Category: I-phone

Namco Bandai‘s has listed a staggering amount of iOS games on sale to celebrate Black Friday/Cyber Monday in the U.S. You’ll find some nice discounts, with most games set at only $0.99…

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

The U.S. Patent office pays a nice tribute to Steve Jobs.

According to Microsoft, Winodws phones have had Siri-like functionality for over a year.

Big Fish Games trying to figure out why Apple suddenly removed their app allowing game subscriptions from the App Store.

Here are some Black Friday app sales.

And don’t forget about our giveaway: Win Free Copies of iPhone Application Tune-Up Guide. A must have for all iOS developers.

On this site I often see searches for topics on creating books, magazines, and comic books.

In the past I’ve mentioned some resources for easily creating book type apps from images and PDF files.

This library makes things even easier than the previously mentioned frameworks by allowing you to take HTML pages complete with your content, and automatically turn those into an interactive book.

The library has already been used in many different iPhone and iPad apps currently in the app store.

The library is the Baker eBook Framework.

This framework is already quite popular, and you can visit the homepage here with full usage instructions and download information.

The framework does not as of yet support the iOS 5 Newsstand for magazines so you may want to check out the Newsstand tutorial that I recently mentioned for just that purpose.

If you’re just starting out and just want to get an interactive eBook or comic book  app out there with this framework you should be able to do it quickly.

©2011 iPhone, iOS 5, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

.

Has it ever happened to you? The sudden realization that a family member, good friend or colleague had their birthday and you missed it? Needless to say, embarrassment and groveling ensues to make it up. After all, most of us wouldn’t be too happy either if someone we cared about forgot our special day.

From now on, there’s a way of never forgetting a birthday again: Meet Yearly, the beautiful birthday reminder app that will let you know in time when to prepare for celebrations.

Get To Know Yearly

When you start yearly for the first time, it will surprise you: most likely, it will magically present you with a number of birthdays from people you know. Just like that.

Welcome to Yearly

How does it do it? Easy. Yearly simply pulls the data from the field “birthday” — if available — from your contacts and processes it. Depending on how much information is available, it will tell you how many days until the next happy day and how old that person will turn. The age of the person can only be shown if the year of birth is included in the data, of course. If you’ve kept your contact list tidy and set a photo for each person, that photo will also be pulled into Yearly and immediately beautify the list view.

Not obvious but explained in the settings is the feature to access contact options with a swipe across a single person. That reveals three icons: mail, phone and texting. That’s a really awesome way to send birthday greetings quickly. Alternatively, you can tap a person and access the contact information in the detailed view. You can also add a note to each person — maybe an idea for a present?

Have additional infos displayed

In the detailed view (pictured above to the right) you can additionally see the actual birthdate of a person and their zodiac sign. In case you entered a note into that person’s contact card in the address book, that note will be displayed in Yearly as well.

How To Add The Birthday To Your Contacts

Yearly only pulls the information from your address book, so if there’s no birthday information included yet, that’s where you need to add it. This isn’t as intuitive or easy as one would hope for, but doable.

Open the card of the contact you want to edit and the chose from the menu bar: Card – Add Field – Birthday. It will add a field to the card and you can then enter the birthday. Unfortunately, there’s no shortcut to repeat the process quickly; with a large contact list it can become tedious, but think of the glory that awaits you when you finally get to congratulate people on time.

I tested the synchronization between address book and Yearly with iCloud and the information was available almost instantly within the iPhone app.

Here’s a hint: if you don’t know the birthdays of some of your contacts, check out Facebook. Most of the time, all the information you need is there (Also, you can snatch the profile photos to add to your address book).

Setting Yearly Up To Remind You

Now that you’ve got all the birthdays neatly within Yearly, set the app up to remind you in time.

First and foremost, allow Yearly to send you push notifications. The app will ask you when you fire it up for the first time, but just in case, you can check again with the Notifications in your iPhone’s settings. If you’re running iOS 5, make sure to allow Yearly to appear on the lock screen: tap Yearly within Notifications and scroll to the bottom to ensure the control is set to ON. This way, even if you miss the alarm, you’ll see it the next time you are going to unlock your phone.

