Announcements

The year is coming to an end, and in the spirit of the great App Store, Apple has posted a list of the top iPhone apps of 2008. Apple has been quite successful this year and their app store has been one success that is, in fact, so successful (despite some problems) that other companies are creating their own app store.

The list that Apple whips up commemorates the most successful of the apps during App Store’s existence. It’s divided into the categories of Top Paid Apps, Top Free Apps, Games, Entertainment, Utilities, Social Networking, and Music, with sub-categories for each.

Of all of the apps in the App Store, the most popular downloaded “paid” application is the boring, yet fantastic Koi Pond from The Blimp Pilots. Of the free apps, the top app was Pandora Radio which is another great app.

View the rest of the top apps of 2008 in iTunes.

On a side note, I must recommend AppShopper.com which is a fantastic website that allows you to view the same in each category as well; just not for the year. Quite helpful and you should definitely check it out.

In college football champions aren’t decided on the field as much as they are decided by the polls. Sure, you’ve got the usual one versus two Championship game but that pairing is also based on the polls. Declaring which phone is the most popular on the net involves just as much uncertainty. But if you’re willing to put up with a fair amount of uncertainty and you like good news the AdMob has declared the iPhone the most popular mobile handset in the world. You slick piece of internet browsing and telephony went from #4 to #1. How does AdMob arrive at this conclusion? From the Washington Post:

Each month, AdMob, a mobile advertising network, rounds up the data from over 6,000 mobile websites and applications, analyzes it all, and releases their findings in their Mobile Metrics Report

Why should you be skeptical of the numbers? Well iPhone Matters has some very insightful readers and from the last time we posted AdMob results Flack had this to say:

Not sure what this proves. Their metrics are based off ad requests from mobile websites. I.E. a user… more...

If you look through the specs of the HTC Fuze you’ll see a lot of overlap with the iPhone. Touch screen, tri band communications, decent looks. The Fuze has some features the iPhone lacks: slide out keyboard, ability to edit Microsoft documents 3.2 megapixel camera and a few others. The iPhone one spec sheet advantage: $100 cheaper (and with the Fuze you have to use a coupon). Fro the spec sheets it seems like it would be a fair battle between the two cell phones with a 50/50 split between AT&T users (like the iPhone the Fuze is AT&T only). But it won’t be a fair fight and you cna already tell that the Fuze is going nowhere.

How can you tell?
First: The hype.
You haven’t heard anyone clamoring for the Fuze and the only people that seem mildly excited by the thing are those that generate press releases.

Second: it runs Windows Mobile
Ah, the achilles heal of the Fuze. Windows Mobile is being rejected for both OS X Mobile and the RIMM OS. and both of those are dominated by Symbian used by Nokia. Windows… more...

I use Google Earth all the time and I’ve wondered when the app would be released for the iPhone. It always seemed like it would be a pretty cool and useful app. Well, now it is available in the iTunes Store today!

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the ‘Location’ feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

Take a look:

I don’t know about you all, but I completely detest the fact Apple got rid of the “All iPhone Apps” link within iTunes. I did happen to stumble upon a very great site that will not only ease my frustration, but yours as well.

Meet AppShopper.com. This new site tracks updates, price changes, and all other apps that are entered in the App Store.

The main page gives you an instant view of all updated apps, beginning with the newest or most recent.

The site also breaks it down a bit further and allows you to search categories such as: New, Prices, New Free Apps, and New Games.

One thing missing - the option to search for an app. I’m not quite sure how this was missed, but at least the main functions of the site are there.

This site is quite useful and I hit myself over the head for not thinking about this myself!

Following on the 8 betas for 2.0 (released July 11), and 4 for 2.1 (released September 12), 2.2 will hopefully bring us a Push Notification.

The new version is labeled iPhone OS 2.2 beta 1 and is accompanied by a new beta of the iPhone SDK (build 9M2611). Beyond “compatibility testing”, there are no other differences noted by Apple.

I am starting to think we aren’t going to see the update in September, as promised, but who knows. There are still a couple of days left…

You know what is better than an Xbox 360, a Playstation 3 and a Nintendo Wii? A 3G iPhone. At least that was the vote of the United Kingdom’s Stuff Magazine readers.
Those folks obviously know their gadgets, the editors of the Magazine picked the Asus Eee PC which i groovy but a laptop is so 1992. Plus, try to look cool walking down the street with an Asus Eee PC held up to your ear while carrying an obviously important conversation. Can’t be done, you’ll be laughed at. But you can yell “I said SELL dammit!” holding an iPhone and people won’t only think you’re cool, they’ll also think you’re getting out of the market a few days too late.
via: Reuters

Amongst a slew of announcements, Steve Jobs briefly mentioned the iPhone 2.1 software.

A lot of the bugs affecting iPhone owners have presumably been fixed with 2.1, but we won’t know for sure until we have all had some time with it.

Steve Jobs has proclaimed that there will be fewer dropped calls, improved battery life, and backing up to iTunes will be a lot faster.

It’s available this Friday for FREE. Unfortunately there’s nothing about the background app notifications or copy and paste.

Good news: on Sunday Best Buy started selling iPhones.
Bad News: Best Buy sucks at customer service
Good News: You can get an iPhone three different places.
Bad news: Two of the three places have horrible customer service (AT&T, Best Buy)
Good news: One place has great customer service (Apple stores)
Bad news: You’re likely much closer to an AT&T or a Best Buy than an Apple store.
Good news: The price remains unchanged ($199.00 and $299.00)
Bad news: still no insurance option.

Well, there is more to it to that. If you remember the ascension of the iPod to the market making and dominating device it has become the trail closely parallels the number of different places the iPod was available at. First, it was just the Apple online store, then Target came on board followed by Dell and now the things are everywhere. More stores mean more exposure and more exposure means a growing market share. If you’re a fan of the iPhone this is unqualified good news.

Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event scheduled for Tuesday, September 9 is rumored to include the release of iPhone firmware update 2.1 according to an inside tip via Ars Technica.

So what all will this event have in store for us? We’ll, one thing is for sure that they’ll offer an updated iPod Nano. One thing that us iPhone users are anxious about is the 2.1 software update.

The firmware update is said to contain new GPS functionality, that will include tracking speed and direction. Several sources also indicate that there’s preliminary support for push notification services is coming. While some are holding out hope for copy and paste in the update. But what is a Rock Party without a better way to rock? iTunes 8 is coming!

Ars Technica claims that the release of iTunes 8 is finally confirmed for September 9th as well, aligning with many of the claims made by Kevin Rose, making iTunes 8 sound incredibly promising.

We shall find out tomorrow…