The Week In iPhone Apps: Makin’ Music, Chompin’ Ghosts

This week in the unseasonably entertaining App Store: Another bizarrely amazing music app; free turn-by-turn directions of questionable reliability; a fat man on a tightrope; an interesting take on the classic-est of classics; and a treat for our dear developers.

Pac-Mac Remix: This is an official, sanctioned Pac-Man remake, and accordingly a pretty good one. Purists might be turned off by the 3D graphics, but the gameplay hasn’t really changed; in fact, using finger flicks to change direction is a brilliant way to control Pac-Man. For $6, as is, this is good; for $2—even if that would mean losing the flashy production—it would kill.

Mujik: An instrument-slash-synthesizer made of books, flies, cardboard and whimsy. It takes about five minutes to figure out what the hell is going on with Mujik, but once you do, it’s beautiful, and the musical possibilities are tremendous. This is as good as Brian Eno’s Bloom, if not better—not least because it’s free. (via TUAW)

Tightwire: A fat man on a tightrope wire, in 3D, who you keep alive by tilting your iPhone. The graphics are good, the impact animations forceful and satisfying, and difficulty level high enough to keep this simple concept entertaining for more than a few minutes. One dollar.

Waze: To be honest, crowd-sourced navigation sounds like a pretty terrible idea, but who am I to judge: Waze has been available in Israel for quite a while, and people swear by it there. In the US, its userbase is a little lean, and most the features don’t yet work as well as they’re supposed to—turn-by-turn navigation included. If more people join, I guess, the user-contributed information, like common speed traps, road quirks, and whatever else you can think of, should get much better. Cool, but couldn’t Google just do this by enabling user layers in Maps? Free.

Call of Duty: World at War Companion: Ha ha, that icon got you all excited, didn’t it? Sorry, this isn’t a new Call of Duty game for the iPhone. Actually, no, not sorry, because for anyone who plays COD: WaW (nice acronym), the detailed stats-tracking and player communication features are pretty neat. Free.

iSimulate: Alright kids, step outside—this one’s for the developers. iSimulate lets you display iPhone apps on your computer screen, mainly for the purposes of demo recording, which is tough in the SDK emulator on account of its awkward accelerometer and multitouch implementations. $8.

The Week’s App News on Giz:

Gross Virtual Girlfriend App Is One-Upped by its Gross Fox News Coverage

Apple Yanks Sex Offender Locator From App Store to the Relief of Perverts Everywhere

Giz Explains: How Push Works

Apple’s Phil Schiller Explains They Don’t Actually Censor Dictionaries

Now Apple’s Blocking All Ebook App Store Submissions? Update: No

The Stupidest App Store Incident Yet: Apple Censors a Dictionary

Third Largest App Store Developer Gets Banned, For Sucking

Windows Mobile Wants In On the iPhone App Action, Literally

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 Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.

Giz Explains: How Push Works

Push. It’s not just a verb that sends people careening down a flight of stairs. It’s also not just for guys in suits diddling on BlackBerrys. You hear it featured on new iPhone apps every week. So, what is it?

Well, push describes a lot of things. Push is simply an action. Versus, say, pulling. Maybe that’s horribly abstract, so try this: If information shows up on your phone or neural implant or messaging program without you (or your wares) asking for it—that’s push. The info is pushed to you, versus you pulling it from the source. There are tons of ways push can be (and is) used.

Email’s a pretty good starting point for grasping the difference between push and the other stuff. You probably know good ol’ POP3—you log into your mail server and pull down new messages. Maybe it’s on a frequent schedule, so it feels automatic, even instant, but you’re still reaching out to the mail server every time to check and see if there’s new mail to download.

IMAP is a little fancier than POP, where all of your folders and email are the same on all of your computers, phones and other gadgets, and any change you make on one shows up on the other, since it’s all happening on a remote server somewhere. But with the standard setup, it’s still the same deal—your mail program has to log in, see what’s new, and pull it down. IMAP does have a pretty neat trick though, an optional feature called IMAP IDLE, that does push pretty well—it’s what the Palm Pre uses for Gmail, for instance. Essentially, with IMAP IDLE, the mail server can tell whatever mail app that you’ve got new messages waiting, without you (or your app) hammering the refresh button over and over. When the app knows there’s new messages, it connects and pulls them down, so it gives you just about the speed of push, without matching the precise mechanism.

While different systems do things differently (obvs), what true push services have in common is that they generally insert a middleman between you and the information source.

