Iphone Updates

Play golf? Then you may want to size up TeeShot. Use it to score your foursome. Then email the day’s results to everyone from your iPhone. TeeShot lets you track your strokes, putts, fairways, clubs, distances, and other data. You can compare stats from your current round to previous rounds, use GPS to measure shot distances, download courses or create your own. And TeeShot gets raves for customer support.

Every so often someone decides to file a lawsuit against Apple because — well, because it’s Apple, it seems. While normal people buying products from other manufacturers — heck, even normal people buying Apple gear — would simply check out a piece of kit before buying it, or at least return it for a replacement if damaged, it seems this isn’t good enough for one New York resident. We’ll leave aside the “defective 3G” and “not twice as fast” parts of this lawsuit (yes, it comes in multiple parts, folks) because we’ve already been there and got the T-shirt. Instead, let’s look at the accusation that Apple knowingly and wantonly shipped defective iPhones with hairline cracks in the casing…

While details are sketchy, Japan’s telecoms company NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is to develop and launch a mobile phone based on the Google-developed open source Android mobile operating system next year. The two companies already work in partnership to put Google’s services on NTT’s “i-mode” Internet service…

While details are sketchy, Japan’s telecoms company NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is to develop and launch a mobile phone based on the Google-developed open source Android mobile operating system next year. The two companies already work in partnership to put Google’s services on NTT’s “i-mode” Internet service…

Apple has finally released firmware version 2.2 for the iPhone, ready to download via iTunes. As usual, it’s a fairly hefty download, so beef up your broadband connection for the 246MB ride. Once done, you’ll get some nifty new features. How useful they are depends on how you use the iPhone, of course. Google Maps has finally been updated to include Street View, public transport, and walking directions (let’s hear it for non-drivers – hmm, just me then?), displaying the address of dropped pins, and sharing location via email…

Filed under: Humor, Odds and ends, Found Footage, Holidays

No, not really.

The guys at Apple retailer and repair shop BeamEcho in Toronto, Ontario, Canada decided to make a horror epic for the ages and came up with the ultimate nightmare: a Mac virus. Just in time for Halloween, TUAW presents their very scary film. The production values are just what you’d expect for a shooting budget of $6. Watch this one with lights on, kids…

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Filed under: Internet Tools

Netflix has been talking about bringing its “Watch Instantly” movie streaming service to the Mac for a long time, and now Engadget is reporting that they’re finally beginning to roll it out. The “Watch Instantly” service allows unlimited Netflix subscribers to stream about 12,000 TV shows and movies to their computers (or set-top devices), but has been limited to Windows PCs since the service first appeared.

Ironically, this is being made possible thanks to Microsoft’s Flash-wannabe Silverlight browser plugin. As we noted way back in 2007, the holdup was the need for Microsoft DRM on the streaming videos and the new Silverlight-based player incorporates Microsoft’s Play Ready DRM.

Unfortunately, the initial roll-out is limited, but Netflix expects to bring “the new platform to all Netflix subscribers by the end of the year.” Sadly for PPC owners, it will be limited to Intel Macs. Nonetheless, it’s great to see Netflix finally coming through on the promise of Watch Instantly for Mac users.

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The iPhone finally launched in Thailand on Friday with the True Move telco, and according to reports got an “overwhelming welcome from businessmen to hi-so people”. However, executives for the company were said to have shown mixed feelings of happiness and anxiety. First fan in the queue was businessman Krit Jiramongkol, who had the dubious pleasure of receiving a T-Shirt emblazoned with the words “I Got the First iPhone 3G by True Move”. Bet he’ll be wearing that in board meetings…

Coolgorilla has announced a new talking phrasebook for the iPhone and iPod Touch, available in seven different languages and each containing over 500 holiday-based sound files. French, German, Greek, Italian, Japenese, Portuguese and Spanish versions allows consumers to search quickly and simply for a phrase in English and let the iPhone speak out the correct phrase, using an authentic, native accent, in the foreign language. Topics covered include eating, travel, and even flirting…

Rake In Grass has announced Archibald’s Adventures, its first game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Archibald and his friends were near a dump behind a mysterious mansion of inventor – professor Klumpfus. Accidently Archie fell down a pipe and ended up in professor’s basement.

In the same time some crazy experiment went wrong and all genetically engineered creatures escaped from their containment in laboratories, while paranoid central computer locked the whole complex up!

