Coconut Island Studio has introduced a new game called Finger Balance. This application has taken the lead in many rankings and is now ready to please everyone. Finger Balance received the title of "New and interesting" and "What's New" in the world of Apple App Store. To celebrate the success of the application and show gratitude to all the users who appreciate it, Coconut Island Studio decided to present a free iPhone 4 and, as a bonus, give a classic game iDragPaper this weekend.
Everyone can take part in the raffle. To do this, just buy Finger Balance and pass levels 4-N, N 7-and 10-N. Then, at each level you will see a button. Click on it, enter your email address, confirm it, and you are registered in the raffle! Now Coconut Island Studio will give a winner 10 iTunes gift certificates at $ 15 each.
Raffle ends at midnight on August 22, 2010. The winners will be contacted by e-mail. So do not waste time, play!
New iPad TV commercial just launched by Apple introduce some 3rd party apps for iPad like Fruit Ninja HD, Twitter.com, Flipboard and others. The idea is obviously to show that iPad with apps from the App Store and Web can do nearly everything. Let's watch:
Last week, SFWeekly has published reports about how the iPad is helping children of autism. The publication visited the family of Leo Rosa, a nine-year old that suffers from autism. Despite his limitations, Leo is learning to communicate better with his family thanks to a new iPad.
Since the iPad’s unveiling in April, autism experts and parents have brought it into countless homes and classrooms around the world. Developers have begun pumping out applications specifically designed for users with special needs. Through the devices, some of these children have been able to communicate their thoughts to adults for the first time. Others have learned life skills.
For Leo, the introduction of the iPad into the family home has been life-changing. Leo’s mother won the iPad in a school raffle for $5. She stated:“With the iPad, Leo electrifies the air around him with independence and daily new skills”.
Recently iStorytime has announced a new application for reading texts with children called Danny the Dragon. It's not the content of the selected stories, which we admire. This application for the iPhone and iPad devices is one of the first that includes video stories being read in a beautiful and understandable language.
Well, if you are waiting for something extraordinary or high tech, you have come to the wrong place. This application includes simple video narrations being read by the woman. Nevertheless, it is quite useful and necessary application for each family that has a child and has no time to go shopping in search of paper books.
Apple has removed the updated of the Camera+ application from the App Store within two weeks. It happened because Cupertino found out that the current app has some hidden downsides allowing let the volume buttons on the iPhone side to act as a camera shutter button, each time a user comes opens Mobile Safari and searches for the URL camplus://enablevolumesnap.
It definitely violates the regulations and rules of Apple, that’s why the company decided to get rid of this application quite unceremoniously. What does it mean? It means that when you try to buy the app, you’ll get the following error: “the item you are trying to purchase is currently unavailable”.
The developer of the Camera+ photography application, TapTapTap, might think about creating new versions of the app in future, but we hope it won’t have such “surprises”.
Today Adobe has announced a new Photoshop application for the devices based on iOS while giving a new image to its previous limited functional application Photoshop.com Mobile for the Apple iPhone. Now it has got a new name Adobe Photoshop Express. Here you’ll find a great number of new features for the iPad sporting the larger screen space, support for the device and improved user interface (UI).
Does it have pros and cons?
Yes! There is no support for the Retina Display of the new iPhone 4. It is quite disappointing for many users.
First Apple’s iAd was Nissan Leaf ad. Users who viewed Nissan's Leaf electric car iAd spent 90 seconds with the interactive advertisement -- ten times longer than customers will spend with a traditional ad. Moreover, people are five times more likely to click on interactive advertisement than they are a traditional online display ad. One more proof of iAd success was made by Unilever, maker of Dove shower products, said its initial advertisement proved to be successful, with 20 percent of viewers checking the ad multiple times, and a percentage in the double digits seeking further information about the product. iAds are also popular among iPhone users, because they don't have to leave their app and launch a browser to view them.
iAd success helps Apple to take up more than half of the mobile advertising market in 2010. And developers, too, have found success with the new iAd platform: Apple providing them a 60 percent cut of the advertising revenue.
