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Free Accordance Bible study software for iOS now available
Accordance, the publisher of the Mac-only Bible study software that I've reviewed before (see here and here) and included in my "best Mac apps" of 2010, has released their long-awaited iOS app for iPad or iPhone/iPod touch. As mentioned in the official release notice, the free universal app includes a copy of the English Standard Version (ESV) of the Bible, which is linked to Strong's numbers. There are also free Greek and Hebrew dictionaries, a copy of Easton's Bible Dictionary and more. In addition, those who create a free Accordance account will have access to even more free resources (see the official release for more details). If you're already an Accordance user, you should use your existing account name and password, because it will allow you to select modules that you have purchased to be downloaded and installed on your iOS device. To do so, tap the Books icon at the bottom left of the main screen to access your iOS library, then tap the down arrow on the bottom left of the "Library" screen. Accordance for iOS will show you all of the modules that you can download and their sizes. I've only just downloaded the app and some modules, so I can't really offer much in the way of a review. The app had been announced for a December launch, and they made it with hours to spare. More information can be found on the Accordance for iOS forum, including some preliminary Q&A, which was done on the official forum announcement post. Online help documentation is also available. Congrats to the Accordance team! Comments are disabled on this post. If you have questions for TUAW regarding this app, please direct your inquiries here.
Mel's favorite iOS apps of 2010
I thought this might be a hard list to come up with, but I really just took a look at the apps that I use every day, and that made it easy. I won't be including built-in apps like Safari or Mail, but the things that third-party developers have come up with that make having an iPhone such a pleasure. That's not to say that there aren't other apps that compete with some that I've mentioned, which are just as good or maybe better, but these are my choices based on day to day use. So here, in no particular order, are my favorites. iCam: What a great little app for 5 bucks. I can check on the house and pets. Using webcams that are built into my Macs or stand alones, iCam lets me see multiple cameras, hear audio and turn motion detection on. It sends alerts so that I know if something is going on. iCam can also record movement if you want. It's easy to set up, the network setup avoids issues with firewalls or multiple routers, and it just works. The app is universal. DirecTV: This app is free and really useful if you have a DirecTV DVR. Using the DirecTV app, I can search for programs while away from home, set up recordings and eliminate anxiety about missing something important. A recent update lets you search for movies, or you can use a more global search to find programs by title, cast member names and other criteria. Continue reading to see more of my favorites.
TUAW's Daily App: Roget's Thesaurus
After a few weeks of games, we're going with more practical apps for a little while here, so here's an iOS version of the famous thesaurus reference book. Roget's Thesaurus is pretty much the name in finding words that can work in the place of other words, and a company called Mobifusion has worked with the real thing to bring it to the iPhone in a searchable form. The app lets you browse through 30,000 words and all of their synonyms, change text sizes on the fly or just flip through if you want to browse that way. You may argue that there are free thesauri (?) available online, and you'd be right, but it's nice, especially if you use one often, to have it available and ready to go on the iPhone whenever you want. The official Roget's Thesaurus app is US$2.99 on the App Store. And if you don't want to pay a few bucks (just consider how much a paper copy of the book would cost -- it's worth it anyway), there's always the FreeSaurus. That works well, but there are ads in it, and as you should know by now, there's no such thing as a free banquet dinner luncheon lunch.
