Apps

Adobe has updated its Flash Player to version 10.3, squashing a bunch of bugs and introducing a brand new control panel. It’s a welcome addition that lets you better manage the many Flash Player settings, including camera, microphone and Local Shared Objects settings. More importantly, one can now set how Flash tracking cookies are being handled and fine-tune other privacy, security and storage settings.

Also important, Flash Player 10.3 now supports auto-update notification for Mac OS X. The new aplet is a native addition to the system-wide control panel on Mac OS X, Windows and Linux, Adobe said. The team wrote in a blog post that Flash Player 10.3 also includes support for Android 3.1 devices.

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Popular micro-blogging service Twitter has unveiled a revamped HTML5 web app that mimics the look and feel of its native iOS counterpart. The new rich interface works in mobile Safari and other mobile browsers, Twitter said. New features include the ability to quickly scroll through your timeline, move between tabs, compose tweets, access your timeline, @mentions, messages that you can read in conversation view, search, trending topics, lists and more.

There’s no need to install anything and it gets updated more frequently, being a cloud-based app. Check it out by pointing your iPhone, iPod touch or Android device at twitter.com. Bear in mind Twitter is gradually releasing the web app so don’t panic if it’s not yet available to you. If you use Twitter’s official Mac client, good stuff happening on that front, too…

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http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=23554190&server=vimeo.com&show_title=0&show_byline=0&show_portrait=0&color=00adef&fullscreen=1&autoplay=0&loop=0

If all the brouhaha about iPhone location tracking fell on deaf ear with you, why not plot your logged location history on a world map, just for the kicks? Sure, you can do that with Pete Warden’s simple and lightweight iPhone Tracker tool for your Mac, but it won’t preserve your location data in the cloud. And while you’re at it, how about making this data actually useful by contributing your personal database of nearby WiFi hotspots and cellular towers (so says Apple) to good causes, from surveys into movement patterns of the human species to epidemiology? That’s exactly what OpenPaths does for you.

With openpaths, you can preserve your iPhone or iPad’s location information as well as visualize where you’ve been. You can even download your data in CSV and JSON format so you can remix it and use it in your own projects. What’s more, openpaths allows you to securely and anonymously donate your data to researchers who could use it to study mobility, transportation, land use, epidemiology, and overall make the world a better place.

It only takes a minute to plot your location data in a variety of ways…

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All checks indicate they have, which would be a first for the puritan California-based gadget maker that likes to keep things under control in the App Store. ZDNet has a story about SugarSugar Dating App somehow making it through Apple’s stringent review process and launching on the iPhone on June 1. The app is a mobile client to SugarSugar.com, which advertises itself as the “leading sugar dating website”.

They also say the app helps one seek “mutually beneficial” arrangements with other users, a telling tongue-in-cheek definition treading the fine line between dating and escorting, if not worse. Maybe Apple censors weren’t paying attention… So, how’s this going to work?

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Angry Birds theme song cover by Pomplamoose (Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn)
(Cross-posted on our sister site 9to5Google.com)

Here at San Francisco’s Moscone West, the Google I/O 2011 keynote has just wrapped up. Being their most important annual pilgrimage for developers, the show is a launchpad for important new products and announcements. For some people, the biggest news is that popular Angry Birds franchise is now available for the most popular platform of all – the web. Joining Google’s senior vice president of Chrome Sundar Pichai on stage was Peter Vesterbacka, the CEO of Espoo, Finland-based multi-million dollar Angry Birds developer Rovio Mobile. Wearing a red Angry Birds sweatshirt, Vesterbacka announced that the Angry Birds web app is now available on the Chrome Web Store. More information and three screenies right after the break.

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Sad news for fans of e-reading. BeamItDown Software announced they are closing down the shop and ceasing development of iFlow Reader, an e-book reader for iOS, due to Apple’s 30 percent cut and new rules that require all content sales to go through the iOS in-app purchasing mechanism. As a result, publishers like iFlow Reader are increasingly finding that Apple’s 30 percent cut is eating into their margins, leaving them with little or no revenue.

BeamItDown Software and the iFlow Reader will cease operations as of May 31, 2011.  We absolutely do not want to do this, but Apple has made it completely impossible for anyone but Apple to make a profit selling contemporary ebooks on any iOS device. We cannot survive selling books at a loss and so we are forced to go out of business. We bet everything on Apple and iOS and then Apple killed us by changing the rules in the middle of the game. This is a very sad day for innovation on iOS in this important application category. We are a small company that thought we could build a better product. We think that we did but we are powerless against Apple’s absolute control of the iOS platform.