Get notified

Additionally, you can fine tune reminders within Yearly itself. Go to the settings and set the time you want to be notified and how many days in advance. I wish, though, that I could set the “days before” reminder individually for some birthdays. While it’s enough to be reminded of a colleague’s birthday on the very day, special days of family members need more preparation. Depending on how important it is for you to get a birthday present in time, I’d like to give myself a headstart of a day or two.

Set when you want to be reminded

Verdict

If you are anything like me, your friends have come to live with the fact that you are constantly late with birthday wishes. And if you are like me, you do feel sort of bad about it. I mean, how hard can it be to keep up with birthdays?

After thirty years I have resigned to the fact that I will never figure it out and that I need professional help — and look, Yearly came along.

The ease of use, with all the data already imported, the beautifully designed interface and the tight integration into iOS including notification center make this app a must-have for those who want to be the first to send a Happy Birthday, not the last.

It’s time to get your game on, folks! It’s Friday, and that means there’s another crop of fresh App Store diversions to browse through, courtesy of your friendly curators here at AppStorm.

Come on in and prepare to play …

What Have You Been Playing?

There’s your selection for this week, everyone! Have a blast playing them and enjoy a cheerful Thanksgiving (if you’re in the states). See you next week!

With the bevy of mobile check-in apps on the market, TechCrunch pointedly asked “do we really need another mobile check-in app?” when Quipster first launched earlier this year. In the following months, Quipster clearly proved the answer is “yes.”

Allowing users to check-in, share and connect with others — these are the fundamental basics of Quipster. Learn how Quipster sets itself apart after the jump.

Getting Started

Quipster is an extensive location based social sharing network, offering its users recommendations, the ability to “quip” and follow local or non-local feeds. These “Quips” can be grouped into locations or topics, which can be followed, shared and added to. And users can view local and international quips without needing to follow the author.

Signup for Quipser is standard; a user name, password, email address and optional photo are all that is needed.

How to Quip

The first time you use the app, Quipster will host a series of overlays of how to use the app—detailing the functions of the most important tabs.

Before signing up for the app, a series of images show how the app can be used.

There are five main tabs at the bottom of the app (which apparently have changed since they launched earlier this year). They are Explore (was City), Topics (was Nearby), Share, Feeds and Profile.

On the Explore page, you can toggle location and subject to customize your feed.

At the top of the Explore page there is a box with two search options relating to topic and location. When tapped, the box will open a new a page, where the user can toggle between locations ranging from city to country and topics ranging from recent to more specific activities such as dining.

Only a few cities are represented in the list: San Francisco, New York, Houston, Atlanta, Washington D.C., Seattle, Daly City, Arlington, Chicago, Denver, Albuquerque, Dallas, Minneapolis and Boston. There is also an Around Me option and an Around the World option for geotargeted updates and all updates, respectively.

Once you have selected your topic and location, a running feed will begin on the Explore page. The difference between Quipster and Foursquare is that on this page, you don’t have to be following someone in order to see their “Quip.” A “Quip” is essentially an optional photo tagged with a location, and a short description of why you are sharing the photo/check-in.

Topics can be narrowed by using the Browse function to select a specific category/Topic.

The Topics tab at the bottom of the screen offers a selection of Latest, Popular and My Topics. The Quips can also be filtered by utilizing the Browse function, which allows users to select from the following categories: Dining, Partying, Shopping, Art & Entertainment, Traveling, Activities and Miscellaneous. These Topics are not subject to location and will feature streams of photos belonging to a “topic” within each category, such as “World Architecture Tour” and “Stunning Picture” under the Travel category. All of these topics are open conversations for other users to add their relevant Quips.

In order to share a Quip, you must select a Topic that helps to define the type of Quip you are sharing.

You can add your Quip to various Topic feeds and share with your friends.

