If you’ve ever wanted to automate an action based on your location, now’s your chance to improve your quality of life through IFTTT on the iPhone. Android devices have had the ability to trigger various functions thanks to apps like Tasker and Microsoft’s own on{x} (if that’s still a thing), but IFTTT’s bringing location-based automation to the iPhone. Chris, our deals guy, found this particularly great recipe if you’ve ever wanted your iPhone to play superhero theme music as you arrived at a location. Combine that with flashy lights and… well you get the idea.

We’ve written about IFTTT before, and you can download it on the App Store for free if you want to try it yourself.

Maybe it’s too early to start thinking of New Year’s resolutions, but Kevin Rose (an investor) tweeted that FitStar now has an iPhone app. As far as fitness apps go, this looks nice. FitStar 2.0 is redesigned for iOS 7, has programs that don’t require any workout equipment, and has courses tailored to getting you to your desired level of fit, whether it’s losing weight, adding tone, or building muscle. A one-year premium membership is also only $29.99 for a limited time, making it much more affordable than a gym membership. Check out FitStar, their programs, and pricing here.

Also worth mentioning: Fitocracy. Fitocracy has some neat ideas around community, gamifying workouts, and also offers various programs from fitness trainers.

Ken Yeung on The Next Web provides the rundown on Square’s new Connect API for merchants.

With the new API, merchants are able to retrieve activity reports for their processed payments, refunds and deposits. Square says that what it will not provide is the ability to accept payments — it’s only for reporting purposes. It’s also limited to pulling data from a single account, so no market research capabilities are available.

The Connect API is strictly for merchants who want to keep tabs on their sales, but it’s nice to have nonetheless if you’re selling products using Square readers or online via the Square Market.

In late October, Aqualia’s Soulver was updated with iOS 7 support on the iPhone, and I noted how syntax highlighting ultimately made the app better than the iOS 6 version:

If you’ve used other iOS 7 apps like Byword, you know how syntax highlighting is beneficial to the user experience: numbers turn green, units are purple, operations are blue, and plain text is standard black. Syntax highlighting makes lines more scannable because operations and individual bits of text stand out more; furthermore, because Soulver allows you to type units manually (you can write “USD”, “usd”, “dollars”, etc) you’ll instantly know if what you typed has been recognized by the app thanks to color highlights. Besides being nice visually speaking, syntax highlighting — a simple addition in theory — makes the experience of using Soulver considerably better.

Today, Soulver 2.4 has been released with iPad support, making the app Universal. The iPad’s interface isn’t revolutionary – you still get a split layout but keys and number pads are larger on the iPad and you get easier access to some of the app’s features.

Soulver is a great app and on sale for a limited time at $1.99 on the App Store.

Chris Gonzales hits the nail on the head with his “rules for App developers” concerning review prompts in apps (you know, the alerts that ask you to rate an app). All of the previous discussion is linked to in Chris’ piece so you can catch up there. As per Chris’ suggestions, I like this one in particular:

Respect the users’ wishes. If a customer chooses to opt out of leaving a review, your app had better not continue prompting them about it afterward. I can live with a one-time popup, but there are some apps that ignore opt-out requests and that is definitely not okay with me. It might even be a good idea to respect opt-outs across app updates, if possible. If I didn’t want to review your app two updates ago, I’m no more likely to do so today.

I personally don’t care for review prompts because they’re intrusive. They get in the way and I feel like a jerk every time I have to tap some variation of, “No thanks.”

An app that does it better is Twitch.tv’s iOS app, which instead of showing alerts[1], has a little translucent bar at the bottom of the screen that asks you to review the app if you like it. It doesn’t get in the way of what’s on the screen or make me stop what I’m doing, and it doesn’t pop-up very often. I think Twitch can use it for other things as well, such as making users aware of new features. The other nice thing about their version of a notification bar is that it can port nicely to other platforms, keeping that experience consistent across mobile devices.