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Moodspin, a very eccentric social-networking add-on service has just had its app (link opens in iTunes) approved on the App Store. In case you're unfamiliar with the site, it currently works only on Twitter, and lets you very quickly broadcast how you're feeling to the people who follow you.

But here's the catch: it's not just text, the service goes in and makes small changes to your profile icon, adding that same mood-related emoticon to your photo, which in turn lets others see what you're feeling no matter what you just tweeted.

Is this useful? In the grand scheme of things, not at all. What's interesting though, is how it tracks that data back on Moodspin.com. Each time you update your mood status it's charted on a timeline, which if you're actively using the site, will show others what you were up to at various parts of the day. Each mood selection is also represented on your daily mood graph which you can compare to just your friends, or everyone else on the Moodspin service.

As an iPhone app Moodspin's initial offering is relatively simple, letting you select your mood in three taps, which can be fired off as a personalized update to Twitter. If there's enough room, it also (annoyingly) tacks on a URL to your Moodspin profile so that others can see what you've been brooding about posted as moods during the past 24 hours. There is however, no way to track your past moods from the app itself, something I'm told is coming in the next big update.

In the meantime, a version of the service which is due later this month will be implementing Facebook status messages and mood changes to user's Facebook profile photos which tend to be quite a bit bigger than Twitter's. However, there it will compete with a myriad of other mood apps that have existed since the launch of the Facebook apps platform.

Moodspin's iPhone app lets you set your mood in a couple of taps, the result of which is a new tweet and Twitter profile picture.

(Credit: CNET)

Apple has provided plenty of ways for users to discover new applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, but on the sharing side the company has come up a bit short. Third-party blogs and social networks have done well to seize this opportunity, creating tools that help filter and sort apps old and new in ways Apple itself has not implemented.

One of those tools is Chorus, which is going live on the App Store early Tuesday. It's basically its own App Store meets social network, where users can share apps they've purchased with others, keep track of what their friends are buying, and discover new apps to buy either through the people they've befriended or from Chorus' hand-picked editors.

Chorus does one big thing the App Store doesn't, which is to allow each user to share their purchase history. Unlike the faceless reviews you see overflowing Apple's marketplace, reviews within Chorus' network are all attached to users you can befriend and follow to see what they've recently rated, reviewed, installed, or uninstalled.

As a new user, you can very quickly populate the service with all this information using a tool the company calls the Gobbler, an Adobe AIR-based application that scans your iTunes library and finds app purchases. You can then go through to check which apps you want to make public with your friends and the service's recommendation engine (note: by default, the Gobbler and Chorus apps are both smart enough to know that you probably don't want to share something that's rated 17 or over).

Chorus' content Gobbler scans your iTunes purchases so you can add them in bulk.

(Credit: CNET)

Once you've shared your application history with Chorus, it helps fuel what the service recommends to you--just like Apple does with its own Genius service. This is where the app goes one step further though; it lets you see which of those apps your friends have used, if they've rated it, and whether they ended up removing it from their device. It also weights its recommendations higher if your friends have it installed.

To befriend other users you can cull your Facebook or Twitter contact list to find those who may already be using the service, or search by whatever username they've using on Chorus. The app also comes installed with a handful of subscriptions to the service's "AppMavens" who are bloggers that seed the network with their picks and reviews. Frankly, I found these the AppMaven's reviews less useful than the App Store's user review section, which--major faults aside, can shed light on things a single review can't, like how well it works on various devices, if there are any bugs, and what version the app was reviewed on.

Chorus recommends apps your friends have used and downloaded, as well as showing you how they reviewed them.

(Credit: CNET)

The saving grace with the Chorus reviews system is that like other third-party app directories, all purchases still go through in the App Store app itself, which means you can still scope out those user reviews before making a purchase. On the downside, when it comes time to buy, you get kicked out of the Chorus app and sent into the App Store. This can be jarring but is made slightly less irritating by the fact that the app is smart enough to remember what you were doing the last time you were using it and bringing you back upon a relaunch.

All in all Chorus is a useful tool for discovering apps that should become increasingly useful if more people seed it with recommendations. Though there are a few things I'd like to see in future versions, the first of which is a way to manage purchases and do app discovery from the Web and not just on the device--something the company says will be coming at a later date. Another is a way to queue up apps you want to purchase, then e-mail yourself that list in the form of iTunes links. This would let you continue to use the tool without interruption, and facilitate batch purchasing.

I'd also like to see recommendations of people to follow based on my download and/or usage history since that would help me whittle down who I'd actually spend time paying attention to. This, or some sort of visual relevancy indicator about how much of a match any given app is to my buying habits would go a long way towards making me, and likely others feel better about clicking through to see more about that app.

