New review tweak for the App Store
We’re not really a breaking news site, but here’s a quick blast of relevant news – especially as we’re doing a few more reviews on All About iPhone these days.
Apple have released a new tweak to the review system on the App Store – reviews are now more pertinent to the current version, and receive two ratings – current and all versions (click image for bigger).
Hopefully there will be more tweaks like this to improve the App Store experience, as Apple works through the growing pains of managing a store with (at last count) 27,000 applications on it.
Head over to AppleInsider for more: http://bit.ly/f9L0y
Thanks to Andy for the tip.
Sync problems with single-name contacts
Well if Steve can have a rant then so can I! Is anyone else having a problem with single name contacts syncing to their iPhone?
The problem is simple: I have a contact on my iPhone, e.g. “Mum”, which is filled in as the First Name in Contacts. The Last Name is blank. That’s the way I want it.
The contact is also set up *exactly* the same way within Address Book. I sync with my Mac a few times, and everything seems fine. Then all of a sudden, on some random sync, the name will change from “Mum” to “Mum Radford”. Maddening!
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App Review: AppSniper
[Andy’s the first of our new reviewers – so welcome to him, and I hope you enjoy his review! – Matt]
The success of the App Store has been one of the key factors in the continued success of the iPhone (and iPod Touch), allowing developers to fill holes in the functionality of the device and widen its appeal to more users than the base functionality alone might attract. Giving the platform a way to regularly refresh itself also helps keep the device from gathering dust on a shelf somewhere once the initial thrill of a shiny new gadget has worn off.
But the success of the App Store has led to problems of its own. With dozens (often a hundred or more) new apps appearing daily, keeping track has gone beyond the realm of the casual user. The onboard App Store application itself no longer gives the user an easy way to keep track of all the new applications. Also, with increasing competition among the developers, one or two day sales mean there are often bargains to be had but how are users meant to know?
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Carnival of the Mobilists 164
This week’s Carnival of the Mobilists is yet again chock full of excellent writing, plus another contribution from All About iPhone. There are stats galore, especially relating to mobile data usage from Tomi Ahohen and Chetan Sharma.
But the post of the week, and also my favourite read, was from Andrew Grill of London Calling. He reports on his “Eureka moment” with Twitter + mobile + search. There is a lot going on in the mobile location services space at the moment. We’ll also have article up on that topic soon, from someone working on an iPhone location app.
Read the Carnival at Ubiquitous Thoughts.
The App Store update system is broken, I tell you…
Up until about a month ago, I’d been very impressed by the way the App Store app (if you see what I mean) kept me up to speed with updates to my installed applications. However, I’m now as wary of App Store’s claimed updates as I would be of a cornered lion…
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The Unborn, Watchmen and interactive mobile billboards
How do you market a film these days? Billboards, newspapers and TV channels are everywhere. But none of them are right in front of your face all day; you don’t constantly check them. The same is not true of your mobile. It’s your most personal device, your conduit to the outside world. It’s a marketer’s dream location.
And the best way to get that promotion on people’s phones? Make them want to install it themselves. I’m going to look at two movie tie-in iPhone apps have been released recently: The Unborn and Watchmen. Just how well do they deliver, for the film studios and for the consumer?
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Hardware Review: Optoma Pico PK101
Think for a moment about the wealth of video content available to iPhone owners. You’ve got YouTube, BBC iPlayer, Joost, Daily Motion and of course the treasure trove of video content that is the iTunes Store – movies, TV shows, music videos, video podcasts, etc. What other phone, or indeed other handheld playback device, has access to so much video media?
Not too surprisingly then the iPhone is a stonkingly good media player. I’m sure I’m not the only one that has watched many hours of video on the iPhone’s glorious display. But there are times when you want to share the experience. Thankfully Apple endowed the iPhone with a pleasing TV output mode. Often overlooked the TV output feature is quite powerful, providing control over aspect ratios and image scaling. Combining TV out with a half decent TV will get you more than acceptable results for the most part, even when viewing video from some of the streaming services such as BBC iPlayer. (more…)
Carnival of the Mobilists #163
This week the Carnival is hosted at Golden Swamp. There was a last-minute call for articles, and the Mobilists have responded with some quality articles. There’s plenty regarding Mobile World Congress, but I particularly enjoyed Russell Buckley’s vision of a mobile-centric future at MobHappy.
Read the Carnival here: http://www.goldenswamp.com/2009/03/02/carnival-of-the-mobilists-163
Listen to live BBC radio on your iPhone
I’m a fan of BBC iPlayer, and I noticed recently that if you sign up for BBC iPlayer Labs, you can now get radio via:
New high quality AAC+ streaming, plays back in our Flash player, no need to install Real Player.
Sweet! No need for Real Player! Wait a minute though – Flash? That means there’s no additional iPhone joy. So here’s a way around it (and it’s not one of those jailbroken iPhone-only hints). And it’s currently the closest thing to a native BBC Radio iPhone app.
Building an iPhone application in a month
Here’s an interesting document I found about iPhone development, via Guy Kawasaki on Twitter.
Ten23 Software built PhotoKast from scratch in a month. It says plenty about the iPhone’s development environment and distribution channel (not to mention their tenacity) that they were able to do this.
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