The Share tab starts with a page featuring a variety of icons representing a number of categories. Once you choose a tab, a new list of icons will open on the next page with a more detailed list of topics. Choose a topic, or an icon that fits your need, and yet another page will open in which you can enter all relevant information for your Quip. You can choose a photo from your Camera’s Library, or take your own photo, add a comment, choose a location, edit the caption for the icon topic you chose, toggle on or off share settings (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and With Buddies Only) and select a Topic that you have either started or are following to place the Quip into.

The Feeds tab is a list of your Quips and Quips from other users you follow. The feed also contains updates to the topics you follow or have posted into.

Your Profile features your history and messages from other users.

The Profile features your number of Quips, Followers and who you are Following. The Profile also features an inbox, which will keep track of who has liked or commented on your Quips. When you select View my Profile, it will open a new page that features your bio, the number of cities you have visited and your titles, or badges you have acquired.

General Observations

Quipster offers its users the ability to create and post into specific topics. While it has been compared to Foursquare, the app itself has a different goal in mind — creating a discovery-based conversation between users rather than focusing on sharing location-based check-ins and photos to your followers. That being said, Foursquare still seems to have been on the minds of those over at Quipster as the badges and titles that you earn are very reminiscent of those found on Foursquare. The badges and titles themselves are meant to separate the top Quipsters who are the experts in certain categories.

However, it doesn’t seem to add anything to the user experience for Quipster and feel almost like a last-minute addition. The icons used for the Topics look generic. However, the icon idea seems to help users quickly identify a Quip more readily as the icon is fairly identifiable. The interface is easy to use and the functionality makes sense. Overall, there seems to be a few extras that bog down the user experience, but other than that, Quipster looks poised to offer a fresh outlook on location based social networks.

Conclusion

Quipster offers a different kind of experience for users looking for social discovery via location based social networking apps. Utilizing topics as the glue to hold together Quips from various users, Quipster is able to effectively categorize check-ins and observations. It offers its users more connectivity as it does not limit the content to who the user is following. While there are a few improvements that could be made — namely a few design decisions, and badges — Quipster is still a worthwhile discovery app to add to your arsenal. And the name is catchy.

In this Quick Look, we’re highlighting Easy Spending Expense Tracker. The developer describes Easy Spending Expense Tracker as the most easy to use expense tracker ever on an iPhone. It comes with a beautiful and clutter-free user interface.

Great new features are added now since the first version, based on tremendous positive responses from our users.

Cool new features, like bill reminders and multiple account summaries on a single screen

Read on for more information and screenshots!

Screenshots

Easy Spending Expense Tracker

About the App

Here are the top five features you can expect to see in the latest version:

• Add a new income/expense in seconds
• Quick view of Recent Transactions and Top Income/Expense categories
• Pay your bills on time with Notification feature
• Backup/restore all your data via email
• Great reports and Google Docs integration

Requirements: iOS 4.3

Price: $0.99

Developer: Tekton Technologies

Vote for a Review

Would you like to see us write a full review of Easy Spending Expense Tracker? Have your say in our poll:

Would you like to see Easy Spending Expense Tracker reviewed in-depth on AppStorm?

Quick Look posts are paid submissions offering only a brief overview of an app. Vote in the poll if you think this app is worth an in-depth AppStorm review! If you’re a developer and would like to have your app profiled, you can submit it here.

Although it came in a touch later than it was promised, iTunes Match is now ready to go. Now you can have all of your music — whether it was bought on iTunes or not — on any OS X/iOS device at any time. Kinda cool, right?

Yes, this is definitely a step in the right direction, but there are a few unanswered questions that I have about the service that make me a bit nervous. Let’s get into them after the break.

What It Is

Let’s just go right off of Apple’s website for this one, that way we hear it right from the horse’s mouth:

With iTunes Match, even songs you’ve imported from CDs can be stored in iCloud. And you can play them on any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac, or PC — whenever you want and wherever you are, without syncing. iTunes Match is just $24.99 a year.

