apps

A young software developer has decided to pull his iPhone game from Apple's App Store because it was too similar to the classic arcade game Tetris.

Noah Witherspoon, a college student in Atlanta, created a free game called Tris for Apple's handset platform. But Apple recently contacted Witherspoon to let him know that the Tetris Company, which licenses the eponymous video game, had notified it about copyright and trademark infringement claims against the app.

Witherspoon wrote on his blog that he has chosen not to take the matter to court and will pull the game on Wednesday. "… Read more

Rooms is, so far anyway, the first and only IRC client for the iPhone. It's pretty stripped down as far as IRC clients go, but for simple chatting, it works really well. That said, it has quite a number of bugs, probably because it's only version 0.5. For the uninitiated, IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and involves real-time Internet communication on chat rooms called channels. There are hundreds of IRC servers located around the world, and is probably one of the oldest forms of Internet chat rooms.

When you first start Rooms up, you'll be … Read more

SEATTLE--If you've ever wanted to hand control of your life off for a day, let me recommend putting it in the safe care of iPhone applications.

That's what I did Thursday, a day for which the plan I had originally made fell through.

So, late on Wednesday night, as I was pondering what to with myself here Thursday--I'm in town for the Gnomedex conference, which begins Friday--I started thinking about my brand-new iPhone 3G and all the applications I've heard you can get.

And it occurred to me that it could be quite an experiment to turn my day over to the direction exclusively of some of those apps. I already had downloaded a couple, but as I looked around on Apple's App Store, I found that there were countless others that could help get me through my day.

I began the morning by booting up LocalEats, a free app from WhereTheLocalsEat.com that offers up lists of the top 100 places to chow down in 50 American cities. It makes its suggestions based on where you are and then sorts them, nearest first.

LocalEats had a few suggestions that sounded good, but before I set off in search of food, I thought I'd give another app, UrbanSpoon, a chance as well. … Read more

On Wednesday night, Facebook previewed the next version of its popular iPhone application, which has retained one of the top spots in Apple's App Store since its launch in early July.

The new mobile version is a complete overhaul that shares much in common with the redesign of Facebook's Web version--a move that could be paving the way for mobile advertising and applications later on down the road.

The biggest addition in version 2.0 is support for real-time status updates, including integration with the service's messaging and live chat. At the time of launch, users will … Read more

One of the common complaints about Apple's iPhone--and one that did not get solved with the launch of the iPhone 3G--is the lack of a copy-paste function. An independent developer, Zac White, recently unveiled his open-source solution: OpenClip, a standard for other iPhone application developers.

He's not the first one to have that idea: another developer, Preston Monroe, has created a hack called iCopy that lets iPhone owners copy and paste between the e-mail and Web browser applications.

OpenClip is not a standalone app but rather a technology that developers can incorporate into their iPhone applications, should they … Read more

Apple has reportedly acknowledged the fact that many third-party iPhone applications have been crashing on launch, according to AppleInsider.

One of AppleInsider's readers says that after he contacted Apple about the problem, he received a response from CEO Steve Jobs himself: "This is a known iPhone bug that is being fixed in the next software update in September."

Apple representatives did not immediately have confirmation.

That was the full extent of Jobs' e-mail, AppleInsider said. While the most talked-about mobile-software problems for Apple right now are still the issues with MobileMe, crashing apps have been causing a … Read more

We've talked about Simplify Media here before as a great way to listen to music from your friends' iTunes music libraries (Windows and Mac). In fact, Simplify Media was one of our 10 best downloads of 2007. The minute you fire it up, you'll see why--as long as you and your friend both have a free account with Simplify Media, you can stream and listen to each others entire music collections on both Windows and Mac. But, the latest release of Simplify Media for iPhone and iPod Touch lets you take all of that music with you.

To … Read more

Today I had one of those what-the-heck software moments that occurs when a program breaks where it's least expected. A premier feature in the iPhone application I was tinkering with had vanished after a version update.

1Password for iPhone, first reviewed by my colleague Josh Lowensohn, is better known by its Mac counterpart, which encrypts log-ons and passwords on the Mac and automatically fills them in on Web pages. Windows users can think of it as the rough equivalent to RoboForm.

Since a smooth move like that requires multiple programs to run concurrently--something presently prohibited for iPhone applications--1Password for … Read more

Congress learns all about cookies (not the delicious kind...but maybe the del.icio.us kind), Gmail goes down, and Google proves to be a terrible communicator. Also, the Amazon Kindle may take off after all (har har), and Twitter baffles us completely regarding its follow/follower spam prevention thing. In sum, it's a Tuesday, but it feels like a Monday.

Google apologizes for Gmail outage http://www.crn.com/software/210002714

PC World: Google Apps hit by prolonged Gmail access problem http://www.pcworld.com/article/149524/

Android may be … Read more