Category: I-phone

Natalia Luckyanova, half of iPhone Gaming’s cutest couple, wrote to share their experience giving away 1000 copies of Harbor Master using the new Gift-This capability of the App Store.

Here’s what she had to say, emphasis added by me:

We decided to try a mass giveaway to see how gifting really works. We gave away 1,000 copies of Harbor Master to promote the upcoming Harbor Master HD for iPad. This got a lot of very heated reactions from other developers (mostly worrying that gifted apps affect rank and this would allow anyone to buy their way into the top 100 apps).

Interestingly, we found that gifts do NOT count towards an app’s rank at all. Also, awarding that many gifts definitely took a lot of time. However, it was a great experience for us nonetheless. We got some publicity for Harbor Master HD and got a lot of love from the player community. If nothing else, app gifting will help not to be limited to 50 promo codes when trying to share an app with media and the community.

Full details available on their blog.

Wikipedia Gets Pretty with Articles iPhone App Take a look at some of the interesting features in a new Wikipedia app for the iPhone.

iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark While Apple says that iPad applications can be submitted next week to coincide with opening of the iPad App Store, most iPad developers only have the iPad simulator to work with until then, except a select few who actually received the device early.

Valgrind Phil Hassey, the author of Galcon for the iPhone, mentioned this memory management and debugging tool at GDC 2010 and it’s definitely worth a look.

Corona Now Supports iPad Busy week for these guys.

Apple Stores Now Able to Sell Unlocked iPhones [update] While the original article mentioned that the phones were unlocked, it turns out that they are just contract free.

Flurry: iPhone Games Are A $500 Million Industry In The U.S. And Taking Share Insightful data from Flurry about the state of the game industry and the impact the iPhone has had.

App Store Approvals Slow As The iPad Land Rush Begins Some iPhone developers have noticed that their approval times have increased just as the date for the iPad launch nears.

Better Late Than Never, Justin.tv Comes To The iPhone The popular video streaming service Justin.tv now has an iPhone application that has some innovative features.

You Can Now Gift iPhone Apps A feature has been added to the App Store that allows you to gift an iPhone application. One interesting side-effect to this is that some developers are noticing that others are gifting large numbers of their application and shooting up the rankings where they would normally need to sell a certain number.

iPad Launch Looks to be Dominated by Gaming Apps Flurry has data on applications being tested on the iPad and they’ve broken it down by category. It turns out the majority of them are games (surprised?).

Urban Airship: Developer Preview Release for AirMail “AirMail is the next generation of push notification for mobile apps. It’s media-rich (think video and HTML), has the ability to do return-receipt, an in-app inbox and all sorts of cool features.”

Buzz Aldrin Portal to Science and Space Exploration for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad Buzz Aldrin has created a Portal to Science & Space Exploration to unite people and technology for the purpose of educating and entertaining the world on this interesting and critically important subject.

iPhone Is Eating Sony PSP and Nintendo DS’ Lunch Another perspective on Flurry’s recent stats regarding the iPhone’s impact on the game industry.

Digg’s iPhone App Is Now Available The much anticipated Digg iPhone app is now available, with a new Digg site redesigning coming soon.

Further Tests Confirm iPhone Touchscreen Superiority An interesting study on the accuracy of the touchscreens on various mobile devices shows that the iPhone is superior.

AdMob Registers 50% Market Share For iPhone OS Based On Smartphone Traffic Admob recently announced that smartphones accounted for 48% of its worldwide traffic last month, with the iPhone still being the dominant device.

3 Useful iPhone Apps to Help File Your Taxes

Last October, I wrote a piece prodding Apple to add Gift This App capabilities — similar to the existing “Gift This Song” — to the App Store. Now, according to this TUAW story, you can! This is going to be big. Expect to see a raft of clever promotional uses of this capability.

Lately Android has been on my radar. It’s gone from easy to ignore to something impossible to ignore.

I’ve tried to ignore it because I don’t care for Java. It’s a fine language, but it’s not for me. So, I’ve been quietly learning Scala to use instead.

Then this came across my inbox today: Corona, the Flash-like way of creating iPhone apps in Lua, is releasing an Android version.

The Ansca Mobile team has done a good job creating a viable alternative to Flash on the iPhone; interesting that they’re broadening to make their stuff run on Android.