Now both Archibald and professor got stuck in the mansion!

It’s up to you to help Archie to overcome all of the pitfalls of the mansion, and use your skills and wit to guide the heroes through more than 100 uncanny levels!

Vela Design Group has announced the latest version of its VelaClock world clock application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Easy to configure, users can display sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for civil, nautical or astronomical times, moon phase and tilt. VelaClock divides the screen into two panes, the upper pane which contains a list of cities and a lower detail pane. Each row in the city list displays the country flag, city name, local time, day of week and a daylight bar (which can optionally be hidden). The daylight bar gives the user a picture of 24 hours of natural light (bright daylight, three kinds of twilight, and night). It may be centered at noon or the current time. A thin white bar indicates when the moon is visible…

My Little Tank

Astraware continues to find high-quality games for the iPhone with the launch of Binoteq’s “My Little Tank” arcade game. The concept is simple — destroy enemy tanks and bases, and protect your own. There are 80 levels to try and get through over a range of detailed terrain. Power-ups enable your tank to get stronger and there are various missions to complete. The game sits on the border between casual and arcade game. The tank can be controlled either by tapping the screen, using the accelerometer by tilting the iPhone, or selecting the virtual on-screen D-Pad. Here’s a video demo of the game. Available for $4.99 from the iTunes Store…

Every so often someone decides to file a lawsuit against Apple because — well, because it’s Apple, it seems. While normal people buying products from other manufacturers — heck, even normal people buying Apple gear — would simply check out a piece of kit before buying it, or at least return it for a replacement if damaged, it seems this isn’t good enough for one New York resident. We’ll leave aside the “defective 3G” and “not twice as fast” parts of this lawsuit (yes, it comes in multiple parts, folks) because we’ve already been there and got the T-shirt. Instead, let’s look at the accusation that Apple knowingly and wantonly shipped defective iPhones with hairline cracks in the casing…

While details are sketchy, Japan’s telecoms company NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is to develop and launch a mobile phone based on the Google-developed open source Android mobile operating system next year. The two companies already work in partnership to put Google’s services on NTT’s “i-mode” Internet service…

Apple has finally released firmware version 2.2 for the iPhone, ready to download via iTunes. As usual, it’s a fairly hefty download, so beef up your broadband connection for the 246MB ride. Once done, you’ll get some nifty new features. How useful they are depends on how you use the iPhone, of course. Google Maps has finally been updated to include Street View, public transport, and walking directions (let’s hear it for non-drivers – hmm, just me then?), displaying the address of dropped pins, and sharing location via email…

Apple today announced Safari 4 public beta for Mac and Windows. With its new Nitro engine, Safari 4 runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. And it features many innovative new features that make browsing more intuitive and enjoyable, including Top Sites, Full History Search, Cover Flow, Tabs on Top, and still others. Safari 4 beta is available for immediate download for the Mac and PC.

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools, Open Source, TUAW Labs

I was really disappointed when Google released their Chrome web browser for Windows only. When it comes to browsers, I’ve tried them all. Right now I regularly switch between Firefox and the latest nightly build from Webkit (essentially Safari). Firefox has the extensibility I rely on, while Webkit has the performance I crave. I had hoped that Chrome would magically combine those two crucial traits and become my new go-to browser. Unfortunately, Chrome is not yet nearly as extensible as Firefox, and isn’t available for Mac (yet).

So imagine my surprise when I stumbled upon the latest experimental Firefox build from Mozilla, called Minefield. This Minefield should not be confused with the unofficial optimized builds of Firefox that Brett wrote about, which are also referred to as Minefield. Minefield is Mozilla’s code-name for this generation of Firefox, and the code name is used for unofficial builds to avoid infringing upon the Firefox name.

So, what’s so special about the Mozilla Minefield build? It’s fast… smokin’ fast. This is essentially a version of Firefox with the new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine under the hood, and as Ars Technica reports, it tests even faster than Google’s V8 JavaScript engine.

As most Mac users have noted, Firefox is kind of pokey on the Mac platform, particularly compared with WebKit or even Safari, and even when compared with Firefox on a similarly spec’d Windows machine. Version 3 of Firefox was supposed to fix the performance problem, and while it’s somewhat better, it’s still not great.

Well, Minefield is great. Using Gmail or even a complex content management system is a breath of fresh air. I feel like my web apps are finally keeping up with me.

