The Apple App Store is just over a year old today. A statement that the company released last week states that the App Store has received over 1.5 billion downloads from over 65,000 available apps. Pretty startling numbers from such a young service.
Oddly, there are about 100,000 app developers for the 65,000 available. A few things may be going on here, either this points to a 35,000 app rejection rate or many app developers are waiting on the sideline to submit their product. Can't count out multiple submission from developers as well.
FlyChat is a new iPhone app that allows you to converse with strangers who share common interests. Think Twitter in an audible form. Sounds harmless, but I think this app could get a bit weird.
Here is how it works: you type in a message and attach it to a "fly". That message then is sent to your selected stranger and global location, That individual from a far off land will then have access to your profile information including picture. The recipient will then have the ability to ignore or respond to your message. The company would like us to think of this app as a “high-tech messages in a bottle.”
This type of social network focuses on making new connections with less emphasis on your current friends list.
An app like this could be useful to the traveler who does not know anyone in their destination city. Maybe they could get useful information from locals about restaurants, hotels etc... Obviously I would not recommend meeting a stranger from another country for lunch, that is definitely creepy.
It's finally here, the Google Mobile Blog has posted, that iPhone 3.0 will include geography based location searches via Safari and Google.com. You must turn on the "My Location" feature on the homepage.
Googlemobile.blogspot.com posted:
As of today, when you visit www.google.com from Safari on your iPhone 3.0, you can choose to turn on My Location by tapping on the link on the homepage. When you tap on the “update” link, your location will be updated and displayed right there on the homepage. Whenever you want to refresh your location, just tap the “update” link. Testing this in New York, my search for “jazz clubs” returned a handful of places within walking distance. I picked one, tapped the phone number, made a reservation, and we were set for the night.
As for now the new service only works in the English language and only in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Google wants its customers to know that it is and optional feature and can easily be disabled for those who are considering the privacy aspects of using "My Location"
The supposed iPhone killing smartphone will no longer sync directly with the latest version of iTunes software, 8.2.1.
Apple's world leading music platform has been working on this development for quite a while. The move turns out to be both strategic and political, in that one will no longer have the ability to transfer music and video to their Palm through a simple plug in method.
The news of this issue first hit the UK on July 15 before Apple released their official statement on the matter the company stated that iTunes 8.2.1:
“disables devices falsely pretending to be iPods, including the Palm Pre. As we’ve said before, newer versions of Apple’s iTunes software may no longer provide syncing functionality with unsupported digital media players.”
The Palm company spokesman retorted:
“If Apple chooses to disable media sync in iTunes, it will be a direct blow to their users.”
The general consensus from Palm to their customers is to skip the upgrade and stay with iTunes 8.2.
This is another clear case where Apple feels as if their intellectual property is being infringed upon.
Includes an easy to navigate TV guide, movie listings, and Netflix browser.
Cost is FREE
From The App Developers:
"i.TV is the ultimate movie, DVD and TV guide for the iPhone and iPod touch—and it's FREE. Quickly and easily find out when and where your favorite movies and TV shows are playing anywhere in the US or Canada and find related DVD titles"
iPhone apps are becoming very popular at colleges these days, There are literally tens of thousands of choices. Below is a list of five top picks...enjoy.
1. Dictionary.com This free app has just over 250,000 word entries and a built-in thesaurus. It performs audio pronunciation for comparative words. Your not getting through college without a dictionary.
2. Kindle for iPhone The popular Amazon creation works with both the iPhone and iPod touch. This app will let you peruse the entire Kindle library give or take a few newspapers. It has Amazons Whispernet capabilities so most Kindle owners will enjoy its syncing ability. This is a free app and it will help students keep up with their assigned reading
3. Pi Cubed Don't throw away your graphing calculator yet. This app will help you form real-time equations. It has the capacity to hold 150 annotated equations pertaining to a broad array of scientific subjects. Students may like that the equations are presented as if they were written on a chalkboard. This app is well worth the $9.99 price tag.
