Hasta La Gadget!

Just as we condemned the worst app genre last week, today we signal the pinnacle of another App Store standby, the soundboard app. There will never be a better soundboard made, ever. WHAT!?

Lil’ Jon: The Soundboard: Yes, this is it. It can’t go any higher. Thank you, Gabe Jacobs Productions—I’m looking the other way on the fart app you already have in the store. $1 Update: For some reason it’s been pulled. Nooo!

Multi-Photo Email: Does exactly what the title says—lets you send more than one image per email. Much, much needed default functionality that unfortunately costs a $1 to add via third-party, but if you email a lot of photos this is really handy.

Hot or Not: Yeah, I can’t believe this company is still going either. Remember what 2001 felt like by scrolling through the sad parade in line at the DMV. Give them a 1-10 rating. Get your license renewed. Go home. A day well spent. It’s free.

eMees Avatar Generator: If the Wii’s Miis are more PlayMobil, Emees for iPhone is more Boondock Saints. There are a couple apps like this, but Emees looks like it has enough options to make reasonably accurate portraits of your friends and celebrity contacts alike. It’s $3

JetSet Airport: Airport Security is one of the best flash games I’ve ever played, and now it’s on the iPhone. You watch people going through security, and deny those trying to bring on dangerous items (like Spray Cheese). The iPhone adds a neat location-based feature by letting you unlock special unique prizes for over 100 international airports if you play in that actual airport. Great stuff. $5

Zombie Chav Hunt: Chavs are kind of like England’s version of white trash, kind of like hillbilly + Ali G + fake tans + fake Burberry. Here they have taken a further step into terribleness by turning into zombies, and you can shoot them with a variety of weapons. Looks like a good way to blow a few minutes. It’s a buck.

Chop Sushi: Picture a Bejewelled-like puzzle game, but with different types of sushi. Wasabi hurts your opponent (yes it’s multiplayer too), and other types do other things. Fantastic for waiting in line at Japanese restaurants.

This week’s App News on Giz:

• iPhone Twitter App Battlemodo: Best and Worst Twitter Apps for iPhone (if you are a Twitterer even half as hardcore as our own Matt Buchanan, this is essential.)

• Come Up With Some iPhone Apps Apple Would Never, Ever Allow (Adam’s Photoshop contest this week—file your entries now!)

• We Now Interrupt Pandora Radio For This Brief Message, Every So Often

• The SniPod Touch: When Apps Go Deadly

• Ustream’s iPhone Viewer App Now Live In Time For the Inauguration

Tron For iPhone’s Multitouch Multiplayer Mode is Awesome: Four Hands, One iPhone

NSFW: Wobble iPhone App Adds Boob Jiggle To Real Boobs, IS Approved

• BBQ Pro: iPhone Meat Management Simulator

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, our top apps directory, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

We’re not exactly sure what this says about the officially unofficial App Store policy on explicit content, but David Carnoy’s Knife Music has just been approved for distribution in said marketplace after the so-called “objectionable content” was removed. Essentially, the author decided to submit a copy of the novel sans a few foul words, with him noting that it was “more important to have people check the book out — along with the whole concept of e-books on the iPhone” — rather than take some stance for personal liberties and whatnot. For those interested, it’s ready for download as we speak at no charge, but if you’re the indecent type, you’ll have to manually add in those swears as you go.

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets

Knife Music e-book approved for App Store after language modification originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Okay, so maybe a new browser isn’t the first thing we’d like to see replaced with some fresh thinking out of the App Store — that honor probably goes to the email client, preferably with something that could rival the G1’s capabilities — but regardless, Apple’s infamous “duplication of functionality” argument has hamstrung iPhone developers from even coming close to stepping on the mothership’s toes from day one. Consistent application of policy is still at a premium when it comes to getting iPhone apps approved, it seems — it’s hit or miss, and as best as we can tell, a happy ending involves the crossing of fingers and getting a reviewer inside Apple who’s having a good day. It looks like Apple’s slowly and quietly tweaking its game in response to complaints, though, with MacRumors noting that a slew of browsers have gone on sale in the past day; some of these things have submission dates several months old, so it seems like they’ve been holding in some sort of purgatory while Steve and the gang debate the merits of letting programmers actually practice their trade in peace. Odds are none of these initial entries will hold up to Safari for good, old-fashioned browsing, but more importantly, this might just open up the door for Opera and others to get in on the game.

