Apple adds ‘Gift This App’ option to App Store

On Monday, Apple added the ability for App Store customers to gift specific apps to others.

Amazon Shows Off Kindle App For iPad; May Not Be Available At Launch

Apple Adds Ability to Gift App Store Applications

Comparison of old (left) and new (right) drop-down app options
Users logging into or attempting to purchase from the iTunes Store today were met with a dialog box requiring that they accept a modified version of the iTunes Store and Ap...

MoviePeg iPhone stand is cheap, cool, easy to clean

Filed under: Accessories, iPhone

Here's a nifty little iPhone stand for you. MoviePeg is basically just a piece of plastic with a notch cut into it that slides over an iPhone. Its design makes it the simplest iPhone stand I've ever seen. But as Apple has proven, simplicity works. I used to think that I would never have a need for an iPhone stand, but then I started using recipe apps and I can tell you the stands come in handy in the kitchen. MoviePeg is especially handy because its solid body lacks ridges and is a snap to wipe flour or egg batter from.

MoviePeg works in landscape of horizontal mode and comes in six colors. At £5 (about $7.50US), if you need a durable iPhone stand, MoviePeg is a no-brainer.

[via Wired]

MoviePeg iPhone stand is cheap, cool, easy to clean originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MoviePeg iPhone stand is cheap, cool, easy to clean originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Oh dear, textaholic seeks iPhone for carpal tunnel relief

Filed under: iPhone

Note: The medical opinions expressed in this post are anecdotal in nature and represent the non-professional experiences of one blogger. It's true that some people have had success with trigger point therapy. However, it is our recommendation that Ms. Levitz and any person suffering with carpal tunnel or a repetitive stress injury should follow the advice of his/her physician or other certified medical professional.

File this under "what did you expect?" Annie Levitz, a sixteen year old from Mundelein, IL has been sending 4,000 text messages a month. Yes, FOUR THOUSAND. She began to feel tingling, pain and numbness in her hands and went to her doctor who diagnosed her the the RSI injury, carpal tunnel syndrome. She's had cortisone injections and will need surgery. But Annie thinks there's another solution -- switching to an iPhone. "I do think that since it's touch it won't be as rough on my hands," she said.

Annie, I could make fun of your situation, but I'm not going to because neuropathic pain sucks. Matter of fact, maybe I can help a bunch of our readers out who are in similar situations.

Annie: you especially, and most likely your doctor, are wrong about the solutions to your problem. "Carpal tunnel syndrome" is more often than not a description of the symptoms than a diagnosis of the actual problem. The cure is not an iPhone, cortisone injections, or God forbid, surgery. It's trigger point therapy. How do I know? Because for two years I had crippling back pain. It was so bad I couldn't walk without excruciating pain. I went to the best doctors and physical therapists who did little to relieve my symptoms. Most doctors said they couldn't pinpoint what was wrong but "knew" I needed injections or surgery to fix it. By chance I read about trigger points online and ordered a book about them. It was the best purchase I've made in my entire life. In less than half an hour, I ended my excruciating back pain -- pain I lived with for two years! -- on my own with a tennis ball.

Since then I have been diagnosed with carpel tunnel, plantar fasciitis and a bad knee. I have successfully treated all -- without doctors -- using trigger point therapy. Usually it only takes two days of about 10 to 20 minutes of self-applied trigger point therapy to take care of these "medical conditions."

Continue reading Oh dear, textaholic seeks iPhone for carpal tunnel relief

Oh dear, textaholic seeks iPhone for carpal tunnel relief originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Oh dear, textaholic seeks iPhone for carpal tunnel relief originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sprint Advertises 4G Overdrive Hotspot Device Using iPhone

Boy Genius Report this weekend noted that Sprint has released a new television commercial using Apple's iPhone to promote the carrier's new Overdrive 3G/4G mobile hotspot device. The commercial claims that connecting an iPhone to Sprint's 4G...

Sprint ad for Overdrive hotspot features iPhone

Sprint's television ad for its Overdrive mobile hot spot device features Apple's iPhone in a starring role.

