The long-awaited iPhone software development kit, which will be released in June, was finally unveiled Thursday.
And with it came a few applications, developed in a couple weeks by some very high-profile names in tech. Apple demonstrated seven new applications in a variety of categories: business, communications, and games.
• Touch FX: Adds Photo Booth-style effects to a photo using your finger on the iPhone touch screen. Pinch or tap to introduce fun-house mirror style effects.
• Touch Fighter: The first official game for the iPhone, developed by Apple engineers over two weeks. You fly through space and steer by using the iPhone like a pretend control wheel, with both hands on the side.
• Spore: Electronic Arts created a mobile version of the game.
• Salesforce.com management application: Salesforce.com created an application that does more than you can do with its Web-based application. For instance, it can talk to Maps to plot directions to your next appointment, figure out how many more widgets you need to sell to make your quota, and more.
• AIM: AOL made an iPhone version of the instant-messaging service. You can switch between conversations with a swipe of the finger, like if you're scrolling through photos on the iPhone. You can also upload photos from your iPhone to serve as your buddy icon.
• Medical records app: Epocrates, a maker of software for medical professionals built a native iPhone application that can access an SQL database for accessing medical information, pictures of pills, and checking for potentially harmful drug interactions.
• Super Monkey Ball: A game from Sega. A skiing game, where you hurtle down a ramp trying to get bananas, and other things. It uses the accelerometer for control, just like Tough Fighter.
See my colleague Tom Krazit's blow-by-blow chronicling of the event as it unfolded in Cupertino on Thursday morning.
CNET News.com's Tom Krazit contributed to this report.
(Credit:
Hands-On Mobile)
Article updated 2/29/08 to correct headquarters location.
We were stoked when Hands-On Mobile, a San Francisco mobile games company, announced Guitar Hero III Mobile for Verizon. On Friday, AT&T brings the portable version of the wildly popular console game to J2ME phones.
The game is expected to launch on 30 handsets today, including Motorola V3 RAZR and Sony Ericcson 810, with more handsets joining the fray. The staggered launch means there's no guaranteeing that your handset will be supported when the game goes live today, but Hands-On Mobile suggests that eager phone gamers check back with AT&T throughout the day and Saturday.
(Credit:
Hands-On Mobile)
There's good reason to make haste. Guitar Hero III Mobile dethroned Tetris in mobile gaming on Verizon, a miraculous feat, by offering three popular songs per month taken straight from Activision's console game. Users who subscribe by March 1 will receive the standard start-up song package and also the month's playlist, including Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Freebird', Black Sabbath's 'War Pigs', and Iggy Pop's 'Search and Destroy'. Dilly-dalliers who subscribe after March 1 will have to wait for April to get any bonus song releases.
Membership on AT&T-supported phones has other benefits, too. The Java platform has allowed for certain upgrades to the BREW version of the game currently out on Verizon phones. The graphics are slightly larger and clearer, and Hands-On Mobile has added a haptic dimension to a missed note: the phone vibrates in response to butter fingers.
In another welcome change, songs will now live on AT&T phones, saving users from having to download them anew. Sorry, Verizon users, you shouldn't expect any alterations to your version yet.
What the J2ME platform gains in graphical quality, it loses, slightly, in audio power. Songs on Guitar Hero III Mobile for Verizon play MP3s; while AT&T's version streams out MIDI.
Be sure to catch Guitar Hero III Mobile in action in this video, taken on a Verizon phone.
Conference-goers flocked around the Guitar Hero station at Motorola's mammoth tent on the CTIA Wireless conference floor, but it was Hands-On Mobile's modest booth where Guitar Hero Mobile is best experienced. There the game's product manager, JJ Leichleiter, walked me through the mobile version of the popular console game.
Let me dispel all doubt by assuring you that this is the real thing, deputized by Activision, Guitar Hero's console publisher. Loosely based on Guitar Hero 3, the 3D mobile version offers two characters (Axel Steel and Judy Nails), four guitars, and 15 songs. Subscription holders will receive three more songs every month.
Playing virtual guitar has gotten easier with a reduction from five keys on the console game's peripheral guitar to three on the phone. Users can choose whichever keypad row feels best.
This game has a lot going for it--easy fretting, satisfying animation, and killer sound quality. Guitar Hero Mobile uses PMD audio for the BREW platform, which preserves the melody, harmony, vocals, and cacophonous ding every time you miss. Stay tuned for a video demonstration on this space and on CNET TV.
Guitar Hero Mobile will be available for purchase for Verizon Wireless users in December 2007. After that, more networks on the BREW platform will join the fray, followed by J2ME phones.
(Credit:
Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com)
Namco attached phones to arcade games to show off mobile gaming.
(Credit: Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com)NEW YORK--It seems people like any excuse to play any video game.
While Halo III and Guitar Hero may be drawing a crowd at DigitalLife 2007, so were classics like Ms. Pac-man.
Namco had a large space at DigitalLife to remind gamers that video games of the '80s are now available for their phone.
Namco offers games like Ms. Pac-Man, Pac-Man, Dig Dug, Mr. Do, Popeye, Snoopy and the Flying Ace, Galaga and even board games like Scene It?.
The games are available, regardless of your carrier, for the Palm OS, Windows Mobile phones, the iPod and the Sidekick, as well as others.
To show this off, the company had working cell phones attached to arcade machines for the corresponding game.
Do you think people would really flock to play games they've played hundreds of times before on a large screen, just to try it on a cell phone?
Apparently, lots of people love just that.
People did not seem to mind at all that they were standing at an arcade machine, yet playing on a 2-inch screen.
The Namco area has been drawing a crowd for two days, which I can only imagine will grow as the show is opened to the public.
- prev
- 1
- next
