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Promo codes for nothing, apps for free
The floodgate of new iPhone apps is open and enlarging all the time. Hundreds of new entries hit the App Store every week. This is a wonderful thing, but it does cause a good deal of consternation.If you are an iPhone owner, how can you keep up with what's out there? After all, according to Macworld, there are now nearly 500 fart apps available for your pleasure out of the 65,000 (and climbing) apps in the store. Cutting through the static is nearly impossible.If you are a developer, how can you get the word out about your wonderful new creation? Well, there are number of ways, and since you're reading TUAW, you found one. We get many more app review requests than we can ever handle and I'm sure all the Mac and iPhone oriented sites are in the same position. Regardless of the quality of your new baby, it's hit or miss as to whether a blog or other news outlet will ever get around to reviewing it. Apple runs a program where developers can generate a number of free promotional codes for publicity purposes. When a code is redeemed either in iTunes or right in the App store on the iPhone, the free app is installed just as if it was bought. Traditionally, the bulk of these promo codes go to sites like ours that provide publicity and hence sell apps. While Apple was briefly blocking any apps with a 17+ rating from getting promo codes, as Michael reports that policy has shifted again. The developer of Eucalyptus, an e-book reader, was surprised to find that Apple is now allowing him codes for his 17+ rated app. [To give you an idea of how involved the app approval process can be, we earlier reported that Eucalyptus was first denied approval because they were using the Project Gutenberg catalog of public-domain books where you could download a totally non-illustrated version of the Kama Sutra. No one seems to know why the plethora of other Project Gutenberg powered e-readers had no trouble being approved, or why these apps' ratings varied.]In late May a new site called AppGiveaway opened and partnered with developers to get paid apps into users hands for free. Sites have always had the occasional contest to win something, and that's always been good for sales, since whether you win or lose, if you entered, at least you were introduced to the product.AppGiveaway does it differently. It provides an incentive to both buyer and seller. Developers contribute promo codes to be given away; each contest contains a full description of the app and a number of screen shots. Contests, plus a small number of Apple related stories, are all AppGiveaway does. In the month of June, AppGiveaway awarded over 130 apps and so far over 100 have been given out in the month of July. Checking the site now, there are currently 20 apps that you can enter and win.Check it out. You'll be helping yourself and in turn, helping the developer community to get the word out. Then come right back and tell us what you found.
AudioBoo lets you broadcast audio directly from the iPhone
Back when we looked at Radar, a photosharing site with an accompanying iPhone app, I mentioned that while Twitter had monopolized the "text exporting" function from your iPhone, there would be a slew of companies to try and grab the rest of the media you want to broadcast. Radar, I said, wanted to be the photo app. And AudioBoo, it appears, wants to be the audio app (we've yet to see a strong video contender pop up with the 3GS, though YouTube is certainly serving for now).I've been using AudioBoo (iTunes link) for a few weeks now, and I have to say, it definitely does what it says on the box: after a short signup session and the installation of the app to your iPhone, you can record and upload (and almost more interesting, listen back to others') audio quickly and easily. You hit record, can talk for a while (i haven't hit a limit yet, though three minutes is what I originally heard, and that tends to be about right for these little mini-podcasts), then hit stop and upload, add a picture, title, and tags, and a few minutes later, your audio is right there on the web for everyone to hear. I've used it on my EDGE phone and my friend's 3G, and I have to say the experience is better on the 3G -- the upload speeds are much better (I generally have to wait on my iPhone until I get on Wi-Fi to upload the audio), and to my ears, the audio sounds better. Here's a recording I made at a Cubs game on my 1G with a few friends, and a recording my friend made on his 3G at a restaurant. Edge works, obviously, but the 3G seems to work better.
