Iphone Updates

Filed under: Cool tools, Deals, iPhone, App Store

Happy Turkey Hangover Day — or, as it’s otherwise known, shopping chaos day 2009. As Mike S. noted earlier, Business Week is calling this season “mobile shopping’s first Christmas,” and indeed there are plenty of shopper-assist apps in the App Store to help you plot, plan and navigate your gift-grabbing course:

• Apple’s collection of essential Black Friday apps
• The full suite of apps in the store tagged ‘Black Friday’
• ReadWriteWeb’s shopper hints and app list
• CNET’s list of Black Friday apps
• The BF app from our deal partners at dealnews [iTunes link]
• The $2.99 MallMaps [iTunes link], which has been featured in scores of breathless news reports and is now the #1 reference app in the US store

Meanwhile, the App Store itself isn’t immune to sales fever: plenty of games and other apps have reduced or free prices for the weekend. There are also plenty of discounts on Mac apps as well.

What we’d like to know is this: Did any of this advanced technology improve your experience out in the field today? Did you use Twitter to share bargains or Loopt to track your buddies down? Did MMS give you the power to send pictures of presents to your spouse, or did RedLaser [iTunes link] help you find a better price at the next destination? Give us the scoop in the comments below; we’ll highlight the most intriguing shopping stories in future posts.

Photo via Flickr / plain_jane53177 http://www.flickr.com/photos/10558398@N02/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

TUAWIs your iPhone your wingman for Black Friday? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone – AppStore – Black Friday – Apple – TUAW

Filed under: Multimedia, Video, iPhone, App Review

A few years ago getting video on a cellphone would have seemed out of the question. Now you can not only shoot passable videos with your iPhone 3GS, you can even edit them in style. What better way to capture those holiday moments without dragging around a lot of equipment?

ReelDirector [iTunes link] has updated the popular iPhone editor to version 2. The U.S. $7.99 app from Nexvio now allows you to do multi-track sound editing and mixing, use stills in addition to video and do a Ken Burns effect. You can also trim and split imported clips. Owners of the older version can update to version 2 for free.

Other features include the ability to change the length of opening and closing titles, and automatic flip of clips that came in upside down.

I kind of marvel that you can do this all in a phone, but you can and it works pretty well. When you are done you can email your finished video (there are limits to the size of videos you can mail) or just put in in your camera roll and export it later.

There are still some weaknesses to the app. The biggest is an inability to use iTunes music for background sound. Apple does not allow this on the iPhone, but they do allow it in iMovie on the Mac. Go figure. You can record sounds live of course, and always hold the iPhone up to a speaker to get some music, but that is a pretty low-tech way to get that done. The Ken Burns effect is limited to one simple zoom-in. You also can’t title projects in the middle, only at the beginning and the end. Documentation is pretty slim, and the linked video of instructions is for version 1, not version 2.

Having said all that, ReelDirector is a remarkable app. No, it’s not Final Cut Pro, but it runs on a dang phone! The developers are very responsive to customer suggestions, and this update added a lot of asked-for features. If you want to get those pictures of Uncle George eating his turkey dinner edited and sent out before dessert is served — and without leaving the table — you can do it.

What a world.

TUAWReelDirector can spiff up your holiday iPhone videos originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 27 Nov 2009 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone – Apple – Final Cut Pro – TUAW – iTunes

Filed under: iTS, iTunes, Developer

After seeing the intent by developers and artists to create iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for their music, Apple has opened up the availability to develop these features to third parties. However, automatic submission for iTunes LP and iTunes Extras is not expected until early 2010; in the meantime, it’s still a limited process and uploads must be performed manually.

If you’re an iTunes contributor and you’re looking forward to developing an iTunes LP of your own, Apple has posted several resources for Extras & LP, including a best practices guide, a development guide, asset delivery tips and a testing guide.

There’s also templates to get you started, and documentation on the TuneKit framework used by iTunes LP and iTunes Extras. These make extensive use of the WebKit framework, while using many new web standards.

Are you going to be more interested in these features since it’s now open for development? Let us know in the comments below!

TUAWApple documents iTunes LP and iTunes Extras for developers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 26 Nov 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple – iTunes – TUAW – Unofficial Apple Weblog – iTunes Extras