Google’s “Favorite Places on Google” is a new program that really refines the term “window shopping”. Google has sent out 100,000 window decals to various stores and restaurants that the business will place on their door or window. Once the decal is in place, an iPhone user can use the app QuickMark [Free for the first 40,000 downloads - iTunes Link] to snap a picture of the decal and then you will find reviews, coupons if the business are offering them or you can even star a business so you can remember it in the future. Google also claims that in the near future you will be able to review places directly on your iPhone as well.

Currently you can find these decals in over 9,000 towns and cities all over the U.S. and if you are curious to check out what is in your city be sure to visit the site, Favorite Places on Google.

If any of you see these decals around your town, be sure to let us know how well it works for you!

[Via Google Blog]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Google Introduces Favorite Places for iPhone

It looks as if the rumors of major publishers getting together to agree upon a set of open standards for a new digital storefront are indeed true. Today Apple Insider is reporting that Condé Nast, Hearst, News Corporation, Time Inc., and Meredith all have officially announced this collaboration.

“For the consumer, this digital initiative will provide access to an extraordinary selection of engaging content products, all customized for easy download on the device of their choice, including smartphones, e-readers and laptops,” said Squires, the interim managing director. “Once purchased, this content will be 'unlocked' for consumers to enjoy anywhere, anytime, on any platform.”

At first the store will solely be for newspapers and magazines with the possibility of books, comic books, blogs and more in the future. The publishers are now working on a reading application that will allow the reader to get that experience of the specific publications. Hopefully they come up with something that wows us.

How many of you would buy into this digital subscription idea?

[Via AppleInsider]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Old World Publishers Confirm Digital Store

If you own either an iPhone or iPod touch along with a Mac computer then Airlock may just be the security OS X application you’ve been looking for. For only $7.77 you can have a very effective lock for your Mac computer with just your iPhone or iPod touch.

How does Airlock work? It’s pretty simple, the program determines when you are near your computer. If you leave your computer’s Bluetooth reach with your iPhone or iPod touch, your computer locks itself. As soon as you are back within Bluetooth range it unlocks your computer. If your iPhone/iPod touch is in a place that is out of range and you need access to your computer, simply set Airlock up to allow for your user name and password to gain access.

If any of you give Airlock a try let us know how you like it!

[Via Gizmodo via Unplggd]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Airlock: Lock Your Mac with Your iPhone or iPod touch via Bluetooth

Dragon’s Lair [$4.99- iTunes link], the original laser-disc (wikipedia it!), fully cell-animated arcade adventure from the legendary Don Bluth is officially, nostalgically available for the iPhone and iPod touch.

If you weren’t there to experience Dragon’s Lair’s emergence onto the arcade scene in the wayback days of yore, it’s hard to explain the impact it made. Suffice it to say, if the iPhone version captures that kind of magic, every 30+ year old will download it on sight, and many younger folks might just fall in love with it as well.

It’s not Pac-Man or Street Fighter; it’s a very different type of gaming experience, so if you’ve been waiting for it, let us know how it translates, and if you’re trying it for the first time, let us know what you think!

[TouchArcade via TUAW]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Dragon’s Lair Swashbuckles its Way to the iPhone!

Apple has once again released their iTunes Rewind listings, highlighting the best, and top-selling iPhone and iPod touch apps of 2009. In the US App Store, it breaks down as follows:

• Spider: the Secret of Bryce Manor [$2.99 - iTunes link] and Real Racing [$4.99 - iTunes link] lead best games
• Sims 3 [$6.99 - iTunes link] and the Oregon Trail [$4.99 - iTunes link] lead top selling games.
• ReelDirector [$4.99 - iTunes link] and Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America [$79.99 - iTunes link] lead best apps.
• MobileNavigator North America [$89.99 - iTunes link] and MLB.com At Bat [Currently free - iTunes link] lead top selling apps.

Apple also has lists up for best music [iTunes link], best movies [iTunes link], best TV shows [iTunes link], best audio books [iTunes link], and best podcasts [iTunes link].

What do you think of their picks?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iTunes Rewind: Apple Highlights the Best and Top-Selling Apps of 2009

Apple, on orders from Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller, has removed all 1000 Molinker-developed iPhone apps from the App Store for allegedly astroturfing the iTunes review system with fake 5-star reviews. Says iPhone camera and video site, iPhoneography, which reprinted an email from a friend named SCW, and jointly followed up with Apple:

Please investigate for I have just looked at 44 of the reviewers who posted reviews for this Molinker Inc app “NightCam Pro” & EVERY Review except 2 of the 44+ are ALL FAKE 5 ★★★★★ reviews. (on my iPhone I could view more reviews but on my computer only 35 were visible & of the 35 visible 34 ARE fake). If you investigate ALL have ONLY reviewed ONLY Molinker apps. A little odd that 42 of 44 US reviews are poorly written & that all users have only written reviews for either All Molinker photography apps (giving 5 star reviews to 6-7 Molinker apps ONLY no other apps by any other developer) or the same 2 apps. 10 Reviewers who only reviewed NightCam Pro & ColorMagic (5 Stars), 24+ Reviewers have ONLY written reviews for 6-7 other Molinker photography apps (5 Stars) & 1-2 are real Reviews giving a 1 Star review

Schiller’s response:

“Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.”

So, was this one of the rare positive uses of Apple’s rejection hammer? Any negatives that could come from it?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Removes 1000 Molinker iPhone Apps for Alleged Astroturfing of Fake Reviews

Dragon Dictation [Free - iTunes link] brings the voice recognition and transcription technology behind Nuance’s well known Dragon Naturally Speaking to the iPhone (and iPod touch with mic attached. Apparently, per comments below, it won’t allow download to iPod touch (?!) ).