RIM’s setup for the BlackBerry is probably the most sophisticated. When your BlackBerry registers with the carrier (which has to support BlackBerry), the details are handed to RIM’s network operating center, so the NOC knows where to send your mail. The NOC watches your mail server, keeps tabs on the phone’s location, and pushes email through to your phone whenever you get new stuff.

What makes it push is that your phone’s not actually polling a server for new messages to pull—it only receives them when they hit your inbox, and are then pushed to your phone by RIM’s servers. This means you save a lot of battery life that’d be wasted by making the phone constantly hit the servers for updates. The flipside is that when RIM’s servers blow up, you don’t get email, since it’s all routed through their system—hence the other panic that grips dudes in suits once every few months lately.

The other biggie is Microsoft, who has Direct Push, part of Exchange’s ActiveSync. It’s architected a little bit differently, so it doesn’t need the precise kind of data about where your phone is that RIM’s NOCs do: The phone or whatever you’ve got sends an HTTPS with a long lifespan to the Exchange server—if new mail arrives before it dies, the Exchange tells your device there’s new stuff, so it should start a sync. After it syncs, the device sends out another long HTTPS request, starting it all over again.

Apple’s weak-sauce substitute for multitasking works pretty similarly: The developer has something its wants to send an iPhone, when its application isn’t actually running, like an IM. It sends the notification to Apple’s push servers, which send the notification to the phone through a “persistent IP connection” the phone maintains with the servers. This connection, which is only maintained when push notifications are turned on, is needed to locate the phone, but still doesn’t draw as much power as constantly pinging the mail server.

Of course, those aren’t the only push systems around, and it’s only getting more and more important as stuff gets shifted to the cloud. We haven’t mentioned Android and Google Chrome, but both utilize push (or will) in different ways. Suffice it to say, Google Sync will soon be a major player in this game. But basically, all kinds of different data can be pushed—calendars, contacts, browser data, hell, even IM is a kind of push—and they all work more or less the same broad way. Just don’t ask us why there isn’t push Gmail on the iPhone yet.

Still something you wanna know? Send questions about pushing, shoving and pancake massacres to tips@gizmodo.com, with “Giz Explains” in the subject line.

The Week In iPhone Apps: Bat Boys and Monkey Islands

This week in the App Store it may as well’ve been 1991: We’ve got Lollapalooza! Monkey Island! Novel self-help strategies! Glittery-clothed strippers! And last but not nearly least, everyone’s favorite defunct supermarket tabloid! The Golden Age of culture, people.

Weekly World News: Now is neither the time nor place to get into my deep appreciation of the WWN, and I feel their blurb says enough:

For over 30 years, the Weekly World News has been the World’s ONLY Reliable News Source. The Weekly World News bares the TRUTH about UFOs, aliens, monsters, Elvis’ whereabouts, cryptids, popular celebrities, and the mutant freaks that live among us.

Considering you can get the entire archives of the paper for free on Google Books, it seems dumb that this $1 app only gives you access to covers, though the add-your-own-face feature is pretty neat. Granted, this could have been a content ratings thing, because half of the dead magazine’s columnists were basically insane, or sexist, or some other terrible kind of “ist.” It’s part of the charm! [via Gawker]

Pocket Dancer: A 3D lady will dance a sad little dance while you spin her around with your finger and occasionally change the floor lighting. Fact: There is absolutely no way to use this without looking and feeling like a creep. One dollar!

Booyah Society : Pulling ourselves out of the slime, here’s the high concept app for the week: Booyah Society assigns arbitrary point values to day-to-day achievements, creatings a sort of WoW-ish self-help game, integrates with Twitter and Facebook. Despite how it sounds, it’s not at all pathetic or annoying; I can easily see how someone who already broadcasts their every action on social networks could get hooked on this. Free.

The Secret of Monkey Island: Special Edition: Diehard fans see Monkey Island titles as the zenith of 2D adventure gaming, while most people who grew up in the early 90s just remember them as being pretty fun. I’m guessing only one of those two groups will be willing to drop the full $8 on this, but to be fair to LucasArts, the game translates well to the iPhone and it’s pretty massive.

