Vonage VoIP App for iPhone Released; Works Over Wi-Fi and Cellular Network

Ramp Champ adds to ramps, challenges

Filed under: Gaming, Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

Red paper tickets are the currency of childhood.

On the shore of Oneida Lake, New York is Sylvan Beach, a small-town resort and amusement complex not unlike thousands of others that dot the country. To a parent, it's a fun day out. Just put the kids in the car and after a short drive set them loose on the beach, rides and sugary snacks.

To a kid, It's Xanadu.

My sisters and I were lucky enough to spend two weeks every summer in Oneida, and Sylvan Beach was the pinnacle of fun. Our grandparents fought toddler-induced exhaustion and a tight budget to host us for fourteen days, and by the time we hit Sylvan, they must have been dragging. Still, they never flinched as we requested money for rides. And sno-cones. And most importantly, for Skee Ball, so we could get tickets.

Oh, the tickets.

Nothing was more satisfying than the tick-tick-tick-clack! of the Skee Ball machine dispensing those heavy, cardboard tickets. The more you got the better you did, and we'd measure them against the length of our arms, our legs and each other. Of course, the best part was handing them to the shady carnie sitting behind a glass display case of cheap crap in trade. It was like shopping without money in a world of brightly-colored plastic. Nothing could be better.

Thirty years later I haven't hefted a wooden ball in a long time, but Ramp Champ for the iPhone and iPod touch offers a killer virtual version. If your unfamiliar, it's a carnival Skee-Ball type game that's wonderfully fun. In fact, the guys at The Iconfactory went all out, treating every detail with TLC: It's visually stunning, the sounds are immersive and dead-on (wear headphones) and game play is challenging, just like real Skee Ball. For more details, check out our first look and full review.

Continue reading Ramp Champ adds to ramps, challenges

Ramp Champ adds to ramps, challenges originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ramp Champ adds to ramps, challenges originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Adobe Demonstrating iPhone Applications Built Using Flash

While Apple's iPhone has notably been left out of Adobe's new initiative with Flash Player 10.1 to bring an integrated Flash experience to browsers on smartphones and other platforms, TechCrunch notes that Adobe has also been using its Adobe MAX 2009...

Adobe Flash Player Initiative for Smartphones Launched, But iPhone Not Included

PC World reports on Adobe's launch of Flash Player 10.1, which aims to integrate the Flash experience across a wide range of devices, including smartphones. The initiative also includes the Open Screen Project, which brings together nearly 50 compan...

Dear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone

Filed under: iPhone, Jailbreak/pwnage

Dear Auntie T,

My father-in-law (long time reader) has the old original iPhone. He finally made the jump and got himself a brand new shiny 3G S. My mother in law wanted the old phone, and promptly took her SIM card out and popped it in the old phone. It should have worked. It did not.

It prompted her to connect to iTunes and then tried to get her to choose a data plan, which she didn't want. All she wants is the essential function of a cell phone with a nice iPod layered on top. Wifi would be nice. She couldn't be less interested in a data plan.

This used to be possible. Is it now not possible? A good friend of mine, somewhat recently did this very thing and had no problem whatsoever. He is happily chugging along with a data-free iPhone 3G. ATT is giving them grief over the phone and won't let her use the phone without a data plan, despite the fact that the iPhone, being the original one, is owned outright and is not subsidized in any way.

Love and kisses,

Lauren

Read on for Auntie's response....

Continue reading Dear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone

Dear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Dear Aunt TUAW: Repurposing an old iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Analyst: Apple could sell more iPhones by ending exclusive AT&T deal

Morgan Stanley's Kathryn Huberty believes that Apple's share of the handset market in the U.S. could more than double if it opened sales of the iPhone through more carriers.

Adobe to Announce New Flash Player That Works On All Smartphones Except iPhone

Vonage releases international calling app

Telephony company Vonage has released an iPhone application that allows users to make cheap international calls over cell or Wi-Fi connections.

Review: OpenTable for iPhone

Just as the OpenTable Web site has made it a breeze to get reservations at restaurants, the iPhone app of the same name is well designed, easy to use, and a must-have for travelers and foodies.

Vonage Mobile for iPhone Now Available in App Store

Back in September we mentioned that a VOIP application, Vonage Mobile, received the green light of approval into the App Store. Today it has finally been made available as a free download with a monthly fee for service. [iTunes Link]

Today Vonage (NYSE: VG) launched Vonage Mobile, its first mobile calling application for smartphones. Vonage Mobile is a free downloadable application (app) that provides seamless, low-cost international calling while on Wi-Fi or cellular networks*. Once downloaded, the service saves customers more than 50% on calls to dozens of countries versus the rates charged by wireless carriers while providing far more convenience than calling cards. Vonage Mobile will be available for download on the iPhone(R), BlackBerry(R) and iPod touch(R) at www.vonage.com and the iTunes App Store later today.