Basically, you tap a button, say what you want to say — from a brief reminder note to long, flowing prose — and Dragon sucks it in and coverts it all to text. Nuance claims it’s 5 times faster than typing, and you can email or SMS the results, and of course to update Twitter or Facebook via copy and paste. There’s even a voice-controlled correction UI.

Best of all, Dragon Dictation is free for a “limited time” — though it appears to be US-only at the moment (what, licensing problems, or don’t international users speak?)

If you give it a try, let us know how you like it…

[via TUAW]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Dragon Dictation Voice Transcription for iPhone Comes to US App Store — Get it While it’s Free!

The CrunchPad has crashed and burned amid antics and accusations worthy of the silliest TV legal dramas (Denny Crane!), but from its ashes has risen might rise the JooJoo. No, really, that’s what they’re calling it because it’s magic.

A 12″ capacitive tablet that runs only a Unix kernel and boots in 9 seconds into a WebKit browser, and… that’s it. Think Chrome OS but not Google’s in a mythical iTablet package but not Apple’s. Other specs include 4GB of storage, WiFi (no cell data), 5 hours of battery life, USB, headphone, and $500 to take home.

We’re with the many other tech’ers who think that’s a hefty price for a mobile web browser, given the price of everything from the iPod touch (or iPhone) to ultra-cheap netbooks, but there may just be a niche for those early adapters who don’t blink at half a grand.

Perhaps not ironically, Steve Jobs is rumored to have said he won’t ship an Apple tablet until the device does more than let people browser the web on the toilet. Whether that means this specific a device is a space Apple isn’t going to enter, or that $500 for anything that won’t run more than just a web browser is a non-starter in the minds of arguably the best product picker of the last 20 years… you tell us. Want?

For more on the JooJoo check out Engadget’s hands-on…

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Mythical iTablet Competitor CrunchPad Undead — JooJoo Coming for $500

TiPb had a chance to talk to some developers who attended Apple’s recent iPhone Tech Talk World Tour (San Jose, Seattle, New York, Toronto, Paris, London, Hamburg, Bejing, and Tokyo), where they promised expert advice at cities near developers. So how has it gone? The T-Shirt’s given away say it all they “came, saw, and coded”.

There were different tracks for developers to choose from, and one of the complaints we heard was that the devs wished it had been longer so they could have attended them all. Still, we have some notes they were willing to share, after the break!

(And if you think this is just for geeks… well it is, but it explains some of why the iPhone does what it does, and what developers could do to ease some of our frustrations).

WebKit

• One dev who was new to Apple technologies found WebKit and their specific CSS (-webkit-gradient, -webkit-mask, webkit-box-reflect) to be “astoundingly powerful”. (If you run WebKit or Safari, check out the http://westciv.tools.gradients demo.
• Apple stressed the advantages of using WebKit and embedded WebView. The AppStore app is an example of a native app with a WebKit UI made by Apple.
• A button made in CSS is much lighter than an image file and also scales elegantly (resolution independent).
• Even a JPG that’s only 50k in size will take up 10 times more memory when it’s decompressed and rendered in a UI.
• WebKit interfaces can be updated outside of the App Store approval process, so no resubmission just to change UI elements.
• Client-side database storage API in HTML 5 saves state locally and reloads the next time you view the page. (Again, http://webkit.org/demos/sticky-notes/ demo.)

App Performance

• Apple believes every developer should be obsessed about performance.
• For the end user experience, every fraction of a second is important. They want to load and go, not invest time in waiting for an app to load.
• iPhone uses 12MB for graphics, 32MB for kernel, 12MB for daemons, 4MB for phone, so for iPhone 2G and 3G, half the memory is gone before any 3rd party app even loads.
• There’s no swap file, so the size of binaries matter since they’ll be loaded into memory.
• When a low-memory situation occurs, there’s a warning. On second warning, background apps are killed, on third warning (95%), front-facing app is killed. (Think Safari disappearing and getting dumped back onto the home screen).
• Apple stressed that developers need to handle these warnings elegantly and free up memory as/when appropriate.
• A user should never be warned about memory or asked what to do (hello AnDROID!).
• Where a developer stores cache is important. If a developer stores cache in a location that iTunes backs up, it creates slow iTunes backups for users. They should cache in temporary areas instead.
• The iPhone uses a single core processor, but can handle multiple threads. In the future these devices may be multi-core so starting now and building them for that future is a good idea.
• Apple believes that great apps come from developers who pay attention to details beyond just what’s necessary to get the job done.

What About Those Rejections?

• The most common reason for a rejection, according to Apple, was when an app crashed on launch.
• Developers tended to know that if an API was private, they shouldn’t try to make an app that depended on it since it would likely get rejected.
• No specific rejections were brought up or addressed.
• One dev we spoke to liked the App Store and Apple as “gatekeeper” because it created greater end-user trust — people were more likely to trust that App Store apps would work and not mess up their phone or do anything criminal.
• Another dev, when asked about iPhone development vs. another platform, liked that Apple handled all the transactions and getting all the apps in front of all the users, which would be a huge chore and expense otherwise.
• Yet another dev just thought the size and reach of the App Store made it the best place to develop at the moment.

All in all it sounds like developers enjoyed the free event, and the free coffee, pastry, and t-shirts. Hopefully Apple will continue to provide them next year, and going forward.

If you attended an iPhone Tech Talk World Tour session and have any additional notes for us, please send them our way!

UPDATE: Stephen Rayner Jr. let us know he’s putting his lengthy, detailed notes from the Toronto Tech Talk online via blog.nuthatch.com.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Notes from Apple’s iPhone Tech Talk World Tour