Angry Birds creators: Apple still does mobile apps best
In a recent interview, Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio (the makers, if you haven't heard by now, of Angry Birds) says that from a developer viewpoint, Apple is the platform to go with. "They have gotten so many things right," says Vesterbacka, "and they know what they are doing and they call the shots." He says that Android's issue isn't so much about device fragmentation as it is "ecosystem fragmentation" -- by spreading itself out so much, Google's smartphone OS has "so many different shops, so many different models" running that it's tough for developers to find their own place in all of the chaos. Vesterbacka also makes the point that much of the Angry Birds success has come simply from marketing. His two steps to succeeding on the App Store are first to "create a great app," and then to "get the message out." He repeats that a few times -- Angry Birds itself is definitely a solid game, but part of the reason that Rovio enjoys such success is their effective marketing and reaching the people who are interested in buying their game. You can watch the full video of Vesterbacka's interview with Google after the break. Personally, I think a lot of the success that Angry Birds has had is a "right time, right place" kind of thing. That's not to take anything away from Vesterbacka and Rovio -- his insights are certainly dead-on and he clearly knows what he's doing, and the company deserves all of the success it has earned. But with a platform as big as the iPhone, there was bound to be a killer app at some point, and Angry Birds is definitely one of those. [via 9to5Mac]
Radio Shack has yet another iPhone promotion now through Friday
Yup. The boys are at it again with another $50 off normal iPhone prices. If you're feeling a bit retro you can score a 3GS for $48.99 with a contract. A top of the line iPhone 4 with 32 GB is $248.99. Radio Shack had a similar promotion earlier this month, but this latest offer does not include the attractive Trade and Save buy back program. The first sale was a sell out, and a check of three of my local Shacks showed none had any iPhones in stock to sell, unfortunately. So, if you want to take advantage of this one, you'd better move fast. The promotion runs through this Friday, and getting the discount requires a new contract or qualifying renewal.
Despite strong start, iPad magazines not faring well over time
There's good news and bad news on the iPad publication front. First of all, lots of iPad magazines seem to be having respectable launches -- Wired's first iPad edition did a full 100,000 downloads earlier this year, and other magazines have seen similarly large numbers at launch, as customers download the app or content just to see what it's like. But that content doesn't seem to be holding anyone's attention, as most publications are seeing major drops over the rest of the year. Magazines like GQ, Vanity Fair, and Glamour have seen about a 20 percent user drop off per month from September to November, at a time when there were more iPads available than ever. Reports say publishers are still hopeful -- they believe that solid holiday sales of Apple's tablet device could bring customers back after the new year. But numbers like these won't get anyone excited in publishing more iPad content, unfortunately. By the time there are enough iPad customers out there to make a digital publication on that platform worth it, publishers may have lost interest. [via Engadget]
Ring in the New Year on your iPhone with the official Times Square Ball app
Ever wanted to be in Times Square on New Years Eve instead of in your buddy's basement? Well, good luck with that. In the meantime you can download the first official Times Square Ball app. The app lets you live vicariously through those that are there and features the countdown clock (synced to your time zone), and it also includes a commercial-free, mobile stream of the webcast event. For those that are actually going to be there, the app offers news, weather, photos, maps and schedules for the Times Square New Year's Eve celebration. Additionally, you can check-in via Foursquare, Facebook and Twitter, and you'll be shown exactly how many miles you are from the festivities. Times Square Official New Year's Eve Ball is a free download.
TUAW's Daily App: Foodspotting
We've been covering a lot of games lately (since those have been the main focus of the holiday season), so here's a non-gaming app that comes straight from Apple's best of 2010 lists. Foodspotting, free on the App Store now, actually reminds me a lot of Corkbin, except that instead of wines, you're finding and sharing information about food at restaurants near you. You can browse pictures of various foods near your location, and then from one of those, follow the user who took the picture, find out about the restaurant it was taken at, or look for other examples of the same dish from other restaurants. The interface is fast and slick, and especially if you're in a place where there are plenty of restaurants to try (I'm right in the middle of Los Angeles), odds are that you'll find something good to go taste. Unfortunately, that's the only issue with this one -- just like Corkbin, the app needs to be populated, and if no one else around you has taken any pictures, you can't really use the app for discovery. But even if there's nothing else nearby, you can at least use it as a visual record of places you've eaten out, and maybe you can find a favorite dish to save for later. Foodspotting's best of 2010 spotlight is well deserved -- bring it along the next time you try a new dish at the restaurant around the block.