While the release of this application is not all that shocking, the fact that you can use the networks 3G data to make your calls with Vonage Mobile is. That whole fiasco between Apple, Google, AT&T, and the FCC seems to have worked out in our favor yet again.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Vonage Mobile for iPhone Now Available in App Store

Our iPhone home screens

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, iPhone, App Store

We were recently inspired by the First&20 project, which presents the home screens of some notable iPhone users. So, we've taken screenshots of our own iPhone home screens for a little comparison.

Once you've purchased an app, you audition it on your phone. Its usefulness determines its spot on the phone. For most of us, only the top apps - those we use most often or love the most - make it to the home screen. While browsing the results, we noticed some trends.

1. Of the 11 bloggers who participated, seven had a Twitter app on their homescreen. Twitterrific was the most popular (Aron, Chris, Mike Schramm and me), followed by TweetDeck (Kevin and Brett) and finally Twitterfon (Erica).
2. Only three of us had an IM app, including Beejive (Aron and Victor) and Yammer (Kevin).
3. Six of us edited the default dock, most notably Kevin whose tricked-out iPhone is the envy of us all.
4. All but one (Kevin) had the Maps app on the homepage
5. Five of us have some sort of productivity app. The most popular is Daylite Touch (Steve and me). Mindmeister, Doris and Toodledo (Brett, Kevin and Victor, respectively) are tied with one each.
6. Brett, Chris, Erica, Kevin and I all had less than five bars of connectivity.
7. Mike Schramm has the most unread email messages. He's the popular one.

Click the gallery below to check out who's got what. The final observation is that the homepage is in a constant state of flux. I occasionally shuffle a new app to the top of the heap. Additionally, games are grouped together, so it's quite unlikely I'd ever have one up front.

What's on your home screen?

Our iPhone home screens originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Our iPhone home screens originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Psystar Announces Program for Third-Party PC Manufacturers to Enable Snow Leopard Installation

setteB.IT reports [Google translation] that unauthorized Mac clone manufacturer Psystar has announced the launch of a new licensing program that will enable third-party PC manufacturers to preload their systems with Psystar's boot loader to allow for...

TUAW Review & Giveaway: OtterBox Commuter / Commuter TL iPhone cases

Filed under: Accessories, Reviews, iPhone

After the debacle earlier this year when I lost my iPhone 3G, I decided to not only protect the new phone -- my lost 3G had been "naked" -- but make sure that whatever I used to protect it had a bit of heft.

My choice of case was the locally-grown (Fort Collins, CO) OtterBox Defender, which fit the bill perfectly. It has what OtterBox refers to as a 3-layer design, including a thick screen protector, a hard shell that encloses the iPhone, and a rubberized exterior jacket that cushions shocks and keeps ports covered. While it has been an awesome case in terms of protection, it's pretty chunky and I've often wished I had something a bit skinnier.

OtterBox came to the rescue last week with a new line of protective cases called the Commuter. There are two models -- the Commuter (US$34.95) and Commuter TL (US$29.95). Like the Defender, these cases work with both the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Read on to hear more about the OtterBox Commuter cases, and a chance to win either a Commuter or Commuter TL case from TUAW and OtterBox.

Continue reading TUAW Review & Giveaway: OtterBox Commuter / Commuter TL iPhone cases

TUAW Review & Giveaway: OtterBox Commuter / Commuter TL iPhone cases originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW Review & Giveaway: OtterBox Commuter / Commuter TL iPhone cases originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Eliminate to Let iPhone Users Frag Their Friends via 3G, WiFi

Ngmoco sent us word of new teasers for Eliminate, the first-person iPhone (and iPod touch) shooter they showed off on Apple’s Keynote stage for iPhone 3.0. Now, I have to admit, I’m not a huge fan of the teaser concept. Rather than build interest, I find they just cause me to tune out after a while. Literally, too much of a good thing.

However, Eliminate really is looking to be a good thing, if not a great thing, so I’m posting the one video so far that makes us really, really want them to get this game out. See, to me the fun in Golden Eye and Halo was never the game. It was hunting down and picking off my friends. Now, if they can ever get live streaming audio to work in real time with the game, and I can hear my friends complain that “it’s not fair” their “controller doesn’t work” and “stop killing me the moment I re-spawn” (okay, those are all actually things I say to them. Shhh!) it would be perfect. But given that it will push challenges and let you play over 3G and WiFi, and using ngmoco’s plus+ network, it could just be dang near perfect.

Now I just have to make sure Chad and Jeremy never get my gamer code…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Eliminate to Let iPhone Users Frag Their Friends via 3G, WiFi

NPD: U.S. Mac Ownership Grows, But Nearly 85% of Mac Households Also Own Windows PCs

According to market research firm NPD's 2009 Household Penetration Study, approximately 12% of U.S. computer-owning households have an Apple computer, up from 9% in last year's study. But of these Mac-owning households, nearly 85% of them also own a...

Magazine Industry Already Preparing for Possible Apple Tablet

Ad Age reports that the print industry is not sitting idly by while it becomes increasingly obvious that Apple is planning to enter the tablet market. In fact, these traditional publishers are worried that Apple may quickly dominate the industry in ...

