Apps

You know you’re in trouble when people write an app with sole purpose of pinging your content network to tell users whether or not it’s up. Touche. Clearly Sony should have released such an app as part of their damage control process. It’s surprising that the idea for the PSN Status app took so long to dislodge. Image iTunes were busted and went down for a month…

I assure you that Apple fans and haters would fall over each other creating a similar app within the first 24 hours of the incident. Not a PlayStation 3 owner? How about i360Emu, a free app for your iPhone and iPod touch (depicted below) that emulates the famous Red Ring of Death which appears when your XBox 360 fails? I know, it’s been a slow news day.

via Touch Arcade

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Citrix, Online, a division of Citrix Systems Inc. which provides remote-connectivity and online collaboration solutions, is jumping on the iPad bandwagon with the news that it will soon release a free iPad app which they claim will be the “first iPad application designed for real-time, remote support.” Dubbed GoToManage, the program will enable support for single location or multiple sites. Why’s that a big deal?

Well, if you’re an IT administrator, you will have the luxury to work anywhere at any time and thereby assist dispersed workforce of your company even while away. That will no doubt come in handy when you lazy on a Sunday afternoon, sunbath on the beach or enjoy cocktails on your summer holiday. GoToManage for the iPad will be the first iPad application designed for real-time, remote support. Those eager to find out more can register their interest and Citrix will notify them when the program becomes available for download.

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Apple has updated its Logic Pro and Logic Express software with the ability to import GarageBand for iPad projects. The welcome enhancement lets you continue perfecting tablet projects on your Mac to edit audio tracks, loops and so forth. The updated Logic Pro 9.1.4 and Logic Express 9.1.4 installers are available for download from Apple’s site.

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A new iTunes version? Close. This is Miro 4, a new feature-packed media player for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux.

Do you feel constrained by the limited media player choices for your Mac? Here’s something completely different. The non-profit Participatory Culture Foundation has just released a brand new cross-platform media player dubbed Miro 4 that “lets you break free”, as the tagline says. The long list of features is pretty impressive. Miro 4 works with your existing media libraries without any copying involved. Just point the application to your music and video folders (including the iTunes music library) and voila – your media automagically appears.

It comes with the Amazon MP3 store and a bittorrent client built-in. Desktop and mobile devices running Miro can share and transfer music and video files to each other effortlessly over the wireless network. They are also working on versions for iPad and other tablets. What else could you ask for? How about this…

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For all the talk of HTML5, web developers nowadays are still doomed to hard-coding pretty HTML5 websites. Deciding enough is enough, two engineers left Apple to found Tumult, a Y Combinator-funded startup. Their goal: Address a chronic shortage of decent HTML5 authoring tools. What, you didn’t think Adobe’s Creative Suite is the be all end all of web development?

The result of their undertaking is Hype, a brand new Mac application taking the pain out of creating eye-catching animations on the web that don’t require the Flash plug-in. Jonathan Deutsch, one of the co-founders and former engineering manager for the Mail.app backend, explains in an interview with Paul Hontz’s The Startup Foundry:

At one point after a trip to Europe, I wanted to make a photo website that would be as nice as a beautifully bound photo album, and use lots of effects. Coding this with HTML5 would have been a nightmare. There had to be a better way, and that’s how the idea for Hype was born.

The $30 download (limited introductory pricing) is already the top-grossing program on the Mac App Store. Deutsch also shared interesting anecdotes about the perks of working at Apple…

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Opera Software has updated the Opera Mini web browser with iPad support this morning. Having spent some time with the app, MacStories praised visual tabs allowing you to switch between multiple pages by tapping their previews, smooth UI animations, background loading of tabs and a handy menu with rich bookmarks, history, settings and sharing options with Facebook and Twitter social integration and My Opera support.

The updated browser also includes the souped up interface with the iPhone 4 Retina Display support. Grab it now, Opera Mini is a universal binary available free on the App Store. When Opera Mini debuted on the iPhone last March, it came down in history as the first major iOS browser from a third-party, following a change of heart from Apple’s previous policy of prohibiting any web browser on the handset other than its own.