See also: App Gems, App Connect and AppVee (all of which open up in iTunes), as well as site AppShopper.com.

Despite increasingly better software, blogging on phones is still a real pain compared with doing it on a regular computer. However, credit is due to WordPress, which has gone to great lengths to make the latest version of its iPhone app much better for users to both create and manage their blogs on a small screen (and without a keyboard).

Besides a new look, one of the biggest changes is that the app remembers exactly what you were doing between sessions, so that if you quit it, or get a phone call, it will take you right back to the page or menu you were looking at. This also keeps you from losing anything you hadn't saved if you're interrupted--even if you were in the middle of a writing a sentence when your phone rang. This should change the beginning of such a conversation from "I am so mad at you right now" to a simple "hello."

In addition to remembering what you were doing, the app does a much better job at letting you manage user comments. The approval screen itself looks almost identical, but the app now lets you quickly switch between the ones that have been approved and the ones that still need to be looked at. It also displays each users' Gravatar (user icon) next to their username and URL, which ends up taking up a little more space than it did in the previous iteration of the app but adds a sense of familiarity with its desktop sibling.

Other small changes include the app remembering which order you uploaded the photos in so that they display in that same order in your post. Although the app still hasn't been updated to include videos, which means 3GS owners will have to add whatever video they shot through WordPress' Web interface instead. The app also now stores passwords in a user's keychain, which means those credentials could be accessed by other applications you may want to give access to later on down the line--like, say an app that lets you post videos to a WordPress blog.

Oddly enough, the new WordPress app is completely different from the original, which still exists but will no longer be updated. The company attributes this to having switched between having an outside contractor make the first version, whereas this new one was built in-house.

The new look makes it simply to hop between comments, posts and pages. User Gravatars are now visible too.

(Credit: WordPress)

Watching ice cubes melt is much more fun when you speed it up. iPhone app Timelapser lets you do it right on your phone.

(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Time-lapse movies can be a complicated affair, and quite often involve either a lot of special equipment, and/or post-processing skills. For just a buck though, you can use the recently released Timelapser app (link opens in iTunes) to turn your iPhone into a tool that can do this time-bending filming technique using nothing more than the onboard camera.

Timelapser's interface tells you how long your movie will be, and how many shots it's taken.

(Credit: CNET)

Depending on what model of phone you have you can use the app to take a picture anywhere from every three seconds to once per half hour. All the while it grabs each frame and stitches it into a movie that's saved on the phone, and that can also be e-mailed to friends.

Of course if you really want to cook with gas, you'll need an iPhone 3GS, which lets you speed up how fast the phone can take shots. Alas, with my lowly 3G I was limited to taking a shot every six seconds. Owners of the original iPhone have to step it down to eight seconds.

The app has a wealth of settings that let you pick things like how large the video's resolution is, how many frames per second it should be, and how long you want the delay to be before it starts shooting. This can be useful if you're propping up your phone somewhere and need time to set up your scene. Users can also use the app just to take a series of photos one after another which get saved in your phone's camera roll.

As I noted when I checked out the IP Camera app, which can turn your iPhone into a networked security camera, the very best way to use this app is with one of Apple's fancy docks. You can also just prop it up with whatever you may have laying about the house, but with the dock you get the benefit of... Read more

Facebook's Ethan Beard outlines what the company is up to in the next six months.

(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)

PALO ALTO, Calif.--Facebook on Wednesday took the wraps off its brand new development road map, unveiling changes and features the company is planning to implement within the next three to six months.

Many of the changes are smaller, simply rearrangements of certain parts of the user interface. However, the company is also making some radical moves like enforcing badly written applications and enabling developers to acquire user e-mail addresses as well as create Facebook-like sites outside of the social network's walls.

Ethan Beard, Facebook's director of platform marketing, who gave the presentation in Facebook's headquarters here, said that the one thing the company kept hearing from developers was that they needed to know what the company was working on ahead of time--and not just for short-term development, but a year down the line. "You want to know what's going on inside of Facebook," he said. "And today is to provide you with a lot more predictability."

That predictability revolves around the company's road map, which now sits on a new developer site. Beard says that it will remain updated with new items, planned changes, and APIs as they are announced. The company is also making publicly available a bug list, which will show developers problems with the site that Facebook is working on, as well as how they are being prioritized to be fixed.

The changes for users

The new user navigation menu takes place of the long bar that used to sit on the bottom of the page.

(Credit: Facebook)

So what are some of the big changes users will see? The first is that Facebook is doing away with many of the visual and organization changes it's made in the last two years. That includes the removal of the Windows Start bar-like app launcher and notification bar that sat at the bottom of the page. That's being moved over to the left side of the page where things like filters currently reside.