There’s one caveat, and it’s a big one: though the current version number is 3.1b2pre (the “b” denoting beta status), this is really alpha software. That means there will be bugs, and you will experience problems. Surprisingly, though, Minefield has been very stable in my testing — not yet crashing in a full day of testing. I have restarted it a couple of times due to suspicion that something strange was going on, but I can’t say for sure if it was.

If you use it with your regular Firefox profile rather than creating a new one, Minefield will complain that most of your extensions are not compatible. Using Nightly Tester Tools, I re-enabled all of the extensions that it disabled, and every single one of them appears to be working normally, even the complicated ones like Better Gmail 2 and TabMixPlus.

I’ve only had a problem with one site so far, but unfortunately it’s a big one: Google Docs. The page simply won’t load. But for now, I’m willing to open WebKit or Camino to edit my Google Docs, because I’m just too smitten with the raw speed that Minefield offers.

One last note: being a nightly build, you will likely find that new versions are available, well, nightly. Mozilla makes the process of upgrading to the latest version virtually painless by using the built-in version monitoring process that Firefox uses.

[via Ubuntu Unleashed]

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Filed under: Internet Tools, Reviews, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Update 2: Box.net will work with first generation iPod Touch units. The team is going to push an update very soon to make this visible on the app description page. You can download the program right now and it is fully compatible with all iPhone and iPod Touch units.

Update: Box.net is looking into why its new app is not working with first generation iPod Touch units and hopes to push out an update soon. We’ll keep you posted!

I love Box.net — the online file storage system that makes it easy to store and share files with other users quickly and easily. A couple of years ago, TUAW wrote up how to use Box.net as an iDisk (and this still works), but now the Box team has made it even easier to access your files while on the go, with the new Box.net iPhone app.

The app, which is compatible with the iPhone and the second generation iPod Touch (sorry 1st Gen touch users!), is simply awesome. Box.net already had an iPhone friendly mobile interface at i.box.net, but while you could access some files from that page, you couldn’t play back media and document viewing was more limited. The new application means you can play back audio and video (assuming the file is compatible with the iPhone 2.1′s firmware support for QuickTime), view PDF or Office files, view photos, and upload photos from your iPhone or iPod Touch directly to Box.net.

Even nicer, the Box.net app integrates directly with your address book, so you can share a folder or individual document with a contact, just by clicking the “Share” button and selecting the contact from the address book. The application also notifies you of any updates or changes made to your box, which is great for individuals who collaborate with other users using a Box.net account.

I have a free Box.net account (which limits me to 1 GB of storage space and puts a 25 MB cap on file sizes), but I was able to access all my files and documents with ease. On my iPod Touch, Box.net loaded PDF files faster than some other tools I have used for PDF viewing, though I did find that network activity did impact overall speed. When the bridged router I use with my non-802.11n devices was in heavy use, it could take quite some time to load a large PDF. When the G router was idle, load time was almost non-existent, even for 8 or 9 MB files.

I don’t have an iPhone, so I cannot vouch for EDGE or 3G speeds — but over WiFi, speed was solid.

The interface of this app, as you can see from the gallery, is just superb. It perfectly matches both the Box.net website and the iPhone user interface guidelines. Maneuvering through files was a cinch and I love the integration with the address book for sharing files or folders. Being able to upload photos directly to Box.net is also pretty great.

If there was anything that could be on my wishlist, it would be the ability to upload other types of tiles to Box.net as well. Of course, you can always e-mail uploads to Box.net, so this isn’t an absolute necessity.

Box.net is free and available from the App Store now.

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The iPhone finally launched in Thailand on Friday with the True Move telco, and according to reports got an “overwhelming welcome from businessmen to hi-so people”. However, executives for the company were said to have shown mixed feelings of happiness and anxiety. First fan in the queue was businessman Krit Jiramongkol, who had the dubious pleasure of receiving a T-Shirt emblazoned with the words “I Got the First iPhone 3G by True Move”. Bet he’ll be wearing that in board meetings…

Coolgorilla has announced a new talking phrasebook for the iPhone and iPod Touch, available in seven different languages and each containing over 500 holiday-based sound files. French, German, Greek, Italian, Japenese, Portuguese and Spanish versions allows consumers to search quickly and simply for a phrase in English and let the iPhone speak out the correct phrase, using an authentic, native accent, in the foreign language. Topics covered include eating, travel, and even flirting…

Rake In Grass has announced Archibald’s Adventures, its first game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Archibald and his friends were near a dump behind a mysterious mansion of inventor – professor Klumpfus. Accidently Archie fell down a pipe and ended up in professor’s basement.

