Apps

Score the best deals on iPhone e-books

I love reading books on my iPhone, but I don't love e-book prices. I mean, digital content requires no printing, binding, shipping, storage, or heavy lifting--so why does Amazon charge the same price for the Kindle edition of "The Kite Runner" as for the paperback?

That's a debate for another day (though let me go on record saying I'd buy a lot more e-books if they were priced in the $1 to $4 range). For now, let's look at ways you can read on the cheap--or, at least, the cheaper--on your iPhone.

Look for freebies Stanza, one of my favorite e-book viewers ( just acquired by Amazon, incidentally), connects you with thousands of freebies. For example, check out the Random House Free Library, which currently stocks 10 mainstream e-books. (Best bet: Charlie Huston's superb crime-noir series, which starts with "Caught Stealing.") Meanwhile, there's Google Book Search, a browser-based solution that connects you to a whopping 1.5 million public-domain books. Point Safari to http://books.google.com/m. Look for deals E-bookseller Fictionwise already discounts its e-books, but you can stretch your dollar even further by setting up a "Micropay" account (i.e., a debit account). Most books come with a Micropay rebate, meaning you get 10 percent to 15 percent of the purchase price added back to your account. But sometimes Fictionwise runs rebate specials, as it's doing right now with J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" series: Buy any/all of the books and you get back 100 percent. You can read Fictionwise e-books using eReader or Stanza. (Just make sure to choose titles that are available in the Secure eReader format.) Try before you buy Amazon's Kindle app lets you read free of charge the entire first chapter of any book in the Kindle Store. That's a great way to see if you like a book before plunking down your $10. However, you can't browse the store from within the app: You have to queue up your sample chapters from your browser. Not so with Shortcovers, an e-book viewer with a built-in bookstore that offers sample chapters for many titles (but only forewords for others).… Read more

QuickTime to provide YouTube support

Apple Insider has unearthed proof that YouTube uploading will be built into the upcoming version of QuickTime that ships with OS X 10.6.

According to beta testers, several video-sharing options will be baked into the latest release of Apple's QuickTime media playback and editing software, including the capability to directly upload to YouTube. With the new QuickTime, you will be able to convert and upload any supported video file type to the online video service and all you will need is to be a registered YouTube user. You also will be able to seamlessly upload supported video to … Read more

Motocross racing and turn-based strategy: iPhone apps of the week

This week, Apple surpassed an amazing milestone at the iTunes app store: one billion downloads. Apple had been running a contest called the Billion App Countdown promotion with prizes including a chance to win a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, a MacBook Pro, an iPod Touch, and more. Though the contest ended once they reached their mark (winners will be announced soon), it's still an amazing feat and clearly implies the apps are going to keep on coming. That's great news for iPhone app lovers like us!

It's no secret that the most popular apps at the … Read more

Android 1.5's Live Folders: Looks nifty

Updated: April 24, 2009, at 1:10 p.m. PT with a comment from Google.

Last week Google tantalized Android developers with an early version of its software developer kit for Android 1.5, the upcoming version of its mobile operating system. Included with it is a laundry list of new features coming out, many of them suspiciously familiar to those Apple's iPhone already has. But here's one, highlighted on Friday, that the iPhone doesn't have: Live Folders.

Loosely lumped into the category of "more home screen widgets," Live Folders are essentially shortcut views into … Read more

Apple's App Store serves its billionth app

This story has been updated. See below for details.

Just before 2 p.m. PDT Thursday, Apple delivered the 1 billionth App Store application, just nine months after the store launched.

The whole countdown process was a little arbitrary, but nonetheless represents a significant milestone for Apple. Although not without its share of controversy, the App Store has been a resounding success for mobile computing, and has forced Apple's competitors to take similar steps.

Someone won a fair amount of Apple gear as part of a contest surrounding the promotion, but Apple has yet to announce the winner.

Update, … Read more

Too many holes in LyricFind for iPhone

LyricFind has been trying to compile song lyrics into a searchable database since 2000, and after a few years of failed negotiations with rights holders, the company is finally getting some traction.

Earlier this month, it released a lyrics app for the Slacker RadioPlus service. The Web site has never been much use: it only lets you search on snippets of lyrics to try to find song matches; I'm much more interested in entering a song title to get the full lyrics for that song.

So I was excited when I heard that LyricFind was releasing an iPhone app … Read more

qTweeter adds Twitter, Facebook into every iPhone app

Users with jailbroken iPhones who are also Twitter and Facebook users should check out a new app called qTweeter. It's a pervasive app that runs in the background, and lets you fire off a quick Twitter and/or Facebook status message without exiting whatever application you're using.

To use it, you simply drag down your finger from the top of the screen which pulls down an area for composition, along with a keyboard that slides up from the bottom. From there you type out your message, and if you've set up your Twitter and Facebook accounts you … Read more

Five iPhone apps for writers

When people ask me if it's hard to be a writer, I tell them the challenge is not just thinking up the words, but putting them in the right order. Then they roll their eyes and walk away, reminding me I need to work on both my material and my delivery.

Anyway, like any professional, a writer relies on tools. Here are five that make a great addition to any iPhone or iPod Touch:

Dictionary.com Duh. Every writer needs a good dictionary and thesaurus. This one, a freebie, serves up 275,000 definitions, 80,000 synonyms, and even … Read more

Apple removes 'Baby Shaker' from App Store

Apple has removed the Baby Shaker application from the App Store, just hours after it was discovered.

The application still shows up in the App Store search, but upon clicking on the title, an error message appears. Baby Shaker, a game in which the user is invited to silence a baby's cries by violently shaking an iPhone, appeared on the App Store Monday despite Apple's policy of banning "offensive" iPhone applications.

Company representatives have still not responded to inquires about how Baby Shaker made it into the App Store in the first place. In the past, … Read more

Soonr goes 3.0: Revamps search, iPhone version

Soonr is releasing the third version of its service Wednesday with a redesigned Web site and updated iPhone application that brings more of its desktop functionality to mobile users.

On the desktop side, the site has been rearranged to put all of Soonr's collaborative features in one place. Things like past file edits, user comments, and permissions control are now in the same place. And you can quickly create a project and start adding files to it on your own, or with collaborators who will be alerted each time there's a new file, user comment, or a change.… Read more