Review: Hellkid: Hook & Jump for iPhone

HellKid: Hook & Jump is a Sonic the Hedgehog-ish side-scrolling game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Though challenging and full of great art, the by-the-book platforming and uninspired level design will likely keep this game in a hellish state of obscurity.

Found Footage: David Barnard of AppCubby talks about KaleidoVid

Filed under: Found Footage, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

While roaming the floor at Macworld Expo 2010 in February, I had the opportunity to talk with David Barnard of AppCubby about several of their iPhone apps, including GasCubby and TripCubby. David also told me about a project that they had in the works at the time, which has recently been released -- a US$0.99 iPhone kaleidoscope called KaleidoVid.

TUAW's Dave Caolo provided you with details about the app in an earlier post, but we thought you might enjoy this short interview with David where he talks about the app, his reason for developing it, and gives us a short demo of KaleidoVid in action.

Found Footage: David Barnard of AppCubby talks about KaleidoVid originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Found Footage: David Barnard of AppCubby talks about KaleidoVid originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T to soon offer Palm Pre Plus, Pixi Plus

Palm announced on Monday that its webOS-based phones, the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus, would soon make an appearance on AT&T.

Amazon Preparing Kindle App for iPad

Following its release of a Kindle app for the Mac last week, Amazon is preparing a Kindle app for the iPad according to The New York Times.

Amazon has posted a page on its site describing upcoming Kindle apps for Tablet Comput...

Steve Jobs Backs Organ Donor Registry Bill in California

The San Jose Mercury News last Friday reported that Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare public appearance alongside California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote a new bill in that state to encourage drivers to sign up as organ donors, drawing on...

Amazon, Barnes & Noble prepping iPad e-readers

Amazon and Barnes & Noble have announced that they’ll be bringing their e-reader apps to the iPad, but will you be able to purchase books from the apps as well?

Amazon, Barnes & Noble Readying Book Stores for iPad

Confirming that it won’t just be Apple’s iBookstore (and your own free ePubs) on the iPad, the New York Times today mentions that both Amazon and Barnes & Noble are both working on book stores of their own. While both market their own hardware devices, the Kindle and the Nook respectively, the iPad is expected to throw a huge spotlight on eBooks in general, and they want to benefit:

The Kindle app for the iPad, which Amazon demonstrated to a reporter last week, allows readers to slowly turn pages with their fingers. It also presents two new ways for people to view their entire e-book collection, including one view where large images of book covers are set against a backdrop of a silhouetted figure reading under a tree. The sun’s position in that image varies with the time of day.

At the offices of Barnes & Noble’s digital unit in New York, 14 developers have occupied a windowless room since January, completely redesigning the company’s iPhone app for the iPad, according to Douglas Gottlieb, its vice president of digital products. The developers hunch over Macs around a big table, and printouts and notecards are taped up on the walls.

The new app will let users flip through books quickly with finger swipes and customize fonts in multiple colors and sizes. Mr. Gottlieb said the company was talking to publishers about adding multimedia to digital books.

Neither company received one of those secret, early-access iPad units for testing, so while they may be simulator-ready for the April 3 launch, they may not want to release until they’ve had a chance to run their apps on the real hardware. Comic reader app Panefly, for example, thinks a bad day 1 experience with an app that worked fine in the lab but poorly on the actual iPad could “kill the train before it leaves the station”.

As to whether or not Apple will approve competing bookstores for the iPad App Store, TiPb’s always felt that the best indicator was Steve Jobs announcing iBooks as a separate, downloadable app rather than a built-in like iTunes Store. While this may have also reflected iBooks US-only availability, and there’s never any way to tell for sure what Apple will do until they do it, at the end of the day they want to move hardware and letting existing Kindle (and Nook) owners bring over their books is a great way to lower the barrier of iPad entry.

Right now, both the Kindle for iPhone [Free- iTunes link] and Barnes & Noble eReader for iPhone [Free - iTunes link] frequire a clunky web-based work around for purchasing books, however, and it would be nice to see that process actually integrated into the apps — like iBooks and the iBookstore.

So, given the choice, what will you be buying and reading your eBooks with — Amazon Kindle for iPad, Barnes & Noble eBook Reader for iPad, or Apple’s iBooks?