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Apple in the past received its share of criticism over the lack of data protection prior to iOS 4. It was a big issue for businesses who couldn’t even fathom losing unprotected sensitive information from stolen devices. The iPhone 3GS introduced a chip for hardware-based encryption and iOS 4 brought out the Data Protection feature that secures your data with a 256-bit encryption.

ElcomSoft, a team of Russian forensic experts behind security software used by law enforcement and certain three-letter agencies, has managed to crack both the on-device data protection and backup file encryption. Bright side of news interviewed Elcomsoft’s Vladimir Katalov who explained how the GPU-accelerated Phone Password Breaker tool unlocks Apple and BlackBerry backups. The program might also come in handy should you ever forget your backup file password, but there are some caveats.

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The App Store, Apple’s software bazaar for mobile apps, has apparently crossed a cool 500,000 app approvals in two years and ten months since its inception. The actual number of store items available for download is closer to 400,000 due to withdrawals, replacements etc. This semi-official news came courtesy of Chomp.com, 148apps.biz and EA-owned games publisher Chillingo. They also posted a cool infographic on the 500K Apps Facebook page which details a bunch of headline-worthy factoids, seen below the fold.

According to Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt, “sometime after midnight Tuesday morning, the iTunes team pushed through a batch of app submissions that sent the total over a six-figure milestone”. In January, a customer downloaded ten billionth app on the store. Android Market has close to 300,000 apps and three billion downloads, per latest figures Google shared at the I/O 2011 conference earlier this month. Knowing Apple’s penchant for juicy stats, we can expect a formal announcement during a Steve Jobs keynote at WWDC on June 6. Here’s more food for thought…

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Fans have taken AirPlay, a wireless media streaming technology from Apple, to places far beyond the boundaries of the iOS/Apple TV walled garden. For example, we’ve seen stuff like a Cydia hack that enables AirPlay in any third-party app, AirPlay support on Android and more. Developer Thomas Pleasance took it upon himself to enable AirPlay on Windows Media Center devices.

Note that you must have Apple’s Bonjour running on your Media Center PC prior to installing his cool AirPlay for Windows Media Center add-in. Bonjour is included with Apple’s free programs for Windows, such as iTunes, QuickTime, Safari and more. Grab the AirPlay for Windows Media Center add-in (still in beta) at Thomas Pleasance’s personal homepage, it’s a tiny half a megabyte download.

So, does this thing work?

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http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dot/dot-360o-video-capture-for-the-iphone-4/widget/video.html

Do you remember your first interaction with panoramic video clips? For me, it was kinda Minority Report moment. Panoramic clips have gone mainstream and in part owe their popularity to BEP360, a 99-cent music app for iPhone and iPad by Black Eyed Peas’ Will.i.am that lets you interact with the band’s 360-degree music video. Should you ever need to shoot panoramic clips using your iPhone 4, definitely consider the Kogeto Dot, a Kickstarter project by Jeff Glasse aimed at bringing 360-degree video recording to the masses. It’s cool, stylish and highly portable, according to the above promo video.

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Version 2.0 of the Square app has the new virtual shelves feature on iPads

Square, a mobile payment startup founded and led by Twitter’s CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey, has issued a new version of their iOS app with three interesting features. Certainly the most visible change is the new-look interface which looks particularly business on iPad. The main idea here is to be able to showcase products to your prospective customers on an iPad’s gorgeous 9.7-inch display. You can set up your products on virtual shelves any way you like, add your own graphics, write the accompanying description and so forth.

Another nice-to-have and more screenies below the fold.

The iPhone interface is also slightly subdued for a more professional look

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If you’ve ever used Google Apps, you’ve seen what kind of power a collaborative, cross-platform word processor can have.  Today’s Apple iWork.com Web applications fall far short (though they look much prettier) in terms of functionality.  But don’t fret Apple fans!  Patently Apple today shows that Apple is heading Pages toward that same Cloud experience.

While it may or may not be “breakthrough” Apple clearly has plans to put its Pages App/Application into the Cloud.  The sooner (WWDC?), the better.