Lollapalooza: Sharing its concept and design with the excellent Coachella app from last year, this free download helps you find your way around the only legendary music festival ever to be ruined by the advent of txt speak.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

TheXchange: Will This Porn iPhone App Survive the Apple Banhammer?

iDisk iPhone App Lightning Review: Halfway There

Soon We’ll Be Able to Search the App Store For More Than Exact Product Names

Apple’s Chickenshit Approval Process Has Gone Too Far

EA Bringing Madden, FIFA Franchises to the iPhone

iPhone Owners Score Free MobileMe iDisk App

Offender Locator Tracks Sex Offenders on Your iPhone

iWet T-Shirts: Yet Another iPhone App That Makes Me Shake My Head in Shame

GV Mobile Google Voice App Available For Free On The iPhone via Cydia

Nissan Developing iPhone App to Monitor Electric Cars

Apple Rejects Official Google Voice iPhone App

Multiplayer Chess iPhone App Is Very Cool, But Probably Won’t Be a Bestseller

GV Mobile Google Voice iPhone App Getting Booted From App Store for Usual Ridiculous Reasons

Spotify iPhone App Kills Pandora, Last.FM, Slacker and iTunes in One Shot

Weirdest Use of Spreadsheets I’ve Ever Heard

Man, Don’t Choices Suck?

Passion iPhone App Will Let You ‘See How Good You Are at Sex’

Resident Evil 4 Brings More Re-Killing Zombies to the iPhone

Top Three iPhone Apps: Weed, Booze, and Partial Nudity

Apple Will Let iPhone Apps Augment Our Sad Little Realities in September With OS 3.1

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 Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Apple’s Chickenshit Approval Process Has Gone Too Far

The App Store approval process has always been mysterious, slightly ridiculous and mildly infuriating. But with the summary execution of Google Latitude as well as every Google Voice app, it’s finally gone too far.

Until this past week, Google’s been the most privileged developer for the iPhone outside of Apple itself. I mean, Google Maps and YouTube come baked into the phone. Hell, Google even gave the iPhone voice search—a more powerful version, no less—before it delivered the feature to its own OS, very obviously using private APIs that would’ve likely resulted in a swift kick in the ass for any other developer.

Yet here we are, Apple has rejected not one, but two Google apps that would deliver major new features to the iPhone, for reasons that are so obviously tripe it’s insulting to even our non-exceptional intelligence. A Google Latitude app would confuse us? Really? Because it would “use Google to serve maps tiles”? Wait. Isn’t one of iPhone 3.0‘s major new features that it can use Google Maps inside of other applications? So like every app can use Google to serve maps tiles. I admit, though, Latitude is a really big word. What does it even mean? That is pretty confusing. Maybe they should call it, like, Google Stalker.

What happened with Google Voice is worse. Google didn’t elaborate on the reason Apple gave for rejecting its official Google Voice app six weeks ago—and presumably, Google had more success wringing it out of Apple than most developers. Hours before Google broke the news, the developer of GV Mobile—a solid third-party app for Google Voice—said that it was being pulled from the App Store for “duplicating iPhone features.” Then every other Google Voice application was silently killed too. Even though, reportedly, Apple’s Phil Schiller personally apologized when GV Mobile initially ran into problems getting approved months ago, and it’d been sitting pretty in the store since then. Oh, and there are tons of other apps that duplicate the functions of dialing and sending text messages.

John Gruber at Daring Fireball says Google Voice was nuked by AT&T, “it’s that simple.” It’s not the first time AT&T’s put a hit on apps: NetShare, the tethering app was yanked (though it clearly never should’ve been approved in the first place), and Skype and SlingPlayer streaming were crippled so that they only worked over Wi-Fi. The difference between those situations and this one is that in those cases, there was, at least nominally, a greater good for users: Limiting those apps protected people from the possibility of AT&T’s fragile, already busted-ass network completely collapsing under the weight of millions of phones streaming tons of data. And, you can still actually use Skype and Sling apps, albeit in a slightly constrained manner.

Google Voice, on the other hand, poses no such mortal danger to the network. It only uses a tiny bit of data at the very beginning of a call to set it up, and text messages sent through the service would be infinitesimally small scraps of data (not to mention, there are other immensely popular apps that already send text messages as data). You still use your AT&T voice minutes when you’re on a call using Google Voice. And, for whatever reason, AT&T’s fear is about Google Voice on the iPhone, since the app is available for BlackBerry on their network.

