What would be an awesome addition to any App store, sadly has been reduced to a glorified movie uploader. Qik  has been for around for jailbroken iPhones for around a year now and is a really neat app. It lets you stream live video from your iPhone to Qik’s website. So you could start up a video and others could tune in and watch live while you streamed over 3G or over WiFi. Awesome right? Well the “official” app only lets you upload videos you have already taken with your iPhone 3Gs. The other kicker is you can only upload over Wifi. So no live streaming, no iPhone 3G support, and no upload on 3G only Wifi. So whats the point of this app again?

Qik App Store Link

MobileMe iDisk for the iPhone is one of those applications that can help round out a device in terms of having a complete mobile solution in your pocket. MobileMe iDisk is just that, giving MobileMe users access to their iDisk directly from the iPhone. You get the ability to view files, send links for others to access your public folder, view cached files off-line and access other MobileMe user’s public folders making this a good v1.0 release.

It’s also one of those applications that should have been introduced and released along with the MobileMe service at the same time. Instead, Apple allowed third party software developers to fill that gap with more feature rich applications over the past year. Now that Apple has finally released their official MobileMe iDisk application it seems rather diluted in functionality when compared to currently available third party offerings such as Files (formerly called MobileFiles) from Quickoffice, Inc. which offers a lot more for your money.

On the plus side is iDisk’s UI, speed and integration with the MobileMe service and works just like the iPhone’s built-in applications which are the only aspects that I can see that makes it nicer to use. But in order for it to be even more useful to iPhone/MobileMe users, Apple really needs to add a few more functions and features. These should include:

• Ability to create and edit custom folders in MobileMe.
• Ability to create and edit custom folders on the iPhone.
• Ability to move custom folders and files.
• Ability to copy link to shared files.
• Ability to download files directly to the iPhone for offline viewing.
• Return to where you left off when opening previously viewed documents.

Those are what I think of and call “core functionality” for this type of application which in this case would easily please the majority if not all of the iPhone/MobileMe users out there. They are not a lot but would add even greater value to the MobileMe service and the iDisk application itself. What do you think?

Reports are coming through that many developers’ Google Voice apps are being pulled from the iPhone App store. Even more shocking, is that rumors say Google’s own GV app was rejected from by Apple!! Apple states their usual garbage reasoning that these apps duplicate functions the iPhone already provides. It’s not clear if the apps being pulled/rejected was AT&T’s doing or just Apple’s choice. Either way it sucks for Google Voice users and a step backwards for the iPhone.

Via: Engadget Mobile

Worms is a classic no matter what platform. For some reason I am not really motivated to run out and grab this title, it might be because you can’t play another iphone. But if YOU are a Worms Junkie and you have to have it. Now is the time.

Worms is a turn-based strategy game where players take turns controlling a team of adorable worms. The idea is to annihilate the other team or teams by utilizing one of the many weapons at your disposal. You can also utilize the terrain in a variety of ways since it is completely destructible. The game features updated cartoon-style visuals, a new control system designed specifically for the iPhone, 50 different challenges, 6 unique environments, four-player multiplayer, and much more.

App store link

Long hours of riding the train in the past couple of weeks has lead me to start downloading more games for the iPhone. My two most recent purchases are iYamato and Baseball Slugger: Homerun Race 3D.

iYamato – $.99 from the AppStore.

It is 1945. You are the commander of the doomed Japanese battleship the Yamato, which was the largest battleship ever created. The American Navy knows your position- it is your job to fight them to the death. That isn’t really anywhere in the game, I just watch too much History Channel. The game consists of you controlling small anti-aircraft guns and the Yamato’s 18.1″ cannons (thank you Wikipedia). You use this firepower to defend your ship from the invader Americans. It is really only worth your while to try this on Hard mode, since on Easy and Medium modes, there is no end to the action. The game will go on until you are sunk which would take forever. On Hard mode, you will sink pretty quickly. The ship cannot be damaged, but can sink. Your ship will start to tilt once bombs hit it, and will eventually sink below the water. The guns are controlled by too-small buttons and sliders on the bottom of the screen. The main buttons control the small guns, and buttons closer to the middle fire the cannons. The controls on this game are a bit frustrating and need some tweaking because it is really hard to tell where the smaller guns are aiming at times. It isn’t a bad deal at $.99 plus tax- get it if you’re going to be bored for a while, but I don’t highly recommend it until updates change the control scheme a bit.

