Britney Spears and her marketing team has released an iPhone application that allows you to add your face to one of her back-up dancers. The application was developed by Snappy Apps LLC and Brandcasting Unlimited LLC. Other features of the application that will be added include exclusive images of Britney, wallpapers, and messages. There is also tweet messages from Britney’s account that is connected to the app. How much does this app cost? The “It’s Britney” app sells for $1.99 [iTunes link].
Joe Hewitt was the main developer of the Facebook iPhone application, but he recently decided to give up on that project. A couple of days ago, he wrote “Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project,” tweeted Hewitt. The main reason why he decided to give up on the App Store is because of Apple’s policies.
In an e-mail to TechCrunch, Hewitt said that he is philosophically opposed to the existence of the App Store review process and believes that they are setting a bad precedent for other software platforms. He said that he would rather be known for making the best platform available rather than being seen as a developer that has to go through a middleman in order to showcase software.
Joe Hewitt is best known for his contributions to the development of the Firefox web browser. In 2000-2003, Hewitt did a lot of the UI programming for the Netscape browser as well. Personally I applaud Hewitt’s contributions to the Facebook iPhone App and the Firefox browser. I hate to see him leaving the App Store developer community, but I’m not surprised he left because Apple’s review process has been highly criticized since the beginning.
Gameloft is a gaming company that designed Earthworm Jim and Shrek Kart for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Now their latest game has more of a political theme. The new game is called Bailout Wars and it allows players to kill bankers by throwing them into the air or shooting them. Another option is to shake them to the point that their clothes fall off.
There is a free and paid version of the game. The paid version sells for $0.99. “Take revenge on bankers in this fast-paced castle defense game. Defend the White House and save the US taxpayers’ money before it gets stolen! It’s time for you to give them what they deserve!” states the game description. Above is a video clip. What do you think about the game?
Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) has officially announced today in a press release that the App Store on iTunes has surpassed 100,000 applications. These 100,000 applications have been downloaded well over two billion times. The applications are divided up into 20 different categories which includes travel, games, finance, and medical.
“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” stated Apple SVP of Worldwide Product Marketin Philip Schiller. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”
Over the summer, the iPhone OS 3.0 was released and developers began to add push, in-app goods, MMS, copy and paste, and shake to shuffle features into their applications. Over 2 billion push notifications have already been delivered to iPhone customers.
John Carmack is the man behind Commander Keen, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, and Quake. He as the lead programmer behind the games and is the co-founder of id Software. Carmack has confirmed that Doom Classic has been submitted to Apple for approval in an interview with TouchArcade.
Doom Classic will be running on the OpenGL rendered graphics engine. The sound engine will have better quality and a crafted control system. It’d be cool if the modded versions of Wolfenstein 3D make it on the App Store too such as the Barney and Beavis/Butt-head version.
It seems that whenever a company gets featured by Apple, they will immediately get funding after. Bump Technologies is no exception. The company behind the Bump application has received funding from Sequoia Capital according to TechCrunch. Jason Kincaid discovered that Bump’s logo was on Sequoia’s PowerPoint presentation slides at the StartupSchool event.
The funding is rumored to be about $3 million based on a $10 million valuation. The Bump app is free on iTunes making the valuation sound pretty interesting. Bump allows people to transfer contact information simply by bumping two iPhones together. Bump launched out of Y-Combinator. Bump Technologies was founded by David Lieb, Andy Huibers, and Jake Mintz in October 2008.
In the frequently asked questions portion of Bump’s website, the founders revealed how the app works which I found pretty interesting. Below is that excerpt:
There are two parts to BumpTM: the app running on your device and a smart matching algorithm running on our servers in the cloud. The app on your phone uses the phone’s sensors to literally “feel” the bump, and it sends that info up to the cloud. The matching algorithm listens to the bumps from phones around the world and pairs up phones that felt the same bump. Then we just route the contact information between the two phones in each pair.
The Wolfram Alpha search engine is one of the most sophisticated search engines I have ever seen. It is a lot more advanced than Google in doing calculations and solving problems, but it is not as appealing when it comes to searching for websites. The problem is that Wolfram Alpha does not have mainstream appeal, yet the company has still decided to charge $50 for their iPhone application.
The Wolfram Alpha iPhone application plugs into the API of the search engine directly and delivers results at a fast pace. This application seems extremely useful to a financial analyst but not very common for a typical consumer especially considering the price.
When I went directly to the Wolfram Alpha website on the Safari browser on the iPhone, it turns out that the user interface was quite friendly too. Below is a screenshot of what the website looks like on the web browser. Once I find out what the main difference is between the iPhone app and the web version, then I’ll update this post. If you download the app, leave a comment. After the jump is a couple of screenshots of the web version of WolframAlpha. (more…)
Directed Electronics has launched an iPhone application that allows users to start their cars remotely. This is a perfect application to have if you live in a place where it snows during thte winter. The application is free [iTunes link], but having a Viper remote system installed on your vehicle will cost you.
Some of the features built in to the application includes unlocking, locking, a trunk opener, panic button, and alerts. You can also manage multiple cars assuming all of them have Viper is installed on them. It is assumed that the application works through satellite because the company claims the range is “virtually unlimited.” Let’s say that you leave the state and forgot that your car at home was unlocked, this would be a good app for you to have.