The new navigation bar will house new quick jumps to menus for both games and applications--something for which Facebook is making a notable distinction. Both will serve as a way for users to get a bird's-eye view of what's happening in games or the applications they've been using, as well as what their friends are up to. The company will also be making it easier for users to add third-party applications to the left side navigation bar with some new code that makes it a one-click affair.

Alongside the new left side navigation Facebook is also trying to make more of a distinction between notifications that are from apps and those that are sent from other users. This change involves taking notifications out of the sometimes-dreaded notification box (which will be soon be getting the ax) and giving developers a new way to notify users with alert badges that pop up as counters. And for notifications that are sent from other users, these will soon be found in users' Facebook in-boxes instead.

The changes for developers

One of the biggest upcoming changes for developers deals with Facebook's level of user privacy protection. The company will be letting users give app developers their e-mail address. In return they can remove their own Facebook in-box from app notification equation. This also applies to Facebook Connect, so third-party companies that use it for log-ins can send important messages directly to a user's primary e-mail instead of their Facebook in-box where it might get lost.

The Connect program will also be joined by a new developer API called Open Graph that essentially lets site owners create a page on any Web site that has the same features as one of Facebook's fan pages. These will allow users to sign up to be a fan with their Facebook credentials and use parts of the site as if they were on Facebook proper. In turn, their actions will be able to show up on their Facebook profile and news feeds. Beard said that the Open Graph API is simply a continuation of the move to add Facebook objects as well as people to third-party sites. "The graph does not necessarily have to exist in facebook," he said. "It can also live on the Web."

Facebook is improving its analytics with a new system that developers can use with third-party analytics tools.

(Credit: CNET / Josh Lowensohn)

Fan pages are not the only thing to escape Facebook's walled garden though. Beard outlined the company's plans to offer developers a way to view a deeper level of analytics for their apps. The reports, which Beard says are much better than the Facebook's current Insight system, will be able to be sent to third-party analytics engines where they can be stacked up alongside performance metrics Facebook wouldn't have otherwise been able to provide.

Keeping bad developers out

Besides some cosmetic and back-end changes, Facebook is also stepping up how it handles developers and applications that don't conform to the site's rules and regulations. Part of that is simplifying its platform policies from 14 pages to just three. Beard says the extraneous language has been cut down, so that hopefully more people will read it.

In addition to policy, Facebook is doing away with its six-month-old verified apps program in place of verifying every single app that passes a certain use threshold. This means that Facebook is going to be evaluating every app on its service to make sure it meets the company's guidelines and getting rid of ones that might have otherwise flown under the radar.

Other tidbits

•  Facebook canvas pages are now getting a special blue bar on top that removes much of the Facebook branding and user interface. Beard said that the move was largely to help developers make their canvas pages more immersive.
•  Profile boxes will be disappearing, and tabs will be slightly more narrow.
•  The new Facebook games tab may implement leader boards
•  Facebook is reworking its friends selector so that when a user is picking friends to invite or send a message, it will let them use the same filters they use to group their friends. Facebook is also working on a way to suggest a shortlist of users based on recent, or overall activity.
•  Developers will be getting a live view into the Facebook Platform status. This is kind of like Twitter's status blog and will show all known problems as well as how hard Facebook's APIs are being hit.

More information about the new developer APIs can be found on Facebook's developer site.

A fresh installation of Windows offers users a chance to get things clean and tidy from the beginning, but it also means a lot of work reinstalling applications you may have had on an older build.

If you've planned ahead, you can go out and download all the installers you think you'll need, then put them on a thumb drive or a disc. Or you can skip all that work and use Ninite (formerly Volery), a very simple tool for Windows that will go out and download all the latest versions of the software you pick from its directory, then combine all of those installers into one self-running .exe file.

The best part is that you don't have to touch a thing, as it installs each application. Every installer is already set with the least intrusive configuration, which means that it's installed to the application's default folder and comes without any superfluous add-ons, such as browser toolbars, companion software, or language packs. And when it's done running, you just delete Ninite's .exe file.

Ninite stacks up Windows application installs and runs them without requiring that you to pay attention to what each one is doing.

(Credit: CNET)

In my test run, I only had one problem with the installation, and it wasn't Ninite's fault--it was Windows'. I was letting Ninite do its thing, and Windows rebooted my computer to install its own updates. The nice thing is, you can relaunch the .exe file, if something goes wrong, and it will determine which programs it's already installed and skip both the download and the install. That's definitely something I'd feel safe sending to a tech-challenged friend or family member (note: most Web mail services won't let you send an .exe file. You can, however, use many online storage services like Box.net, Dropbox, and MobileMe to get it done)

Of course, one of the biggest drawbacks with Ninite's system is that you're limited to its selection of software picks. And if you're a control freak, you can't go in and make small tweaks to each installation while it's happening. Otherwise, it's an utterly fantastic way to get a quick start on a new machine, or offer up application recommendations to friends and family who just got a new machine with Windows 7 on it.