The situation crystallizes our worst fears about Apple’s dictatorial App Store. Users aren’t being protected from bad things or from themselves here. Even though it seemed ridiculous to us, when apps with objectionable content were blocked or booted before the ratings system was in place, it was in the interest of some paradoxically lazy but over-protective parent somewhere out there. But the only thing being guarded is some ephemeral long-term interest of AT&T against the devaluation of phone numbers and the ability to easily use any phone at will. (FWIW, AT&T says “AT&T is not involved in the approval process, so we can’t speak to this issue.”) Not only is Apple hurting users in the service of AT&T by denying them innovative new features, they won’t even bother to come up with a good excuse. If they’re going to lie about it, they could at least make the rationale believable.

To truly get a sense of the chickenshittniess on Apple’s part, Just read this account of the conversation VoiceCentral’s developer had with Apple when they were told their app was going to be pulled from the store. It’d be hilarious if it didn’t mean a developer got screwed.

It’s obvious Google’s not happy about it either—and not just because Google exec Marissa Mayer’s deleted tweet pointing to a satire piece about Google deleting Apple from its search results, since it “duplicates a lot of the functionality of other sites.” If everything was copacetic Google wouldn’t tell the world Apple shut down their applications. (And if the alternative web apps were all that great, Google wouldn’t make native apps to begin with.) Whatever the causes, there is now definitely a rift between Apple and Google.

It’s a sobering reminder of what Apple’s total control over the iPhone platform really means. For the first time, it’s denying people exciting new features and possibilities, without even a semblance of benefit or concern for users. Maybe it’s a catfight with Google. Maybe AT&T finally found a clause in its contract that didn’t make them Apple’s bitch. Either way, it’s just depressing.

A year after we said we still need the iPhone app black market, nothing’s changed. To wit, GV Mobile’s available on Cydia right now. We know the App Store is Apple’s exclusive domain, and playing in their space has its tradeoffs, but the implicit trust is that whatever Apple does that might seem ridiculous or weird, it’s ultimately trying to create a better experience for users. That’s just not the case here, taking the App Store approval process beyond cryptic and infuriating into something that’s actually toxic for users. Since it’s crossed that line, our App Disapproval Watch starts now—it ends when Apple finally cuts this crap out.

Google Voice app GV Mobile ported to jailbroken iPhones, web app version in the works

So well-mannered, straight-laced iPhone users got a pretty big slap in the face yesterday by way of Apple’s (and AT&T’s, no doubt) total Google Voice rejection. Looks like jailbreakers are picking up the pieces, as GV Mobile developer Sean Kovacs — whose app was in the iTunes store for some time before being yanked yesterday — has ported the Voice client over to Cydia free of charge, although donations are gladly accepted. Even more interesting, but less concrete, Kovacs said he was already working on a web app version, possibly for submission to Palm’s app catalog. No word on the fate of GVdialer, an app that was also unceremoniously pulled, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it followed in similar footsteps.

Read – GV Mobile now on Cydia
Read – Sean Kovacs on Twitter

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Google Voice app GV Mobile ported to jailbroken iPhones, web app version in the works originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Jul 2009 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple Rejects Official Google Voice iPhone App

Now we know why Google Voice apps were only released for BlackBerry and Android. Apple rejected Google’s official Google Voice app when it was submitted for approval six weeks ago. What. The. Shit.

Here’s the quote from the Google spokesperson to TechCrunch:

“We work hard to bring Google applications to a number of mobile platforms, including the iPhone. Apple did not approve the Google Voice application we submitted six weeks ago to the Apple App Store. We will continue to work to bring our services to iPhone users – for example, by taking advantage of advances in mobile browsers.”

This news comes on the heels of Sean Kovacs’ GV Mobile Google Voice app being pulled from the store for “duplicating features.” Even though, TechCrunch relates, Phil Schiller himself personally approved GV Mobile and called Kovacs to apologize when its initial approval was delayed months ago.

TechCrunch suspects, probably correctly, that apps for Google Voice are being rejected at least in part through AT&T’s influence, since Google Voice lets you send free text messages and delivers cut-rate international calls—on top of making phone numbers even more meaningless—making it scary to AT&T in way like Skype VoIP over 3G. Either way, it seems obvious the Google Voice service is being targeted for extinction, at least as a native app on the iPhone.

Google plans to take the same route it was forced to take with Latitude on the iPhone—web app land. It’s an interesting switch for Google and Apple on the app front, actually. Google was noted for getting away with using private APIs in its Google Mobile app to make the voice search command work. Now Apple’s rejected two of its major apps in a row, in a way validating Google’s belief that web apps are the future anyway.

It seems somewhat silly, and a bit of a reach, to insinuate the rejections are signs of brewing hostilities between Apple and Google, but you have to figure if there weren’t any behind the rejections, they’ve at least got to be causing some anxiety by now.

