G lacked the autofocus and short range macro clarity for that task, and while the iPhone 3GS made up for that in large degree, RedLaser is going the extra mile and enabling barcode scanning without using the autofocus. So, yes, it works fine on all generations of iPhone.

Doesn’t sound like it was easy — Apple rejected the application’s use of the camera 6 times before iPhone 3.1 rolled around and they got the big, green light to start scanning. It will no doubt be appreciated by users.

The features break down as follows:

• Scans UPC, EAN, and UPC-E
• You can email a list of products
• Automatically localized for currency (USD, EUR, GBP) and regionalized Amazon stores (.com/.co.uk/.de/.co.jp/.fr/.ca/.cn)

In our tests, it worked well (though getting our hands to hold the iPhone steady enough was a challenge — need to cut down coffee intake!). If you try it out, let us know what you think!

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Snapture [$1.99 on sale - iTunes link], as can be seen by that little price and link notation right there, has gone from a must-have Jailbreak-only app, to a new home in Apple’s very own iTunes App Store.

For those unfamiliar with Snapture, it takes the iPhone camera experience to another level, such as taking photos by tapping anywhere on the screen (or lifting you finger off the screen), variable image sizes, pinch-to-zoom up to 5x, 8 direction alignment level and rapid-fire multi-shot (3 to be specific) functionality. (Yeah, color mode and taking pictures with the volume buttons didn’t survive the cross-over, but a satisfying amount did).

If you want to get a lot more out of your iPhone camera, give Snapature a try and let us know what you think!

More screen shots after the break!

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qStatus is the App Store subset of the qTweeter Jailbreak app, and Echofon is the new name for Twitterfon. Confused yet? Don’t be, we’ve got the basics on both these iPhone and iPod touch Twitter clients!

qStatus [$0.99 - iTunes link] is designed to quickly let you update your Twitter (and/or Facebook status), either with text, or by sharing your current song, a photo from the camera or library, or a video from iPhone 3GS. There’s no reading functionality, but there is the typical Gx5 attention to awesome interface detail. Unlike qTweeter for Jailbreak, of course, there’s no multitasking “swipe-down-to-tweet-from-anywhere” functionality either.

Echofon [Free - iTunes link] or Pro [$4.99 - iTunes link] is, as mentioned, the new name for Twitterfon and the new Pro version includes Push Notifications (with optional “sleep” period so it doesn’t bother you when you’re trying to get some shuteye), sync with Echofon for Firefox on the desktop (formerly Twitterfox). Non-Pro users get bug fixes and the name change.

If you get your tweet on with either, let us know how they work for you (or help me test them via @reneritchie).

Determined to maintain their place atop WebApp mountain, Google released a new service today as part of their Labs testbed, and again it helps push forward just what’s possible using cloud services (online data) and interactive front ends (AJAX in the browser). Google Blogs says:

Fast Flip [http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/] is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting. At the same time, we provide aggregation and search over many top newspapers and magazines, and the ability to share content with your friends and community. Fast Flip also personalizes the experience for you, by taking cues from selections you make to show you more content from sources, topics and journalists that you seem to like. In short, you get fast browsing, natural magazine-style navigation, recommendations from friends and other members of the community and a selection of content that is serendipitous and personalized.

Right now they’re providing content from New York Times, the Atlantic, the Washington Post, Salon, Fast Company, ProPublica and Newsweek, but the news we’re excited about, and indeed have come to expect from Google is this:

We’ve also made a mobile version of Fast Flip [http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/mobile] with tactile page flipping for Android-powered devices and the iPhone, so you can browse on the go. This is accessible at the same address.

Now if this were combined with something like Google Books, lets say…

A couple more pics after the break. If you try it out, as always, let us know what you think.

[Thank Muero for the tip!]

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Yahoo! has (finally!) released an official Flickr app (free – iTunes link) for the iPhone and iPod touch, and… Dunno. I’m not a big Flicker user. So, I haven’t really formed much of an opinion about the official Flickr app. Leanna, who does use Flickr, liked the homepage (it has a nice Ken Burns-style pan and zoom animation) but felt the rest was underdeveloped and was surprise to see it didn’t add “taken with iPhone” (or other, proper, device attribution).

Note: the app, of course, is rated 12+ because, also of course, someone might accitentionally type “nudie pics” in the search bar. (Likely violence abounds as well, as do lego vikings!).

If anyone else has had a chance to test drive it and has an opinion to share, let us know in the comments. Despite — in spite? — of Yahoo’s travails of late, Flickr is still a monster of a site and it’s nice to see it show up and represent on the iPhone — given the iPhone is its most popular camera and all…

Spotify [Free with premium subscription - iTunes link] is now available for iPhone (and iPod touch) is now available — if you live in the UK, Sweden, Spain, France, Norway or Finland.

According to Spotify, if you live in those countries and have a premium subscription, you can enjoy:

• Access to millions of tracks with Spotify’s constantly updated catalogue
• Search and stream music instantly. Browse by artist, title, album, genre, label or year
• Create and synchronise playlists. Updates from the desktop application will be synced instantly and vice versa
• Playlists can be downloaded and played in offline mode when you have no connection, are on a plane or subway, or abroad and subject to roaming data fees
• Listen to tracks and albums in their entirety. Rewind, fast-forward, pause, skip and shuffle
• View cover art for all tracks and albums

So, if you live in one of those countries, and have a premium account, and an iPhone or iPod touch (list long enough yet?) and you try out the Spotify App, let us know how it works for you!

[Thanks James for the tip!]

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C64 ($4.99 – iTunes link], a Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone (and iPod touch) is now available from the App Store, despite having been previously rejected by Apple. FCC spotlight? Phil Schiller intervention? Simple change of heart? Sounds more like a slight change of code, says the C64 blog:

Ultimately, BASIC has been removed for this release; however, we hope that working with Apple further will allow us to re-enable it.

(If you’re dying to get your BASIC on, however, reader Stooovie let us know you can still access it by enabling “always show full keyboard”, starting a game, paging over to the EXTRA keyboard, and then tapping RESET. Boom, dropped into BASIC with a ready-prompt — though we clearly don’t remember enough C64 BASIC to see if it actually does anything or just sits there blinking. Commenters?)

But, as they say, who cares about BASIC, C64’s focus is games and it ships with Dragons Den, Le Mans, Jupiter Lander, Arctic Shipwreck and Jack Attack. More games will be available in the future (via in-app purchase, we believe).

The interface is gorgeous, the passion level obviously high, and the C64 is a classic (as is the Amiga, cough, want-it-next, cough), so for fans of any of those qualities — or more likely all of them — check it out and let us know what you think.

Demo video and more screen shots after the break!

[Thanks Stooovie for the tip!]

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Time.com Mobile [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch re-configures the current events, editorial, and entertainment aspects of Time’s online presence for Apple’s portable, connected platform. Easy to navigate tabs include News, Top 10 Lists, Quotes, Popular Stories, and Media, and you can choose to view all of those in either list view or a coverflow-eque Image Flow presentation.

If you give it a try, let us know what you think. Plenty more screenshots after the break!

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