ie8 fix

Applications

This week's New Yorker cover created on iPhone

Brushes, paints, canvas: unnecessary.

Computers, software, tablets: superfluous.

These days, all you need to create magazine cover-worthy artwork is an iPhone and Steve Sprang's $4.99 Brushes app. Oh, and insane talent.

Those were the ingredients that produced this week's dazzling New Yorker cover, a traditional-looking blurred street scene that looks like an authentic brush-and-canvas painting.

In reality, artist Jorge Colombo finger-painted the image while standing outside Madame Tussauds Wax Museum in Times Square. (Side note: I have vivid memories of practicing sleight-of-hand with a quarter while at Madame Tussaud's in London. Guess we all use our … Read more

Crowdsourcing weight loss with iPhone's Lose It

Eating tends to be a social thing. Dropping the pounds that result from such sociability, however, is mostly a solitary experience, requiring lonely denial in the kitchen and often lonelier miles on the footpath or bike trail. Small wonder, then, that most attempts to lose weight fail.

It doesn't have to be this way, of course, and an application I've been using on my iPhone suggests a way to open-source the weight-loss experience, making dropping pounds a social, fun experience.

CNET recently profiled several weight-loss applications for the computer, some of which have a social element to them.

It's a good list, but my favorite application by far in this category is Lose It!, a free app for the iPhone.

Lose It! makes it easy to track calories, monitor exercise, and track progress toward weight-loss goals. Because my iPhone is always with me, Lose It! follows me around, too, reminding me how much that bar of chocolate is going to cost me in terms of gym time, facilitating rational calorie intake/burn.

Where Lose It! fails, as do all of these weight-loss applications, is in making this process truly social.

Fixing this would give FitNow, the developer of Lose It!, a serious revenue model that would turn a seemingly universal human desire to look/feel better into a great way to make money.

Here are a few ideas for the FitNow team, several of which Bryce Roberts, a good friend and fellow Lose It! junkie (in fact, it was Bryce's example that got me using the application), offered up while we were mountain biking last week (so that we could gorge on high-calorie foods later in the day :-):… Read more

Apple changes mind on rejected e-book reader app

Apple has had a change of heart and decided to allow an iPhone app that offered access to the Kama Sutra.

Apple on Thursday notified the developer that it had rejected the e-book reader app because it deemed the content available on Eucalyptus as "objectionable." As it does with all books available through the app, Eucalyptus downloads a text-only version of the ancient Indian book on sexuality from Project Gutenberg.

The Kama Sutra does not come installed on the app; as with any book title, users must search for the book and download it. The baffling thing in … Read more

Apple rejects iPhone app over access to Kama Sutra

Apple's iPhone app rejection policy continues to mystify.

This time, Apple has rejected Eucalyptus, an e-book reader app that can--after purposely searching for it--access the Kama Sutra. Like it does with all books available through the app, Eucalyptus downloads a text-only version of the ancient Indian book on sexuality from Project Gutenberg.

In a letter to the developer on Thursday, Apple rejected the app because it deems the content available on Eucalyptus as "objectionable."

What's interesting about this case is that the Kama Sutra is available in the iPhone App Store through several other methods. For … Read more

Robot synthesizer and touch-screen hack and slash: iPhone apps of the week

I read about a new term today for iPhone application fans that hits a little too close to home. The term is "Appnoxious," and describes iPhone owners who are always whipping out their iPhone to show their friends, family, or coworkers their favorite new app. Ahem.

I apologize to everyone, but I believe I might be just that: Appnoxious. In my defense, it's my job to seek out and find new iPhone apps, so I'm hoping at least some of the people I know will give me a pass? Maybe I should just embrace it...

This … Read more

Yahoo's iPhone app gets spoken search

On Tuesday, we reported that Yahoo pulled the plug on the Java version of its revamped mobile application, with the assurance that it would continue to develop for iPhone and other mobile platforms.

On Wednesday, Yahoo proved that with an update to its iPhone app. Yahoo Mobile 1.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch enables voice searches everywhere that the search bar is located in the app. You'll press the oneSearch field and see the large gray button prompting you to press and speak your inquiry. Unlike Google's voice app, which by all appearances had permission to break … Read more

iPhone Kindle app gets updated to 1.1

Amazon has just released a version 1.1 update to its free Kindle app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and it sees a number of improvements over the 1.0 release.

This update follows another smaller update a few weeks ago that added an iPhone-optimized Kindle store (which you still have to access via Safari, but at least the interface is now more mobile-friendly).

Two and a half months ago, Amazon released its free Kindle application for the iPhone and iPod Touch that lets you read Kindle books on the devices without having to purchase the expensive e-book from Amazon. If you were an existing Kindle owner, you could also take advantage of the Kindle application thanks to Amazon's Whispersync, which would sync both libraries, and you could pick up reading where you left off.

The reading experience is not as pleasant as on the dedicated e-book reader due to the smaller and backlit screen, but at least it's an option for those who didn't want the Kindle hardware.

With the version 1.1 update however, the reading experience on the Kindle is ever so slightly improved. For one thing, you can now switch the view from portrait to landscape mode if you prefer to read that way. You also have the option to "lock" the phone in either portrait or landscape mode thanks to a padlock icon to the lower right. We actually wished more iPhone apps had this feature since sometimes we wished things didn't rotate when we didn't want them to.… Read more

RoamBi iPhone app makes data uberpretty

A data report reader may not seem like the most exciting candidate for an iPhone app, but if you're working in the field--or are even just a numbers nut--the new RoamBi app will catch your eye.

RoamBi (short for 'roaming business intelligence') is good-looking, all right, and it manages to cram a breadth of information into its gorgeous charts and graphs. Unlike many mobile versions of spreadsheet readers, you'll almost never need to scroll through a tiny spreadsheet to analyze your data.

The service also includes a Web publisher where individual operators or corporate employees can import reports … Read more

Track business executives' tweets with ExecTweets

Are you trying to climb the corporate ladder? Hard work helps, but it couldn't hurt to have some insight from those who have reached the top. ExecTweets for iPhone aggregates the Twitter feeds of nearly 100 top executives.

Those execs include top brass from companies such as Best Buy, Digg, Microsoft, and Zappos. Following them nets you nuggets of business wisdom, links to stories they consider important, random thoughts (this is Twitter, after all), and even notable quotables (not sure why, but execs are really into quoting).

The application makes it a snap to browse the tweets, with separate … Read more

Gmail's iPhone, Android labels come with a catch

It's no secret that Google's mobile team has been slowly rolling out features from its desktop Web mail to the mobile version of its e-mail site. A few weeks ago, visitors to Gmail.com from the iPhone or Android G1 began seeing an option to "mute" a conversation thread, which blocks further messages in the thread from crowding your in-box. Now, another secondary feature has joined muting. On Monday, Google pushed mobile message labeling.

As with muting, being able to organize e-mail messages by color-coded labels like "parties" or "itineraries" can take … Read more