“They [Apple] screwed us”, BeamItDown Software’s Philip Huber told Fortune.

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IM+ Pro, one of the best multi-client chat programs for iOS devices, has been updated with a location-based feature that makes it easy to find random chat participants nearby your current location. Developer Shape Services says Neighbors provides users “the opportunity to find new real life connections and friends with common interests”. This is interesting as we haven’t seen a beneficial integration of location, which is the latest fad, with chat services.

The Neighbors feature works pretty straightforward. You locate people on the map to engage in chat sessions with nearby friends. Others discover you based on your location information that can be as accurate as house, street or city – your choice.

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It’s been four years since the original iPhone came out, but the rumored Facebook integration with iOS remains non-existent. iPhone users, however, needn’t eye their webOS- or BlackBerry-toting friends with envy – there’s an app for jailbroken devices that addresses this issue.

Native FB Upload, a two-buck download from the Cydia Store, enables you to share images by choosing a photo in the Photos app and tapping the new Facebook option in Export menu. Once you authorize via Facebook Connect, you can compose an optional message or share the image as is. Multiple photo uploads and other tweaks are being planned for future versions, Modmyi noted (via Cult of Mac).

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Mobile devices, especially iOS gadgets, command the largest share of digital game downloads so it doesn’t really come as a surprise that big games publishers are scrambling to port famous franchises over to the iPhone. According to TouchArcade, Duke Nukem Forever is almost certainly in the works for iOS devices. The publication spotted a mention of the App Store in the game’s manual on Steam, leading them to speculate that Gearbox is planning an iOS release of Duke Nukem Forever as well.

What reason could there possibly be to include App Store licensing terms in a document for a PC game?

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Adobe, which last week updated Photoshop to work with its freshly announced iPad apps, has finally released said programs for iOS devices. Adobe Eazel, Adobe Nav and Adobe Color Lava, iPad companion apps for Photoshop, are now available for download on the App Store. Adobe Eazel is a finger-paint program that sells for five bucks. The app lets you send your artwork directly to Photoshop CS5 from any location, provided you have a network connection between your iPad and a computer. The remaining two apps sport even tighter integration with the popular image editing software. More information and videos after the break…

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Microsoft has released a new toolkit to help iOS developers write applications for Apple’s mobile platform that also play nice with cloud Windows, also known as Windows Azure. The Windows maker says the toolkit is available for its own Windows Phone platform as well, adding that a version for Android is due next month. The iOS tookit facilitates the creation of both iPhone and iPad apps developed using Objective-C and XCode. Why bother? Microsoft explains they want to “make it easier to target Windows Azure by offering native libraries for non-Microsoft platforms”.

Using the toolkits, developers can use the cloud to accelerate the creation of applications on the major mobile platforms.

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DoubleTwist software advertised as “the iTunes for Android” in most recent update added support for Apple’s open AirPlay media streaming technology. This allows Android owners who use the free DoubleTwist smartphone app to wirelessly beam music, movies and photos to the Apple TV, in addition to compatible Sonos hardware. The life without wires, according to the developer, is a breeze with this app:

Wirelessly sync your iTunes playlists, photos and videos with your Android phone using your home WiFi network.

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If photography on the go is your thing, you can be picky with a myriad of photography-focused software vying for your attention on the App Store. FX Photo Studio from MacPhun, the creators of Silent Movie Director, a video editing app I recently reviewed, has caught my attention recently. Now, I mostly use awesome Camera+, Photo fx and Instagram to capture and edit images so I approached FX Photo Studio with a skeptical eye. I mean, who needs yet another photography app, right?

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If you recently upgraded to iOS 4.3.3 that fixed Locationgate woes, you’ll be delighted to know that untethered jailbreak and unlock for iOS 4.3.3 is now available. The iPhone Dev-team have updated their PwnageTool and redsn0w programs so it’s now possible to jailbreak iOS 4.3.3 using Mac and Windows in a way that doesn’t require connecting the device to a computer each time it’s rebooted.

The iOS 4.3.3 untethered jailbreak is based on the exploit created by @i0nic for iOS 4.3.1. The updated redsn0w tool also allows you to turn on multitasking gestures, the team noted in a blog post. If you wish to unlock your device for use with any carrier, there’s an app for that.

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Oh, another pretty news reader, that’s what you must be thinking, right? Pay attention for Hitpad is your personalized window to relevant content that helps put those trending topics on Twitter and Google Trends into perspective by combining tweets, videos, images, news articles and web links into a uniquely designed news flow.