Whatever the reasons, it sucks, and as Jason Kincaid says, what’s really troubling about this rejection is that it appears that “Apple is now actively stifling innovation.” And the whole black box app approval process doesn’t exactly alleviate that sinking feeling either. After all, if Google doesn’t stand a chance, how does anybody else? [TechCrunch]

The Week In iPhone Apps: Look Into Your Soul, Kid

This week in the App store, things got a little deep: We discovered haunting new sounds, created fine art, psychoanalyzed our friends, read great literature, experimented with prescription drugs, and even reconnected with an estranged child. Your turn!

Layers: Layers is a Sketches-style drawing app, except with, well, layers. That might seem a little excessive for a fingerpainting app, but for serious iPhone art—which is a thing, by the way—five layers and the ability to export in PSD format is invaluable. Five dollars.

Barnes and Noble eReader: Barnes and Noble‘s eBook+eReader megannouncement mentioned that their fancy new eBook store would be supported on the iPhone, and this is what they were talking about. The app is a readily customizable e-reader with integration for B&N’s store, which seems large and cheap enough, though I haven’t had much time to dive into it. The app worked fine for me, but quite a few folks are reporting glitches in this early build—some quite serious. Free, until you want some decent books.

iConcertCal: Another ultra-obvious iPhone 3.0 app that we just weren’t allowed to have until now, iConcertCal scans your music library to produce a list of concert dates for all your favorite artists. The $3 price would be excessive if the app weren’t as good as it is, but the inbuilt ticket purchasing, venue mapping and iTunes integration are thoughtful and, well, they work.

PhonyPhone: Babies love iPhones, for a lot of the same silly reasons adults do. So if you’re prepared to take on the risk of handing over a fragile, multi-hundred-dollar gadget to a being that hasn’t even figured out how to stop soiling itself yet, you may as well go for it. For a buck, PhonyPhone will give babies a colorful fake phone interface to play around with, which will speak numbers at them, play a song, and most importantly, keep your precious, dial-happy bundle from spitting up, long-distance, in your boss’s ear. I feel like there could be a little more functionality packed in here—more noises, more songs, more to play with, basically—but then again, I’m not a baby.

Rorschach: I’m a sucker for games like Rorschach, which drive you to become a moralistic, bloodthirsty vigilante bring a pass-around-the-phone element into their gameplay. (Human interaction is pretty OK! Who knew!) The concept is simple enough—you and your friends guess each others answers to simple questions about various ink blots—and it has a familial, board-game-like draw to it. Great road trip fodder, to be sure. Two dollars.

Ghostly Discovery: There are two reasons to download this app, both pretty convincing. First is the music selection, drawing from the Ghostly label’s eclectic stable of artists (if you like them, you’ll have heard the name). Broadly, though, it’s a cool take on music recommendation, which take into account parameter like how “organic” or “digital” music is, or what color “mood” you’re in (don’t worry, there’s a guide). Actually, there are three reasons: It’s freeee.

Medscape: Are you a doctor? Probably not. But if you are a doctor, or a med student, or an industry journalist, or a pharma-follower, or you’re just deep, deep into multiple pill addictions, WebMD has an app for you! Medscape keeps you from mixing your barbiturates with your muscles relaxants, and provides all kinds of pharmaceutical information, keeps you apprised of the latest medical news, offers free mini-lessons to keep doctors sharp (CMEs they’re called, for Continuing Medical Education), and most usefully to nonprofessionals, provides access to a massive directory of hospitals, physicians and pharmacies. And like pretty much nothing in healthcare, the app is free of charge.

This Week’s App News On Giz:

Google Latitude for iPhone Is a Lame Web App Because Apple Thinks We’re Easily Confused

Kensington Nightstand Dock Converts iPhone Into Retro Alarm Clock

Half-Amazing, Half-Terrifying Concept App Combines Facial Recognition with Augmented Reality

The App Store Is Just Like the Civil Rights Movement, and Other Lessons We Can Learn From iFart

Navigon MobileNavigator for North America Hits the App Store, $70 For Now

Don’t Expect a Huge Increase in Complexity Of iPhone Apps Any Time Soon

Sports Illustrated Swimsuit App Is as Close As You’ll Get to an Official iPhone Porn App

David Bowie Space Oddity iPhone App Lets You Remix the Thin White Duke Anywhere

Public Radio iPhone App Adds On-Demand Content, Accidentally Kills FM Radio

Augmented Reality iPhone App Helps You Find Your Mommy

iPhone Icon Paperclips Appify Your Office Supplies

Universal Hopes You’ll Actually Watch Blu-ray Special Features If They’re iPhone Apps

Need Medicinal Cannabis? There’s an App For That

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 Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

The Week In iPhone Apps: Augmented Everything

In a very special late night edition of your weekly iPhone apptacular: Apps that make things that are already good—FM radio, video games, shopping, spouses, the city you live in—a little bit better.