The best iOS apps I used in 2010
After looking back over Mac and Mac/iOS hybrid apps, it's time to look at the best iOS apps of 2010. As before, this list comes from my particular experience over the past year with these apps. 1) iCab Mobile (US$1.99, universal) is a replacement for mobile Safari. While it is hindered by the fact that iOS doesn't have anywhere to set a "default browser," and therefore most URLs that you open from the Springboard or email/Twitter/etc... will open in Safari, iCab offers plenty of features that make it worth the effort. It is the first app on my dock, and I much prefer it over Safari. Although it uses the same rendering engine as Safari, it comes with a host of features that Safari doesn't have. iCab Mobile will let you download files, which you can either offload to your computer later or upload to Dropbox from right within the app. Tap and hold an image, and you can save it right to your Dropbox. iCab on the iPad also does "real" tabs, with a visible tab present (it will auto-hide when not needed, if you want). You can set it to open links in new tabs, or open only links to different domains in new tabs. It has content filtering built-in, as well as module support for things like Instapaper, viewing HTML source or even downloading videos from YouTube. It also has a forms manager and a kiosk mode, and as Mike pointed out in November it supports VGA mirroring for presentation use. Web browsing is one of the primary uses of my iPad, and iCab Mobile is well worth the minimal asking price. Find out more at iCab Mobile's website. See the rest of my choices below.
Michael's Best of Tech 2010 list
It's time for that honored tradition that's inescapable at the end of every year: the annual best/worst lists. But I'm generally a positive kind of guy, so I'm just going to share my "best of" part of the list. Below you'll find my selections for the best of tech that I used in 2010. Some of the items on the list may have originated before 2010, but this is the year I really put the tech to use. So, without further ado, here is the Best of Tech 2010 as I see it. Best Mac App: 2010 wasn't kind to the Mac app platform. The wild success of iOS and mobile apps in general seems to have taken a toll on innovative desktop apps. Hopefully the Mac App Store will reverse the trend. Until then, if you are looking for a cool new Mac app, try OmmWriter Dāna. It's a word processor designed from the ground up to lend itself to the user's creative flow. You can read my review of it here. Try it out (there are both free and paid versions), and you'll find out just how much a little thing like a horizontal cursor can increase your creativity. You can download OmmWriter here.
App Store freeze has ended
Most of the country still has lots of winter to go through, but one thing has already thawed: the Apple App Store. Every year, Apple freezes changes on iOS apps during the holiday, in part to give the team that does updates a little break, and because sales tend to be quite volatile as people unwrap iPhones, iPod touches and (this year for the first time) iPads on Christmas. But today marks the un-freezing of the store, so top paid and free charts will go back to changing at the whims of App Store shoppers, and app developers are free to submit updates and change app prices and descriptions again for the first time since last Thursday. So far, not much has changed. We'll probably see a few of those holiday sales end this week, though EA still hasn't ended its big sale (as of this writing, anyway -- the rumor was that as soon as it could, the company would jack up its prices on popular apps, but that hasn't happened yet). It's possible that some games have done so well at their 99 cent sale prices that they'll just stay there, and/or the developers will find other ways to make them a little more profitable. And I don't think we'll see any big new apps this week (most developers probably made sure to get their apps out before the holiday rush), but you never know -- with so many people making apps for iOS, there's usually always something ready to go.
Lawsuit over app privacy targets Apple and developers
Apple and several mobile developers are facing two separate lawsuits over the collection and unauthorized sharing of private user data with third-party advertising networks, according to iLounge. The first lawsuit, Freeman vs. Apple, was filed in a northern California federal court and targets applications such as Pandora, Dictionary.com, The Weather Channel, Toss It, Text4Plus, Talking Tom Cat and Pimple Popper Lite. The second lawsuit, Lalo vs. Apple, was filed in federal court in San Jose, California and seeks class action stats for anyone who has downloaded an offending application between December 2008 and last week. Similar to the first lawsuit, the Lalo vs. Apple suit targets Pandora, Paper Toss, The Weather Channel and Dictionary.com. Apple is included in both suits as the App Store approval process makes the company an "aider and abetter" to the deceptive practices of these applications. The lawsuits stem from a recent Wall Street Journal investigation that revealed several iOS and Android applications were transmitting age, gender, location and device identifier information to third-party advertising companies. This information was mined by the recipients and used to serve up relevant in-app advertisements. Unfortunately, this exchange of information was done without the user's knowledge or consent. While most of the collected information is not personally identifying, the hidden nature of the exchange caused a stir among privacy advocates. It was only a matter of time before this moral outrage turned into a class-action lawsuit.