Here’s how it works: iTunes determines which songs in your collection are available in the iTunes Store. Any music with a match is automatically added to iCloud for you to listen to anytime, on any device. Since there are more than 20 million songs in the iTunes Store, chances are, your music is already in iCloud. And for the few songs that aren’t, iTunes has to upload only what it can’t match. Which is much faster than starting from scratch. Once your music is in iCloud, you can stream and store it to any of your devices. Even better, all the music iTunes matches plays back from iCloud at 256-Kbps AAC DRM-free quality — even if your original copy was of lower quality.

In other words, you pay $25 a year to Apple and any song in your iTunes library — burned, copied or bought from iTunes — is stored in iCloud, giving you access to the music anytime on any device you want.

Digging Deeper

Thinking about this a bit further, this has pretty dramatic implications on the devices you purchase in the future, because you might not need as storage as you thought.

Let’s say you’re ready to buy an iPhone 4S, but you can’t decide between the 16, 32 and 64GB models. Assuming you’re usually connected to a good cell signal, you could buy the 16GB model and just download the music you want on demand. That means that you’ll save the cash on the purchase price of the phone, with a mild hit on your time when you want to listen to music.

Is iTunes Match worth the money?

On the other end of things, if you have a mammoth music library and there’s no iPhone that could contain it, then iTunes Match allows you to download those tracks you don’t keep local when you want them. Now you can still buy the biggest iPhone, and still have access to that huge library.

The Pirated Music Part

We’ve probably all got some pirated music on our computers somewhere, right? Personally, I’ve never downloaded a torrent of a new album or “borrowed” one from a friend, but I know plenty of people who have. At one point, I was offered a 1TB hard drive full of MP3s that a friend of mine already had in his library and didn’t need anymore — these things happen, and sometimes we have files in our collection that came from a less than reputable source.

Now although it’s illegal to have those files in the U.S., there’s no harm in having them on your computer really, assuming you’re not sharing them with other people. But now, with iTunes Match, you are. And those people are Apple.

Apple has a very strong moral stance on certain issues, and pirated music is one of them (remember those “Don’t Steal Music labels on the old iPods?). By sending your library and its accompanying metadata to Apple, you’re giving them a key to your possibly illicit material. Will they do anything with that information?

Most likely, no. Chances are pretty good that Apple isn’t going to turn in iTunes Match customers to the cops because it would hurt them in the long run. And chances are also pretty good that Apple already has access to that information, iTunes Match or not, just because of iCloud. But the possibility is there, right?

It’s Only Music

I really debated getting iTunes Match for myself, but then I started to wonder if I really needed it. My iPhone has all of my music on it, so that’s not an issue, and even if my iPad doesn’t have it all it’s still on my iPhone which is always with me. There’s not much of a point.

But what would make sense to me is an iTunes Match for your movies and TV shows. Since those files are so much bigger, I can’t carry everything I want on one device, it’s just not possible. But with a hypothetical iTunes Match for my entire iTunes library, I could walk around with a relatively light device, and just download what I want when I want it. Sure, the files might take a bit longer to download, but if it allowed me to watch as it went like the AppleTV, then I’d be set. No need to worry if I have the right movie on my iPhone anymore, it’s always available.

Of course, they can’t do that right now, and I’m sure it’s because of licensing issues or something similar. But wouldn’t it be neat if it was?

Closing Thoughts

When iTunes Match first came out, I was all excited because it meant that I would have access to all of my music wherever I was, no matter if it was on my device or not. But in looking at it further, I wonder if it’s really necessary. Most of the time my iPhone is in my pocket, and that has all of the music I really want to listen to on a regular basis. Do I really need to spend the money to get it done, particularly when I worry about the privacy issues?

But you’ve got a different decision to make. What do you think about iTunes match? Will you buy into the service, or do you not find it to be necessary? Let us know in the comments.

I realized one day as I was driving in my car that I started to get a little tired of always listening to music. Then I remembered that I could download podcasts on iTunes to listen to on my iPhone. So when I got home, I went into iTunes and downloaded a bunch of podcasts. Needless to say, after a week of getting my podcasts this way, I was left with wanting something better than what I was currently doing.

