Concept: iPhone-connected Smart Finger For The Visually Impaired

iOS devices come with great accessibility support. It is fairly easy for developers to implement in their apps, and iOS is packed with accessibility functionalities out of the box. The Thimble is “a concept multimedia finger glove” designed by Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet that has an optical scanner right above the finger tip which is capable of on-the-fly conversion of text to Braille messages.

We know the iPhone 4 can be controlled with Braillant-32 bluetooth Braille Displays, but this concept is different: the Thimble also acts as a location-aware device that can connect to the internet to pull news and other data and pass them along as Braille messages. From the video below, it also looks like there’s some kind of speech recognition technology in there.

The Thimble is just a concept for now, but I think it would make for a great product to further extend iOS’ accessibility features. [FSM via dvice]

Camera+ Sells 500,000 Copies, Jumps Behind Angry Birds

The highly anticipated new version of taptaptap’s Camera+ was released only two days ago, and while we’re still testing it in real-life situations before our huge review, we do think already it’s a great app update. In fact, Camera+ is one of our Top Camera Apps of 2010.

According to the numbers shared by taptaptap’s John Casasanta, Camera+ 2 has sold 500,000 copies so far. This made the app quickly climb the charts of the App Store, placing it at the #2 spot of overall Top Paid Apps right behind Angry Birds and above all the discounted EA games, which have taken over the iPhone and iPad App Store charts. Casasanta doesn’t know whether Camera+ will manage to get to #1 before the iTunes Connect shutdown (the App Store charts will be “frozen” from today until December 28th, and developers won’t be able to submit new apps, updates or price changes) or not, but releasing Camera+ this week was a clever marketing move nonetheless. They priced the app at $0.99 to celebrate the re-launch, put an additional effect pack in the app sold through in-app purchase and gained visibility thanks to all the blogs and Twitter users who mentioned Camera+ these 2 days. Thus, it got to #2 and it will likely stay there until next week. Very clever indeed.

Just as a reminder: the first version of Camera+ generated $250,000 in revenue in the first month of sales earlier this year. Well deserved.

iPhones and iPads Take Over The Italian Parliament

In spite of the major conflicts and debates going on right now in the Italian Parliament, it seems like every member agrees on one thing: getting an Apple device for Christmas. As noted by iSpazio, members and senators from PD, PDL (Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s party) and FLI are all getting iPads from Santa.

It is unknown whether the devices will be gifted as a “bonus” for personal use or will be deployed for work purposes in the Parliament. We read about the iPad being used by congressmen at the U.S. House of Representatives before, and at the White House, too. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Italian Parliament coming up with its own apps to check on daily appointements, logs and activities.

As iSpazio also notes, members of FLI will be able to choose from iPads and iPhones. Not bad!  Why not giving away some Macs as well at this point? I think members would enjoy an awesome app like Screens.

Skyfire for iPad Now Available

As noted by 9to5mac, Skyfire for iPad is now available. As previously reported, Skyfire takes advantage of the iPad’s larger screen to integrate more social features in the app and allow users to constantly share items on Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader (or send over to Pinboard, Instapaper and Read It Later) with the app of a button. Most notably, Skyfire for iPad comes with a series of buttons in the bottom toolbar that let you check on your Reader feeds, Twitter timeline and Facebook wall, together with the possibility to like every page with a universal Like button and see only updates from friends who shared links.

Social features aside, Skyfire for iPad has the same on-the-fly Flash video conversion technology seen on the iPhone version. If the iPhone app is to be trusted, Skyfire Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool is pretty awesome, and it converts video to an iOS-compatible format in seconds. One could ask why Flash videos are needed on iOS when most of web video has iOS-optimized fallbacks now, but still. Skyfire for iPad also comes with additional functionalities such as a new tab design, desktop option to avoid loading websites in mobile versions, private browsing a.k.a. “porn mode”. Also, guess what kind of websites still doesn’t provide iOS-compatible video. I think I know why Skyfire is selling all those copies.

Skyfire for iPhone made $1 million in its weekend in the App Store. With the App Store charts freezing tomorrow until the 28th, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the app having a tremendous success on the tablet as well. Go download it here at $4.99, and check out the demo video and feature list below. Read more

Well Things Just Got Interesting→

Well Things Just Got Interesting

Inspiration and imitation are a natural part of competition, especially in a market as tight as news readers.  But in this case, I personally felt that MobileRSS went too far.  As a solo developer, I rely on app sales to support myself.  A lot of other iOS developers do the same, including Reeder.  We simply don’t do things like this to each other.

As a result, I have decided to disable MobileRSS’s API key for the time being.  This is not an app that I would like ReadItLater to be a part of in its current form.