Sprint goes a little crazy with new Pre advertising
We hadn't necessarily taken the Pre crowd as the attention-span-of-a-gnat sort, but in case our psychology is dead off, Sprint has formulated a truly mind-blowing 60 seconds of video that runs down a series of meaningless stats -- the number of emails just sent containing "miracle banana diet," for example -- and ties it all together neatly at the end as a plug for the carrier's 3G and 4G networks. Perhaps more importantly, the Pre makes two brief appearances in the ad -- but if you're looking to take your visual overload to the next level, you can have a peep at Sprint's updated "Plug into Now" site, which blasts you with a seemingly endless series of widgets that keep you abreast of stats like the number of lung transplants that occurred today, the number of shopping days until Christmas, and the current national debt. Clicking on the Pre takes you to a dedicated series of Pre widgets complete with a spinning Pre -- nothing new, really, but if you simply must have fast access to Pre mentions on Twitter, this might just be your dream come true. Follow the break for Sprint's ad, but make sure you're not too amped on caffeine first. [Via PreCentral, thanks James]
Zarhym promises BlizzCon ticket sales will be better
BlizzCon 2009 tickets will likely go on sale soon, and before then, Zarhym is here to reassure you: Blizzard is doing what they can to make sure things will not go the way they did last year. Unfortunately, he doesn't go into detail on exactly what that means. We'd have to think that they wouldn't just open up the floodgates on a site that wasn't ready again, but while most thought that the lottery that ended last year's ticket sales worked pretty well, it looks like that may not be the plan just yet. Whatever they plan to do, we hope it works out in a fair way and with a minimum of fuss for those who do try to go. Anything without the Failoc or the FailSCV is a plus in our book.Zarhym also says that they will be giving us advance notice before the tickets actually start selling, so people will have time to make travel arrangements if necessary (and/or ask the wife or parents for the money to go if need be). And he says that a pay-per-view type of event, as they did last year, or even a live stream of some of the events online, is not beyond the realm of possibility.Of course, even if you don't make it for whatever reason, you can be sure that WoW Insider will be there and covering everything that happens, from the awesome costumes to the possibly blogger-threatening danger. Stay tuned for more info soon.
WoW Model Viewer updated for Wrath, but still needs work
WoW Model Viewer is a crazy useful tool for machinimists or just anyone out there (like Zach) looking to enjoy the art of Warcraft outside of the game itself. The only problem with the app is that it hasn't updated since way before Wrath's release, but the code monkeys over there have finally rectified that: they've dropped release version 0.6.0.2, which we're told is compatible with the models in Wrath of the Lich King.Mostly compatible, anyway -- we're told that lots of the new animations aren't working yet, and there are quite a few bugs still poking around. And there's more trouble -- the program's admin has reported that the site could use a new host, since the last admin had some troubles with the hosting provider. Surely there's someone out there who can help -- lots of people use the program (and of course it's spawned countless terrific machinima movies that we've all enjoyed).Hopefully Model Viewer will find its way back on track -- the program has really jump started the world of machinima, and it would be a shame to see it fall into disrepair due to lack of support.
HTC's official Fuze page shows up... kinda
If you had any lingering doubt that HTC's US, GSM version of the Touch Pro (AKA the Fuze) was headed to AT&T in the near future, you can probably take a deep breath. Thanks to an eagle-eyed tipster, we're now able to view HTC's official page for the device, although it looks like they may not be done with all the coding, as an image of the Tilt is still being used as a placeholder. There's no mention of release date, though we do learn that the device will sport AT&T's Cellular Video and Mobile Music services, and a "unique AT&T defined 5 row slide out / slide away QWERTY keyboard," which definitely means nothing at all. Hit the read link if you don't believe us, but for goodness' sake -- you should see someone about that paranoia.[Thanks, Wie]
T-Mobile goes live with G1 website
It's one thing to appear on a website before being officially outed. It's another to have a web portal designed specifically for a handset. On the eve of its official debut in the Big Apple, T-Mobile has launched the definitive G1 website, complete with a G1 logo, the time and date of tomorrow's press event, a few tabs sure to be chock full of juicy details just as soon as said event closes, and most importantly, a pre-order button (of sorts) in order to sign up for what we can only fathom to be a notification of availability. 10:30AM tomorrow morning -- we'll be there, you'll be there.