In the same time some crazy experiment went wrong and all genetically engineered creatures escaped from their containment in laboratories, while paranoid central computer locked the whole complex up!

Now both Archibald and professor got stuck in the mansion!

It’s up to you to help Archie to overcome all of the pitfalls of the mansion, and use your skills and wit to guide the heroes through more than 100 uncanny levels!

Vela Design Group has announced the latest version of its VelaClock world clock application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Easy to configure, users can display sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for civil, nautical or astronomical times, moon phase and tilt. VelaClock divides the screen into two panes, the upper pane which contains a list of cities and a lower detail pane. Each row in the city list displays the country flag, city name, local time, day of week and a daylight bar (which can optionally be hidden). The daylight bar gives the user a picture of 24 hours of natural light (bright daylight, three kinds of twilight, and night). It may be centered at noon or the current time. A thin white bar indicates when the moon is visible…

In Mac OS X Leopard, you can instantly find and then immediately open a document using Spotlight. But what if you find a document and you’re not sure it’s the one you want to open? Or you simply want to learn where it’s located on your Mac? Instead of opening the file, find out how you can ask Spotlight to take you to where you saved it on your hard drive by watching the latest Quick Tip of the Week.

My Little Tank

Astraware continues to find high-quality games for the iPhone with the launch of Binoteq’s “My Little Tank” arcade game. The concept is simple — destroy enemy tanks and bases, and protect your own. There are 80 levels to try and get through over a range of detailed terrain. Power-ups enable your tank to get stronger and there are various missions to complete. The game sits on the border between casual and arcade game. The tank can be controlled either by tapping the screen, using the accelerometer by tilting the iPhone, or selecting the virtual on-screen D-Pad. Here’s a video demo of the game. Available for $4.99 from the iTunes Store…

Every so often someone decides to file a lawsuit against Apple because — well, because it’s Apple, it seems. While normal people buying products from other manufacturers — heck, even normal people buying Apple gear — would simply check out a piece of kit before buying it, or at least return it for a replacement if damaged, it seems this isn’t good enough for one New York resident. We’ll leave aside the “defective 3G” and “not twice as fast” parts of this lawsuit (yes, it comes in multiple parts, folks) because we’ve already been there and got the T-shirt. Instead, let’s look at the accusation that Apple knowingly and wantonly shipped defective iPhones with hairline cracks in the casing…

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends

The Big Mean Folder Machine is a useful tool from publicspace.net (developers of the indispensable A Better Finder Rename 8) that takes the drudgery out of either splitting files into multiple folders or merging files from different folders.

Why would you want to do either of these tasks? Let’s say you’re trying to back up 30 GB of photographs to DVD. You can either start dragging files to a folder and keep checking with Get Info to see if the folder size is less than the writable size of a DVD, or you can just have BMFM automagically split the group of files into folders that are perfectly sized for DVD burning. Or let’s say that you want to take individual folders for former clients and turn them all into one big “Former Client Archive” folder. It’s easy to merge all of the files in those different folders into one big archive folder. The Big Mean Folder Machine takes care of file name conflicts in that case.

Version 1.5 adds the ability to create deeper hierarchy levels (dependent on the number of files per level) and restores MP3/AAC functionality. A trial version limited to 100 files is available for download, or you can buy the application for $14.99.

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Filed under: TUAW Business, Podcasts

Last week on the talkcast, Christina led a lively discussion of the laptop announcements, the lack of Firewire on the MacBook, and more. You can listen in via the Talkshoe page, or download the show in iTunes / via RSS.

Be so kind as to join us tomorrow 10/25 at 10 pm ET for this week’s live show, hosted by me and featuring a special guest — he’s a mild-mannered industry analyst by day, a tech columnist by night… our friend Ross Rubin will be joining us, as we delve into the astonishing impact of the iPhone on Apple’s bottom line and the wireless market at large. Has our favorite computer company truly gotten past the Mac?

You can join the conversation on TalkShoe by using the shiny browser-only client; you can also use the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client that we all know and love. For the web UI, just click the “TalkShoe Web” button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. You can also listen in on the Talkshoe page or call in on regular phone or VOIP lines: dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *-8. Talk with you then!