Recently after posting about cross platform iOS and Android development, and updating the iPhone development on Windows page I received information about some interesting game engines, and tools.  I will be adding these game engines to the listings on this site as all have been used in apps already in the app store.

Please feel free to share about any other game engines you know of that are being used in iPhone and iPad apps, I would like to make the listings on this site as complete as possible.

1. The first of those game engines is GLBasic.  GLBasic is a programming environment that allows you to create 2D and 3D games using a variation of the BASIC programming language. GLBasic apps compile for iPhone, Mac OS X, and Windows. The GLBasic SDK runs on Windows, a Mac IDE is currently in beta. A free trial is offered.  This looks like it could be an easy way to get into 3D App development.

2. The second game engine  is Game Editor. Game Editor allows you to create games in a drag and drop environment, and while Game Editor is open source, and can be used freely, however, you will need to purchase a license in order to compile for iOS. The editor works on Windows, Linux, and Mac however you will need to compile the game on a system running Mac OS X.  Game Editor looks similar to Game Salad however the licensing options appear much more reasonable.

3. The third engine is Esenthel which is a commercial 3D game engine developed for the creation of AAA titles on multiple platforms. It comes with a World Editor, Mesh Editor, Gui editor and 2D icon generator. This looks like it could be an interesting alternative for those looking at Unity 3D. There is a free version, but to compile for the iPhone and iPad you will need to purchase a license.

For other game engines see the open source iphone game engine, and commercial iphone game engines pages.  The above engines will be added soon.

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©2010 iPhone, iOS 4, iPad SDK Development Tutorial and Programming Tips. All Rights Reserved.

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Today we presents a roundup of cool jQuery plugins for September 2010.

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I got an e-mail from Mike, telling me that he is in Hospital at the moment. So, he is unable to answer any questions in the forums or comments. I would like to wish him well and a speedy recovery. From what he says, he is on the mend so should be back real soon. […]

Here’s another entry in our “Five Apps For” series, which identifies five iPhone/iPod touch apps that fill a specific niche, appeal to a particular crowd, or cover an area of interest. Enjoy!

As an aging child of the 70’s and 80’s (I’ll be 40 in January), I’m feeling nostalgic for the past while cozying up to my own mortality. Call it a mid-life crisis, regression or what have you, but I’m thinking about the old days. This Etch-a-Sketch iPad case kicked the process into high gear and got me thinking about contemporary versions of the games I used to love.

After scouring the App Store, I found the selection sadly lacking. Every app I found (with one notable exception) resembled its ancestor only superficially. Still, I present them for your consideration. Here are five apps for nostalgia.

Speak & Spell

Update: Reader Rockey04 has pointed out iSpeak and Spell ($0.99). Awesome!

Who remembers typing out bad words with the good old Speak & Spell from Texas Instruments? I don’t mean the 1986 model with that poseur membrane keyboard, but the ’78 model with big chunky keys and that unforgettable voice: “That is incorrect. The correct spelling of….”

While there’s no actual Speak & Spell app in the app store, there is Remix DJ : Speak EZ (Free). Its UI closely resembles that of the Speak & Spell and includes all of the original sounds, including that very same voice; over 200 samples in all. It’s meant for DJs to use as a virtual instrument (you can’t play any of the old Speak & Spell games), but for free it’s still fun to hear the old sounds. Remix DJ: Speak EZ is compatible with iPhone and iPod touch.

Click Read More to see our remaining four picks.

TUAW5 apps for nostalgia originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Given the number of things you have to keep track of in a day, sometimes a simple task manager — the kind that reminds you once and then waits until the next day to tickle you again — doesn’t seem adequate. If you wish you had a snooze button for your tasks, maybe Bugger (US$0.99) is worth a look.

Developer ZZTech built a tool to solve this problem, and it does the job pretty well (note that it requires iOS 4 and a backgrounding-capable device). You can create reminders for any future date and for an assortment of categories, then set a ‘bug level’ of every 10 minutes, 30 minutes, hourly, daily or weekly — and if none of those intervals suit you precisely, you can customize them. After the reminder trips, you’ll get on-device background notifications every time the clock ticks around until you either get ‘er done or delete the reminder.

There’s no sync to desktop or cloud task managers, and none of the power features of higher-echelon GTD tools, but in this case you probably won’t miss them. For speedy, gotta-finish task tracking, Bugger gets it.

We’ve got 10 promo codes for Bugger to give away, and all you need to do is leave a comment below telling us what task is most likely to slip your mind.

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment on this post about your most misremembered task.
• The comment must be left before Friday, September 24 at 11:59PM Eastern Daylight Time.
• You may enter only once.
• 10 winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One copy of the Bugger app (Value: US$0.99)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

TUAWTUAW Giveaway: Bugger puts repeated reminders in your pocket originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here at TUAW, we love enthusiastic readers. They tell us what they like and what they don’t like, and nothing could be more passionate than the recommendations for TeamViewer that appeared in the comments on a post I recently wrote about using iTeleport and LogMeIn to provide remote support. Given the enthusiasm, I decided to give TeamViewer a try.

Like most other remote computing solutions, TeamViewer is made up of two parts. There’s a computer-based server, available for both Windows and Macintosh, and clients including an iPad application. How much you spend on your setup depends on how you plan to use the application.

TUAWSharing screens with TeamViewer for iPad and Mac originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When Apple recently announced the availability of $0.99 rentals of TV episodes, not every network was on board with it. The Walt Disney Co. and News Corp. (parents of ABC and FOX, respectively) were good with the deal, though one of the most notable opponents was Warner Bros. (CW, among others). The reason: $0.99 for an episode rental is too cheap.

Chief Exec Barry Meyer of Warner Bros. went on to say that having rentals set at such a low price would hurt sales of full seasons of their television shows, adding that the current $2.99 to own an episode, via iTunes, suited them just fine.

Ever since the idea of renting TV episodes came about, I couldn’t fathom why someone would choose to purchase — permanently — an entire season of a show until after they’d already seen it. I can see why one would want to watch their absolute favorites over and over again, but only once they know they’re good. Rentals can only help boost sales of permanent purchases, but the show has to be proven good first. Maybe that’s what’s really scaring Warner Bros. here.

[via 9 to 5 Mac]

TUAWWarner Bros. says Apple’s TV rentals are too cheap originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Participants in Delta’s SkyMiles or American Airlines’ AAdvantage frequent flyer programs, or anyone who would like a chance to win a million frequent flyer miles, should head over to the App Store now.

Both airlines are providing contest incentives to get people to use their apps. American, for example, is holding the “Mobile Million” contest. Just download and install their app by October 15th, play a few games of sudoku (among other things, the AA app has a built-in sudoku game…), and you could win one of many prizes, including the grand prize of one million AAdvantage miles.

Delta started the war of the contests with their “One App. One Million Miles” contest, which runs through September 29th. The big prize here is one million Delta Sky Miles. You have to be a Sky Miles participant to enter this contest with the app. If you’re not, it takes less than a minute to join the program.

Although your ability to use all those frequent flyer miles is subject to availability of reward seats, it’s still a heck of a prize, and it costs you nothing to enter either of the contests except a little bit of time.

[Tip to Gadling from @LuxeTiffany]

TUAWDelta, AA iPhone apps could be worth a million frequent flyer miles originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Gameloft has announced that it has broken the 20 million download mark across all of its paid apps. That’s a huge number, and it shows that the company has really latched on to the iPhone as a huge market for its mobile games. Gameloft hasn’t been slow on development at all — the French company has released 47 games this year, and of those, 42 have hit the Top Grossing top five, and 25 have reached number one. Gameloft hits from the past include Hero of Sparta, the remade Oregon Trail, FPS title NOVA, and the mobile version of Assassin’s Creed.

They’re not done yet — Dungeon Hunter 2 is due out later on this year, as is the HD version of Assassin’s Creed, and an interesting title called Star Battalion. Gameloft’s titles are always very well made, and it’s good to see that its popularity has landed it a spot in the growing pantheon of successful App Store developers and publishers.

TUAWGameloft breaks 20 million paid apps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Earth for iOS, which was already one of the biggest “wow” apps on the iPhone (It’s the Earth in your pants!), has received a huge update that adds support for the iPhone 4’s gorgeous retina display, as well as new ocean topographies that will allow users to explore the underwater depths.

You can see from the screenshot above that this adds an insane amount of detail to the textures and drawing space. Even this comically oversized screen grab can’t convey how good this looks on a real iPhone 4, though. I highly suggest that you check it out for yourself.

Google Earth is a universal application for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch; it is available in the App Store as a free download.

TUAWGoogle Earth updated for iPhone 4 retina display, includes ocean topography originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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