4. News Fuse You can stay up to date without browsing every internet news outlet. This app will gather news from up to 18 different sources, no need to download several separate news apps. It's a pretty striped down app as far as features go, it just gets the job done. It goes for $0.99.
5. Tweetie When students feel the need to tweet during lectures, there are many twitter apps to choose from. Tweetie appears to be the go-to choice due to its ability to post links and pictures through multiple accounts. It costs $2.99
Apple on Tuesday evening provided iPhone developers with a second beta of iPhone 3.1, the first update to its third-generation mobile operating system, while Mac developers saw a new incremental build of Snow Leopard.
iPhone Software 3.1 beta 2
Beta 2 is only accessible to those with an existing developer account. Released to developers Tuesday evening, the latest beta provides a number of fixes and features, including the ability to connect to and work with a system wirelessly, without the tether of a USB cable.
Developers who spoke with ArsTechnica confirmed the new WiFi connection feature, with one unnamed developer calling the addition “huge.”
No official information is available regarding the upcoming iPhone OS 3.1 as developers are currently under a non-disclosure agreement. The second beta is available at the iPhone Dev Center Web site.
Though the new feature does free up a USB port and allows more flexibility for developers, Apple has reportedly warned that physically tethering is still the preferred method, as it is faster and consumes less power.
As revealed with the first release, 3.1 also adds Bluetooth and video features. Users can now invoke Voice Control using a Bluetooth headset rather than a wired headset or the built-in microphone. When editing video clips, users can save a copy of the trimmed video instead of permanently losing the discarded ends.
ArsTechnica reports that developers cannot install applications from Xcode or debug them via WiFi.
Further additions appear to improve battery life, greater access to video recording features for developers, and possible preparation for adding MMS support for AT&T subscribers.
First seeded to developers at the end of June, the first beta and SDK reportedly included roughly a dozen new extensions for the OpenGL ES graphics library, allowing developers to improve graphics on the iPhone 3GS. Beta 2 reportedly includes fixes for the OS Xcode, as well as other facets of the software.
Mac OS X 10.6 build 10A411
Separately, developers testing Snow Leopard received build 10A411 of the operating system over the next-gen system's Software Update mechanism.
"This Snow Leopard Developer Preview Update is recommended for all users running the Snow Leopard Developer Preview Build 10A402 or later," Apple reportedly told developers. "This update includes general operating system fixes for stability, compatibility, and security."
The latest update weighs in at roughly 730 MB, about half the size of build 10A402a distributed last week.
In a world teeming with increasingly similar tech products, Apple is one company that seems to have no problem churning out standout products. This might be attributed to sleek designs, fun features, and friendly interfaces--or maybe you want to chalk it up to good ol' marketing tactics. However, in the case of the iPhone and the iPod Touch, there's one attribute that undeniably separates these devices from the masses: the ever-expanding cadre of third-party applications. You can find everything from cookbooks and weight-loss trackers to games and productivity tools, but the area in which the iPhone and iPod Touch really excel is music, and there are hundreds of applications to choose from in this category.
To help you sort through the mass of options, we rounded up five of our favorite iPhone music apps. To keep things simple, we limited our scope to free selections that have a heavy focus on full music playback. Not everything included here will be a perfect fit for every iPod user, but you're sure to find something that will float your boat.
1. Pandora
Pros: Straightforward and easy to use; saves user data to account; nice interface with prominent album art; good music selection.
Cons: Skip limits; pop-up ads on every track; no community features.
The gist: If you only get one music streaming app for the iPhone or iPod Touch, make it Pandora--it's a great introduction for those who are anxious to hear some new tunes.
2. Last.fm
Pros: Plentiful community features and perhaps the best-tailored music recommendations; let's you add individual tracks to playlists for calling up later; lets you tag tracks and purchase directly from iTunes; no ads that we noticed.
