apps

This launcher kick-starts Windows Mobile apps

There are two ways to get to your most-wanted applications on a Windows Mobile phone. If you're lucky, your program of choice is among the icons of six recently-opened applications strung along the top bar of the Windows Mobile interface. Otherwise, you'll be picking or clicking through the randomly-arranged icons in the application explorer, the platform's inert portal to your collection of programs.

Until the Windows Mobile interface gives people more options for starting programs fast, there's Elecont Launcher, a much more direct solution for quick-launching applications. This small, simple, and handy install takes out some … Read more

Run Keeper uses GPS to track exercise, road trips

Exercise enthusiasts will love Run Keeper, an upcoming fitness tracker for the iPhone. It centers on a really simple tracker that follows your location as you run via GPS, then puts that information into a personal database.

Every time you complete a run you can see how far you went (to the best of the phone's tracking capabilities), along with the time spent and how it compares with previous runs, all on a Google Map.

Developer Jason Jacobs of FitnessKeeper tells us it's just the tip of the iceberg for planned development and that much bigger things are on the way. For people too cheap to shell out for Nike's iPod nano-centric run tracker this makes a viable alternative albeit with less integration with iTunes. Nice, however, is the option to check out your data from any computer since the maps and runs are stored in the cloud.

While Jacobs has designed the application for tracking runs, another viable use for this is tracking trips in vehicles. Businesses looking to keep an eye on their employees' short-haul trips could use such a system to make sure they're going where they said they did.

A video of the application in action is embedded after the break. No word on when this should be available in the app store.… Read more

Facebook's iPhone app: a bug that gives out magical iPhones (not really) to friends you never knew you had

This morning Facebook told me that 27 of my friends had downloaded the iPhone Facebook application. 27 out of 300+ is a good chunk of people and speaks to the fact that more and more people are getting iPhones. Of course, this is only if they can be patient to wait at least 2+ hours in line and if a given Apple/AT&T store actually has them in stock. It's hard to imagine that this has been going on for at least two weeks.

Anyway, I clicked the link to see who actually downloaded the Facebook iPhone … Read more

Comparison of Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid Cloud offerings

Peter Wayner at Infoworld published a good overview of Cloud offerings from Amazon, Google, AppNexus, and GoGrid. The main takeaway: Cloud Computing is as nebulous as it is cumulus.

The first surprise is that the services are wildly different. While many parts of Web hosting are pretty standard, the definition of "cloud computing" varies widely. Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud offers you full Linux machines with root access and the opportunity to run whatever apps you want. Google's App Engine will also let you run whatever program you want -- as long as you specify it in … Read more

New Reviews: The Mac uninstallers

As a software reviewer, I download a lot of programs to test them out. Some are great programs deserving of a space on my hard drive while others just are not up to snuff. With all the available software here at CNET Download.com, you've probably found a few gems worth keeping, but you've inevitably also downloaded a few programs that just didn't work out. We understand.

On a Windows machine, you can go to the control panel and choose the Add/Remove programs tool to find and uninstall software you don't want. But on a … Read more

Google App Engine sort of getting Perl support

Google programmers are adding support for the Perl programming language to its App Engine service for hosting Web applications, but so far it's not really an official project.

The work is the project of Google employee Brad Fitzpatrick, who disclosed the project on his blog Tuesday. But he's not a member of the App Engine team, and Google isn't promising Perl support, he said. By going public with the project, he hopes to intercept other Perl fans' work in the area.

"I (along with other Perl hackers here at Google) are now allowed to work on … Read more

ReQall's iPhone app saves brain cells, cell phone minutes

If you're not the type of person to carry around a notepad or voice recorder with you, there are a handful of Web services raring to help you out if you've got a mobile phone. ReQall, a service that launched back at Demo 07 has a great new iPhone application that does just that. I got in touch with Sunil Vemuri, ReQall's chief product officer who showed it off during one of today's CEO pitch sessions at the AlwaysOn Summit.

The application's killer feature is that it saves your notes both locally and to the … Read more

WordPress app hits the iPhone fashionably late

Just a week and a half ago WordPress for the iPhone was announced with a pretty killer screencast detailing what you could do with it. Tuesday morning it finally showed up on the app store (download it here), and I've had ample time to play with it. The good news is that it's very enjoyable to use and quite capable for creating posts on the go. The bad news? You've got to have an iPhone or iPod Touch to take advantage of it.

The key benefit to using this app is writing and publishing quick posts on … Read more

Five more must-have freebies for the iPhone and iPod touch

Let's hear it for software developers who don't charge for their work. Witness these five excellent apps for the iPhone 3G and updated iPod touch, then check out five more freebies you'll definitely want to install. (As before, all links will take you directly to the iTunes Store.)

Aurora Feint Bejeweled meets Bard's Tale in this amazingly polished puzzle/RPG game. Last.fm and Pandora Tired of your own music library? Name a favorite artist and these two apps will build you a custom radio station, then stream tunes over 3G or Wi-Fi. I can't … Read more