At first glance, Apple's new “Apps to Impress your Friends” section may seem like an innocent section showing you the coolest apps that will surely wow your pals. Look again and you will soon realize the section should be called "Apps to Impress your friends enough to buy an iPhone." The section includes amazing and the newest iPhone exclusive apps.
These apps leverage advanced technologies. But apps work extremely well on iOS. For example, Ocarina will blow your friends away when they see you're playing an instrument with your breath, Red Laser will blow your friends away when you scan items at the mall and etc.
We've gotten some information that Apple plans to rename the Apple TV into "iTV", which was initially named as "iTV" in September 2006, but changed the name to "Apple TV" for its launch in January 2007. Apparently the box won't be capable of handling 1080p video. Instead it will only push out 720p clips. Moreover, video experts note that the difference in resolution is not visible to users at a normal TV viewing distance unless the screen is larger than 55 inches. The device will be getting apps and presumably an App Store entry.
iTV well be running iOS that means that it will get access to iTunes. By converting Apple TV into an iOS device, the company could erect a third new wing of apps in iTunes. This smaller, cheaper device will probably use network streaming rather than Apple TV's hard drive for local storage.
Today iPhone and iPad Box.net apps were upgraded and now allow saving necessary files for offline access, which means that with a new version you can use Box.net services even if no Internet connection available. When collaborator makes changes to documents on any of the Box platforms, previously saved files may be synchronized with its updated versions. The update also includes iOS4 support, high-res graphics and fast app switching.
One of the Box.net's co-founders Aaron Levi said that the investments in the mobile strategy are caused by several facts. First of all, the increasing number of business tasks may be now performed on mobile devices and everybody should take it into account. Besides that the service's competitors like Microsoft Sharepoint haven't yet created strong mobile offerings, which is a chance for Box.net to increase its share on this market.
At the moment iPhone and iPad apps that implement Box.net services have been downloaded 150 000 times. Levie said that up next are Blackberry and Android apps.
New section in App Store called "Try Before You Buy" allows users to test drive selected list of apps before purchasing it.
At the current moment section contains freemium, "lite" and ad-supported apps that have both free and paid versions. If the app doesn't have free version, it will not appear in the section.
Section "Try Before You Buy" can be found under the "Free on the App Store" heading. Currently there are 98 apps, including such games as Labyrinth 2, Metal Gear Solid Touch, Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown and free versions of apps like AccuTerra and Moodagent.
Yesterday Apple released iOS 4.1 beta 3 for developers. Build number is 8B5097d for the firmware and 10M2308 for the SDK. Here is what's new in beta 3:
A revised API that allows applications to have an access to contact thumbnail pics;
Media playback enhancements, which include new classes in AV Foundation, related to batched playback, writing/reading and file compression;
New features of Game Center: now players can track their in-game achievements and game scores on leaderboards and find teams for group play. But it was also found that Game Center is no longer supported for iPod touch 2G and iPhone 3G, though it is unknown whether it is a permanent change or not.
Final release of iOS 4.1 is expected to be shipped in September or October.
FaceTime feature gives users the possibility to make voice calls. Apple restricted this feature to Wi-Fi only. Today it became possible to use it over 3G!
The main topic of the new Macworld will be iPhone 4. That's why the image of the new iPhone 4 was photographed and post-processed entirely on another iPhone 4. This was done by Peter Belanger.
Shooting and editing only on the iPhone had its challenges. Normally Peter shoots Macworld covers with a Phase One P65+ digital camera, which offers 12 times the resolution of the iPhone 4’s camera. That meant getting an image as close to the size of the Macworld cover as possible, because any cropping would reduce the resolution of the image even further.
For post-processing Peter used two iPhone apps - PhotoForge ($3) to remove green cast and the Resize-Photo ($1) to increase the resolution from 216 dpi to 290 dpi to meet the printing requirements.
At the Black Hat security conference, which is being held this week, research firm Lookout told about malicious application that was found in Google's Android Market. It was collecting private data (such as phone's SIM card number, text messages, browsing history, voice mail password and subscriber identification) and then sending it to a web site imnet.us, which is owned by an unknown person in Shenzhen, China.
According to VentureBeat report, written by Dean Takahashi, an app was claimed to load custom background wallpapers and was submitted by Jackeey Wallpaper. Read the rest of this entry »