AVSForum suffers database failure, loses "tens of thousands" of posts
Generally speaking, we don't much cover forums 'round these parts, but the AV Science Forum -- better known as AVSForum -- is the place to go to converse about all things AV-related. In what can only be described as a dramatic bummer, the website suffered a "a major failure in the database and backup storage." Due to the catastrophe, "tens of thousands" of posts were lost over the past week, and the boards have been restored to how they looked on August 2nd, 2008. We get this weird feeling the administrators will be implementing enough backup solutions to keep things humming along 'til the end of time after having this happen, though.[Thanks, Big Wizz]
Sega shows more Destruction
Along with the news that World Destruction will be releasing in Japan on September 25th (shock, gasp, it was pushed back a week!), Sega has released a new video for the title. Although it shows some more gameplay footage, most of it is your classic RPG fodder and not battle scenes. Still, we're pretty impressed by how it seems to be turning out. Not only does it look great and have an interesting story, but the 300 event scenes and plethora of maps and voices that Sega promised should be enough to excite any RPG gamer.Also, folks interested in the game (or anime, or comic) can go and check out World Destruction's official website. There's not much in the "Game" section, aside from a nice-looking background and a gorgeous song (the one from previous trailers), but the song alone is enough to get us to keep on coming back until they add some content.
SK Interview from Frostshock
Frostshock is a Hungarian site that covers World of Warcraft -- they've done us the kindness of linking to us in the past, but usually my Hungarian is so rusty that we have no idea what they're talking about. This weekend, they posted an interview with SK-Gaming, the group that nabbed the world first of Kil'jaeden, and while normally we wouldn't be able to tell a másnap from a kezdték, the newly redesigned World of Raids has a translation up.There's a lot of the usual stuff that you hear from guild after a big down, but there's a few new things in there, too -- apparently SK and other raiding sponsors are actually paying "premiums" for world first kills. Doesn't sound like a lot, but they do say they'll be able to do a meetup this summer thanks to their run in Sunwell, so that's a fairly substantial amount for playing a game. Both M'uru and Kil'jaeden are on their top 3 encounters in the expansion, along with Magtheridon, apparently. And the Sunwell "gates" system gets a pretty good review -- SK says it kept some guilds going even when they might have been burned out on the tougher fights.All in all, an interesting interview. They dive into drama a bit when talking about the friction between SK and Nihilum, but mostly, they just stick to what it's like raiding as a professional guild in the Sunwell. It will definitely be interesting to see how these kinds of guilds react to the 10/25 man change in the expansion -- raiding has come a long way from the 40-man runs in vanilla WoW, and these guilds may have a lot more competition for the 10man world firsts.
Test realm forum offline, possible pointer to WotLK beta
More news for all you hungry Wrath of the Lich King fans out there. The test realm forum has been taken offline and is showing as undergoing a change, although we don't know what that is just yet. The exact submessage is "The forum you're trying to access is not ready." This is significant for a couple reasons.First, the test realm forum is usually left up for a while after the patch so folks have some place to go and reference everything that was learned during the beta. I know that I've used the forum for up to a month to go and get necessary information.Secondly, this comes less than a day after the World of Warcraft beta site experienced a change. When getting public releases of software ready, it's often a process of "First, get the site going – but don't link it to the public. Second, take down the public systems and get them ready." This is quite possibly what we're seeing here.Finally, this forum always goes down before something beta-ish is released. This could mean they're just clearing it to implement a 2.4.2 release or something, but I doubt that given they've usually only cleared it for major point release. Ie: 2.2, 2.3, 2.4.An interesting tid bit of WotLK news for you all this morning. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that within a month we'll see some major announcements concerning the next expansion.%Gallery-5525%
Mario & Sonic at the official web site
With Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games finally heading out in January for U.S. and Japanese gamers, and in February for the European market, it's no surprise that Nintendo's finally gotten around to putting up their official site. Sega's site has been up for some time, as has Nintendo's site for the Wii version, but the DS game has lagged a bit behind. On the Japanese site, you can see some of the games and how they'll control, in all their touchscreen-destroying glory, as well as characters, event breakdowns, and more.[Via Gamefront]
Color the bouncing balls at Ontamarama site
We know some of you have some mixed feelings about Ontamarama, but we'll say this: the newly-revealed English-language site is pretty awesome. But then, we're suckers for any chance to color, so maybe we're biased. The new web site actually has a decent amount of content, and the overall design is quite pleasing -- we especially appreciated the stylus pointer when navigating around. The usual fare is all here: story, screens, and downloads featuring wallpapers, videos, and as a nice addition, an avatar package, but it's the extras that got our attention. In addition to the coloring book mentioned above, there are a couple of little minigames to get you hyped for the Ontamarama experience. If only every game site was as rich in fun, random content![Via press release]
Touch Detective 2 1/2 site goes live
Oh, Mackenzie. We can't help but love you, with your quirky little face and even quirkier cast of extras. And thanks to the brand new site for Touch Detective 21⁄2, we can wallow in new screenshots, character profiles, and more. The best part? The site is filled to the brim with the two things that are best about this burgeoning franchise: the art design and the humor. Also, if anything was ever great avatar material, it is Space Salmon. Someone slap a Mario hat on that guy and use him on Joystiq.
