Applications

Wired has a great article up on applications that replace actual tools. You can use the iPhone as a level, as a tape measure, calipers and even a speedometer. Fantastic uses of the iPhones built in GPS and accelerometer.
Check it out!

All those Apple commercials highlighting Spotlight in OS X are awesome. Imagine, the ability to search anything on your Mac and find it so quickly. Imagine indeed! For us iPhone Mail power users search is a long-forgotten dream that has turned into a nightmare. For example, I wanted to phone my good friend Chris Seibold (author of an awesome Apple Hacks book you must buy!). Trouble was I hadn’t moved his phone number into a contact. It was deep within my email. On my Mac it is one click away. On my iPhone is is impossible to get to because I can’t sort by sender (or sort by anything) or search.

I can’t imagine search would be that difficult to add to Mail. After all, doesn’t the iPhone run OS X?! Isn’t that supposed to make developing this stuff super-easy?

In the meantime it seems the time is right for a competitor to come along and write a 3rd party email application for the iPhone (iEudora anyone?).

What about you, does Search matter, or are you happy to be pinned down to chronological order?

I’ve spoken highly of MotionX Poker and MotionX Dive but there is a new kid on the block that may send MotionX Dice on a run for their money.

One common request was the ability to to roll different types of dice.

Developer Mach Kobayashi has stepped up to fulfill this need with his new application MachDice. The $0.99 application provides a realistic dice simulation that can be trigged by button or by shaking your iPhone.

Unique to MachDice is the ability to roll an arbitrary number of arbitrarily sided dice. Take a look:

We’ve all known that Nike+ was supposed to come to the iPhone, we’ve just been waiting a bit longer than expected. So what is in store for us? Nike+iPhone=Awesome!

Or a lot of great features and smart implementation, Nike+ definitely uses the iPhone’s technology to its advantage to create a better user experience and offer a better feature set.

Because of the capabilities of the iPhone, a lot of the stuff that Nike+ used to run on the Mac and on the Web are now being run on the iPhone itself.

You’re able to keep track of all the classic stats and maybe even map out your route with GPS. So the iPhone’s sensors and chips are going to be well used by this app.

Looks very promising…

Via: Gizmodo

{UPDATE}
So it turns out that the supposed screenshots that were leaked to iPhone.fr were in fact faked. AppleInsider noticed that the app showed someone using it to listen to a Coldplay song, but Apple doesn’t offer developers a way to play music on the device in any way besides the iPod application. As cool as it… more...

The web is abuzz about this little program that popped up on the App Store yesterday. Appropriately named, NetShare creates a proxy and establishes a pseudo-hotspot with your iPhone’s connection leaving you free to surf the web on your laptop.

It’s tethering, more or less. The concept of the app is to essentially use your iPhone’s 3G or EDGE connection for your laptop. With WiFi quite prevalent, I am not sure why one would do that, but it is cool.

Not quite sure how they managed to get through Apple’s heavily guarded security entrance, but Apple apparently got word of the infiltration and immediately took the app out of the store.

Unfortunately, I passed right by it not thinking anything about the app and didn’t download it, but did you happen to get it and if so, how is it?

So one big complaint that I heard was the lack of other instant messaging services available in the App Store. Although I don’t use any other service besides AIM, I could empathize with those individuals. Of course, they could always go to the web apps such as Meebo and a few others, but having a native app is just more fun.

Yesterday, I was browsing through the Social Networking section as I usually do and stumbled upon a new addition - Palringo. (iTunes Link)

Palringo has been around for quite some time and if you ever owned a Windows Mobile Device or Blackberry, then perhaps you’ve heard or even used this nice program.

Palringo is an instant messenger app that’s able to connect to AIM, MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, etc. It will also let you send media files (photos). However,  you do need to set up a Palringo account to get it all going. Not a big deal, but it appears to be the best option for multi-client IM as of now. I am sure others will come along.
I really enjoy it and… more...

Thanks to CoreLocation in the iPhone SDK, Apps can make use of WiFi, Cell, and A-GPS information to keep track of where you are.

Your Twitter feed can be tagged with your current location, or can show you just those contacts in a certain vicinity. A movie app can automatically fetch show times for all the theaters in a certain radius. A to-do app can pop up location-based (rather than just time-based) alerts, reminding you to help your grandparents mow the lawn next time you’re there, or ping you when you pass the electronics store so you remember to pick up that ethernet cord you need.

Amazing apps, amazing capabilities, but a little intrusive, don’t you think? Apple enforces a policy that requires apps to pop up a request asking your permission several times before defaulting to location aware status. After selecting yes for at least twice (for most apps I’ve tried), you will no longer see the message again. Some users thought it was no longer tracking since it never asked, but that is not the case at all. It has defaulted to the common answer - “OK.”

For those… more...

I live in a household with more than one iPhone user (that I helped to cross over ) and it quickly became a dilemma of wether or not we should purchase the same app more than once or just not use the app at all. I found out about a method that may help users in my dilemma.

The solution uses the abilities currently present in iTunes to authorize and download the application to other iTunes libraries so you do not need to worry about hacking your device at all.

1. First, you’ll want to log in to your friend/family’s iTunes library using the AppleID you used to purchase the Application….Check

2. Go to the application that you are purchasing and click “Buy Application”. The App Store should give the following prompt: “You already purchased this application. To download it again for free select OK.” ...Check

3. Select OK, download the app, then log out of your account, and you should be able to sync the application with the iPhone that is connected to that iTunes library!

Sounds pretty simple, eh? I tried it out and it works. To read a little… more...

It seems, thanks to Windows, that every platform’s sign of maturity is when it offers…Solitaire! Now iPhone users need not feel left out, Red Mercury, LLC, a developer and publisher of fun and snappy iPhone games, today announced that AcidSolitaire Collection is now available for sale on the App Store. Red Mercury has released the AcidSolitaire(r) Collection

The most popular computer card games, Solitaire, Freecell and Spider, are brought together in the AcidSolitaire Collection.

AcidSolitaire Collection delivers the excellence you expect from iPhone and iPod touch games. Relax with polished game play and snappy graphics. Easy-to-read cards make it fun in either portrait or landscape mode. Select images from the Photos app to create your own game backgrounds, and queue up some music from your iTunes library to enjoy while you play.

AcidSolitaire Collection for iPhone and iPod touch includes:
* Quick and simple single-touch play with Intellimove(r)
* Easy stop and go. Games are always automatically saved
* Listen to your iTunes music while you play
* Super Battery Saver extends battery life
* Complete move memory. Undo/Redo your last move or every move
* Use… more...