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While details are sketchy, Japan’s telecoms company NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is to develop and launch a mobile phone based on the Google-developed open source Android mobile operating system next year. The two companies already work in partnership to put Google’s services on NTT’s “i-mode” Internet service…

Apple has finally released firmware version 2.2 for the iPhone, ready to download via iTunes. As usual, it’s a fairly hefty download, so beef up your broadband connection for the 246MB ride. Once done, you’ll get some nifty new features. How useful they are depends on how you use the iPhone, of course. Google Maps has finally been updated to include Street View, public transport, and walking directions (let’s hear it for non-drivers – hmm, just me then?), displaying the address of dropped pins, and sharing location via email…

Coolgorilla has announced a new talking phrasebook for the iPhone and iPod Touch, available in seven different languages and each containing over 500 holiday-based sound files. French, German, Greek, Italian, Japenese, Portuguese and Spanish versions allows consumers to search quickly and simply for a phrase in English and let the iPhone speak out the correct phrase, using an authentic, native accent, in the foreign language. Topics covered include eating, travel, and even flirting…

Rake In Grass has announced Archibald’s Adventures, its first game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Archibald and his friends were near a dump behind a mysterious mansion of inventor – professor Klumpfus. Accidently Archie fell down a pipe and ended up in professor’s basement.

In the same time some crazy experiment went wrong and all genetically engineered creatures escaped from their containment in laboratories, while paranoid central computer locked the whole complex up!

Now both Archibald and professor got stuck in the mansion!

It’s up to you to help Archie to overcome all of the pitfalls of the mansion, and use your skills and wit to guide the heroes through more than 100 uncanny levels!

Vela Design Group has announced the latest version of its VelaClock world clock application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Easy to configure, users can display sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for civil, nautical or astronomical times, moon phase and tilt. VelaClock divides the screen into two panes, the upper pane which contains a list of cities and a lower detail pane. Each row in the city list displays the country flag, city name, local time, day of week and a daylight bar (which can optionally be hidden). The daylight bar gives the user a picture of 24 hours of natural light (bright daylight, three kinds of twilight, and night). It may be centered at noon or the current time. A thin white bar indicates when the moon is visible…

Palm announced its new Palm Pre handset running Web OS at this year’s CES. Based on initial specifications, here’s how it stacks up against the iPhone 3G.

Look & Feel

The Palm Pre measures 100.5 (H) x 59.5 (W) x 16.95mm (D) compared to the Phone 3G’s 115.5 (H) x 62.1 (W) x 12.3mm (D); the Palm Pre weighs 135g compared to the iPhone 3G’s 133g. The iPhone 3G’s about a centimetre-and-a-half taller, with the units weighing about the same. The Palm Pre has a slide out QWERTY keyboard for easing text entry.

Screen

The Palm Pre has a 3.1-inch touchscreen with 24-bit colour 320×480 resolution display – the same resolution as the iPhone 3G…

My Little Tank

Astraware continues to find high-quality games for the iPhone with the launch of Binoteq’s “My Little Tank” arcade game. The concept is simple — destroy enemy tanks and bases, and protect your own. There are 80 levels to try and get through over a range of detailed terrain. Power-ups enable your tank to get stronger and there are various missions to complete. The game sits on the border between casual and arcade game. The tank can be controlled either by tapping the screen, using the accelerometer by tilting the iPhone, or selecting the virtual on-screen D-Pad. Here’s a video demo of the game. Available for $4.99 from the iTunes Store…

Every so often someone decides to file a lawsuit against Apple because — well, because it’s Apple, it seems. While normal people buying products from other manufacturers — heck, even normal people buying Apple gear — would simply check out a piece of kit before buying it, or at least return it for a replacement if damaged, it seems this isn’t good enough for one New York resident. We’ll leave aside the “defective 3G” and “not twice as fast” parts of this lawsuit (yes, it comes in multiple parts, folks) because we’ve already been there and got the T-shirt. Instead, let’s look at the accusation that Apple knowingly and wantonly shipped defective iPhones with hairline cracks in the casing…

Filed under: Airport, Software Update

Now you see it, now you don’t — and now it’s back. The very brief tenure of AirPort Extreme Update 2008-003 (it was available on Tuesday for a while, but then withdrawn) has given way to the shining reign of update 004. The update is a 2.2 MB patch recommended for all Intel machines on 10.5.5, resolving “some issues with Airport connections when roaming in large WiFi networks.”

