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Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently--the upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labour Day weekend. And with this week's apps, there's no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
The Android Dev Blog today released some shots and details on the Android Market--the Android version of the iPhone's App Store. Stressing that it's a "market" (free, open, etc) rather than a "store," the Google folks have decided to not require an approval process for devs to have their applications listed, unlike Apple's mysterious black box of approval that even the developers still don't fully understand. Which is great news for Android devs, but could be quite a handful for Google.
DSTwitter brings Twitter Shitters the ability to broadcast their current activity to the world via their DS. Is this something you couldn't do before with your mobile phones? Of course not. But if you can read Spanish and can run homebrew apps on your DS, grab DSTwitter and start broadcasting the consistency of your turds to everyone in the world. We have. [Mashable via PMP Today via Pocket Gamer via Kotaku]
You must've seen at least one book titled something like "This book will teach you how to earn US$1 million." Now, picture an iPhone application that has just two functions: a red jewel icon that "always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were able to afford this," and, after pressing the "(i)", a secret mantra that "may help to you stay rich, healthy and successful." It costs US$999.99. See where I'm going with this? I've got a better mantra that'll help you stay rich and healthy (by avoiding accidental spending-induced heart-attacks.) "Make sure you keep iTunes asking for your permission to buy apps before purchasing, or clicking on this app link may make you very, very sad indeed." [Product page]
A year ago, we said that no iPhone SDK meant no killer apps. It came, and the apps are here in staggering numbers. But many of the amazing apps and concepts we grew to love as unofficial apps aren't here, and only about 100 of the 500+ apps at launch in the official store are really useful or desirable—the rest are dupes or just bad. There are no less than five apps to turn my iPhone into a flashlight, yet I can't turn it into a 3G-powered Wi-Fi hotspot. Why? Because the SDK has more restrictions than Guantanamo--devs can't integrate with the OS and have to steer way, way clear of copyright and trademark issues—so the most innovative, game-changing apps might not ever make it to your squeaky clean iPhone. That's why we need more than Apple's official app store--we still need jailbreaking, Installer.app (now Cydia) and the best unauthorised third-party apps to make the iPhone an ultra-powerful open platform we really want. Here are the roadblocks:
If you Google "iPhone apps," the first thing that comes up is iPhoneApps.org, a site selling a bundle of "top 10" iPhone applications for US$25 using "safe PayPal." Friends, there's nothing safe about this site. It's a scam. The iTunes App Store is the exclusive distributor of official iPhone apps, period. Don't get your apps anywhere else. Tell your friends and family. If you're savvy enough to use Installer.app, this PSA is not for you, obviously (I mean, you know you can get all this stuff for free, right?). [Thanks Blake!]
A few Apple App Store developers have apparently taken a page from the line cutting Steve Wozniak today, and are using a loop hole in the service's naming conventions to shoot their apps to the top of the list. The story goes that certain developers are cutting to the head of the class with sneakily inserted spaces and quotation marks. One "offender" is Jirbo, Inc., which put a space in front of all of its games' titles. All Jirbo games now appear at the top of the alphabetical App Store games list.
Developers, developers, developers! Our iPhone Application Contest is still going on and we're just waiting for your juicy submission. Did you make something that will revolutionise the (fill in your industry) industry? Send it on in! See here for details. There's are even fantastic prizes waiting for you.
TiVoremote, the iPhone / iPod touch Telnet TiVo Remote app, was finally updated a few weeks ago with an ooey gooey GUI, and some really useful new features. Now at version 0.23, the app can now detect TiVos on your home network, allowing for easy selection of the TiVo you want to control. What's even better is the app now has the ability to download the Now Playing list data from the TiVo, allowing the iPhone to show what's been recorded and display each recordings data info. The app can also use the NPL data to start playing the recordings automatically. So if you've got a Jailbroken iPhone / iPod touch, and a Series 3 TiVo, I would suggest giving the app a try, it's surprisingly useful. [TiVoRemote]
Google Media Server is a Google Desktop add-on that provides a way to get PC media content onto your TV. With the help of a UPnP device, Google Media Server collects all the relevant media files from your PC and makes them available over a local host. While it doesn't seem as direct as a device like SlingCatcher, it's probably a whole lot cheaper. Google Media Server is available for download here. [Google Media Server via Crunch Gear]