Nate Weiner of Read It Later condemns MobileRSS because they’ve blatanently ripped off Reeder’s unique user interface, but at the same time offers his apologies to his customers who use MobileRSS as their utility of choice. While he regrets disabling a major function of MobileRSS, Nate honorably offers to offset the cost of this inconvenience if his customers feel their service has been disrupted. It’s a shame that a developer in our own community has had to take such a stance thanks to the actions of another, but good on Read It Later for stepping up and simply saying, “No.”

Update:

After speaking with a number of other developers, including Silvio from Reeder, I’ve decided that the best thing to do is re-enable MobileRSS’s API key.  The developers who made MobileRSS have a number of other apps with Read it Later support (on Twitter, iPhone and iPad).  I’ve discovered that all of these apps use the same API key so disabling it unfairly affects an enormous number of innocent Read It Later users using the developer’s other apps.

While the intentions were good morally, business is business. Ultimately I agree that it’s up to the end user to decide whether or not to support an application that has unfairly (and blatantly) copied the user interface of a competitor, though I applaud Read It Later for bringing awareness to the situation. I find it interesting that Silvio Rizzi of Reeder understood the financial implications and felt that such a damaging proposition was unfair. Undoubtedly the developers of MobileRSS have enough to deal with considering this afternoon’s lash out against the company.

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TinyGrab 2.0 Hitting The App Store Now

Watch out TinyGrab users - the second iteration of this fantastic image sharing application is going live in the App Store as we speak. From the mouth of the @TinyGrab team themselves on Twitter, keep an eye out for updates including iOS 4.0 compatibility, the ability to share grabs on social networks like Facebook & Twitter, and a recent lists updates that fetches your history from your account instead of the handset. I love TinyGrab because it’s so useful for sharing screenshots, and it’s only a dollar if you’re a member but don’t yet have the mobile version. For only a dollar in the App Store, it’s a free update for previous owners and a must have tool for those without.

Project Mag Goes Free Tomorrow, New Issue Coming On January 7

Remember Richard Branson’s Project for iPad? In case you have forgotten, it’s Virgin’s first attempt to build an iPad-only magazine “about creative people, for creative people”. While the first issue of the app wasn’t that revolutionary or feature-rich, there was some potential in there, for sure. The animated cover looked nice and content was pretty good, too.

Today Virgin has announced that users will be able to download Project Issue 1 for free starting tomorrow (December 23) until December 29. Project Issue 2 will be released on January 7, although no further details have been provided.

In early 2011 Virgin will also release an entirely crowd sourced issue of Project, with a new animated cover that’s been selected from a contest held in NYC three weeks ago. Videos of the selected cover and the contest featuring Richard Branson have been posted online, check them out below. Read more

DisplayPad Turns Your iPad Into A Touch Friendly Second Monitor

As a compliment to your MacBook, your iPad often becomes the getaway for reading, playing games, and couch surfing the Internet. Though we readily find uses for the iPad such as turning it into a giant trackpad for controlling a Mac Mini underneath your TV or for remotely controlling Dropbox shares, one use we occasionally struggle with is utilizing our iPad as a second monitor when the extra screen real-estate is necessary for getting work done. DisplayPad by Clean Cut Code is one of many apps that turns your iPad into a remote monitor, perfect for extending your desktop like we do when covering Apple events.

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myPhoneDesktop 1.6 - MacStories “2x” Giveaway

myPhoneDesktop is an app for iPhone, iPad and OS X we’ve covered on MacStories a few times in the past. While packed with functionalities, the basic concept of mPD is fairly simple: it provides a way to link your desktop web browser, computer and mobile devices over the air, through the cloud. myPhoneDesktop allows you to easily move data between computers and devices and relies on iOS’ push notification system to let you instantly get the data shared on a Mac or PC.

With this app, you can share text, URLs and images, initiate phone calls and send SMS, send links to alternative browsers for iOS, send content from any webpage to your iPhone and iPad via bookmarklet. It comes with a browser plugin and a desktop app to simplify sharing of data, it’s deeply integrated with several third party iOS apps such as Instapaper, Skype and GoodReader. The latest 1.6 update, though, takes everything a step further: the app can run in the background and receive clipboard data for 10 minutes, it’s got Google Voice integration and the desktop companion can even initiate Google Voice calls and send SMS.

We have 5 copies of myPhoneDesktop 1.6 to give away. Unlike our usual giveaway though, each winner will get 2 promo codes. Jump after the break to check out the giveaway rules, or if you can’t wait – go download mPhoneDeskop here. Read more