“Five minutes with Hitpad is like spending an hour browsing around”, developers Jay Meydad and Nir Holtzman Ninio wrote in the app’s iTunes description. So how does Hitpad differ compared to dozens of regular feeds readers or visual news readers such as Flipboard?

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As of today, MobileMe stopped using Sync Services, Apple’s own platform for data synchronization between your programs and supported devices. As we pointed out, this has affected recently released Office for Mac 2011 Service Pack 1 which relied on the platform to sync Outlook calendar with your iPhone. As a result, Mac people must physically connect their device and sync via iTunes, which kills the purpose of push calendar in the first place.

Alternatively, you can change your email client and go through the email server supported by the Mail app. Sounds like too much hassle just to keep your Outlook calendar and iOS gadget in perfect sync.There’s a workaround that lets you wirelessly sync Outlook calendar with your iOS device via Windows – on  your Mac.

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Everybody knows that the iOS notification system is way overdue for a much-needed refresh. It needs to be rethought from the ground up, if fan-made concepts are an indication. In the meantime, you can customize the look and feel of of the boring blue iOS notification alert using AlertArtist, a tweak for jailbroken devices available on the Cydia store.

The program lets you customize a number of elements, such as typeface and the color of border, font and shadow. Or, you can quickly switch between one of the pre-installed templates. If you’ve been on the lookout for the ultimate multitasking tweak for your jailbroken device, look no further than Physwitch (video below)…

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Publisher Hearst has agreed to selling subscriptions to their iPad magazines through iTunes, after months of negotiations with Apple, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Starting with their July issues, iPad apps for Esquire, Popular Mechanics and O, The Oprah Magazine, will be available through a service from Apple that allows customers to sign up for subscriptions inside the apps and get billed automatically. Subscriptions to all three publications will be sold for $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year.

Hearst has also confirmed plans to eventually begin selling newspaper apps (perhaps The San Francisco Chronicle and Houston Chronicle?) and other content through in-app subscriptions. The news leaves Condé Nast as the only major magazine publisher out there not participating in Apple’s new iOS subscription service. However, it’s only a matter of time before Condé Nast joins other big publishers. Last week, Time Inc. reached a deal with Apple enabling them to offer print subscribers digital magazine subscriptions at no additional cost.

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The Daily, an iPad-exclusive digital magazine that launched February 2, has been a money-losing business for Rupert Murdoch-owned media empire so far. According to Peter Kafka of The Wall Street Journal’s MediaMemo blog who chatted with op-chief Chase Carey during an earnings call, the magazine lost ten million dollars last quarter. What’s surprising is the mention of just 800,000 downloads. Even though those downloads don’t equal paid subscriptions, it’s still a disappointing figure for such a high-profile digital publishing operation.

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Streaming music service Spotify has made an interesting move with a new version of their desktop application that can sync your playlists with iPods without having to go through iTunes. Just connect your iPod shuffle, iPod nano or iPod classic to a computer and watch it automagically appear in the Devices section in the Spotify sidebar to easily sync your iTunes music and playlists.

The Swedish startup wrote in a blog post that an updated version of their free app for iOS and Android devices provides the same functionality over your local WiFi network so you can wirelessly sync your MP3 playlists in Spotify from your computer to your phone. Plus, it’s now possible to wirelessly sync these playlists to an iPod touch.

Spotify also took the battle to Apple’s home turf with a new music download service that undercuts iTunes’ three-tier pricing model with 50p per track pricing in MP3 bundles. All the aforementioned goodies will be rolled out to all users, including those using an ad-supported free music streaming, as part of an automatic update. Check out iPod syncing in a video after the break.

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According to a yesterday survey of the app store economics by IHS iSuppli, Apple will grab more than two thirds of the overall market for mobile application stores this year. People will spend an astounding $3.9 billion this year alone on apps for their homescreens, a 78 percent year-on-year revenue increase. For comparison, when the App Store launched back in the summer of 2008, the market for mobile applications was worth just $206.1 million that year ($830.6 million in 2009). The App Store is projected to hit $2.91 billion in revenues this year, equaling to a 76 percent revenue share and a healthy 63.4 percent year-over-year growth. Total market for mobile apps will be worth an estimated $8.3 billion by 2014, iSuppli predicts.

In 2011 Android users are projected to spend a cool $425 million buying apps (why note more?) versus about $200-$300 million for the users of BlackBerry App World and Ovi Store. The App Store’s market share will shrink due to the growth of other mobile platforms, but Apple is still expected to command a 60 percent revenue share for mobile apps by 2014, running at an annual rate of five billion dollars.

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