Baseball Slugger: Homerun Race 3D- $2.99 on sale right now.

This is a great game- no question about it. It is addicting, easy, fun, anything you want in a game. It is essentially a Home Run Derby with severely juiced up characters.  The aiming of your swing is done by accelerometer, and is quite sensitive. Graphically speaking, this game really looks like an early PS2 game- just looks amazing. You can upgrade your batter by certain achievements (Numbers of HRs, fouls, etc.), hitting homers when a “gold ball” appears, or by winning online contests. With these Gold Balls, you can upgrade your stats by getting new uniforms, pants, shoes, gloves, helmets, and. You can also pay Gold Balls to customize the look of your character, but there isn’t a performance boost to this. The online play is great, with differing rooms for those with differing skills. Points are earned by getting hits, HRs, hitting foul-poles and scoreboards. There are two glitches in the game- one where you hear the sound of a pole being hit before the ball reaches the pole (doesn’t affect gameplay at all) and one where I hit a normal HR that just kept going when it should have landed. That’s how I hit a 750 foot homerun, which was AWESOME.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Firemint has put up the above video tech demo of their Real Racing game running optimized for an iPhone 3GS and…. wow.

Since the game uses a high fidelity physics engine, adding cars is a good test for pushing the hardware. We started our tech demo with 8 cars on the track, then 10, 12, 16 and 20, and the 3GS still didn’t break a sweat,” wrote Firemint’s Alexandra Peters. “We finally stopped when we got to 40 cars on the track at the same time, still with no perceptible drop in frame rate. We think the results are mind blowing.

Via: theiphoneblog

One of my hobbies is web and graphic design. I am not good enough or consistent enough to actually make a living at it, but I enjoy keeping up with what is going on. So you can imagine my excitement when I found this list of iPhone Apps for web designers. Even if all you do is mess around with your own site, this list will have one or two things that will be solid additions in your web sites arsenal.

When it comes to web design, there are apps for nearly everything, from helping create color schemes to managing your busy schedule. Here are 15 of the best!

1. Ego

Ego is a brilliant way of checking your web statistics on a daily (or even hourly) basis. Able to support sites such as Twitter, Squarespace and Google Analytics, you can track the traffic to your website from the comfort of your iPhone without the time consuming pain of having to log in and out of each individually.

2. Palettes

Particularly useful for the graphical web design, Palettes allows you to lift colous directly from any image you see online on your iPhone and create a ‘palette’ of your own, replicating exactly the desired color scheme. Palettes can be imported from or exported to other programs such as Photoshop and Illustrator, and offer a quick and efficient way of working with colors without having to compromise on accuracy.

3. WhatTheFont

One of the best things about using iPhone apps is the mobility that they offer. For example, if you see a font or lettering that catches your eye while out and about, simply take a photo and the WhatTheFont app will identify it, meaning you can incorporate it into your own designs in a matter of seconds. WhatTheFont works on practically every image, so even if the font is on a web page and not a photo, this app will still identify it for you, which has helped this app achieve almost cult status amongst designers.

Click through to see the rest of the list
(Via: WebDesignLedger)

It is hard to believe we are in our third year of the iPhone. When I initially switched from Windows Mobile to the iPhone I was looking for a device that would merge all my gadgets and toys into one neatly designed, well built package. I understood the decision I was making and the sacrifices I would ultimately have to live with.

The first glaringly obvious sacrifice that any Windows Mobile switcher user came made within was Apple’s, in my opinion, weak calendar and productivity suite. Microsoft made the premier productivity suite for mobile and still to this day it is what keeps a lot of Windows Mobile users with the archaic platform. Some who did decided to switch made the assumption that Apple would put out updates to build the platform up and strengthen it’s image as a true smartphone and to some extent they were (I was) right. The updates came, the SDK was released, and we are all falling in to a never ending black hole of apps.

After the release of their SDK the world was buzzing about background processes’ and productivity. Many of the mobility experts I knew where switching back to older platforms to take advantage of of the deceptively simple process of notifications, but were lured back by the iPhone’s ease of use and potential. Some even kept a second device as a way to get things done on the go. Apple’s premature announcement of PUSH notifications let the world know they were aware that there was a need to fill this niche on the iPhone. But was their solution really the answer we were looking for?

The answer is still unclear with only one productivity app in the App Store supporting PUSH (Remember the Milk) and PUSH still being in it’s infancy. I feel server based solutions will provide more problems than most users are willing to deal with.