Cons: Interface isn't as straightforward as those of Pandora and Slacker; not as valuable to users who aren't involved in the Last.fm community; a bit slower than other music apps listed here; skip limits.
The gist: With all its features, tabs, and buttons, the Last.fm application is one of the most in-depth and dynamic streaming music applications available for the iPhone.
3. Slacker
Pros: Straightforward and easy to use; saves user data to account; nice interface with prominent album art; heart and ban buttons to tailor playback to your liking; station listing page is graphically pleasing with album thumbnails.
Cons: Skip limits; no community features.
The gist: Sound quality, speed, and access to tunes are the most important ingredients in a mobile streaming radio app, and this app has them in spades--it's a worthwhile download for anyone who wants to less ads than found on Pandora.
4. imeem
Pros: Unlike other music apps, imeem gives you "cloud" access to part of your own library; includes useful sections that spotlight artists and recommend music based on your tastes; offers a sharing feature; has a nice interface that's easy to browse.
Cons: Limited by the usual Internet radio restrictions (skip limits, inability to play songs by the same artist back to back); access to your library is limited to 100 tracks unless you pony up a yearly subscription fee.
The gist: Beyond the appeal of streaming your music collection form the cloud, the rest of the Imeem application falls somewhere between the simplicity of the Pandora app, and the more personalized, social approach of Last.fm.
5. iheart radio
Pros: Let's you listen to radio stations from most major metropolitan areas across the U.S.; sound quality is generally better than standard FM radio; less commercials than standard FM radio; includes a fun "Shake It" feature that randomizes stations.
Cons: Station list is dominated by Clear Channel and other corporate offerings, meaning you won't find any cool, indie frequencies here; quality for some stations is poor.
The gist: If you love Top 40 and miss some of the hit stations from where you grew up (or where you went to school, etc.), iheart radio provides a portal for you to enjoy that content again.
Honorable mention: Shazam
Pros: Identifies songs playing over the air with the push of a button; shows album art for identified tracks; offers links for directly purchasing the song through iTunes or watching the video on YouTube.
Cons: Only works for recorded music; doesn't work well in noisy environments; often can't identify fringe music.
The gist: Shazam is a great download for people who are constantly wondering "what's the name of that tune?" while out and about.
Apple Inc. said users of the iPhone and iPod Touch media player have downloaded more than 1.5 billion programs from the company’s online store, signaling demand for the applications is accelerating.
The pace of downloads has picked up since Apple reached the 1 billion mark in April. The App Store now has more than 65,000 free and paid programs available, up from more than 500 when the site was introduced a year ago, Apple said in a statement today.
Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs said the application site’s success will make it “very hard” for competitors to catch up. Research In Motion Ltd. and Palm Inc. set up stores in recent months offering programs for their devices and lag behind Apple in the number of applications available.
RIM, which opened its App World in April, said the number of programs on the site doubled to about 2,000 as of July 6. Waterloo, Ontario-based RIM, maker of the BlackBerry, doesn’t provide download figures.
Palm, which began selling the Pre handset in June, has about 30 programs on its site. Several thousand developers have applied to build programs for the Pre, Pam Deziel, vice president of developer relations, said last month.
Apple, which also makes the Macintosh computer, rose 76 cents to $143.10 at 9:37 a.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The Cupertino, California-based company’s shares had gained 67 percent this year before today.
Market-Share Gains
The iPhone went on sale in June 2007, and Apple added the App Store after developers clamored for a way to create programs for the device. Apple is the gatekeeper for the site, approving which programs are distributed. It takes a 30 percent cut of each application sold and distributes free programs at no cost.
In June, Apple released a faster version of the iPhone, selling more than 1 million in the first weekend. There are now more than 40 million iPhone and iPod Touch users who can download games and programs for the phone that do everything from tracking the weather to simulating a Zippo lighter to keeping tabs on calories consumed.
