Twitter for iPhone, aka Tweetie 3.0, is showing as an available update now in iTunes, though the link currently leads to an “application unavailable” popup. We take this to mean that, yes, Tweetie 2.0 was pulled from the iTunes App Store last night because the newly rebranded version is on its way… now-ish.

How long it takes for now-ish to become now depends on entirely on the wanton tease that is iTunes’ international propagation system. If/when you manage to grab it, let us know in comments and tell us what you think. (Especially if you spot any nifty new features!)

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Twitter for iPhone (Tweetie 3.0) is coming… now-ish is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

TiPb’s curious — how do you use the iPhone and/or iPad for your job?

We want some real life stories, some real world experience. We want to know what it’s like to use the iPhone and/or iPad in your line of work (and yes, being a student or caregiver or stay-at-home parent or even… politician, counts as work!)

1. Tell us what your job is.
2. Give us a paragraph or two describing how you use your iPhone or iPad during your workday. Tell us the story.
3. Share any tips or tricks you might have come across. What about the iPhone or iPad makes your job easier?
4. List the top 5, must have apps you use to get that job done.

And… That’s it!

We’ll be picking one reply every week or two and including it in a post right on the front page of TiPb.com. If/when your post gets picked, not only do you get your name (or username) up in lights, you get a sweet $20 iTunes gift certificate for your trouble! And yes, we will prioritize based on how awesome, how funny, how tragic, how well written, how inspiring, how disappointing, — generally how memorable your entry is. So bring it!

So what are you waiting for, tell us how you use your iPhone and/or iPad for your job?

• Official iPhone entry forum thread
• Official iPad entry forum thread

Contest: Tell TiPb how you use your iPhone or iPad for your job! is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

In stock: Griffin SmartShare for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch

The Griffin SmartShare is great for car trips, plane flights, waiting rooms and anywhere you’re in the mood to share.

Plug SmartShare into the mini-jack of iPhone, iPod, MP3, CD, portable DVD player or laptop computer and invite a friend to a party of two. Griffin has also integrated a slim volume control slider into each of SmartShare’s output jacks. Share your music, not your volume preferences.

Great design, small enough to carry anywhere, makes SmartShare a must-have addition to any accessory bag.

Order the Griffen SmartShare for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch now from the TiPb accessory store…

In stock: Griffin SmartShare for iPhone, iPad, iPod touch is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Survival horror thriller Zombie Infection for iPhone has to be Gameloft’s highest production game to date. The graphics and voice acting are top notch and the cinematic style is engrossing.

Zombie Invasion starts off with you landing in a small town, that — wait for it — has been overrun by zombies! The first level is basically a tutorial showing you the moves for your character. You can shoot and stomp on crates to find goodies such as ammunition and medical supplies. You can move while aiming (albeit very slowly) and you can dismember the zombies by shooting their legs, arms and heads; what more can you ask for?

As you progress through the 12 levels in the game you unlock them to replay at any time. This is great since Zombie Infection has a trophy achievement system. You can go back though levels and practice/earn achievements. There are some fun ones too, for example if you shoot off both legs of a zombie, you get an achievement for that. It is this type of mechanic that makes me come back for more.

To add a little variety to the game, you can also play as one of two characters; Ex-soldier Damien Sharpe and reporter Alex Rayne. The names are cheesy, yes, but the gameplay and fun factor is not. I love this game and I am thankful that Gameloft is bringing these types of games to iPhone; it makes one really compelling alternative to other platforms for mobile gaming. Check the video and pictures after the break!

Pros

• Great graphics
• Good voice acting
• Solid controls
• Two different characters to play
• Compelling story
• Level select after you complete a level
• Trophies
• Online leaderboards
• 12 Levels
• Unlockable Survival mode

Cons

• No quick turn
• I can’t think of anything else… this game is HOT!!!

Zombie Infection for iPhone – app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple’s new policy on cross-compilers has the development community in a frenzy, and for good reason.  RunRev is reaching out to Apple and developers and voicing their opinion on the matter.