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Ever since I reviewed MacPhun’s FX Photo Studio for iOS, its insane amount of superior effects, the eye-catching interface taking full advantage of iPad’s canvas and the overall polish have been a revelation. Suffice to say that I walked away wanting that photo editing experience on my Mac. The opportunity is clearly there: Excluding big-name suites and a few established programs from indies, quality yet affordable photo editing programs are few and far between on the Mac. That being said, I set out to review FX Photo Studio on an aging 2.4GHz unibody Mac mini with 2GB RAM running Snow Leopard.

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Would you believe me if I told you a year ago that the Apple police would have reverted its stance on the App Store nudity?  Well they didn’t. Yes, some boobs are now OK, but undesirable Playboy bunnies are not. That didn’t stop Hugh Hefner, the founder and namesake of the Playboy empire, to find a clever solution.

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Infinity Blade is the killer app Apple fans usually run on their iPhone or iPad to showcase the graphical prowess of iOS gadgets to their Android-toting friends. It’s arguably one of the best iOS games around and thus far the only title based on Epic’s Unreal Engine. Developer Chair Entertainment has kept the game alive with two big content updates. Today’s third and most ambitious update has brought us brand new multiplayer and survival modes in a 584MB download. You can fight your friends over the Internet via Game Center’s match-making feature, compare your respective scores, check out your unlocked items and so forth…

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Fans of the Yahoo! Messenger messaging platform can now enjoy video calling on iPad 2. The version 2.1 update, now available free from the App Store, is a universal binary that supports both the iPhone’s smaller screen and iPad’s larger canvas. The 21.7MB download has been optimized for Apple’s slate, iTunes description says, adding iPad-optimized layout plus voice and video calling on the device.

The program also features stronger anti-spam features letting you block one or all add requests from a single view. iPad 2 users don’t have a lot of video calling choices apart from Apple’s FaceTime and a few less fancy programs. Yahoo! Messenger is a very popular cross-platform communications platform, meaning iPad 2 people can now enjoy video calling with their PC and Mac counterparts.

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And it’s only for jailbroken devices with a front-camera. The $7 RecognizeMe by Apocolipse unlocks your phone by matching pre-recorded images of your face against the front camera feed. Simply holding the device in front of your face for a couple of seconds should automagically unlock it. Check out a cool video demonstration below…

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What’s your switching strategy? Most folks believe they’ve got it all figured out until they realize that transferring settings and documents from a rusty PC to a Mac is a mind job. Parallels, the company that brought you great PC virtualization software for the Mac, has just released on the Mac App Store Parallels Transporter, their handy tool aimed at switchers. It’s a no-brainer, especially at price that low. More information below the fold.

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According to paidContent, Apple is planning on exhibiting at the upcoming BookExpo America trade show, a first for the company. Apple will be sending an iBookstore employee Scott Simpson and their show presence is said to be significant based on a large booth in a prime location, next to publishers Random House, Disney Book Group and Macmillan. Apple won’t be selling anything, but their presence is meant to boost their position in the e-reading space and raise visibility of the iBookstore and iPad as an e-reading device.

UPDATED [May  18, 2011 1:00pm Pacific]: The original story has been updated with a quote from a spokesperson for the event confirming Apple will be privately meeting select books publishers rather than exhibit at the show.

via MacRumors

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Patently Apple today reveals a trademark today by Apple for the word “Noteworthy” which they postulate is a new OCR app that could be released in iOS 5.  One use would be taking an image and turing it into a document like Google’s recent Docs app does.

Update: Apple has a Font named Noteworthy which is likely the reason for registration
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You may have heard that an unknown company called Lodsys was threatening to sue small iOS developers over the use of in-app purchasing, a system-wide iOS mechanism that lets users buy additional content inside apps, using their standard iTunes credentials. This being an Apple-designed feature, a lot of  folks were left scratching their head when Lodsys announced last Friday plans to take developers to court should they refuse to pay royalties.

Following a storm of criticism by many online media outlets and bloggers who said the company was acting like a patent troll, Lodsys put out a blog post. No, they’re not patent trolls and yes, they’re just trying to “get value for the assets that it owns”. Right. In a series of Q&A posts Lodsys detailed this issue. They’re entitled to claim 0.575 percent of US revenue made from in-app purchases, so says Lodsys. On annual sales of one million dollars this amounts to $5,750 a year in license costs. But wait, there’s more of that nonsense.

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