Palm’s new smartphones failing to fuel sales

Palm is now predicting revenues from its re-launched smartphone business will fall far short of earlier projections, and hopes.

Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II for iPhone and iPod touch Now Available in App Store

They are finally here RPG fans, Final Fantasy [$8.99 - iTunes link] and Final Fantasy II [$8.99 - iTunes link] were released earlier today in the App Store for your iPhone or iPod touch. Each game will cost you $8.99 but that seems to be a small price to pay for such classics as these.

Final Fantasy features the bonus dungeons added to later editions of the game – the Soul of Chaos and the Labyrinth of Time. Part 2 also contains the bonus dungeons added to later editions from the Soul of Rebirth and the Arcane Labyrinth.

If you try them out let us know us what you think in the comments below! Do they live up to the hype or are there better ways to spend $18?

Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II for iPhone and iPod touch Now Available in App Store is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Review: H.A.W.X. for iPhone

H.A.W.X. is a Tom Clancy-inspired game from Gameloft that will have your after-burners kicking in as your heat-seeking missiles blast the bad guys out of the sky. Offering intuitive controls, great visuals, and high-flying thrills, H.A.W.X. sores above the rest.

Swipe Backward, Forward, Pause, or Play on Your iPhone via Camera Gestures — Apple Patent Watch

Patently Apple brings another interesting Apple proposal to our attention — this one involving using the iPhone camera to detect swipes backward, forward, and the accelerometer to detect pause or play for things like Voice Mail without having to move the iPhone away from your ear. But that’s not all:

Consider the following example of navigating the display screen. If the user wishes to scroll down on a webpage or text document, then the user would simply move their finger across the camera lens in an upward direction (i.e., towards the top of the screen 200). This would be consistent with moving the page “up” so as to bring a bottom portion of the page into view. To move the page down (and thereby bring a top portion of the page into view), the reverse needs to occur, i.e., the user needs to swipe across the lens in a downward direction. Note that navigation on the display screen (using a finger swipe across the camera lens) need not be limited to straight up and down, but rather could be performed in other or additional directions (e.g. left and right). Now that Apple is introducing “iBook” – think of flipping the page of a book using this method so that you don’t even have to move your hands from the iPhone or future camera based iPad.

So now we’ve heard of case gestures, bevel gestures, and camera gestures… Of course Apple patents tons of stuff we haven’t and may never see in real products, but are any of these starting to interest you?

[Patently Apple via MacRumors]

Swipe Backward, Forward, Pause, or Play on Your iPhone via Camera Gestures — Apple Patent Watch is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Survey Reveals Application Usage and Demographic Data on iPhone and iPod Touch Users

Mobile advertising firm AdMob today released its January 2010 Mobile Metrics Report, revealing some interesting data about application usage and demographics for iPhone and iPod touch users, as well as users of Android and webOS handsets.
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Intuit Debuts Rebuilt Quicken Essentials for Mac

Intuit today announced the release of Quicken Essentials for Mac (QEM), a complete rebuild of the company's personal financial management application.

QEM launches a new era for Quicken on the Mac. It marks Intuit's first Mac-...

Apple Patent Application Details iPhone Control Via Finger Swipes Over Camera

Patently Apple points to another interesting patent application from Apple filed in August 2008 and published this morning detailing means of controlling an iPhone or other handheld device by swiping one's finger across the camera lens. Most...

Full text searches on the iPhone? There WAS an app for that.

Filed under: Rumors, Software, iPhone, App Store

Sometimes you can't win for losing. A few weeks ago, I was talking to fellow blogger and all-around genius Brett Terpstra about how I wished there was a full-text search for iPhone mail. He told me that there was, and it was called reMail. I immediately downloaded the free app, paid the US $3.99 for the in-app feature of using IMAP mailboxes, and reMail started downloading copies of all my mail. This took overnight, but so what? When done, I could search on any word or term just like the Macintosh Mail application, and be rewarded with a listing of all the incidences of the term in my 3,000 or so email messages in a fraction of a second.

This worked like a dream. I immediately put reMail on my home screen and was happy. At least, that was, until last week when I read that Gabor Cselle, reMail's creator, announced that the app was being put out to pasture, and was immediately being removed from the App Store. Google both bought the app and hired Gabor to be a Product Manager on the Gmail team.

As a nice gesture, Gabor decided to keep supporting reMail until the end of March and make the two in-app purchases free. Along with IMAP support, you could also buy the option of having it work with Rackspace email. And thus started the conspiracy theories. Techcrunch surmised that this could be another shot over the bow in the Apple-Google smartphone war, and that Google bought the technology to kill it off, so Apple couldn't buy it first. There may be something to that since reMail is arguably a better mail app than the one that built into the iPhone.

