Jake Marsh sent along this neat screencast of an iPhone web app for MySpace that he’s working on. Facebook basically seems to be the gold standard of social networking web apps these days, and this looks basically just like that one. It is cool that you can look up people right away, but the real improvements are on MySpace’s Music pages — not only can you subscribe directly from the profile, but he’s also got it working to play all the music there (usually trapped in Flash, though there is a less easy way around it already). He also says that it might eventually be possible, for songs that are available for download, to get them with one click into the iPhone’s iPod library.

Yes, it looks just like Facebook (in fact, it looks like a rip of the mobile site), but why fix something that’s not broken? Unfortunately, Marsh is just showing off — he says that it’s just for him right now and he’s aiming for an open beta in August. He should probably aim for a little sooner than that: after June, we might all be saying “what web apps?”

Posted on April 25th, 2008 by admin
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Posted on April 22nd, 2008 by admin
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You’ll remember that one of the game demos on the iPhone SDK was Sega’s Super Monkey Ball franchise — Spore got all the headlines, but Sega did show up with a pretty nice port of a game that could do very well on the iPhone. And when producer Ethan Einhorn sat down to talk to GameCyte about the port, he said all the things I want to hear: casual, pick up and play gaming on the iPhone, with interface innovation akin to the Wii and gaming performance comparable to other handheld gaming devices, even with a team that had never touched Cocoa and Open GL before.

There are some nice promises from Sega here for at least one cool game in the App Store in June. We’ll continue to hope Sega (and Apple, and all of the other companies stepping up to develop games for the iPhone) can deliver.

via http://www.tuaw.com/2008/04/14/sega-producer-talks-about-super-monkey-ball-for-the-iphone/

Posted on April 15th, 2008 by admin
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Posted on April 10th, 2008 by admin
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Posted on April 9th, 2008 by admin
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Posted on April 8th, 2008 by admin
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This weekend, I finally got around to watching my first movie rented from the iTunes Store: Punch-Drunk Love. According to the Internet Movie Database, it was filmed in Panavision, which makes the aspect ratio 2.35:1 and requires a good bit of squinting to make anything out on the iPod touch. These very wide aspect ratio movies are annoying, because they don’t make very good use of the maximum 640×480 that Apple specifies for iPod/iPhone-compatible content. In order to arrive at the 2.35:1 aspect ratio, the picture would have to be a paltry 640×272.

However, according to iTunes, the movie was actually 853×366. Yes, that’s right: Apple says the iPhone and the iPod touch support a resolution of 640×480, and then it produces much larger video files that play just fine.

Some further experimentation shows that the iPhone and the touch will play files of up to 720×576 at 25 frames per second—coincidentally, the exact same size at which PAL DVDs are encoded. Files up to this size can played through mobile Safari or synced through iTunes.

However, that doesn’t explain the 853×366 Adam Sandler movie. The solution to that mystery is probably also found in the DVD world: anamorphic encoding. NTSC DVDs are always encoded in 720×480, which has an aspect ratio of 1.5:1. However, they’re played as 1.33:1 (4:3) or 1.78:1 (16:9) if the content is encoded as anamorphic widescreen. And, apparently, the iPhone and iPod touch are capable of playing anamorphic encoded video files. So my guess is that the movie I rented was encoded as 720×366 with an anamorphic aspect ratio of 1.78:1.

Obviously, using a higher resolution than what the screen supports (480×320) isn’t all that useful if you just plan on watching video on the iPod touch or the iPhone, but it can be if you want the same files to be playable the mobile device and on the computer screen or TV. If you are interested in experimenting yourself, don’t forget to stick to baseline H.264 encoding and remember that these files will not play on older generation iPods.

via http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/04/07/iphone-ipod-touch-support-720×576-rather-than-640×480-video

Posted on April 8th, 2008 by admin
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It used to be that a mobile device couldn’t be taken seriously unless you could run Doom on it; the relentless urge for an upgrade means that now it’s a working version of Quake or nothing. Thankfully the iPhone (and iPod Touch) can pass that test, with Quake 3 Arena ported to the handset. Seemingly the work of Canadian game studio HermitWorks (who are behind the Space Trader game), directional control is via the accelerometer and firing is handled by tapping the screen.

Most interestingly, you can take part in multiplayer games. No word on an actual release or whether this is just a proof-of-concept exercise, but we shall keep our fingers crossed all the same.

As an aside, PHONE Mag played with a Qualcomm Android prototype capable of running Quake while at CTIA Wireless last week; check out the video here.

[via Coolest Gadgets]

Posted on April 8th, 2008 by admin
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Finally a twitter application for the iPhone created at: http://blog.npike.net/2008/04/05/mobiletwitter-141-released/

Posted on April 7th, 2008 by admin
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As you probably recall, The Dev Team’s ‘Pwnage Tool’, which was supposed to allow the installation and launching of unsigned disk images and firmwares, was set to be released to the public last weekend when it was delayed for another week. In the meantime, Engadget’s Nilay Patel managed to get a video preview of the app in action. Video after the break

The tool opens up numerous possibilities for iPhone hacking, from custom distributions to ported OSs.

via http://www.iphonealley.com/news/video-pwnage-tool-in-action?s=c30caf24df5381647d4d7c959abe240a&

Posted on April 3rd, 2008 by admin
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