Apple launches 12 Days of Christmas promo for various European countries
Apple's 12 Days of Christmas promotion went live on December 26 for many countries in Europe. The annual promo sees Apple giving away free apps, songs, TV shows, films and music videos from the iTunes Store. Each free download is available for only 24 hours. Here are the countries the promo is running in: UK: http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.co.uk/ France : http://www.itunes12joursdecadeaux.fr/ Germany : http://www.itunes12tagegeschenke.de/ Italy : http://www.itunes12giornidiregali.it/ Switzerland : http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.ch/ Ireland : http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.ie/ Spain : http://www.nuestros12diasderegalos.es/ Netherlands: http://www.itunes12dagencadeaus.nl/ Norway : http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.no/ Austria : http://www.itunes12tagegeschenke.at/ Finland : http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.fi/ Sweden : http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.se/ Luxembourg : http://www.itunes12daysofchristmas.lu/ In addition to the above websites, you can also track your country's promotions by downloading Apple's official iTunes 12 Days of Christmas app. The promotion runs until January 6, 2011. Thanks to Richard P. for the list.
Beer cannon fires beer out at your iPhone's demand
We've seen an iOS device used to control a soda machine before, but here's a setup with a more, ahem, practical application for New Year's Eve: a beer cannon controlled by an iPhone. You can see a video of it in action after the break, and the creator even has it set up to post videos of fired beer cans straight to Twitter. The whole thing is controlled using what looks like a web app on the iPhone (or it might just be a normal app fitted with some web views), and it allows you to select what kind of beer you'd like, as well as look through the cannon's web cam, and then shoot your beer across the room to you. The app can also control and monitor the temperature inside the mini-fridge, so this is quite a setup. Unfortunately, we don't have much information on how it was all made (though we're told that's coming soon), but it's all connected up using an IO-204, and the cannon itself is air-based. Pretty wild. I wouldn't advocate using this on New Year's Eve with a room full of people, though -- someone's going to end up with a concussion. Thanks, Hans!
Facebook for iOS, Tapulous see big iOS downloads over the holiday
As expected, we're starting to see huge download numbers for iOS from over the weekend. As people unwrapped their new iOS devices, they also took to the App Store to pick up new games and apps as soon as they could. Facebook for iOS saw a gigantic jump in users -- as you can see in the chart above, the app saw an increase of a million users just over the holiday weekend, and it has gone up by almost 5 million users since Thanksgiving. That's pretty phenomenal, even considering that we knew the App Store would be busy. We probably haven't seen the last of the record numbers, either -- Tapulous says that its new Tap Tap Revenge 4 app saw twice the downloads this year that the last version did last Christmas. The peak downloads for that app (which is number one on the free App Store chart during the current freeze) reached 45,000 per hour over the weekend, which is just huge. I have a feeling that a lot of devs saw some really high sales and download numbers over the Christmas holiday. We'll keep an eye out for more as the next week goes on. [via DF]
TUAW's Daily App: Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Much like all of that snow outside your door, the App Store's top lists are currently frozen -- Apple will release what's in the top spots on the marketplace tomorrow (after the holiday), but until then, everything's staying exactly where it is. While we haven't seen a lot of numbers just yet, it's clear that EA was a big winner on the App Store this year. The company dropped prices on lots of its titles earlier last week, then claimed a good bit of the top 10, top 20 and the top 200. The rumor is that as soon as it can, EA is going to raise prices back up on these apps, so if you want to grab this recently-released port of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 at just a buck, now's your chance. Some of the reviews on this iOS version of Mortal Kombat are iffy. The port suffers from the usual fighting game problem of having no buttons on the iPhone, so controls don't feel responsive. Often the controls actually aren't responsive, though there is an S button to make some of the more common moves easier to pull off. But for just a dollar, playing UMK 3 right there on your iPhone is pretty awesome. Whether or not you agree with EA's stunt -- some say it was a cheap way to get some attention, while others say apps are worth what people will pay for them -- I do think it's pretty impressive that a big, traditional gaming company found an interesting way to take advantage of Apple's usually eclectic marketplace. We'll have to see if other bigger studios pick up on this kind of thing in the future, or if indie developers can find a way to take advantage of it.
