iPhone

YouTube video courtesy of pictranslator

PicTranslator 1.0 (iTunes App Store) is a $1.99 iPhone app with an interesting premise. It can translate European written language in the real world from one language to your native language by capturing the image with the iPhone's camera and then presenting a translation to you. Additional languages can be purchased in-app for 99 cents each or an "All Language Pack" for $1.99.

PicTranslator (Product site)

YouTube video courtesy of Appirion

The town I live in recently put laws into place that forbid handling portable electronic devices like phones while in the driver's seat of a car with a running motor (even if you are parked and not in motion). Having been nearly clipped (while walking) or run into by some whacky drivers with a phone sandwiched between their shoulder and head, I support this law. But, something like this iDriver remote car control app from the University of Berlin
could be used for some really amusing satire videos...

Team Berlin - Spirit of Berlin - Autonomous Car Project

"Yes, Officer, I was handling an iPhone while driving a car. But, I wasn't inside of the car."

And, oh yes, the software and hardware engineering of the iDriver app and car mods are awesome!

Screenshot courtesy of Squarespace

If you've listened to any of Leo LaPorte's podcasts over the past few months, you've probably heard an ad for the Squarespace content management service on one of those podcasts. I'm apparently so impressionable of these podcast ads that I suggested it be evaluated by a couple of people even though I've never used the service myself :-)

One of my caveats when I mentioned it was that it did not have a mobile management or content creation component like, for example, WordPress and its WordPress for iPhone app. This issue appears to be addressed by the release of this free app...

Squarespace 1.0.4 for iPhone

- Post/manage content
- Post photos/images
- View site & posts
- Manage multiple Squarespace sites
- View site statistics

Comment management and moderation is not available in this app. But, the app's description text on its iTunes page says it will be available in the 1.1 release.

Take note of the app's ability to view a Squarespace site from within the app. One of the service's apparent shortcoming is that it does not appear to detect mobile devices and reformat sites in a mobile friendly way.

YouTube video courtesy of rsafuto

I remember being shocked with the 10,000th iPhone app was announced. Then, I was somewhat surprised when the number of iPhone apps overtook the number of Windows Mobile apps despite Windows Mobile's more-than-a-decade lead time. Now, I'm not surprised at all to read this news...

Apple Announces Over 100,000 Apps Now Available on the App Store

Yes, I acknowledge that many thousands of those apps are useless ones. And, yes, I acknowledge that thousands more are those single-book-wrapped-in-an-app that should be simple content read using an ebook reader app. Still, incredible success of the iPhone apps eco-system is undeniable.

Let's not ignore another announcement that came out this week though. T-Mobile USA tweeted...

Fun Android fact:The Android Market has grown from 50 apps(when we launched the T-Mobile G1)to more than 12,000 apps today

While Android's app count isn't growing as quickly as the iPhone's did in its first year, 12000 is still a healthy and respectable number of apps. I wouldn't be surprised to see the number of Android apps pass Windows Mobile by the summer of 2010.

The recently released free MarketWatch news app for the iPhone has an interesting feature: Text-to-speech to read stories on an iPhone.

MarketWatch 1.0.0

This 2 minute 5 second podcast provides a brief sound sample of a MarketWatch story being read on the iPhone 3G's speaker.

- You can listen to the podcast right now from your web browser by using the embedded player above.
- You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes or this RSS feed.
- You can also point your smartphone's browser at mobiletoday.podbean.com to listen to or download the MP3 file over the air to your phone.

I've noted for months that I've been buying Amazon Kindle ebooks even though I don't own a Kindle reader because I've found reading ebooks on the iPhone to be quite satisfying and enjoyable. So, it was somewhat gratifying to see noted the noted tech commentator Om Malik writing...

The Next Hot e-Reader: The iPhone

The only problem is that he was promoting data that notes those irritating ebook-in-a-single-app iPhone apps overtook games as the largest percentage app category. There are now more ebook-in-an-app apps than games! Yuck. App-clutter if you wask me.

Now, BusinessWeek reports on what I predict will be the biggest app clutter causing in the iTunes App Store and iPhones everywhere within the next year...

Do-It-Yourself iPhone Apps

I'm calling this category "Vanity Apps". It seemed like a good idea when I spoke with Joel Comm (of iFart Mobile fame) about his then new service of creating these vanity apps. But, I've come to change my mind after thinking about the new app clutter this category is going to create. Ugh.

Readers of Marvel Comics have can purchase and read comics on their iPhone through no fewer that four apps according to this press release...

