In case you missed it, iTunes Connect is back online. The web interface that allows developers to submit apps, updates and price changes went down on December 23 for the so-called “holiday shutdown” which didn’t freeze the App Store charts as many believed, but still made it impossible for developers to submit apps and users to find updates in iTunes. iTunes Connect went back online a few hours ago, and app updates are now showing up in iTunes and propagating through the App Store. Read more
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App Store Updates Are Back, Camera+ Sells Over 78,000 Copies On Christmas Day
Apple Selling Beatles Gift Cards So You’ll Never Forget
They may be gone from Apple’s homepage, but they hold a strong presence in every international Apple Store. The Beatles are such a big deal for Apple they decided to produce dedicated iTunes gift cards for them, as noted by iLounge. After the iPad gift cards and the iBooks ones, the Beatles-themed iTunes cards come in two different flavors: a $149 one that features the band on a white background and should give you access to “The Beatles Box Set” and a standard $50 one which appears to be a regular iTunes card to buy anything you want.
By the way, I almost forgot “the day I would never forget” was more than a month ago. You know, it’s hard to keep track of everything.
8mm For iPhone Applies Vintage Effects to Videos In Real-Time
Hipstamatic is one of the most popular iPhone apps in the App Store: not only it’s a great app with a cool camera-like interface and tons of filters, films and flashes to choose from, it has also been named “iPhone App of the Year” by Apple and journalists at the New York Times use it. Hipstamatic is the closest thing to having an old analog camera on your iPhone. Some say it’s overly designed and too complicated for the average users, I think the results and popularity of the software speak by themselves.
Then again, Hipstamatic (and other apps that apply cool effects to photos like Instagram or Camera+) is for photos. 8mm Vintage Camera by Nexvio is a new app that can apply vintage film effects to videos, all in real-time through the iPhone’s rear and front-facing cameras. Read more
iPhone Controlled Mini Fridge Beer Cannon
Whaaaa? That’s right kids (of legal drinking age), ‘personalbeerrobot’ has created what every man only dreams about - a mini fridge that can be remotely controlled to adjust temperature, pivots and uses compressed air to fire beer cans into your thirsty grip for a shot of hoppy refreshment. It’s controlled using an iPhone web app; select what kind of beer you’re thirsty for, use the built-in cannon cam to aim, and fire away! The iPhone web app can also control and monitor the mini fridge’s temperature as well. There’s even a twitter account set up for the beer robot: @MyBeerRobot
Features:
- Vends 4 types of beer
- Broadcasts temperature
- Adjust temperature via iPhone
- Aim via webcam
- Auto tweet video per shot
- Fire beer with 50psi of deliciousness
Video after the break…
iTunes 12 Days of Christmas: Day 3
Thanks to the iTunes 12 Days of Christmas promotion, every day from December 26th to January 6th users will be able to download a “fantastic selection of songs, music videos, apps, books, TV episodes and a film” completely for free on iTunes.
The free app for iPhone and iPad that lets you receive push notifications for daily offers is available here. Today, you can download a free Duran Duran EP called From Mediterranea With Love.
Stay tuned for promotions coming every day until January 6.
The Nose Knows No Phone Like iPhone
Ever try smelling an Android phone? No? Some might say it smells like plastic. Smitten iOS graphic designers will tell you it smells like failure. But have you ever tried smelling an iPhone? It smells like Lucky Charms right? If it was anyone else other than me, it would be just plain disgusting. At least using your iPhone as a handkerchief isn’t as disgusting as using your iPad as a sushi plate (plus, boogers simply taste better), though I have yet another reason to keep my hands off your handset.
If you’ve an iPhone and busy hands, NoseDial assumes that the oleographic Retina Display is the perfect place to shnoze dial 911. Seriously, we can’t promise this kind of intimate nasal fondling won’t lead to anything more than an “app with benefits.” Perhaps it could be useful if you’re wearing more than biker gloves – those thick socks you yankees call mittens certainly aren’t very app happy. NoseDial allows you to tilt and scroll all with your face, but at the risk of looking ridiculous and triggering one of Apple’s sensitive liquid sensors with your snot, we ask you refrain from this $1 German utility just as you avoid taking your iPhone into the bathroom. On the contrary, you could buy the app and just use your fingers – but that wouldn’t be any fun now would it? NoseDial is an interesting concept, though when you need your fingers to just pull the darned thing out of your pocket, I can’t see it being very useful via the utensil between your eyeballs. Unless you’re a gymnast – that I’d like to see.
[via TUAW]
iPod Nano Hacked, Will Soon Support Movies and iCalendars?
It looks like the iPod nano has been hacked. Developer and hacker James Whelton managed to bypass the device’s cache comparison and install a rather simple Springboard hack that allows for blank space creation – something that’s possible on jailbroken iPhones and iPads. As Whelton notes this is a very simple hack which will likely enable other devs to play around with the iPod nano and install bootloaders on it.
Most of all, Whelton discovered some hidden strings in the nano’s OS:
Next is the discovery in some of the device’s plists of reference to support of Movies, TV Shows, Apps, Games, vCards, Calender events and so on, with a few other cool things like a passcode lock. With the bypass I figured out, I hope to enable these pretty soon. It seems like the OS is a rehashed version of the previous Nano’s OS.
Details on how to bypass the iPod nano’s OS will be posted in the next days. While we’re pretty that Apple won’t open up the nano to 3rd party apps anytime soon, it will be interesting to see what the hacker community (or should we call it a “jailbreak” for the iPod nano?) will come up with. Check out the video below. Read more
iPhone Nano Watch: Worst of Both Worlds
We’ll never, ever grow tired of covering weird Chinese knock-offs of Apple products. What we have here today, though, can’t exactly be described as a knock-off: it’s something that doesn’t really exist to start with. It’s an “iPhone nano watch”, a strange combination of those iPod nano watches people have been wearing since September and the more popular iPhone with its distinctive UI. The iPhone nano watch has got a wristband and some clock functionalities I assume, but it also lets you “slide to unlock” and comes with a SIM slot, FM radio tuner, Bluetooth, USB, camera sensor and a speaker.
Don’t ask me how it’s even possible to make calls with this thing. I guess that’s why it’s still labelled as “engineering prototype” – hey, everyone deserves to be deeply tested, right? The iPhone nano watch will also get a headphone jack come the final release.
On a side note, I can’t wait to find a prototype of this one in a shady Shanzhai bar. Hit the source links for more photos. [Engadget via M.I.C. Gadget]
App Store’s Christmas Brings Millions of Downloads to Developers
All those new iPhone and iPod touch users tracked by the official Facebook app? Yeah, the spike in traffic and new users isn’t limited just to the Facebook app. According to numbers reported by The Next Web and Business Insider, Rovio’s blockbuster iOS game Angry Birds and Tapulous’ Tap Tap Revenge 4 generated over 1 million downloads and twice the level of traffic of last year, respectively. Put simply: this year’s App Store and iOS growth showed its results on December 25th by bringing tons of new customers and downloads to apps that already managed to gain a prominent position in the Store. Or was it because of all those people that got an iPhone, iPod touch or iPad under their Christmas trees?
A little bit of both, in my opinion. Surely lots of people got an iDevice for Christmas and rushed to the App Store to buy apps; we shouldn’t ignore the fact, though, that several developers discounted their apps before the iTunes Connect shutdown (which ends tomorrow, by the way) forcing many users like me to save money for Christmas (or iTunes gift cards) and buy apps altogether right before the family dinner. Either way, those are impressive numbers. Read more