The iPhone’s share of global sales of so-called smart phones doubled to 10.8 percent in the first quarter, outpacing RIM’s growth, according to research firm Gartner Inc. RIM boosted its share to 19.9 percent. Nokia Oyj dominated the market with 41 percent, while Palm ranked outside the top five.
To contact the reporter on this story: Connie Guglielmo in San Francisco at cguglielmo1@bloomberg.net.
An app called TwitVid launched on the iTunes App Store today, enabling iPhone 3G S owners to record "video tweets" and post them to Twitter just as they would with photos, links, and text. The app is one of the first to make use of the new iPhone's video capabilities, and is made by a pair of Canadian college students and their venture-backed startup EatLime. The app is tied to a companion site, TwitVid.com.
While EatLime and its video-tweet competitors can't be faulted for taking advantage of Apple's newly unlocked iPhone features, there's something to be said about the regressive nature of "video tweets." What was once hailed as rapidly consumable, quickly-written and unobtrusive, the text-based tweet is evolving into something entirely different: A multimedia note trailing a ten-second time-waster that has to launch a video site just to present itself. Keeping up with Twitter just became a lot less fluid.
As Digital Beat notes, the TwitVid news comes on the heels of a sizable $5.5 million fundraising round by mobile video site Qik.com.
Prescriptions, X-Rays, Even Eye Tests on a Smart Phone Screen
By DEVIN POWELL, Inside Science News Service July 13, 2009 —
Doctors are increasingly bidding farewell to their classic sidekick -- the pager -- and opting for smartphones that do more to help them practice medicine.
A recent report by the healthcare market research firm Manhattan Research in New York shows that 64 percent of doctors are tech-savvy, using mobile devices made by BlackBerry, Palm, and Apple.
Although medical applications are a small fraction of the myriad of "apps" available for smartphones, they are one of the fastest growing categories and are finding their way into hospitals, clinics, and medical schools.
Medical apps make up a little more than one percent of all apps, but the downloadable medical apps are becoming so useful to doctors that the Georgetown University School of Medicine in Washington, D.C., now requires all of its students to carry an iPhone or iTouch.
Here's a look at some of the more popular and unusual apps developed for medicine and public health for the iPhone and other mobile devices:
Pocketing Prescriptions The most popular medical application for the iPhone by number of downloads is Epocrates, a free portable database that contains pictures of and information on 3,300 pharmaceutical drugs. It has been available for several years on mobile devices like BlackBerrys and Palm Pilots and was downloaded 50,000 times during the first three months after it was released for the iPhone. Physicians at hospitals such as Georgetown University Medical Center carry around the app to double-check for potentially dangerous drug-drug interactions when prescribing treatments for their patients. An expanded version also provides information about diseases and laboratory tests.
Itty-Bitty X-rays Featured in Apple's commercials, OsiriX allows radiologists to view and carry around their patients' X-ray scans on an iPhone. The X-ray images can be sent from phone to phone via iChat.
While the iPhone's tiny 480 by 320 pixel screen is small for making a diagnosis, physicians can zoom in and out or transfer the images to a Mac computer to study them in full detail.
OsiriX also displays PET, MR, and CT scans, as well as ultrasounds. To ensure confidentially, the images can be stripped of information that could be linked to a patient.
EyePhone Brazilian ophthalmologist Renato Neves has adapted seven eye exam tests to be administered from the iPhone's screen. The chart of letters that tests vision acuity, usually mounted poster-sized on a wall, has been scaled down for the small screen held at an arm's distance.
Standard tests for color blindness have also been reformatted for the iPhone, as has Amsler's grid, a field of crossing lines used to check for problems like macular degeneration.
Zapping Cancer The "level" application on the iTouch -- normally used to hang a picture properly -- has been adapted to help radiologists aim X-rays and destroy tumors.
During chemotherapy, radiologists often use beams of X-ray energy to kill cancerous cells inside the body. But many cancers -- especially those of the lungs, livers, pancreas, and breast -- become hard-to-hit moving targets when a patient breathes in and out.