1.) CONFIDENTIALITY-The average user will have to trust their personal information not with the developer of the application but in some if not most cases with a third party vendor.

2.) CONSISTENCY-If you have ever run a website you know your website only works when your server works. PUSH notifications will depend on that same type of reliability. BlackBerry isn’t even 100% and they are the industry standard of for PUSH and reliability. Unless your app will tell you that it can’t communicate with the server, you will be blissfully unaware that your appointment, task, or conference call has passed by without even a vibration.

3.) CONTROL-We’ve addressed in the past the issue of dealing with a Tsunami of notifications. Where we have a little control over alerts by choice of sound, badges, and a pop up, there is no control over when these apps go off. I could receive a game challenge in the middle of a meeting, or tweets in the middle of the night, But if you have all your favorite apps sending out notifications all day with little control of over when, then one of two things could happen. : 1) You are going to check every time they go off which could lead to loss of productivity or 2) you will become desensitized to all the alerts and miss important ones.

With companies like the makers of OmniFocus not wanting to support PUSH it becomes apparent that it is still not the solution to make he iPhone a productivity giant. So what is the answer? Do we allow background processes at the sake of our batteries, or is there is simpler solution? Can applications be granted right to use the calendar API to use it’s alerts and keep us from having to depend on a connection to get things done. What do you think? Are we on the right track with PUSH or do we need to see more from Apple?

TweetDeck, a popular Twitter client for desktops based on the Adobe AIR platform, is finally making it’s way to the iPhone’s of Twitter addicts everywhere. TweetDeck is known for its rather extensive feature set and is the desktop application of choice for many Twitter power users.

Features of the upcoming iPhone app are remarkably similar to the desktop version, which should please many users who have been longing for a powerful and fully-featured alternative to the current selection of iPhone twitter applications.
The features listed include:

* Tweet directly from your iPhone or iPod Touch.
* Manage multiple Twitter accounts.
* View notifications for new tweets received.
* Use columns to create your personal dashboard.
* Simply sync to set-up
* Continuously updates between your desktop and iPhone.
* Create Groups to easily follow all your friends.
* Follow topics in real-time with saved searches.
* Reply to tweets and send direct messages.
* Easily re-tweet messages.
* Share photos with Twitpic and YFrog.
* Shorten links with your favourite URL shortener.
* Follow and un-follow people.
* Shake your iPhone to refresh columns.

There is no mention of push notifications, but hopefully it will be added in the future. According to Mashable, the application is set to be released this evening at 9pm Pacific time. Stay tuned for a full review once we’ve had time to toy with it.

UPDATE: Tweetdeck is now on the appstore. It’s completely free. Get it here!

[Via TweetDeck, Mashable]

DataViz has put out their popular Documents To Go. This mobile software suite made its name on Windows Mobile (who?) They a have now set their eyes on the iPhone and look to make a solid companion to your desktop word processor.  To attest to how easy this is to use, I typed the whole review in this app.

Landscape and portrait mode

First and foremost when you buy an app like this with hopes it will have a landscape mode, I can confirm it does. It is a little slow in the transition, but after it transitions works great.

Toolbar

All of the features in Documents To Go are accessible by a slick toolbar that holds 5 icons in portrait mode and 7 in landscape. The next set of icons are just a swipe away. Much like the pages of the iPhone the toolbars many icons can be accessed by a swipe left or right. It is very responsive and slick. Great choice for a mobile device. To get to the individual options just click an icon and your choices will pop up. If you are confused as to what an icon stands for just hold that icon for a few seconds and the descriptive text will pop up

SAVE

docs to go gives you standard save features. Save and Save As. Save lets you name and save a previously unamed and unsaved file or just save a current draft. Save as lets you save and name a previously unnamed and unsaved file, or save a copy of the current draft.

Clipboard

The clipboard let’s you choose from:

• Cut
• Copy
• Paste
• Select All

The method to select appears to need improvement. To select you tap and hold, the magnifying glass will pulse, then slide your finger through the text you want to select. I would have liked them to have implemented Apples cut and paste or at least the selection method…and imagine they will once 3.0 is official. Once selected, you touch the copy and paste icon and select your option. Cut and Copy work as you would imagine. The text is copied to the clipboard waiting to be used via the paste function. Each function has a dedicated button.