On the other hand, it may be that Google, seeing a widening of the search market, wants to build reMail's functionality into another product. It would be foolish, in my opinion to not do so. Google has worked with Cselle before as part of the Gmail team and knows what he can do. With reMail as part of the bargain, he's more important to them than during his earlier tenure.

There is a rumor floating around that someone has reverse-engineered reMail and will release it as open source. This could be interesting and may change the game, but it may be just a rumor. Whatever happens, it'll be intriguing to keep your eye on the evolution of mail apps on smartphones, and to learn just what Google has in mind.

Full text searches on the iPhone? There WAS an app for that. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Full text searches on the iPhone? There WAS an app for that. originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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iPhone Users Use 5x The Data Of Blackberry People Per Month

According to a study from the analysis firm Validas, considering data from more than 1,000 smartphone users, iPhone users use around twice the amount of data than other smartphone users, and almost five times as much as Blackberry users. The difference is strikingly apparent when you see that that nearly ...

Apple Announces Winner of 10 Billion Song Contest [Updated]

Apple today announced that its iTunes Store has reached the significant milestone of 10 billion songs downloaded, as we noted yesterday. The company also revealed that the winner of its "Countdown to 10 ...

Apple Announces Winner of 10 Billion Song Contest

Apple today announced that its iTunes Store has reached the significant milestone of 10 billion songs downloaded, as we noted yesterday. The company also revealed that the winner of its "Countdown to 10 ...

Linksys router turned into smartphone-controlled doorman (video)

Working for a large company comes with a lot of baggage, the least of which is an RFID security badge. For those small companies who can't afford such extravagantly wireless door key solutions there's another option: this DIY project completed by a team of developers at Sunlight Labs. It all centers around a Linksys WRT54GL, a Linux-based wireless router that, with a little firmware hackery and a bit of wiring, was tethered into the office's door release buzzer. The team then went about allowing SSH access to the router and created Android and iPhone apps that instantly connect to the device and open the door, authenticated by a PIN and a unique ID assigned to each device. Users can also deliver their PIN via SMS or a simple phone call to open the door. Elegant, impressive, open source, and one less thing to forget on a Monday morning when groggily heading to the office.

Continue reading Linksys router turned into smartphone-controlled doorman (video)

Linksys router turned into smartphone-controlled doorman (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 09:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Review: Outside for iPhone

Push notifications to let you know about changing weather conditions seem like a natural for an iPhone app. Unfortunately, Outside's bare-bones approach to notifications doesn't offer the flexibility most users will need.

TUAW Quick Plays: Alchemize, Dizzypad, Alice in Wonderland

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

Here's a quick look at three games for the iPhone and iPod touch we've gotten a chance to play lately.

Alchemize is an interesting twist on the old Tetris/Dr. Mario dropping block gameplay. The idea is that you twist and drop pairs of potions that will match up whenever three of the same kind touch each other, and then leave one transmuted element of the next level in their place. There are five different modes to play as well, including an Avalanche mode that will drop a line of elements on the field if you fail to make a match in a certain time frame, and even a Bejeweled-style timed mode with a full field of elements to switch around for matches. The game is a lot of fun to pick up and play, and while the graphics aren't much more than sprites, the gameplay (and the music) more than make up for any disappointment in that area. If you enjoy a good dropping-block game, you'll like this one, too. It's $2.99 but has been known to go on sale occasionally.

Two more quick plays after the "Read More" link below.

Continue reading TUAW Quick Plays: Alchemize, Dizzypad, Alice in Wonderland

TUAW Quick Plays: Alchemize, Dizzypad, Alice in Wonderland originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW Quick Plays: Alchemize, Dizzypad, Alice in Wonderland originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 25 Feb 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Titanium iPhone 3GS Mod — Elegant and Armor Plated

According to Engadget, Martin Schrotz decided to pull a Colossus on his iPhone 3GS and transform the simple plastic backing into armor plating of nigh-invulnerable (and 3G friendly!) titanium alloy.

Check out the video for more, and let us know if this has you hoping Apple goes back to unibody metal for the 4th gen iPhone…

Titanium iPhone 3GS Mod — Elegant and Armor Plated is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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TiPb Apps 2.5 — Clixtr for iPhone (Macworld 2010)

Live from Macworld 2010, Rene and Leanna talk to Clixtr [Free - iTunes link] about getting social with your iPhone photos.

Watch along after the break!

TiPb Apps 2.5 — Clixtr for iPhone (Macworld 2010) is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

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Shape Recognition on a Touch Sensitive iMac Screen?

Apple's patent applications always generate a lot of interest as they are one of the few windows we have into the company's research and development labs. Some patent applications are more interesting or relevant than others, but we knew thi...