Ironically, as I was listening to a podcast on my iPhone, I heard about Instacast, and these guys that were talking about it were raving about how much they loved using it. So, it was at that point that I decided to give it a try myself.  The more I used it, the more I started to fall in love and with many features being added over time, this has definitely been my go-to app for podcasts.

Subscribing to Podcasts

There a variety of ways to subscribe to podcasts using Instacast. The first way is to use the app itself to find the podcasts you want to download. When using Instacast, there are a few ways to look for them. They have a Popular section, Just Added and Genres and you can also search for a certain podcast by title, author or description.

Snapshot of adding podcasts and search

Let’s say you have already subscribed to a bunch of podcasts on iTunes and you want to have them play and transfer over into Instacast. It recognizes podcasts that are already in your iTunes on your iPhone and will transfer them to the app.

Adding a podcast from iTunes

Lastly, if you know the URL of the podcast that you want to put on Instacast, you can also input it in the app and download your podcast that way. Also, Instacast’s website has the Top 30 podcasts that you can download straight from there.

Managing Podcasts

When it comes to managing your podcasts, the app definitely doesn’t disappoint with the options that are given to you. First, you can choose to either have your podcasts cached to your iPhone, meaning that they are downloaded onto your device. The nice part about this is that you don’t need an Internet connection to play your podcasts. This also helps you save battery life.

Instacast also integrates with Dropbox. Let’s say you want to backup your podcasts, one of the ways to do this is to export to Dropbox. You can also import podcasts from Dropbox to Instacast as well. It works seamlessly as support for this is built right into the app itself.

Dropbox Import/Export

Most podcasts come with what are called “Show Notes.” Usually these are links to a variety of things that are talked about on the podcast itself. I know for me, a lot of times, there are some great things that are talked about and I want to read about that topic later. I can then save the show notes  to Read It Later or Instapaper so that I can make sure to have it for later reading.

Save for later reading alternatives

A cool feature that was just added with the addition of iOS 5 is iCloud Sync. When you activate it within Instacast you can now sync it with another device that you use Instacast on. It syncs all your podcasts and where you left off on a particular track.

iCloud Sync

Playing Podcasts

There are a lot of choices when it comes to playing your podcasts. Like I had mentioned earlier, they can be cached to your device if you so choose. You can also decide to just stream them. In order to do this you need to make sure that you have an Internet connection. For me, I prefer to cache my podcasts just in case I don’t have a good connection.

Playback Options

You can play both video and audio podcasts with Instacast. They can be played in the background while you are multitasking on your iPhone. They can also be sped up and you can skip ahead a certain amount of time as well.

Conclusion

Overall, I really can’t find a complaint about this app. Usually I can dig with a fine tooth comb and find something that I don’t find appealing, but with Instacast, there is nothing really that I don’t like. It is built well and they keep adding great features to it to make it even better. On top of that, there’s an iPad app on the way as well.

If you are a fan of podcasts, or wanted to start listening or watching them more like I was, then this is a great app to use. Yes, you can use the Music app on your iPhone if you want, but that is so boring. Instacast comes packed with tons of features hat you won’t want use anything else for your podcasts viewing.

Earlier this year, IK Multimedia introduced the iRig Mic and VocaLive app for the iPhone. Our very own Steve Sande did a review of the iRig Mic, which you can check out here. The app is good, but it’s not universal which is a big drawback for folks who have an iPhone and an iPad. Of course, you could use the VocaLive app on your iPad, but it was simply the iPhone version of the app enlarged 2X.

This month, IK Multimedia has brought VocaLive to the iPad.The new app is custom built to fit the tablet’s larger screen, and has some extra features, too. Vocalive for iPad can be expanded to 8 recordable tracks and adds a fourth effect slot. Two of these four effect slots can be used for vocal effects compared to a single slot on the iPhone version.