Send

I thought it was great to see the send button front and center, until I pressed it. I got this message: “To send a file as an attatchment, you must set up an Exchange ActiveSync account in Documents To Go” Well that lost it’s charm fast. According to a Tweet I read they do plan on supporting MobileMe, but what about the people in between?

Character Formating

I guess you expect to see character formatting but cor some reason it was a nice surprise to see it in this first release. With options like :
Bold
Italics
Underline
Text Color
Background (see picture above)

I would like to see the option for choice of font and font size, but again, not a bad set of options for a first release.

Paragraph Formatting

These options are pretty straight forward. Left, right, center, alignment, justified, and distributed .  The features so far really make this a must have mobile document creator, but wouldn’t replace Word…obviously

Bullets and Numbering

You have two choices. Bullet points or numbers.

• a
• b
• c
• d

1. a
2. b
3. c
4. d

I really enjoy taking notes in a outline format. When using both bullets and indents you can develope a full outline. However it isn’t as fast or intuitive as I would have liked. So I hope to see this improved in the future. At this point custom bullet points are not supported but would be a welcomed addition.  What can I say, I like pretty bullets.

Indent

Documents To Go provides both increase and decrease indent. Like I said earlier. You can use these in combination with bullets for outlines. Other than that the use is as you would expect.

Search & Replace

Now let’s talk about icing on the cake. DataViz did a great job adding and implementing search and replace. When you click the search icon you are greeted with a clean little search window. Type in your word or phrase and hit search on the keyboard. Be careful not to hit Done, it sits where you would expect to see search, right beside the search input.

Tap the arrow below the search field and you are presented with Replace and the option to toggle Case Sensitivity and to search Whole Words. This again works and works well. If I could change anything, it would be the option for live search. Like in Firefox, I enjoy watching my results appear as I type.

Zoom

The older I get, the worse my eyes get. I find myself squinting and straining to read. Next thing you know I have the text inches from my face. Enter Zoom. Zoom allows you to increase and decrease the percieved text size from 50% to 200%. Great for those of us whole might be a little (lot) blind.

Go To

Have you ever been writing a doent and had to go back to the begining, middle or end quickly? The Go To is for you. That is exactly what it does. Ordainarily this would be a nice touch, but is actually a needed feature. From the begining I noticed that scrolling was an issue in this release of Documents To Go. It lacks that same fluid movement that you are use to in most apps. Where as Go To doesn’t fix it, it does provide a quick way to get to major parts of the document. The flaw I found in the document I was working on would indicate it was much longer in the scroll bar than it actually was. This made the Go To Middle button not work right. It would take me to a blank section of the page, way under the typed text.

Undo & Redo

Any word processing or document creation app worth anything has to have an way to Undo an action. Lucky for us we get both undo and redo. The undo and redo both work several steps forward and back, but I have yet to test how many steps that is.

Word Count & Info

Just to round out this incredibly rich mobile word processing app, DataViz adds Word Count. This will give you your word, character, and, paragraph count at a glance and…well that is all it really does. The feature set is simple but invaluable.

Lastly info provides a quick glance at the files info size, date modified, name, and file type.

Conclusion

DataViz has put out a solid first release of Documents To Go. Even though this is a great app it does have a few bugs and a major missing feature. Spell check! Surely I can’t be the only person in the world who spelling is atrotious. I doubt this is an oversight as much as a feature set in development. First I would imagine a spellcheck dictionary would be huge and the process to do so might make this first release unstable. I had a couple of crashes while writing this. Granted I didn’t restart the device after install. My initial impressions are that the app itself is a little slow. It isn’t completely unusable. Just has a little bit of a lag to it. I expect this to be addressed in the first update and don’t expect an issue at all on the iPhone 3Gs. I would like to give DataViz props for adding the ability to rescue a document after a crash. Nice touch. Currently only Excel viewing is available but DataViz does plan on adding Excel editing in the future via a free upgrade.
Documents To Go comes in two flavors.  With and without mail support.  You can grab the version without mail support for $4.99 (two weeks only) For only $5 more you might as well grab the the support for Exchange (MobileMe in the future) at $9.99. Documents To Go is a steal. Once they add Excel editing I would easily pay $20-$30. If you haven’t picked this app up then hurry. You only have 2 weeks to take advantage of the $9.99 price. After that it is going to go up. Based off of the feature set I imagine it will go up quite a bit.

Buy Documents To Go with Exchange (MobileMe soon)  support here $9.99 and without mail support here $4.99