Get Marvel Digital Comics! YOUR Choice How!

These apps come from iVerse, Panelfly, ComiXology, and ScrollMotin (Iceberg reader?). Comic books can be purchased using the in-app purchase mechanism. I downloaded and installed PanelFly's app to test out this process since Marvel comic books are 99 cents each through this app compared to the $1.99 cost in other apps (noted by MacWorld's article below).

Marvel Comics come to iPhone

Panelfly Comics 1.1 (iTunes App Store)

Note that only a few comic titles and issues are available via these iPhone apps. And, the various iPhone apps do not offer the same comic titles for in-app purhcase as noted by Comics Book Resources...

Marvel Comics now available via comiXology, iVerse, Panelfly and ScrollMotion apps [Updated]

For exampl,e Spider-Man and Iron Man titles are available through PanelFly but not comiXology. On the other hand comiXology appears to be the sole iPhone app source for Captain America and Marvel Zombies.

(...MORE...)

continued...

The free...

Nikon Learn & Explorer 1.0 (iTunes App Store)

...iPhone app is a clever piece of pre- and post-sales marketing for Nikon's Digital SLR (Single Reflex Lens) camera products. It helps DSLR owners learn to use their high-end camera better by providing descriptions of techniques along with photos and videos to illustrate those techniques. It also provides a photography glossary to explain various photographic terms. The information is quite useful and educational. The photos are stunning. However, the load time for the photos is quite long over a WiFi connection. And, the one video I tried to view stalled after a few seconds of streaming and buffering.

However, the price is right (free). And, the photos are amazing to look at and worth the long wait needed to download them over the network.

Via CNET: Nikon app teaches photography on the fly

16 of my iPhone apps were updated in the past week. Updates 1MB or larger are noted in parentheses. You may note that some of the apps listed were on one of my booted apps list. They are shown as updated because they were unsynced with my iPhone rather that completely removed from my iTunes app library.

Apps that do not have comments in the list below indicates that the update is simply a bug fix release or an iPhone OS 3.x compatibility update with, perhaps, some bug fixes.

1. DigiDrummer Lite 2.6 (3.1mb) Updated info view

2. Discovery Channel 1.1 New media content

3. Dual Level 2.4.0 Bubbles move more smoothly

4. Free Translator 1.0.19

5. Graphing Calculator 1.1.5 Polar & parametric graphing support. Random integer function.

6. iHusky 3D Pet Lite 3.5 (14.8mb)

7. INRIX TRAFFIC! 1.2 Traffic incidents in list format. Expanded road coverage

8. myStarbucks 1.0.1 (6.3mb)

9. Night Camera 3.0.1

10. Now Playing 3.11 (1.7mb)

11. NPR News 1.2.1 (1.5mb)

12. NYTimes 2.3 New article sharing tools (Twitter/Facebook)

13. Remote 1.3.2 (1.6mb)

14. ShapeWriter Lite 3.2.0 (1.3mb)

15. SketchBook MobileX 1.1 (3.8mb) Layer delete, double tap exist from Layer Editor. Import landscape oriented images. Brush preview on resize. Stippling. Guestures to invoke actions.

16. Thomson Reuters News Pro 1.1 Email news stories (send to friend). Ability to change text size.

After initial success with an early release of WordPress for iPhone, I had nothing but problems with subsequent releases. Then, with the previous 1.3 release of the product I was able to use it with one of my personal blogs (TO-Tech) but not the other. The little iTunes Store oddity I noted yesterday...

New WordPress 2 for iPhone Release Demonstrates an iTunes Store Oddity

...gave me even more pause for thought and more hesitation in using the new release. It turned out that WordPress 2 is considered a completely separate product from the earlier 1.x releases. I deleted the older version from my iPhone to make sure I don't accidentally use and test the wrong app.

Configuring the app to work with my second blog (MobileViews) went smoothly if somewhat slowly. It seemed to take forever before I saw that WordPress reported it has successfully authenicated with the blog's underlying WordPress engine instead of the usual XML-RPC error I had become so used to seeing.

Next, I posted a text-only blog item successfully. The final test was to post a blog item that included a photo. So, I snapped a photo using my iPhone 3G while outside during my lunch break and tried to post it using WordPress 2 for iPhone. You can see from the web page segment displayed above, that the blog entry with both a photo and text posted to and appeared on my blog without any issues.

All I can say is, "phew!" It is great to be able to post little personal blog items using WordPress 2 for the iPhone.