Square Enix’ Chaos Rings has turned out to be a huge hit in the App Store: after all the positive reviews and users’ feedback, Chaos Rings (which, for those who don’t know, it’s a typical japanese RPG) is now the top grossing app in nine countries, and the devs confirmed it’s also headed to the iPad as “Chaos Rings HD”.
Chaos Rings Headed to the iPad
iPhone in Japan: 72% of Smartphone Market
Good news for Apple: Businessweek reports that the shipments of the iPhone to Japan have more than doubled in the past year, taking 72% of the smartphone market.
“Shipments of the iPhone, which began selling in Japan in July 2008, climbed to 1.69 million units in the year ended March 31, Tokyo-based MM Research Institute Ltd. said in a report yesterday. That raised the total to 2.3 million, Hideaki Yokota, an analyst at the research firm, said by telephone today.
The iPhone helped smartphone sales more than double last fiscal year in Japan as shipments of regular mobile phones shrank, according to the report. Smartphone shipments will probably exceed 3 million units in the 12 months started April 1, even as the overall market is forecast to contract for a third year, it said.”
I’d be curious to see some stats for Italy though. Very good numbers, anyway.
Google Announces Free Turn-by-Turn Navigation for iPhone
If you ask Cody what’s so great about Android, it’s very likely that among all of his responses there would be a special mention for turn-by-turn navigation. Yeah, stuff like Tom Tom and Navigon, but free.
Well, it turns out that it might be coming to the iPhone as well.
Talking Apps, A Case for A Better iPad File Management
I’ve been using my iPad for two weeks now, and among all the things I love about it, I couldn’t help but notice something I wish Apple would have put more effort into: sharing files between apps installed on the iPad.
Newsprint Goes 1.1, 10 Copies Up for Grabs
Remember Newsprint? It’s the RSS application for iPhone we reviewed a while ago here, and I was quite impressed by that first release of the app. The interface surely looked different but good, there were some interesting features to be explored for future releases and, overall, I just liked it.
Finally, Hashbang Ind. has released an update to Newsprint, the 1.1 version, which brings a lot of stability improvements and fixes requested by the users.
Apple Is Not Banning Analytics Tools for Apps
This is great news for App Store analytics tools such as Flurry and Medialets: they won’t be banned, but only if they respect Apple’s rules. So, unlike we reported some weeks ago, it’s not like they’ll be completely banned, they just have to change their system. The entity of “just” is still unknown though.
Jumbalaya, Remix Letters & Get Points. Review & Giveaway!
Something about the iPad makes it great for casual word games. For example, Words with Friends and Scrabble (which admittedly have the same type of gameplay) are really great to play on the iPad’s larger screen. But if you’re looking for something a little bit different, let me direct your attention to Jumbalaya - which not only tastes good, but also happens to be a great iPad game. Read more
Syncman for Mac Keeps GMail and Address Book Contacts Intact
Floating between contacts in GMail and maintaining a carbon copy of those recently added contacts on my Mac has become somewhat of an evening chore. Believe me, manually adding the same contacts to multiple devices over and over again bites. But with Syncman, it’s easy to keep your GMail and Address Book in sync nirvana. Read more
99 Year Old Lady Buys Her First Computer, An iPad
We know that if there’s something great about the multitouch technology it’s accessibility. It’s intuitive, easy to understand, everyone can use it.
Virginia Campbell is a 99 year old lady who’s just bought her first computer to read and write, two things she’s always loved to do. Thing is, the computer is an iPad and it’s incredible to see how she uses it without problems and limitations of any sort. Like we said many times, it just works.
The video we’re embedding after the break is going viral on the Internet, and the story even got picked by Fox12 Oregon. Also, she prefers landscape mode and uses Pages to write her poetry. Well done, Apple.