Update: As it turns out, all these new browsers are WebKit-based, so while things do appear to be changing, we wouldn’t hold out hope for an iPhone edition of Mobile IE just yet.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Apple suddenly approves a bunch of browsers for App Store; major policy shift in progress? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember that proof-of-concept you saw way back in June of last year? You know, that one involving SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone? Here at Macworld, Sling Media is doing its darnedest to take the spotlight away from the looming Apple keynote by announcing that said app is almost ready for consumption. It’ll be demonstrating a functional version in San Francisco, and it’s planning to submit the software to Apple for certification sometime this quarter. In case you couldn’t care less, it’ll also unveil a prototype SlingPlayer for Mac HD, which will enable Mac-using Slingbox PRO-HD owners to stream high-def material to their Mac. As for the good stuff, pricing has yet to be determined for the SlingPlayer iPhone app, but the SlingPlayer for Mac HD will be made available gratis. Full release is after the break.

Continue reading SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone, SlingPlayer for Mac HD make debuts

Filed under: Cellphones, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Portable Audio

SlingPlayer Mobile for iPhone, SlingPlayer for Mac HD make debuts originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the holidays and our year-end app lists (games and everything else), it’s been a little while since we last dove in to our weekly roundups. Time to catch up!

Mint: The app I’m most excited about over the last few weeks is Mint—a free iPhone companion to the popular online financial planning site. Mint gives you recent transactions, balances and budgetary breakdowns for any of your banking, investment or credit accounts, presented with really nice typography and design. It’s read-only—you can’t make any transactions—and if you lose your phone, a kill switch on Mint.com will disable remote access to your account. I use this app every day now. Free

iHand Massage: It’s a hand massager. Suuuuuure, and that sexytime font was chosen for its superb double ‘s’ ligatures, mmhmm? iHand gives you full control over your iPhone’s vibrator to relax away all the tensions of the day in whichever way you choose. $1

iBonsai: A diversion, but a pretty one: iBonsai uses a random-number algorithm to grow infinitely diverse bonsai trees before your eyes, which you can then rotate around in 3D and save as your wallpaper. $3 is a little steep, but it’s very pretty.

Bailout: The texts of US laws are in the public domain: If the developers of Bailout are making a grand ironic statement by demanding you pay $2 for the full text of the Bailout bill, hats off. I doubt they’re that smart, though.

Zephyr: Another hit from the guys at Smule, creators of Ocarina and, of course, Sonic Lighter. Zephyr lets you draw images with snowflakes, adds wintery whoosing sounds. Right. But the social aspect is very cool: you can then send your message out to other users of the app, who will see it drawn out on their own screens in real time and can then send a reply. I haven’t received Zephyr stick figure porn yet, but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. $1

Shapewriter 2.0 Pro: Shapewriter is an innovative text-input tool from the creator of the T9 auto-recognition system that’s now ubiquitous on phones everywhere: drag your finger over a soft keyboard connecting letters into words like a connect-the-dots puzzle, and Shapewriter will sort it out with surprising ease. The free version also has recently received a full v 2.0 overhaul, but the pro version for $10 will remove the supported ads and add landscape typing, internal copy and paste, and few more features not found in the free version.

RjDj Shake: And finally, RjDj Shake builds on the awesome concept of music generation that responds to your environment in real time by adding accelerometer input. Seven different scenes twist the sound you hear in different ways according to your shakes and shimmies. $3

This week’s app news on Giz:

• The Best iPhone Apps of 2008

• The Only 10 Games Your iPhone Needs

• Softbank’s Speeek iPhone App Translates Spoken Japanese to English On the Fly

•IAmAMan Period-Tracking iPhone App for Sleazy, Shameless “Players”

• Crayon Physics iPhone Game Looks Amazing

• Don’t Be That Guy With The New Year’s Noisemaker iPhone App Tonight

• Safari+ Adds Desktop Functions Like Text Searching to Mobile Safari

• Melody Bell Turns iPhone Jiggling Into Ensemble Performance Art

• iSteam iPhone Steam Simulation App is Amazingly Cool

• A Disney Artist Draws Way Better Than Us…On His iPhone

• Mr. Game & Watch Saunters His Way Over to the iPhone

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.