For those not familiar with RunRev, revMobile is a cross-platform solution that will allow developers to port their applications to several different mobile platforms with ease.  Even though revMobile is still in its pre-alpha stages, it shows a lot of promise for developers who wish to develop for multiple platforms.  It allows them to build their applications and not have to re-write code for each and every platform separately.  This would provide an invaluable tool for devs.  Now with Apple bringing the ban hammer down on cross-compilers, Adobe isn’t the only one speaking up anymore.

RunRev has issued a statement with its thoughts on Apple’s new policy on cross-compiler usage. Apple wants developers to create native applications originally written in Objective-C code. What this means is that developers will not have the ability to simply port over existing applications written in other languages. Apple voiced their concern over apps running natively and creating a more “seamless” user experience. RunRev isn’t necessarily in agreement as to whether or not that’s the best course of action. They’ve proposed a solution to this problem in an open letter to the community and Apple.

” … In order to support our active and growing revMobile customer base, we submitted an in-depth proposal to Apple that we create an iPhone-only product that uses native Cocoa objects, supports 100% of their API, works perfectly with multitasking and battery life, but uses a variant of the revTalk language to use these objects and APIs, and then translates those into native code. While a significant engineering departure for us from the current revMobile path, this solution would have resulted in perfect-quality iPhone-only applications impossible to distinguish from native applications. It would have been impossible to tell these applications apart from native iPhone applications because they would be native applications. As native applications running directly without a compatibility layer, there would have been no battery life issues, multitasking and iAds would work perfectly, and new APIs would be supported as they came out. … “

To me, this sounds like a reasonable solution. Apple has rejected this proposal and RunRev is uncertain what the future will hold for revMobile at this point in time.

” … Some of our customers have suggested that we continue to develop the version of revMobile that outputs entirely native code (as detailed above). However such a solution–even though it would create perfect applications–would be in violation of Apple’s agreement, which states that code must originally be developed in one of their approved languages. As such, we cannot risk hundreds of thousands of dollars of further engineering budget to create a solution that does not guarantee Apple acceptance to the app store. … “

This is also understandable. The amount of development and time that would go into this solution is immense. As RunRev has stated, they’re left at a stand-still as they aren’t 100% certain that this solution would work or if apps created using revMobile would still face the App Store ban hammer. That’s a lot of time and money to waste on an uncertainty.

This policy also will prevent the use of development tools such as HyperCard, which was one of the first successful rapid application development tools available. Not only do tools like this work, they provide an invaluable time management tool to developers. Not to mention HyperCard was written by Bill Atkinson, a co-founder of Apple. How’s that for irony?

Perhaps Apple wasn’t just after Adobe, as many originally thought. But where is Apple and why is it starting to feel like they’re beginning to alienate more than just Adobe product users?

Thoughts?

[via RunRev]

RunRev responds to Apple’s new cross-compiler policy is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Apple is back with a handy how-to on finding duplicate songs (or videos) in your iTunes library. This is timely for me as some weird combination of MobileMe prefs sycn, Home Sharing, SuperDuper cloning, and iTunes 9.1.1 resulted in my main iTunes library disappearing, and the restore left me with multiple copies of multiple songs. Here’s the recommended fix:

Begin by selecting Music in your iTunes Library, then choose Display Duplicates in the File Menu and sort the resulting list by Name. It will display only songs with names that exactly match the names of other songs.

Not all will be duplicates, of course. For example, some might be covers, and others could be different performances by the same artist. To help identify actual duplicates, put the Time column right next to the Name column in your display. (Just grab it by the title and drag it over there. And by the way, hiding the Artwork column will make it easier to spot what you’re looking for.) Identical names with identical playing times are highly likely to be duplicates and you can then choose the one(s) you want to get rid of. When you’re done, click Show All at the bottom of the window.