[NYT via AppleInsider]

Amazon, Barnes & Noble Readying Book Stores for iPad is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

How Do You Stream Music on Your iPhone?

Outside storing music in the iPhone’s built in iPod app, there are a variety of ways to simply stream the audio you want to listen to:

• Streaming internet radio/subscription apps are the obvious place to start. Slacker [iTunes link], Pandora [iTunes link], Pocket Tunes [iTunes link], Spotify [iTunes link]… the list goes on an on. Some are limited to the US (or just slightly beyond the US) or Europe, but those who have them in their area often swear by them. Some of these also provide local storage so you can keep some of the songs on your device for those occasions when a Wi-Fi or 3G isn’t available.
• Musical games, spearheaded by Tap Tap Revenge [iTunes link] and Rock Band [iTunes link] have shown that users are just as willing — sometimes even more willing — to buy songs for sport as they are for simple enjoyment. With in-app purchases, some of these games have even become music stores unto themselves.
• Musical apps, where an artist or group wants to create something more than just a song file or even iTunes LP, have also become fairly common on the App Store. These can range significantly in content and presentation, but they can and do bring the music.
• Storage apps, like MobileMe iDisk, Box.net, DropBox, etc. can give you access to the music you keep on the cloud. Just like they can view your documents and other files, they can typically play any supported audio format you’ve loaded them up with.
• Mobile Safari, the iPhone and iPod touch (and soon, iPad) web browser can play any music format Apple supports. Just tap on a link and the Quicktime player pops up, buffers, and plays your audio. This includes audio you’ve stored on your own web-enabled server setups. And it’s one of the few apps that’s allowed to keep playing in the background — when it doesn’t run out of RAM or lose connection or otherwise glitch-out.
• iTunes app, while it will only give you 30 seconds of music for sampling, will stream full-length podcasts if you tap on the title instead of the download button. If you prefer talking and creative commons to the latest premium hits, it’s a surprisingly useful option. And it will play in the background just like Safari (and potentially fail, just like Safari).

We’re all hoping iPhone 4.0 addresses that pesky “no streaming internet music while using other apps” multitasking miss we’ve suffered through lo these last 3 years, but in the meantime — what are you using to stream your music on your iPhone? Any tips and or tricks you can share?

How Do You Stream Music on Your iPhone? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

iPad 101: Get Your Free ePub eBooks at Project Gutenberg

Waiting for Apple’s iPad and its iBooks and iBookstore app? The outstanding Project Gutenberg has 30,000 free-as-in-beer-and-and-as-in-speech ePub format eBooks to help keep you start building your library today.

If you’re not already familiar with the geeky details, ePub is the open, free-flowing eBook format that Apple is using for iBooks. However, let’s caveat that “open” piece — ePub books bought from the iBookstore will be using Apple’s FairPlay DRM (digital rights management) which means that while ePub is a widely supported format, Apple ePub books won’t work on other devices, and ePub books using other DRM (like Adobe Content Server) won’t work on the iPad. Headache, right? Well, the good news is DRM-free ePub eBooks — like those from Project Gutenberg — should work on the iPad and pretty much everything else.

To use Project Gutenberg, just click on the link above and browse or search away. If you’re not sure where to start, try their Top 100 list. When you find something you like, scroll down to the EPUB link and download the file.

Now, we’re assuming (as in hoping) Apple will also give us an easy-as-iTunes way to drag, drop, manage and sync free ePub books over to the iPad but we just don’t know for sure. There are a variety of other ways to do it, including the same super-combo of Calibre and Stanza that works so well for the iPhone and iPod touch today, but we’ll have to wait for April 3 to know for sure. (And we’ll update once we do, of course).

If you know of any other great sources for free ePub content — or any terrific free eBooks you want to recommend — tell us about them in the comments.

iPad 101: Get Your Free ePub eBooks at Project Gutenberg is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Review: More iPhone Shakespeare apps

If you have trouble making sense of Shakespeare, both No Fear Shakespeare and Shakespeare Pro can help you. But the two apps have very different approaches and pull off the feat with varying degrees of success.