Hyper Facts for iOS: A powerful and fun database query app
It's amazing what you can find with your iOS device. With the whole internet in your hands, vast databases are yours to explore with a couple of taps. Hyper Facts is a new way to more easily manage these searches, and overall it works pretty well. You type in a search term, a name, or an event (like a historical event) and off goes the app to do a search. The app searches 4 different databases, although the ones used aren't specified, and there are also links to Wikipedia. If you click the 'nearby' icon, the app gets your location via GPS and tells you interesting things around you, with links to articles. %Gallery-111988%
DropDAV: An easy way to link iWork for iPad and Dropbox
iWork for iPad is an incredibly powerful tool for folks who want to use their iPads as a MacBook Air surrogate. However, if they want to round-trip their documents through the popular Dropbox service, there hasn't been a way to save or open files from within Pages, Keynote, or Numbers for iPad. Until now, that is... DropDAV is a new service from smiles + laughs that provides a WebDAV front end to Dropbox. What that means is that any iPad or iPhone application that can open or save files through WebDAV can now link straight to Dropbox. Since iWork for iPad has always had WebDAV capabilities built-in, DropDAV provides the long-needed door between iWork and Dropbox. To sign up for DropDAV, you just need to have a Dropbox account. DropDAV provides a 14-day free trial; after that time, the cost of DropDAV is 30% of your Dropbox account price. If you have a 2 GB free account with Dropbox, your DropDAV service will be free. Hit the link below to see how it all works.
Video: DJing on an iPad
In the video below, you'll find a pretty rocking DJ set thanks to an iPad and some other pretty gnarly hardware. This isn't exactly a DIY solution, since DJ Kutski is using Traktor Pro (that's the software on the screen above) and an X1 controller, both of which are pretty significant pieces of DJ gear. But the iPad is definitely a big part of the equation, and it's running TouchOSC, a neat app that allows you to hook up sound interfaces over Wi-Fi using some very configurable abstract graphics. There's not much in the way of explanation. You can definitely see him changing pitches and adjusting the volume in real-time (pretty impressive just running the controller over Wi-Fi), but non-DJs will probably have to look elsewhere to figure out exactly what's happening here. Then again, if nothing else, you can enjoy some nice iPad-driven beats on this Christmas Eve. Enjoy!
iOS 4.1 quietly added Cherokee language support
The Associated Press reports that Apple has quietly incorporated Cherokee language support into iOS. Cherokee tribal officials were worried about the demise of the Cherokee language as the tribe aged and its younger members increasingly adopted the English language -- and iPhones. However, instead of seeing technology as a threat, Cherokee tribal leaders opened talks with Apple three years ago about including native support for the Cherokee language in iOS. This fall, Apple replied to the Cherokees' request and announced that it was adding the Cherokee language to the roughly 50 languages supported by iOS. Apple's announcement was a surprise to Joseph Erb, who works in the Cherokee Nation's language technology division. He told the AP, "There are countries vying to get on these devices for languages, so we are pretty excited we were included." The written Cherokee language was created over 200 years ago when a blacksmith named Sequoyah converted the spoken Cherokee language into text. Use of the language has diminished in recent decades. Only 8,000 of the 290,000 members of the Cherokee tribe still speak the language -- a number the tribe hopes to increase with a little help from Apple.