(via Download Squad)

Imageshack's Yfrog, the image- and video-hosting service for Twitter, can now record videos from a user's Webcam. The recording tool also doubles as a way to take photo stills, either manually or with a five-second delay. These images are then attached to an outgoing tweet which can be penned right from the site.

The move differs from some recently released services like Twitcam and Camtweet which can record video as well as stream it out live for your followers to watch and interact with. On the plus side, Yfrog's implementation has very generous time limits, as my test video went well past the 40-minute mark.

For now, Webcam recording will remain a site-specific feature, and not a part of Yfrog's API, meaning third-party posting tools cannot take advantage of it. However a representative for the company told CNET News that that could change if developers are interested in integrating it into Flash-based video widgets. In the meantime, many developers have already integrated video into their apps using Yfrog's existing video uploading API.

Want to record a video of yourself to put on Twitter? You can now do that through Yfrog.

(Credit: CNET)

Penzu, the stylish Web word processor we checked out about a year ago, is ready to make a business out of its hosted writing tools.

The company on Wednesday introduced a professional version of its service that costs $19 a year and fixes many of the gripes we originally had about its very pretty, but feature-light, offerings.

A pro membership now gets you all kinds of goodies, including a rich text editor, tags for organization, image hosting, 256-bit AES encryption on posts that you've locked, and themes that skin the entire interface to your liking. Pro users can also slurp in their posts from another blog service (currently Live Journal only), as well as export them as PDFs and raw text files.

Penzu can now be skinned in one of six themes for those who pay for the service's new pro membership.

(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

New features are not limited to pro users. All users now have a way to share a read-only version of a post to others that does not require any special sign-up for the person who's viewing it. The tool can also now grab your photos from Flickr, not just your desktop.

This feature worked without issue when we tried it, albeit slowly. You first have to dig through all your Flickr albums, then cycle eight photos at a time to find the shots for which you're looking. After that, you have to wait while they're imported, which, in our case, took close to 2 minutes per photo, making the tool take too long to be usable.

It's worth noting that the service is still designed as a diary replacement, not as a collaborative document editor, the way Google Docs, Zoho Writer, Adobe's Acrobat.com, and others operate.

Penzu's focus makes it difficult to make strong comparisons to those tools, but to be honest, I don't see much value in paying the $19 for some of the extra features it adds. Things like rich text editing, data exporting, and tagging should be standard features on just about any Web-based writing tool, if it hopes to compete for user attention and, in this case, dollars.

The Viper Smart Start app can control your car from wherever you are, as long as you have a data connection on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

(Credit: Directed Electronics)

Car security company Directed Electronics is unveiling a new iPhone application Tuesday that lets customers control parts of their Viper SmartStart-enabled vehicle from their iPhone or iPod Touch.

The app, called Viper SmartStart, is quite similar toZipcar's recently released iPhone app, except it can work with your car, and not one you're renting for the weekend. It, too, creates a virtual keychain control module that can do things like lock and unlock your vehicle, open the trunk, and activate the alarm, getting rid of the need to carry around one of those keychain clickers as long as you've got your phone handy.

Coolest of all, though, there's a "Smart Start" button in the center of the screen that can turn on your vehicle. The company is promoting this as a simple way to defrost or cool off a car before you get in--that is, assuming you correctly set the climate controls the last time you were inside.

Since the app uses the iPhone's data connection to send the commands, you can control your car (or cars) from anywhere you have an EDGE or 3G signal. It also means you can use it on a non-cellular data device like the iPod Touch, as long as it's near Wi-Fi.

The app is completely free, but it requires you have Viper's SmartStart system installed in each car you want to take control of. This costs $499 for a new installation, or $299 for cars that already have a Viper alarm system, as well as an active subscription to Viper's Smart Start service. Buyers of the system get a year of the $29.99 service included when they get the service installed; then they have to pay after that.

I'm still waiting for a version that can give you live video and steering controls, like the ridiculous, yet awesome remote-controlled BMW in "Tomorrow Never Dies" Though something tells me that's not happening anytime soon.

You can watch the company's promo video after the break.

Correction 9:07 a.m. on October 13: This story initially misidentified the remote-controlled car and James Bond film it was featured in. It is a BMW, and it appeared in "Tomorrow Never Dies."