Priceless Picks: Don’t let the advertising-crap-app appearance of Priceless Picks turn you off—this free download, branded all over with Mastercard, is great. It combines loads of data collected from a number of sources, including user submissions and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk army, to give wide-ranging recommendations for things to do, eat, drink or experience wherever you happen to be. There are other apps that do similar things, yes, but the dataset on this one already seems strong, the scope—not just restaurants, not just a particular company’s establishments—is healthy, and the 3D map presentation is fantastically cool, and surprisingly smooth.

Griffin iFM Radio Browser: A lot of people will download this assuming it’s a streaming radio app—it’s something else entirely, and actually quite exciting: iFM polls your location to come up with a list of local terrestrial radio stations, providing you with access to song titles, album art, artist info and purchase links for whatever’s playing on your FM station of choice. Think of it as augmented radio.

It’s also one of the earliest examples of accessory integration for OS 3.0, featuring a software interface for Griffin’s Navigate inline iPod remote, which has a built-in radio. Free. (The app, not the accessory. Sorry.)

Snore Patrol: Leave this app running overnight and it’ll provide a decibel readout of whatever weird nostril/sinus/lung business goes down in the duration. The idea is to present a snoring partner with graphical proof of their terrible flaw, which will in turn guilt them into doing something about it. It’s funny, but the pink interface and lady-oriented marketing is disheartening. Women snore too! MUST WE MEN SUFFER IN SILENCE? Your gynocentric passive aggressiveness: Free.

Squash the Street : If the economy’s got you down, and you’re vaguely upset about some fatcats on Wall Street, or at your banks, or something, why not direct a little bit of your pent-up aggression and/or depression into your iPhone? That’s what Squash the Street is for: Pure, possibly misguided venting. Neat 3D-ish graphics give this ultra-timely voodoo doll a bit of longevity. A dollar.

Cyclops: Barcode scanning apps are a no-brainer for modern smartphones: just snap a picture of a product’s label, and they’ll pull down a plethora of information. That’s exactly what Cyclops does. It’s not the first, but it’s the first designed around the iPhone 3GS’s new camera, which has good enough macro skills to make such an app truly useful. Free. [Via TUAW]

iMetal: There are many rules by which app developers live, some written, some not. One of the most powerful is the mandate that no hardware feature on any version of the iPhone shall go unused, or perhaps more accurately, unexploited. The iPhone 3GS utilizes a magnetometer for its compass, meaning that it can detect when certain metals are nearby, and that someone could theoretically make an app that acts as a sort of makeshift metal detector. And since nothing stays theoretical for more than a week in the App Store, someone has: it’s called iMetal, and it’ll tell you when you’re iPhone is next to a giant piece or iron, or hovering somewhere near a neodymium magnet. As an actual metal detector, it’s basically useless; as a party trick, it’s pretty neat. A dollar.

The Typography Manual: To most, this app will seem esoteric, or at worst, plain boring. To type nerds, however, this is like kerned, serifed manna from heaven. As its name implies, it’s something of a typography primer and history lesson, but on top of that, it’s a visual glossary, a collection of clever type tools, a directory of keyboard combinations for special symbols, and quite a bit more. Five dollars.

World of Warcraft Mobile Armory: Anyone who doesn’t play WoW won’t know what this is, and doesn’t need to. Anyone who does can download it for free.

This Week’s App News On Giz:

Portal Gets Played On an iPhone, Sort Of

Comcast’s iPhone App Does More Than TV Listings

Google Now Finds Stuff Nearby Using Your Location in Mobile Safari

Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Makes Pizza Ordering Easier, More Gimmicky

iPhone Server Farm Puts Old Models To Good Use

TwitVid for iPhone 3GS: Guess What It Does?