If you love singing, karaoke, doing voice overs or just hearing your voice warped through crazy effects, then check out VocaLive and the accompanying iRig Mic. VocaLive is free on the iOS App Store with extra effects available via in-app purchase. There’s also a full version which includes all the effects available for $19.99.

IK Multimedia’s VocaLive comes to the iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 12:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

As a general rule, I avoid reviewing apps from friends. You send me a pitch, I pass it along to the team. But when Matthias Ringwald, Bluetooth developer extraordinaire told me about Type2Phone, I really wanted to try it out myself. For $4.99, this Mac app transforms your computer into a wireless Bluetooth keyboard.

If you’re not exactly following why anyone would care about that, let me explain why this utility fills a huge hole in the iOS experience, particularly for developers.

Nearly all recent devices now support external Bluetooth keyboards for text entry. You navigate to Settings, enable Bluetooth, select a device and pair to it. You can then type using a physical keyboard rather than the onscreen touch one. This greatly speeds up text entry.

What Type2Phone does, by emulating a BT keyboard, is let you perform the same announcement and pairing tasks, but from your OS X desktop. That means, if you’re testing software on your device (or you just want to type to your device with your computer nearby for any other reason), you can pair and go in just a few seconds, without having to drag out a hardware keyboard.

The application remembers the pairing details for you, and you can select each device from a pop-up menu.

For devs, that’s insanely useful. You can instantly type into text fields, into text views, or into any object that implements a UITextInput protocol. Type2Phone means you can do your text entry from your normal keyboard, along side your normal development tasks. It evaporates a messy annoying detail of development.

Personally, I’d prefer if the app offered a way to switch off its scrolling text preview (you see it at the top of this post) — I type fast enough that the scrolling letters make me a bit dizzy — but aside from that, this app did its job exactly as promised.

You can grab Type2Go from the Mac App Store.

Type to your iPhone with Type2Phone and your Mac keyboard originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Time to get up, get out and do some shopping for you or your Apple-owning friends! Apple’s Black Friday event has been going strong in Australia for over 12 hours and the sale has finally made its way to the US.

Similar to previous Black Friday sales, the discounts are modest. You can save:

• $41 on an iPad
• $21 on an iPod touch
• $11 on an iPod nano
• $101 on a MacBook Pro, MacBook Air or an iMac
• $11 on the Magic Trackpad
• $11 on the Magic Mouse
• $11 on the Apple Wireless keyboard
• $11 on the AirPort Express
• $21 on the Time Capsule
• $21 on the AirPort Extreme
• $11 on the iPad 2 Smart Cover (Red)
• $5 on a $50 iTunes Gift card

There’s also steeper discounts on non-Apple products like backpacks, cases, speakers and more. The sale is available both online and in Apple retail stores. Have fun shopping!

Apple’s Black Friday sales now live in the US originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Around this time last year, Tascam introduced the Portastudio app, a 4-track recorder modeled after the legendary Portastudio 144 4-track recorder of some 30 years ago. Now, Tascam has debuted the iM2, a stereo recorder with two condenser mics and a built-in pre-amp that’s based on Tascam’s well known DR series of portable recorders.

The iM2 simply plugs directly into the dock connector of your iPhone or iPad, overriding your devices built-in mic to provide you with high quality recordings. The two mics are adjustable over 180 degrees for uni-directional recording, perfect for capturing a live recording as well as the ambience of the room you’re recording in.

The iM2’s built-in preamp can also handle 125 dbs of noise, so you could theoretically record a jet plane taking off without having to worry about any distortion to the recording, even if your own ears may suffer.

The iM2 is priced at around US$80 and is available for pre-order. For all the details, check out Tascam’s website.

[Via Engadget]

Tascam debuts iM2 stereo condesor mic for iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Fri, 25 Nov 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Apple’s annual Black Friday deals are now live in the United States, Mexico, and Canada (North America), with discounted iOS devices, Macs, and accessories. This sale is very similar to the…

[[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

Today we present a collection of the best free WordPress templates for November 2011

read more