Dreamcast-mounted iPhone dock sends VMU into jealous rage

It was just over 10 years ago that Sega made the ill-fated move to release the Dreamcast, taking it down a road that would result in the company ditching the hardware scene entirely -- well, almost entirely. Out of the deal we got this wonderful white console, which Jay Hauf has remembered with this bit of simple hackery. He's popped the D-pad out, removed the controller's bottom-mounted cable, threaded an iPhone dock through, then, apparently, went back to creating cute little box-headed figurines. It's perhaps not the most amazingly complex controller mod of all time, but a worthy one nevertheless.

[Via iPhone Savior]

Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming

Dreamcast-mounted iPhone dock sends VMU into jealous rage originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 05 Oct 2009 08:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Flash Player inches closer to smartphones

Adobe will offer beta versions of Flash Player for smartphones later this year, it said on Monday.

Adobe Flash 10.1 to Finally be “Just Right” for iPhone?

Adobe is working on Flash 10.1, which is a version that’s finally supposed to suck less — battery power and cpu cycles, that is. Meaning, it might just be a contender to finally bring acceptable performance to mobile clients like the iPhone sometime in 2010, even if everyone BUT Apple has signed on at this point.

Back up: since the iPhone debuted with the first mobile web client that actually rendered “just the internet”, some users have clamored for Flash. And why now? They were used to that also being on “just the internet”. However, the iPhone was still a mobile device and Flash is still notorious for bloat, bugs, and otherwise non-Mobile friendly behavior (and no, we won’t mention the increased attack vectors runtimes bring to the table, nor the privacy concerns over Flash-cookies, again, okay?)

Steve Jobs himself famously blamed Adobe for having a desktop version that was too big, and a Lite version that didn’t really work, and said Adobe was missing a middle version that would be “just right”.

Well, Flash 10.1 might just be that mythical middle-ground, using the GPU to hardware accelerate it’s renderings. About time. Included as well will be multi-touch and gesture support, and the ability to save state so as not to waste resources when users switch browser “pages”.

This all ties into Adobe’s Open Screen project, whose aim it is to make Flash the platform for dynamic web content on mobile, something Adobe really wants and everyone from competing renderers like Microsoft’s SilverLight, to truly open web advocates aren’t nearly as interested in. Apple, thus far, has been heavily investing in WebKit and technologies like HTML 5, CSS, and JavaScript, which can obviate the need for Flash in many of the place it’s (arguably wrongly) being used today. Likewise, H.264 has brought YouTube, Ustream, Stickam, and other video platforms to the iPhone without Flash wrappers, and HTTP Live Streaming will take that further still.

This has no-doubt been noticed by Adobe, and factored into making Flash 10.1 a much better product. Apple, however, is the last major holdout to announce support (or even interest in) Flash 10.1.

There are still some users who are desperate to get Flash on their iPhone (and NO, not just for porn vidz!), and equally vocal users who consider the iPhone a blissful oasis from the fan noise, heat, drain, slowdown, and punching monkey ad-banners Flash has traditionally brought with it. Of course, Flash is a runtime and a development platform — and Adobe is showing off Flash-developed games — so one major question will be whether Apple is interested in fragmenting their App Store ecosystem beyond the simple WebApps that currently exist.

Check out PreCentral.net for a video of the new Adobe Flash 10.1 beta running on the Palm Pre, then come back and tell us what you want.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Adobe Flash 10.1 to Finally be “Just Right” for iPhone?

Apple Working on “Bathroom Web Surfing” iTablet Since 2003

While the entire industry is increasingly painted as breathlessly holding their breath for an Apple iTablet sometime in 2010, the New York Times re-affirms they’ve been working on just such a device since at least 2003:

“It couldn’t be built. The battery life [using PowerPC chips] wasn’t long enough, the graphics performance was not enough to do anything and the components themselves cost more than $500,” said Joshua A. Strickland, a former Apple engineer whose name is on several of the company’s patents for multitouch technology.

More essential than that, even as technological hurdles were cleared over the years, the idea kept getting shot down by Apple CEO Steve Jobs because no one could answer the question of “what they were good for besides surfing the Web in the bathroom”.

Ultimately, Apple’s experiments with a Safari Pad were leveraged into making and marketing the iPhone instead — something Jobs, and users, obviously found more compelling.

Arguably, the same problem still exists. Apple’s own hardware (like PA Semi chipsets), software (like iTunes LP and iTunes Extra), and industry rumors over print-derived content (like magazines, books, newspapers, etc.) add sub-plots even while the main storyline is still getting fleshed out.

Not lost, however, is that while competitors have tried to evangelize the tablet concept for a decade and received nearly zero traction, the mere thought of a post-iPhone Apple iTablet has achieved so much media buzz the category itself has seen a re-birth from a variety of players.

Apple’s would likely have 85,000 iPhone apps (possible 100,000 by launch), which — as has been speculated before — could run, several at a time, each in their own window like on a desktop system, along with full screen versions of Safari, iPod, and whatever i-app shows dynamic “print” media.

If the iTablet ends up being real, and being “All your media in your hands”, Apple might have a story of their own finally worth telling. Then we’ll just have to see if people buy it.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Working on “Bathroom Web Surfing” iTablet Since 2003