Japanese Soul Calibur Legends site opens for business
The Japanese site for Soul Calibur Legends is up and running, complete with screenshots and a few character profiles, and lots of room to expand for later content. Despite the change in gameplay, the site gives us warm and fuzzy feelings of familiarity. While this isn't the same ol' fighting game that we're used to from Soul Calibur, the mood of the series is definitely intact. [Via GoNintendo]%Gallery-3272%
Need more No More Heroes?
We do, too, and though the countdown has ended, we've been left a little unfulfilled by the No More Heroes site. Guess we can't expect much from these countdowns, eh?The good news is that the site is open, and there's lots of unactivated tabs ripe for expansion. Looks like the real wait begins ... now. But from everything we've seen of No More Heroes, it's worth a few months of thumb-twiddling and breath-holding. We just hope it doesn't suffer the same fate as Manhunt 2 .... Luckily for those of us who burn for more on Suda 51's latest effort, Famitsu has some updates for us, including some hot shots of rocket-legged female assassin Holly Summers. Expect more coverage in the coming months, as No More Heroes is tentatively scheduled for release this winter.
Apple.com has new Spotlight interface for search
While it was hard to miss that Apple.com received a complete redesign with this week's WWDC events, the finer points of the site's new functionality are now coming into the, erm... spotlight. Eagle-eyed TUAW readers have been commenting and reporting on a number of interesting new enhancements to apple.com's abilities, such as the horizontal sub-navigation that Gruber mentioned on some of the product sites (try apple.com/mac to get an idea). A really cool new (and long overdue) feature to searching Apple's site is more or less the web-based equivalent of the Spotlight interface. As you can see, the search box is pinned to the top right of ever page at apple.com now, and running a search produces near-instant results in a drop-down menu style interface. A 'View all search results' option at the bottom of that menu displays the page I snapped for this post, complete with a more robust and categorized list of search results that can be expanded and collapsed, helping you find just what you need far more quickly. The site even appears to be using cookies to store a recent list of your searches, keeping them always accessible at the far right of this search results page.Altogether these are some very, very welcome new tools for searching Apple's exponentially growing product, information and support material. It should be noted, however, that the last update Apple made to their discussion forum still holds true, and that includes its own powerful search tools; this spotlight UI seems to apply only to the rest of apple.com.
Apple site redesign yields new iPhone visuals
Some downtime on ye ole Apple Store had folks fired up that something fresh from Cupertino might get pushed out to store shelves Monday, but the ready-to-swipe credit cards sitting in the world's outstretched hands ended up going largely unused when Steve decided to focus more on what's to come than what's on sale today. No bother -- at least the WWDC keynote was accompanied by an Apple.com redesign that dragged along some fresh iPhone scenery for the ride. Unless your name's Walt, this is about as close as you're gonna get to it before the 29th, so soak it all in.%Gallery-3869%
New videos at Super Paper Mario's Japanese site
Nintendo of Japan has put up a teaser page for its next big Wii release, Super Paper Mario. Considering that the US release date (4/09) is a week and a half earlier than Japan's, we're not sure which to blame for why their official site came up before North America's -- our laziness or their industriousness.Along with the standard story and cast previews, there are three gameplay videos, with nine more promised. The movie clip showing what happens when Mario gets a star is definitely worth a watch. We've really grown fond of seeing the giant plumber kick aside warp pipes ever since he picked up the habit in New Super Mario Bros.Keep an eye on the site as there are still two unrevealed sections. With the game's release being only a few weeks away, they won't be able to hold onto those last bits of hidden info for too long!
Full Hotel Dusk site now open
As the title indicates, Hotel Dusk: Room 215 has graduated from a minisite to the full treatment, complete with loads of new content just waiting to be discovered. If you need to slake your extreme thirst for this intriguing title until you can get your hands on it, this is the answer you're looking for.