Some of the commenters who installed the earlier build didn’t experience any obvious ill effects; others reported installation hangs, lockups on reboot or problems connecting to wireless LANs, so your mileage may vary — with any luck the new build has a steadier grip on stability.

You can download the new update via Software Update or (shortly) from the Apple support downloads page.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in

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Filed under: iLife, Software, Freeware

While most people are probably satisfied to send their photos from iPhoto through their Gmail accounts using Mail, some people would rather have a more direct option. For example, sending large files through Mail seems to be no problem for me, yet from the same network with exactly the same settings, my wife’s Mail chokes and spits and frequently fails when she tries to send a bunch (or even a few) pictures from iPhoto.

Tired of playing with her SMTP settings and getting everything working for one message, just to have it fail on the next one, I finally went in search of a more direct approach. My wife and I are both “switchers,” and back in Windows we were used to Picasa, which has the ability to send photos via a Gmail account built-in. Makes sense, since Google owns Picasa, but that’s exactly what I was looking hoping to get iPhoto to do.

In my searches I came across an iPhoto plugin called iPhoto2Gmail. When I tried it last week, it hung my iPhoto instance every time I tried it and I had to force quit iPhoto. I gave up on iPhoto2Gmail, but couldn’t find anything else. In desperation, I went back to have another look at iPhoto2Gmail and discovered that it had been updated to version 1.0. Crossing my fingers, I gave it a try, and… it works great!

Though I don’t need it on my machine, I really like the direct simplicity of sending my photos from right inside iPhoto, and I think I’ll continue to use iPhoto2Gmail. If you’ve been struggling with sending photos through a Gmail account, this might be a useful option for you.

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While details are sketchy, Japan’s telecoms company NTT DoCoMo has announced that it is to develop and launch a mobile phone based on the Google-developed open source Android mobile operating system next year. The two companies already work in partnership to put Google’s services on NTT’s “i-mode” Internet service…

Apple has finally released firmware version 2.2 for the iPhone, ready to download via iTunes. As usual, it’s a fairly hefty download, so beef up your broadband connection for the 246MB ride. Once done, you’ll get some nifty new features. How useful they are depends on how you use the iPhone, of course. Google Maps has finally been updated to include Street View, public transport, and walking directions (let’s hear it for non-drivers – hmm, just me then?), displaying the address of dropped pins, and sharing location via email…

Though the iPhone was never designed to be used with a stylus, there may well be users that would prefer the PDA-ness of using one. Other styluses designed for the iPhone have been brought to market, but now QDOS has designed one that attaches to the iPhone via the headphone port (so that you don’t lose it) and comes with a cleaning pad that can also be attached…

Coolgorilla has announced a new talking phrasebook for the iPhone and iPod Touch, available in seven different languages and each containing over 500 holiday-based sound files. French, German, Greek, Italian, Japenese, Portuguese and Spanish versions allows consumers to search quickly and simply for a phrase in English and let the iPhone speak out the correct phrase, using an authentic, native accent, in the foreign language. Topics covered include eating, travel, and even flirting…

Bit specialist this one — if you’re a producer, post-production producer, editor, or anyone else needing to deal with timecode and frames (if you don’t know what that is, don’t get this app) then iTC Calc could be the iPhone app for you. It comes with two modes: “simple” offers offset calculation, timecode-frame converter and standard mathematical operations, while “complete” also gets you a duration calculator and history window. Available for US$14.99 ($9.99 / £5.99 introductory) [iTunes store link]

Rake In Grass has announced Archibald’s Adventures, its first game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Archibald and his friends were near a dump behind a mysterious mansion of inventor – professor Klumpfus. Accidently Archie fell down a pipe and ended up in professor’s basement.

In the same time some crazy experiment went wrong and all genetically engineered creatures escaped from their containment in laboratories, while paranoid central computer locked the whole complex up!

Now both Archibald and professor got stuck in the mansion!

It’s up to you to help Archie to overcome all of the pitfalls of the mansion, and use your skills and wit to guide the heroes through more than 100 uncanny levels!