TomTom’s GPS-Enhancing Car Adapter Should Work With The iPod Touch

Worms For iPhone: Same Game, Worse Controls

TuneWiki for iPhone Is Now Fully Armed and Operational

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 Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

The Week In iPhone Apps: Navigation, Inebriation, Multiplication

Oh, I can keep going: financial news aggregation, slideshow presentation, carrier lamentation, lyrical collect-ation, and… and… tethering? Seven out of eight ain’t bad. Anyway, enough of that—here’s your weekly app dump:

Navigon Lite: Hark! Dedicated navigation units are dead, for the iPhone hath slain them! Except no, not at all, because navigation apps are still fresh, imperfect, and too expensive to “just try.” Navigon’s Lite version, then, is a great idea: It lets users test the app’s routing power, nice UI, and Navteq mapset—all 1.29GB of it, taking up space on your phone. The catch—and it’s a big one—is that GPS doesn’t work. But even as is, it’s marginally useful, and definitely worth your time if you’re considering taking the plunge on the full version—whenever it comes out, that is. So you’re not shocked when it does, the Euro app is $140.

Absolut Drinkspiration : Drinking apps are almost invariably junkware, and advertisement apps are usually a waste of time. Absolut Drinkspiration is both of these things, and nonetheless manages to be pretty good. At its core it’s a drink recipe and recommendation app; at this, it does fine, helped by the fact that Absolut is happy to accommodate non-vodka listings. (A true gentleman, this app!) If your drinking needs a little guidance, it can help with that too: it’ll recommend drinks based on parameters like taste, time and mood. It’s also got GPS built in so you can upload your mixes and see what others all over the world are drinking, and exactly where they’re drinking it. Free.

TroubleSpots: TroubleSpots is part of an ambitious project, providing a tool to report when, where and how your cellular network has failed you. The reports, with embedded geodata, are passed on to AT&T, who will presumably see them and feel guilty, or something.

Two things: I think AT&T probably already knows where its network is thin; and I have a sneaking suspicion that using TroubleSpots inadvertently draws you into a secret guerilla annoyance campaign run by, say, T-Mobile, waged with iPhone apps and complaint forms. We’ll never know! Anyhow, if having the ability to instantly file a complaint with your carrier will keep you from hurling your iPhone out the car window, this app is worth its (nonexistent) price of entry.

Pix Remix, Slideshow Builder : A pair of slideshow apps, both paid, which do very similar things. Both make Ken Burns-style moving picture shows, both can share presentations from phone-to-phone or though a web interface, and neither can export presentation into common slideshow formats, like PowerPoint or Keynote. The differences? Slideshow Builder pans more intelligently using facial recognition, while Pix Remix has many more presentation options. Another biggie: Slideshow Builder, though a dollar more expensive at $4, has a near-full-featured free version.

Lyrics+ : There are a few annoyingly obvious, dead-simple apps that we just weren’t allowed to have on account of the iPhone SDK’s prior restriction on music library access. Thank god for OS 3.0. Two weeks ago, we finally got a music-library-enabled alarm clock; this week, a real-time lyrics fetcher. There are plenty of ways to incorporate lyrics into your audio file tags pre-transfer, but this one will do it over the air (correction: it just displays lyrics. Nothing is written to your tags), while you listen. A buck for now, regularly $2. (via TUAW)

Finalprice: Fun fact: With a little help from the App Store, anyone can function as an adult without any understanding of math, at all. This is thanks to apps like Finalprice, which calculates discounts and sales taxes to give you an actual, at-register totals for whatever you’re considering buying. Or, you know, you could just figure this stuff out on the built-in calculator in a few seconds. Your innumeracy tax: one dollar.

CNN Money: A polished single-source news app with a solid video section, clean (but weblike) interface, and a real-time ticker, if you’re into that kind of thing. Good if CNN Money is your thing, although I’ll stick with multi-source aggregators like Fluent, or an RSS reader. Free.

MyWi: And finally, one for the jailbreakers. MyWi is an extremely slick tethering app that, instead of connecting to computers via Bluetooth or cable, sets up a zero-config wi-fi network, router-style. It even broadcasts an SSID (a network name) so you—and others—can easily tap into an iPhone’s data connection. It’s great, but $10 is a bit steep for a jailbreak app—especially one that violates your contract, potentially landing you in trouble with your carrier.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

NYC Exit Strategy: The Other NYC Subway App You Need

The Cost of Buying Every iPhone App: $144,326.06

SoundAMP App Turns the iPhone Into a Makeshift Hearing Aid

Amazon Won’t Let Mobile Apps Use Its Product Info Anymore

iTwitter: The First iPhone Twitter App With Push, Sorta

TwittaRound Twitter Reality Augmentation Looks Amazing, Even If It Is a Horrible Idea