Two radiologists at the University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor figured out how to use data gathered by the iTouch accelerometer strapped to their chests, which measures the angle of the devices, to calculate their breathing rates.
They will present the app, which could be used to time X-ray blasts to coincide with exhaling, at a medical physics conference this month. It is called "iBreathe" (which happens to be the name of another app that turns the iPhone into a breathalyzer).
Tracking Swine Flu As the H1N1 influenza virus ("swine flu") swept across the globe, IntuApps in New York, New York developed a public health app that allows people to track its spread. The app, which is still awaiting approval by Apple, brings together information drawn from a range of different sources on the web.
A Google Maps plug-in shows the locations of outbreaks, while feeds from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provide information about how the virus works, the current threat level, and government advisories.
New iPhone mic gets 10X better reception than the built-in mic Brando’s claiming 10x better audio reception on this external, swivelable iPhone microphone.
Even if it doesn’t get 10x better reception, it should get perhaps 2x better reception, which is worth $14 for most people.
Here’s more detail from their website:
“Voice and video recording on iPhone 3.0 brings iPhone owners to the new mobile multimedia era. Yet, sound quality is not the best. Try out the NEW Flexible mini capsule microphone which is especially designed for new iPhone 3.0. It enables you to record better sound quality. Instead of receiving sound from the iPhone speaker at the bottom, your iPhone can receive sound from any direction. It is especially useful while shooting video as the microphone and the camera can be pointed to the same direction. Bend and turn the microphone to the desired direction to focus sound source. Flexible mini capsule microphone gains 25+ dB, sound clarity increases as well as sound quality improves. It works on iPhone 3G S, iPhone 3G, iPhone 2G and iPod Nano 4G.”
According to an Apple Insider report, Apple may finally be in the closing stages of bringing the iPhone to China.
The report says the company as applied for a Network Access License, meaning a release could be just months away.
The news comes through Wedge Partners analyst Matt Mathison who says the application was filed this week but notably lacks any mention of onboard Wi-Fi, meaning the wireless will not be available on the Chinese version of the phone.
It has been long rumored that Wi-Fi would have to be dropped to "appease the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, which would prefer that iPhone owners use local networks," says AI.
Mathison says he is confident now that the Wi-Fi issue is settled that the phone will go on sale in China before the Chinese New Year, on February 14th 2010. The phone will likely be available through carrier China Unicom , the only carrier in the nation that has available compatibility "with the iPhone's existing 3G standards."
Apple has filed for a brace of patents that give some insight about what could be in future iPhone smartphones. The July 9 patent application came a week after Apple applied for touchscreen-related patents.
One of the patents is called ID App, and it would enable an iPhone, or other portable device, to display various amounts of data on nearby objects. The device could use the camera, an RFID reader, or a GPS chip to identify objects, and then compare those against multiple databases. For example, a user could take a picture of a landmark, and the app could use meta-data along with GPS to determine what it is, and then bring up the landmark's Wikipedia page.
"After an object has been identified, the portable electronic device can provide additional information about the identified object," the patent application said. "In some embodiments, the portable electronic device can search for the additional information based on the previously defined mode. In some embodiments, the portable electronic device can provide additional information with incrementally increasing levels of detail."
Nokia (NYSE: NOK) has released something similar with its Point & Find program. Users can snap a picture of a movie poster with their phone's camera and then receive a movie trailer, information, or directions to the nearest theater playing the film.
Another filing suggests future Apple devices could have facial-recognition technology. This could be used for security purposes by limiting who can authorize the device. Most Macintosh laptops already come with built-in cameras. For this to be effective with the iPhone, a future version would likely have to have a front-facing camera.
The company also filed for patents that could filter text messages for obscene content, better manage visual voicemails, and changing the voice output on iPhones. The patent application may be seen here.
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1. Pandora
4. imeem