Though the iPhone was never designed to be used with a stylus, there may well be users that would prefer the PDA-ness of using one. Other styluses designed for the iPhone have been brought to market, but now QDOS has designed one that attaches to the iPhone via the headphone port (so that you don’t lose it) and comes with a cleaning pad that can also be attached…

Coolgorilla has announced a new talking phrasebook for the iPhone and iPod Touch, available in seven different languages and each containing over 500 holiday-based sound files. French, German, Greek, Italian, Japenese, Portuguese and Spanish versions allows consumers to search quickly and simply for a phrase in English and let the iPhone speak out the correct phrase, using an authentic, native accent, in the foreign language. Topics covered include eating, travel, and even flirting…

Vela Design Group has announced the latest version of its VelaClock world clock application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Easy to configure, users can display sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for civil, nautical or astronomical times, moon phase and tilt. VelaClock divides the screen into two panes, the upper pane which contains a list of cities and a lower detail pane. Each row in the city list displays the country flag, city name, local time, day of week and a daylight bar (which can optionally be hidden). The daylight bar gives the user a picture of 24 hours of natural light (bright daylight, three kinds of twilight, and night). It may be centered at noon or the current time. A thin white bar indicates when the moon is visible…

Rake In Grass has announced Archibald’s Adventures, its first game for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Archibald and his friends were near a dump behind a mysterious mansion of inventor – professor Klumpfus. Accidently Archie fell down a pipe and ended up in professor’s basement.

In the same time some crazy experiment went wrong and all genetically engineered creatures escaped from their containment in laboratories, while paranoid central computer locked the whole complex up!

Now both Archibald and professor got stuck in the mansion!

It’s up to you to help Archie to overcome all of the pitfalls of the mansion, and use your skills and wit to guide the heroes through more than 100 uncanny levels!

Vela Design Group has announced the latest version of its VelaClock world clock application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Easy to configure, users can display sunrise, sunset, dawn and dusk times for civil, nautical or astronomical times, moon phase and tilt. VelaClock divides the screen into two panes, the upper pane which contains a list of cities and a lower detail pane. Each row in the city list displays the country flag, city name, local time, day of week and a daylight bar (which can optionally be hidden). The daylight bar gives the user a picture of 24 hours of natural light (bright daylight, three kinds of twilight, and night). It may be centered at noon or the current time. A thin white bar indicates when the moon is visible…

Palm announced its new Palm Pre handset running Web OS at this year’s CES. Based on initial specifications, here’s how it stacks up against the iPhone 3G.

Look & Feel

The Palm Pre measures 100.5 (H) x 59.5 (W) x 16.95mm (D) compared to the Phone 3G’s 115.5 (H) x 62.1 (W) x 12.3mm (D); the Palm Pre weighs 135g compared to the iPhone 3G’s 133g. The iPhone 3G’s about a centimetre-and-a-half taller, with the units weighing about the same. The Palm Pre has a slide out QWERTY keyboard for easing text entry.

Screen

The Palm Pre has a 3.1-inch touchscreen with 24-bit colour 320×480 resolution display – the same resolution as the iPhone 3G…

Filed under: Multimedia, Software, iPhone, Graphic Design, App Store, iPod touch

I’m continually amazed at the high end functionality being displayed by various photo apps for the iPhone/iPod touch. We’ve seen panorama creators, and image sharpeners, just to name two.

A good example is ColorSplash [App Store link] a $1.99US app that brings some of the sophisticated controls you’d find in Photoshop right onto the iPhone. ColorSplash can take a color image from your camera roll, or any image uploaded to your iPhone/iPod touch, and desaturate the photo selectively. You can have the photo all grayscale, except for a face, or take they sky to grayscale while leaving the rest of the landscape in color.

You can zoom into the photo using the usual finger controls, and paint color selectively on an image, leaving a very striking effect. You do all this with your finger on the touch screen, and with a bit of practice and judicious zooming you can really be very accurate. We’re used to seeing images like this come out of high end photo programs, but doing it on the iPhone is a bit of a stunner.

The app allows unlimited undo, and brushes can be semi-transparent, so the amount of color can be varied. A palette gives you the option of hard edge or soft edge brushes, and you can save your work at any stage and go back to intermediate versions of your image if you want to. You can work in portrait or landscape mode, and there is detailed, built in help.

The program author, Hendrik Kueck. is a computer scientist from Vancouver, B.C. who contributed to the creation of Adobe Lightroom 2.0, so he’s no slouch when it comes to imaging theory and practice. He previously did Juxtaposer for the iPhone and iPod touch.

The best way to see what the program does is look at some of the simple images I did in the gallery below, or click over to the author’s web site for some more information.

TUAWA Splash of color from Colorsplash originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 17 Feb 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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