There’s also a quick way to spot duplicates of the exact same song from the exact same album by changing the Display Duplicates command to Display Exact Duplicates. In iTunes for Windows you do this by holding down the Shift key when you click the File menu, and you can then move down the menu to select that command. On the Mac, hold down the Option key while you select the Display Duplicates command and it will change to Display Exact Duplicates. You’ll still need to look carefully before deleting because some albums contain more than one version of the same song, but most of what you’ll see will be true duplicates.

I nuked and started over, which was a slower and more aggravating process, so kudos to Apple for surfacing how to articles like this one. If you’ve dealt with duplicate songs — or movies, TV shows, podcasts, etc. — in your iTunes library and have ninja tips of your own to share, let us know in comments!

[Apple iTunes News]

How to find and remove duplicate songs in iTunes is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Wi-Fi Sync for iPhone is a jailbreak app that allows you to wirelessly sync with iTunes as opposed to having to plug in your phone.  It found it’s way into Cydia after it was rejected by Apple.

As of now, Wi-Fi Sync is only Mac compatible.  The developer is currently working on a PC version which he states on his website should be complete in about 8-10 weeks.  If you have a Mac and want to try it out, simply click here to get the Mac desktop software, then go in Cydia and purchase Wi-Fi Sync [$9.99 - Cydia Link].

After you’ve installed Wi-Fi Sync on your Mac and your iPhone, you should now be able to pair them.  The first time you do this, you’ll need to be by your Mac as it’ll ask you to accept the connection.  You’ll see this new icon in your Mac task bar (far left).

From that menu you have a few settings.  One being to disable backups.  I did this, as backups typically take a while and obviously, over wifi, your syncs will not be as quick as they are via traditional USB connection.  It’ll definitely make your battery take a hit with backups enabled as the time it takes to sync drastically increases.  To disable backups, just click that little icon and click to disable backups.

Now I don’t know if it was just me or if it’s a bug but my Mac kept asking me to accept the connection everytime, or wouldn’t find it sporadically.  There was also a couple times it would boot me off and my iPhone would tell me I had no wi-fi connection.  As this app is in it’s newborn stages, we will see how it progresses in terms of stability and feature set.  As far as I see, you’ll also need to tell your phone to sync automatically if you plan on using this app while not directly in front of your computer.  If that setting isn’t there, you’ll physically have to be in front of your computer to hit sync, which to me is somewhat counter-productive.

In my opinion, it’s a nice tool but I don’t know if it’s worth $10 at this point.  I personally encountered a few more bugs than I would have expected for an app with this type of price tag.  We’ll see what the developer does to refine it in the coming months.

Pros

• Ease of use
• Convenient
• Uses same familiar syncing process users are already accustomed to

Cons

• Drains battery pretty quick
• Must have automatic sync enabled for this to be useful
• Price tag is somewhat high
• Mac Only (for now)

Wi-Fi Sync for iPhone – Jailbreak app review is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Looks like Tweetie 2 is gone from the App Store and that could mean its anticipated renaming and relaunch as Twitter for iPhone is nigh.

Atebits’s Loren Brichter, the developer behind Tweetie, announced just over a month ago that Twitter was buying Tweetie as their official iPhone app and he was joining their mobile division, and that not only would the Mac version continue (users are eagerly waiting for Tweetie for Mac 2), an iPad version was also on its way.

TechCrunch teases that a new Twitter for iPhone, if it is indeed launched today-ish, could even be a universal binary that works for both iPhone and iPad.

While we wait and see, let us know if you’re not a current Tweetie user, will it going all official (and free) prompt you to switch or at least give it a try? (And what will that mean for the existing Twitter app market?)

[TechCrunch]

Tweetie 2 gone from App Store. Twitter for iPhone incoming? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog

Among large tech and communication companies, Apple looks to spend relatively little money — and percentage of revenue — lobbying Washington compared to say AT&T, Microsoft, Google, or Amazon.

That could mean they’d rather spend money on products than pet politicos, or that despite Adobe’s supposed complaint to the DoJ and FTC, Apple’s not too worried about government intervention in any of their businesses at the moment.

Comcast and Google on the other hand…

[Business Insider]

Apple spends least on lobbying is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb - The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog