Category: I-phone

It could be argued that all the best games in the App Store cost money, however we’re going to dispel that myth in this issue of Game Friday. Our roundup this week focuses solely on the free games available for the iPhone including Jet Fighters, Warships and Sudoku 2.

Like always, if you have a game you want reviewed, please let us know!

Sudoku 2

Sudoku 2

Sudoku, the Japanese number puzzle game that exploded in popularity a few years ago, has no shortage of games available for the iPhone. Sudoku 2 is definitely one of the best of these, combining some lovely graphics with Open Feint integration.

The game is slightly forgiving, awarding you a correct solution if you complete the puzzle with less than three errors. Notes can also be added to each square, so that you can easily work out what can still be placed there and hints can also be given if you get stuck. You can pay for Sudoku apps that do less than this and as a time killer, there is no puzzle game better.

Price: Free
Developer: Finger Arts 
Download: App Store

Rollercoaster Extreme

Rollercoaster Extreme

For those of you who downloaded Waterslide Extreme from Barclaycard, you’ll know exactly what to expect from Rollercoaster Extreme, essentially the same game but on a rollercoaster rather than a waterslide. The game includes 8 tracks around New York City, utilising the accelerometer to steer your cart down each course, collecting speed boosts and dodging obstacles.

The faster you go, the higher your score and you can collect a badge on each level to demonstrate your riding ability. The cities look fantastic, especially for a free game that you don’t even explore and there is replay value for those wanting to improve your score.

Price: Free
Developer: Dare Digital 
Download: App Store

Jet Fighters

Jet Fighters

A text-based massively multiplayer fighter game, Jet Fighters pits friends against each other as rival squadrons do battle on the iPhone. Join a squadron, train up your pilot and complete missions in order to level up your fighter.

Money earned in assignments can be used to upgrade your weapons and armour and there is months of battle to be had as you try to dominate the skies. For those of you who get very involved in these games, honour points can be bought for anything up to 4000 for $100, but these are optional extras and the game functions fine without them.

Price: Free
Developer: The Godfather 
Download: App Store

Bubble Explode

Bubble Explode

Bubble popping games can either be very enjoyable, or just a button bashing mess whereby you can gain a high score without really knowing what you are doing. Thankfully Bubble Explode is one of the former, where you clear matching colours that are touching in order to score points. If the screen fills up you lose the game.

There are some interesting elements not found in other bubble games, such as bonus points for certain shapes, and a variety of game modes that increases the lifespan of the app. An Ad-free version is available for $0.99, but if you aren’t that fussy, this version is well worth a look at.

Price: Free
Developer: Spooky House Studios 
Download: App Store

Warships

Warships

Battleships is a classic game that has appealed to many generations of children and adults and Warships aims to extend that love to the iPhone generation. Featuring multi-player Bluetooth capability you can challenge your friends to battles to determine who rules the seas. You can also take on the computer in three levels of difficulty, however the AI programming leaves a little to be desired and could do with being improved.

Unfortunately, you often find that the computer knows more that it should appear to and this does impact on the game’s enjoyability. However, there are three different game modes to try, including God Mode where you have just 34 shots to defeat your enemy on a giant board. Best played with a friend, but still ok for a quick game alone.

Price: Free
Developer: Edovia
Download: App Store

What Have You Been Playing?

We always appreciate your feedback and suggestions for other games so please let us know what you have been playing in the comments below.

For four years the Envato Marketplaces have helped authors around the world earn an income selling their digital wares. Along the way we’ve grown from one marketplace to seven, with more on the way. We’ve gone from hundreds of members to hundreds of thousands. Items from our marketplaces have appeared in projects for companies big and small, all around the world. And most importantly of all, we’ve had thousands of authors cash out earnings, ranging from a bit of money for a big weekend to sums in the tens of thousands of dollars a month!

It’s been an amazing ride, and here at Envato along with our commitment to growing AppStorm, we are completely committed to making our marketplaces the best around. That’s why I’m very excited today to announce that as of the end of September we are rolling out some dramatically improved rates for all our exclusive authors!

As the sites have grown, so has our revenue. As we increase in volume and size we’re able to push back more and more to the authors. This is in fact our third rates increase now, and it’s always a really happy day when we get to make the changeover and start putting more money in author’s hands.

New Author Rates on Envato Marketplaces

50-70% with a $75k scale

The new rates, which go into effect at the very end of September, will see new exclusive authors get 50% of every sale out of the gate, with their commission rising up to 70% as they sell more. The volume of sales needed to get to 70% has been dramatically reduced from the old $300,000 mark, down to just $75,000. While that’s still a lot of money, it will mean dozens of our existing authors will suddenly catapult up to the highest rate and every author will see a big increase to their earnings.

If you’re wondering just how much people sell on our marketplaces, perhaps a stat will help. Our top seller across the marketplaces has sold just shy of a whoppingly huge half a million dollars in gross sales! That’s an enormous amount of money, most of which happened in under a year.

Lest you think that’s just for the biggest marketplaces, in fact on every single one of the seven marketplaces, we have authors whose take home earnings are in the four figures each month! So that’s authors selling not just on ThemeForest, our marketplace for websites, but also the marketplaces for graphics, video, audio, 3D, Flash and code and scripts.

How much could you make selling your work?

Envato Notes – new Community Blog!

Envato Notes!

You can get the full details of the big Envato Rate Increase on our brand new Envato Community blog – Envato Notes.

Notes, which launched just last week, is going to be the hub of the entire Envato / AppStorm community with news about our sites, interviews of people who work on our sites, tips, giveaways, competitions and much more.

If you haven’t seen it already, I highly recommend heading over to Envato Notes and subscribing to the feed!

Happy Birthday Authors!

So on the fourth anniversary since our first marketplace FlashDen first hit the web, I’d like to take a moment and say Happy 4th Birthday to all our authors. Thank you so much for choosing to sell with us. Thank you so much for being a part of our amazing community. Thank you for helping us make the Envato Marketplaces what they are.

One More Thing …

With the Birthday Bundle now finished, our massive rates change announced, well … to borrow a line from Mr Jobs, there’s just one more thing. Next week, I’ll be back with a very exciting announcement – a whole new Envato Marketplace! Yep it’s one heck of an August for us here at Envato, so stay tuned for even more big news!

Woohoo!!!

Lots of visual content, quick transactions, and hungry customers: that’s what Sharp has in mind with this proof of concept sushi menu application for iPad. Rather than putting diners through the chore of tracking down their favorite rolls and sashimi in a multipage laminated paper menu, the app puts dishes front and center.

The iPad app isn’t for sale yet, although the DigInfo report quotes Sharp saying it may be commercialized if there’s interest; it might also be ported to Sharp-built devices. If it does get rolled out, it would be included as an integrated piece of Sharp’s POS system for restaurants, including billing and order management tools. We’ve seen systems like this tested before, but as far as we’ve heard, no one’s actually using iPads in real-life restaurants and at least one Australian tapas joint has already gotten on the bandwagon. If you’ve seen a virtual menu in action, let us know in the comments.

[via Guy Kawasaki]

TUAWFound Footage: Sharp says ‘sushi please’ on iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Federal Trade Commission, of all things, has laid down a ruling in the strange case of Reverb Communications’ iTunes reviews. We didn’t get to this story the first time around, but a PR firm named Reverb Communications (disclaimer: I’ve attended their press events here in LA) was accused a while back of asking its staff to leave positive iTunes reviews on some of their clients’ App Store titles. This wasn’t just a request to have the staff try out and review client games — they had an “internal user reviews” process, in which employees of the firm were paid specifically to leave positive reviews — “not over the top” were their words — on iTunes and online message boards.

Now, the Federal Trade Commission, ruling under the recent regulations for endorsements online, has decided to settle the case. No money is changing hands, but Reverb and its executive have been asked to remove all of the reviews posted. You can read more about the agreement on the FTC’s website. The FTC says that anyone endorsing a product online “should disclose the material connection the reviewer shares with the seller of the product or service,” and that Reverb didn’t do that.

For its part, Reverb and executive Tracy Snitker would like to brush the accusations off. “Rather than continuing to spend time and money arguing, and laying off employees to fight what we believed was a frivolous matter, we settled this case and ended the discussion,” she told the New York Times. But this ruling seems more important than that — it’s the FTC’s first enforcement of the Internet review guidelines, and so we’ll have to see what kinds of precedents this case sets.

TUAWFTC makes ruling in iTunes review case originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I wonder if it’s only a matter of time before Apple decides to go to a liquid-cooled solution rather than keeping with bigger and faster fans. In any case, one technically adept person over at Asetek didn’t want to wait for that day. He went about not only water cooling an older 8-core Mac Pro, but overclocked it as well. The result was a much quieter system, with the same speed as a newer Mac Pro and at lower cost.

I haven’t noticed a Mac Pro to be all that noisy, but the quieter the system the better, especially when it’s on or under your desk. What this guy didn’t explain, though, was how much time and money it cost to outfit the older Mac Pro with water cooling. Would the time, effort and cost there still make it a worthwhile mod? Check out his full video after the jump.

TUAWOverclocked, liquid-cooled Mac Pro trades noise for speed originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are plenty of hurdles between a good idea and App Store success; even after your killer app hits the virtual shelves, the challenges of discoverability and competitors sandbagging your app with Astroturfed bad reviews add up to plenty of headaches. Still, once past the biggest stumbling block — Apple giving a thumbs up or thumbs down — things should get easier, right?

Unfortunately, some intriguing apps end up in approval limbo, the stranded state between all-clear and no-thanks that’s reserved for some of the most innovative and paradigm-busting apps; the apps that make Apple go “Hmm…” and force the app approval team to exercise the pocket veto. Without a clear rejection (telling the dev what can be fixed), there’s nothing to do but wait.

The most high-profile limbo case is Google Voice, which as far as we know is still being reviewed by Apple’s team more than a year after it was submitted. The latest is Briefs, a well-regarded app prototyping tool which may be running afoul of the no-interpreted-code ban in section 3.3.2 of Apple’s developer agreement, despite the assertion that Briefs doesn’t work in a way that’s forbidden by Apple’s rules. Even though developer Rob Rhyne made a cogent case to Apple’s team on the merits, and even with some high-level support from contacts made at WWDC, Briefs remains unapproved and unrejected.

Rather than wait indefinitely with his 1.0 growing stale, Rhyne has decided to offer the existing version as open source, which iPhone developers can compile and install on their testing devices. Rob’s colleague Jeff Lamarche at Martian Craft voices his frustration here.

In many ways, this could be an App Store success story: developer dedication and innovation, open lines of communication between indies and Apple, an open source tool that can improve app development for scores of coders. The only problem is that darned silent treatment, and the missing timeline for escalation. If an app can’t make it on the store, it seems the least Apple ought to do is say so and say why.

TUAWApp Store approval limbo boxes in Briefs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has formally sued Apple, Google and several others over the use of technologies for which he holds the patents.

The Wall Street Journal was unable to reach any of the parties involved for comment, but notes that Allen has been going after companies, many of them high-profile, that he believes are using software that was developed in his Silicon Valley laboratory several years ago.

The suit identifies four specific patents. Each appears to be a huge part of how contemporary e-commerce and Internet search tools work. For example, one addresses how websites suggest products based upon customers’ recent searches. Another lets those reading a news story quickly find related stores, while the two others let ads and news items, among other things, flash on a computer screen adjacent to what the user is directly looking at. No specific dollar amount was identified.

TUAWPaul Allen’s company sues Apple, Google originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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More Mac 101, our series of tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

As reliable and fantastic as your Mac is, chances are it will occasionally need service. When you’re speaking with a representative on the phone or standing at the Genius Bar with your lovely, you’ll be asked to provide some basic information, like the model, OS and so on.

That’s the easy stuff we know off the top of our heads. Other specifics, like serial number, the kind of processor, the date of purchase and so on are harder to remember. Fortunately, Apple has produced some cheat sheets that you can print, fill out and store away until they’re needed.

There are three documents available: “My Mac Hardware,” “My Mac OS X Software and my Apple ID,” and “My Internet Connection.” Print them, fill them out and keep them stashed somewhere safe. It’ll only take a minute and when you need them, you’ll be glad they’re there.

TUAWMac 101: Keep all your service info close to hand originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Update: If it wasn’t clear originally — you have to download the Bodega client first, and purchase the apps through its store. Some readers were confused by the link to the 1Password site, which was for illustration purposes only — the discount on the Mac client is specific to Bodega.

Today’s the last day to grab some deals from Bodega. The would-be app store for Mac OS X software is offering a 50 percent discount on the following applications through the end of the day:

• 1Password ($19.97)
• Sandvox ($28.50)
• Cockpit ($12.49)
• MoneyWell ($24.99)
• Clean My Mac ($14.97)
• Brush Pilot ($7.50)
• Mac DVDRIpper Pro ($4.97)
• My Living Desktop ($17.47)

This is a great deal on some really awesome software for your Mac. A good many of us love 1Password, and Sandvox is a great WYSIWYG web editor that’s won an Apple Design Award.

To take advantage of the sale, you need to purchase the software through Bodega, which is a free download.

TUAWLast day for Bodega half-off sales on Mac apps originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As preparations begin in San Francisco (check out the Yerba Buena Center’s new look) for the September 1 press event, here’s a brief review of what’s likely and unlikely to go down.

iPods are a given, and likely to be the thrust of the event. Apple has refreshed the line every year in September since the iPod‘s introduction. We’re guessing a more iPhone 4-like touch with a camera and possibly a retina display, perhaps on a higher-end model.

Also expected is a new iTunes rental option for TV episodes. As of this writing, TV shows are available for purchase at US$1.99 each. Bloomberg has suggested that Apple will add a rental option for $0.99 a pop, with new episodes becoming available just 24 hours after their original air time.

The wildcard is a new Apple TV (or iTV) running specialized apps on the iOS. It certainly doesn’t fit the music theme implied by the invite, but who knows. Perhaps Steve has one more thing up his black sleeve. In any case, visit TUAW on the 1st for our complete coverage.

TUAWIn Brief: September 1 Apple event originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAWTUAW’s Daily App: Zentomino HD originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Just in time for the days of, well, skipping out on video games and getting back to the books, Sega has decided to try and tempt you away from that schoolwork by dropping prices across the board on its iOS games. Golden Axe, Shining Force, Streets of Rage and Ecco the Dolphin are all on sale for just US$0.99, and the Super Monkey Ball and Sonic the Hedgehog games are on sale for just a few bucks as well.

Phantasy Star II is worth mentioning on its own. Sega just released the game on iOS today, and for my money (only $2.99 during this sale!), there’s no better Genesis-era RPG. Seriously, if you are a fan of the console RPG genre at all, this one’s a must buy. The story’s fun, the gameplay is excellent, and having the title on the App Store is a real treat. Shining Force is a great game, and Streets of Rage is a fun title to have around for just a buck, but if you buy one game during this sale (which lasts through September 1st — thanks, Sega!), I’d recommend Phantasy Star II.

TUAWSega puts titles on sale for back-to-school, releases Phantasy Star II on iOS originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember the Milk (RTM) is a popular Web-based to-do list manager with an equally popular iOS app (here’s our review). This week, the app’s developers have announced that it’s now free for the iPhone… with a few caveats.

Until now, the iPhone app was only available to those who paid US$25 a year or $2.99/month for an RTM pro account. The free version includes everything in the full version with the following exceptions: It only syncs manually (and once every 24 hours at most) and it doesn’t support push notifications. If you depend on the app to nag you into action, you might want to move on or consider the pro upgrade. However, those comfortable with referring to the app as the day progresses are in for a treat. RTM for iPhone is a solid app that you’re sure to enjoy.

Those who’ve been putting off trying RTM for iPhone now have the perfect opportunity. Download and enjoy!

[Via Lifehacker]

TUAWRemember the Milk for iPhone now free — with a catch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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