Push Gmail for the iPhone, Finally (It’s Not What You Think)

Prowl Pushes Growl Notifications to Your iPhone

Nearest Tube iPhone App Adds Digital Directions to Your Surroundings

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 Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

The Week In iPhone Apps: Childhood v3.0

Right, so bear with me here: this week our apps are all about learning new things, understanding the world around you, meeting new people, playing extremely silly games in large groups. Sort of like being a kid again! No? Ok.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Pocket Universe: It’s a pinchy, zoomy, 3D star map for the iPhone and iPod Touch. For the iPhone 3GS, for which the new Pocket Universe is designed, you get full-on astronomical augmented reality. Using location services, accelerometer data and the 3GS’s compass, Pocket Universe pseudo-overlays information about your stars, planets, constellations and general space things according to whatever you’re pointing at. Three dollars.

Loopt for iPod Touch: The Loopt iPhone app has been around as long as, well, iPhone apps. Since 2008, it’s earned its keep as one of the only useful friend-locating apps. Just about every mobile platform has a client, with one notable exception: the iPod Touch. That, along with Of course, Loopt isn’t quite the same without GPS, but Wi-Fi location will get you by in a bind. Still waiting for a proper 3.0 version though. Free.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Seek ‘n Spell: iPhone games tend to be a lot like games for any other portable device, and rarely leverage some of the traditionally non-gaming capabilities of the handset. Part of this is because, until recently, the developer SDK was sort of limited. Most of it, I think, is because developers just haven’t been thinking hard enough.

Take this clever, if obvious, idea for a game: A map of wherever you are is overlaid with letters, which you and you teammates can collect by physically running to their icons. Your goal is to come up with words for points, Scrabble-style. It’s a very, very cool idea, and decidedly sweatier than your typical iPhone game. A buck.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.MSNBC: Hey, look, another news organization has a content app! Let’s talk about it! This one’s less about news than about catering to fans of the network, with an emphasis on video content as well as Twitter feeds from MSNBC personalities. It’s a bit hard on the eyes, and occasionally goes stuttery on you, but it works fine. Fun fact: according to the iTunes description, this iPhone app, being an MSNBC product, uses “Microsoft’s Advanced Technologies.” What this means, I have no idea. Free.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Fluent News: If you could sense a lack of excitement about that MSNBC app, that was because of apps like Fluent. It’s far from the first multi-source news aggregator, but it’s one of the better ones. It behave like Google News, more or less, collecting important news from lots of sources and grouping it in a sensible way Why not just use Google News then, you might rudely interject? Well, for one, Fluent can cache news for offline reading, for plans, subways, caves, or wherever. It also prefetches longer articles, though I couldn’t really tell in my brief testing. Anyway, it’s free, so why not?

Skype: Another incremental update to another extremely popular app. This one gets an interface lift, but most importantly, two useful features for people who use Skype’s pay services: text messaging with SkypeOut credit (good for cheap international texts; bad for having no reply function), and Skype Voicemail support. Voicemail support is a bigger deal than it sounds: since receiving calls when you’re out is still pretty much out of the question, the voicemail access makes being out of touch a little less irritating. Still free.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Air Sharing Pro: We’ve always been impressed with Air Sharing—it’s a solid file storage/viewing solution in its basic form. The Pro version, though, is a different animal entirely. First of all, it’s expensive: $10, to be exact. It’s also got expanded support for file storage services like, MobileMe, MyDisk, and Drop.io.

The main draw is that there are tons of new file functions: emailing, which is a huge help; direct printing, via OS X printer sharing; archiving abilities, including viewing archive contents without extracting. It’s a bit like a walled-in version of Finder, and the closest to a proper file browser you’re going to get on a non-jailbroken iPhone.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

Facebook 3.0 for iPhone Adds Events and Photo Albums, But No Push (Yet)

Apple’s Nudie App Headaches Now Involve Underage Girls

iPhone OS 3.1 Features: Better Video Editing, Voice Control Over Bluetooth, And More

Remarkable Speech-to-Speech Voice Translator Coming to iPhone and Blackberry

Birdfeed Twitter App Review: Lean, Fast and Pretty

Doom Resurrection for iPhone Hits the App Store, Costs $10

A Whole Lotta Quake Will Be Blowing Up Your 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 Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.