Archive for the ‘iPod Games’ Category
10 new games for iPhone/iPod Touch from EA
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008 | 144 viewsOne of the largest game publishers, company Electronic Arts, announced 10 games for iPhone and a player iPod touch. In the end of September in sale first game EA for touch devices Apple - Spore Origins will arrive.
Among the remained games are registered YAHTZEE Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, MONOPOLY: Here and Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed: Undercover and The Sims 3.
It is obvious, that EA seriously considers iPhone and iPod touch as perspective game platforms, planning to transfer on devices the majority popular titles. We wait for similar decisions from others game developers.
Five iPhone apps for football junkies
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 | 90 viewsFiled under: iPod Family, iTunes, iPhone, App Store
With apologies to our friends across the pond who have their own take on what “football″ really is, the first full day of a new season of American football got underway yesterday with a whole host of league games that stretched late into the night. The only thing better than watching a football game is having some really cool football-related apps on your iPhone or iPod touch while you watch. Keep reading to learn more about my favorite five apps.
Pro Football Live - Here’s where to go for all the latest updates, scores, and news around the NFL. Customize your own page to the upcoming schedules of your favorite teams and the latest photos from around the league. Individual team page give great breakdowns of team and individual stats on every game — including preseason. If you′re a stats junkie, this is the app for you.
Fantasy Football Cheatsheet ‘08 - Keep track of everything that’s going down with your players and team with this cool app. It’s got the rankings of 400 players and their defenses, so you can easily through data while you assemble your draft wish list. Search players by name or team, and choose the My Team tab for instant info on how your players are doing. Sweet.
AP Top25 College Football 2008 - Not strictly related to the NFL, of course, but how else would I keep track of how well West Virginia played (or not) this week, and how those Heisman candidates are looking? Use this app to get weekly AP poll info, view team progress and scores, get rankings, and even view photos of recent games.
Paper Football Lite - Jonesing for a football fix but stuck at the office? Play a few quick rounds of Paper Football instead. It’s not the same thing as a fun game of pickup in the backyard, but it’ll do in a pinch.
Don’t have an iPod touch or iPhone? Not to worry, I’ve got you covered.
UPDATE: I pulled an app at the last minute and, as an eagled-eyed reader who counts better than I noticed, that knocks the count down to four. For an extra App-By-Default, check out comment #4. 
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My ideal iPod touch
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 | 93 viewsFiled under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, SDK
Don’t get me wrong, I love my iPod touch. As a matter of fact, I’m writing this post with it on the beach as my girlfriend goes surfing. But with Apple’s new product announcement
on Tuesday, it makes me wonder what changes could be in store for our favorite supercharged music player.
I think the single greatest thing Apple could do for the iPod touch is take a page from the Amazon Kindle and offer free “ Whispernet” service for every iPod touch sold. (Or, say, roll it in with a Mobile Me subscription.) Amazon bought access to a chunk of Sprint’s EVDO network, which means every Kindle has network access wherever it goes.
Apple could make such a deal with AT&T — and its various partners worldwide — to provide the necessary bandwidth. Who knows — perhaps they have already. Allow tethering with software like NetShare, and you’ve got Internet access for your Mac, too. Instant-on, and always there. Brilliant.
Another simple addition would be GPS functionality, bringing the iPod touch in line with its newer sibling. Suddenly, the need for both a GPS and an iPod in your car is obviated, and it opens up interesting opportunities with the car manufacturers who already offer iPod integration in their vehicles.
Third, and this could apply to new iPhones too, would be to allow access to the dock connector for Apps. This opens up all kinds of options for iPhone and iPod touch owners to use voice recorders and cameras, as well as potentially control a wide range of equipment from industrial automation tools to backyard telescopes.
Who knows what Apple has up their sleeve? Certainly not me. But with this wish list fulfilled, you can be sure a new iPod touch is in my immediate future.
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iPods in uniform
Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 | 396 viewsFiled under: iPod Family, Software, Odds and ends
When U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan need to communicate in Iraqi Arabic, Kurdish (spoken in north Iraq), or Dari and Pushto (Afghani languages), they can reach for an iPod.
Vcom3D, working with troops from the U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division, designed a software product called VCommunicator Mobile that uses the iPod to display a phonetic translation, “speak” a phrase through an attached speaker, display the phrase in local writing, or demonstrate hand gestures that are common in Arabic.
The Army is fielding about 260 iPods and iPod nanos equipped with this system, with about 700 individual troops using the device in Iraq and Afghanistan. The total cost of the system, including the software development for all of the specific dialects and languages, a speaker that plugs into the earphone port, and protective covers for both the iPod and speaker, was about $800,000.
Before someone makes a crack about the U.S. Military buying $3,100 iPods, remember that these are running custom software with key phrases that must be accurately rendered in a number of different languages, and custom software development and language localization is never inexpensive. The system also comes with a laptop-based editor for adding new phrases or editing existing ones.
Vcom3D chose the iPod platform for the system after realizing that both U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians owned or were familiar with Apple’s iconic media device.
[via MacDailyNews]
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Movies now showing in NZ and Australian iTunes stores
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | 180 views
They may be first to see the sun, but they’ve been waiting quite a while for movie rentals and purchases from the iTunes store — now that patience has paid off, as movies have now arrived in a land down under.