However the cost of the SmartStart systems is rough on the wallet. The SmartStart system has a retail price of $499 and the SmartStart module costs $299 for existing Viper customers. The Viper SmartStart can be bought from Best Buy as of right now.
The Tap Tap Revenge franchise was started by Nate True and is published by Tapulous. Tap Tap Revenge was the most downloaded game on the Apple App Store in 2008. The game features tapping on different colored balls before moving from the top of the screen to the bottom. The colored balls are in sync with the song playing with the game. This concept is similar to the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchise.
Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS) has already been successful on the App Store and now they are bringing their Rock Band franchise from gaming consoles to the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch. The game announcement was made at the CTIA conference.
The Rock Band iPhone application will have 15 songs and 5 more that can be unlocked as you progress in the World Tour. There will also be an option to buy additional tracks. The game will have single player, multiplayer over Bluetooth, and Facebook Connect integration.
All the instruments will work too. That means you can select the guitar, drums, bass, and vocals. No word yet on the release date, but it is expected to arrive within the next few weeks.
Alyssa Milano is best known as Samantha on Who’s The Boss? and Phoebe Halliwell on Charmed. Milano has recently been very active on Twitter. Milano recently faced the wrath of the “Tweetie mob” when she retweeted the following message:
“Boooooo!!! RT @TwitterDispatch: Tweetie ‘Upgrade’ costs the same as buying new: http://j.mp/b6VgC”
Milano was referring to the Tweetie iPhone application which costs $2.99. Given Milano’s celebrity status, it turns out that many people did not like her reaction for having to pay for an iPhone app. Frommer of BusinessInsider bashed Milano for her remarks, but I disagree with him for doing that.
Milano is entitled to her opinion just as much as Frommer is. And for those developers complaining about more people needing to support them, develop high quality apps and you will get downloads. Tweetie is one of the top grossing applications on the Apple App Store so I’m sure whoever made it is doing very well financially now.
“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” stated Apple CEO Steve Jobs in a press release. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”
Apple has announced today that over 2 billion applications have been downloaded from the App Store. The App Store is currently the largest applications store in the world. There are about 85,000 applications available for download as of today and there are about 50 million iPhone and iPod Touch customers around the world. In the Apple iPhone Developer program, there are 125,000 (registered) developers.
As Peter Kafka points out, in the last 76 days Apple sold 500 million applications. On average, that is about 6.6 million downloads per day in the last 76 days. Between the 85,000 applications, it is estimated that Apple is making roughly $200 million per month. Since Apple keeps 30%, that means the company would be making $720 million per year just from the applications business.
iMo is a startup that launched out of the TechCrunch50 conference that aims to make the iPhone or iPod Touch act as a gaming controller for PC games. Most PC games use a mouse and keyboard to play but sometimes people prefer to play with a wireless controller. This is where iMo’s future application comes in. iMo’s application would make the Apple iPhone or Apple iPod Touch work as a wireless controller.
The application would communicate with the PC through a WiFi or Bluetooth connection. iMo will cost $0.99 on the Apple App Store and the application will be available on the Google Android Market in the future too. Below is a video demo of the presentation from TechCrunch50.
When Apple Inc. approved Spotify, it blew everyone’s minds. Apple had literally approved an iTunes competitor, a type of app that generally gets rejected quickly. Spotify is a Swedish P2P music streaming service that has almost no buffering delay and witnessed a huge demand on bandwidth when their iPhone application was approved. Because of the approval and bandwidth demands, Spotify had to become invite-only again for their membership services.
“We are going to have to temporarily reinstate our invite system in the UK. We are invite-only in all our other launch countries but we hope to be able to remove the need for an invite again very soon,” stated Spotify’s Andres Sehr in a blog post.
Playlists on Spotify can be created for free, but there are radio advertisements that are played in between songs. Spotify also allows users to create collaborative playlists which are given their own web addresses. Spotify was taken out of invite-only in February but had to go back because of the iPhone app. Those that are willing to pay to get direct access can register for Spotify will have to cough up £10 per month. The advantage of paying that price is that the music will be ad-free.
RealNetworks Inc.’s paid streaming music service Rhapsody has been surprisingly approved on iTunes. Considering the amount of bandwidth that application possibly requires to work, Apple seems to be pretty lenient. Apple is also the #1 music retailer so allow a competitor into the system comes even more as a surprise. Apple generally rejects applications that would interfere with their business.
The application download is free, but new subscribers will have to pay $14.99 per month if they want to use the application for more than 7 days. Rhapsody users will be able to stream music from a collection of over 8 million songs. Rhapsody will work as long as the user is getting a cellphone signal or WiFi.
Here’s a crazy idea for an iPhone application: Show 5 pictures at a time of women that have been arrested. The application was made by MSK Software and has the following description: “Weekly 5 mugshots (public domain) of hot women being arrested. All suspects are innocent until proven guilty.”
Getting arrested is never fun and society frowns upon it. But at least these women have something to smile at if they get featured on the application because they are considered as being “hot” by MSK’s standards. The price of the app is $1.99 which seems like an unfair price according to the application’s reviews. The app should be $0.99.