Aussie and
Kiwi iTunes users can purchase and rent movies to their hearts’ content. New releases on DVD will premiere day-and-date on the iTunes store at the same time as they’re on sale in physical form in the two new countries of service.
iTunes movie purchases in Australia will kick off the price tier at A$9.99 for catalog titles, A$17.99 for recent releases and A$24.99 for new
releases; rentals will be A$3.99 for library title rentals and A$5.99 for new releases. iTunes movies in New Zealand start at NZ$9.99 for catalog title purchases, NZ$17.99 for recent releases and NZ$24.99 for new releases, rentals are NZ$4.99 for library titles / NZ$6.99 for new releases. As in the US store, getting the high-def version costs an additional dollar. Rentals can be held for 30 days before you start watching and then you have 48 hours to finish (a
whole day longer than US customers? Must be the International Date Line).
Thanks to everyone who sent this in
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Play FLAC in iTunes with less mess
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | 178 viewsFiled under: Audio, Software, iTunes
Since switching to the Mac full-time last year, my only remaining complaint has been the abysmal (and finicky)
FLAC support in iTunes. FLAC, or Free Lossless Audio Codec, is an open source lossless compression format that offers a nice compromise betweeen storing the uncompressed music file — which is very large — and converting the file to a lossy format like MP3 or AAC. Apple has its own lossless format,
Apple Lossless, and Apple Lossless is great — but I have lots and lots of live performances archived in FLAC and haven’t wanted to spend the time
converting all those files so that I can play everything in iTunes. About 6 months ago, I pretty much gave up and started just ripping CDs in Apple Lossless and using
Max to convert favorite albums or performances.
Reader Mitchell wrote in and told us about Fluke, which aims to be an easier way to play FLAC files in iTunes. I’ve used other XiphQT based solutions, but none have worked as well as Fluke. Install Fluke and then open up a FLAC file with it (or drag your FLAC files to the icon) and it automatically runs a script that tricks iTunes into adding a FLAC file to the library. For the most part, tagging and even album art will be converted — though I did have to add track numbers to some of the files I tested. It isn’t as seamless as an actual FLAC player, like Cog, but it is certainly more hassle-free than some of the other script-based solutions I’ve used in the past.
Fluke is free and available for download here.
Thanks Mitchell!
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My Favorite iPhone Apps: Erica’s Take
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 | 152 viewsFiled under: iPod Family, iPhone, App Store
When it comes to the
iPhone, it’s really really difficult to narrow my app love down to just three picks. So with apologies in advance for all those amazing applications that didn′t make this cut, let me jump in with three choices that I simply do not live without on my (jailbroken) iPhone:
Cydia. When Jay Freeman’s Cydia first debuted, I was hesitant to use it. It sucked up the root partition space like a sponge and its interface was, at best, preliminary. And now, in 2.0, Cydia owns me. It’s simply fabulous. From its command-line Unix support to its fully overhauled interface to its extremely workable update system, Cydia provides a powerful software distribution system, perfect for modern smartphones and a great competitor to AppStore.
Boss Prefs. Boss Prefs offers a wonderful services application. It lets me enable and disable services such as EDGE, Bluetooth and SSH from a central application. Because I only intermittently subscribe to data plans, Boss Prefs ensures that I won’t accidentally start downloading a la carte data that starts at about $500 million (or so) per kilobyte. It also lets me enable and disable my mail accounts, so the iPhone works perfectly for whichever mode I’m in: intrepid TUAW blogger at large or private Soccer Mom on the go.
Othello. Othello is my current fidget-game-on-the-go. When I′m stuck waiting somewhere for a few minutes, I pull out Hongtao Guo’s perfect take on Othello. With three playing levels, optional sound and a really nicely designed interface, Othello provides the perfect time waster. There are other free versions of Othello under various names on AppStore but I particularly like this implementation. Although I wish it would put me directly into the game board rather than the welcome screen, that’s my only criticism of a lovely, free application that’s a great deal of fun.
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The iPod mount for your ‘magnetic’ personality
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 | 278 viewsFiled under:
Accessories,
iPod Family
See what I did there? Eh? Eh? Magnetic! As in this product from
iStik (warning: annoying loud background music) which uses neodymium magnets that let you attach it to workout shirts, jacket pockets, or your backpack.
Of course, neodymium magnets are very strong, and can damage hard disks. It works fine with the iPod nano′s flash memory, however. You also might want to avoid wearing the iStik on your shirt front if you have a pacemaker or other automobilediac device.
iStik is $25 for the second-generation iPod nano, and $27 for the third-generation “fat” nano. Terrible magnet jokes sold separately.
[Via
productdose and
Gearfuse.]
Apple’s tasty calculator mistake
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 | 142 viewsFiled under:
iPod Family,
Bugs/Recalls,
iPhone
In a recent
tip, TUAW reader Dr. Drang told us about a bug he found on the iPhone/iPod touch’s
calculator. According to his research, when you type π × 2 + 5 = into the calculator you get 11.283… (the correct answer). However, when you reverse the
Pi and 2, entering 2 × π + 5, the answer given is 7.
This error can be demonstrated by entering Pi (3.141592654) manually, instead of using the Pi button — you will get the correct answer each time. Therefore, this error only shows up when you use the Pi button.
So, be sure to read up on this bug from the
tipsters website before you use the calculator for anything too important.
Update: Reader Vineet
writes in the comments to note that this behavior is typical of stack-based calculators and should be considered more of an operator-expectations issue than a true bug.
Thanks for the tip,
Dr. Drang!
