Podotree has updated their iPhone app, Cube Dog, and your virtual pet now talks back.

Cube Dogs are adorable, 3D, interactive pets that you can customize to your hearts content! When you talk they repeat what you say! Tap them, and they do all kinds of cool stuff… like play baseball, and even fend of ninja attacks! Take a snap shot, and share with your friends!

• Talk Back – Your fully-customized and fully-awesome Cube Dog has a voice. Speak to it to hear him repeat what you say in a unique voice of your own.
• Real-World Photos – By opening the iPhone's rear-facing camera, Cube Dog can play and take photos alongside your real dog, at the beach, on your desk, or anywhere you choose.
• Tap to Play – Cube Dogs respond when you poke them. Tap his hands, feet, head, and eyes to watch him wave, jump, dance, knock his head back or make crazy faces.
• Animation Gallery – Cube Dog: 'Talk Back' introduces an animation gallery to choose your favorite complex interactions; from playing fetch to calling your cell phone to fending off ninja attacks or turning into a hilarious monster.
• 130 Million Possible Customizations – With 90 nose/mouth, eyes, ears, body, and head options, Cube Dogs are easily the most customizable toy on iOS.

I am a kid at heart and think this app is absolutely adorable. I particularly like the ability to take pictures of Cube Dog in the real world.

Cube Dog is availalbe for free for iPhone with optional in-app purchases. Screenshots after the break.

[iTunes link]

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As expected Lodsys was but the first highly publicized patent troll to try its hand at getting licensing fees from small, independent iOS developers, and as more come creeping out of the woodwork, some international devs are considering leaving the US App Store to avoid the costs and potential legal nightmares.

Simon Maddox on Twitter:

All my apps removed from US app stores (all platforms). 0.575% of total revenue put in a spare bank account. Screw you, Lodsys.

While leaving the US market now may not prevent claims of past infringement, it certainly shows the increasing frustration experienced by developers whose livelihoods are threatened by an increasingly incomprehensible and irreconcilable system. Basic concepts of patent law, like obviousness and prior art, seem not longer to be consider when patents are granted, only when they’re litigated. Expensively.

Florian Mueller on FOSS Patents:

The patent troll problem gets worse by the day, and it’s turning into a think-global-sue-local business. Today, an Indian company named Kootol distributed a press release announcing that it sent “a notice” to a long list of companies large and small, claiming that they sell products and operate services on which a patent application pending in different jurisdictions around the globe reads.

At what point will Apple (and Google, among others) have to step up and offer support, perhaps even indemnification for code included in their SDK, or bend their billions towards reasonable patent reform in the US, or face the decimation of the app ecosystems that are at the heart of their collective mobile profit centers?

[@simonmaddox via The Guardian, FOSS Patents]

AppsVersusRobots have updated their beer tracking app, Brewski Me, with the ability to give half-star ratings and more awards.

• Check into beers and locations
• Discover and share new beers
• See what your friends are drinking and meet other beer geeks
• Rate and review beers
• Create your beer Wish List
• Stock your Beer Cellar and keep track of your Favorites
• Earn Award Caps

The update includes:

• The number one requested feature: half-star ratings! Dial in your brew reviews!
• Bug fixes, including those with 24-hour format devices.
• New background features to enable more awards!

My husband is a huge beer fan (and snob), so I look forward to using this to keep track of his favorites. Now I won’t have to ruin the surprise of bringing beer home by calling to ask him which kind to get!

Brewski Me is free for the iPhone. Screenshots after the break.

[iTunes link]

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Every day, TiPb gets flooded with announcements for new and updated iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad apps and games. So every day we pick just a few of the most interesting, the most notable, and simply the most awesome to share with you!

• TUI Stopper: Do you have a habit of Texting-Under-The-Influence? Or maybe Calling-Under-The-Influence? This app allows you to hide some of your phonebook contacts for a given amount of time. [$0.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]

• Thorn: Zombie Dungeon Survival: Become Thorn, viking hero of notably short temper. Trapped in the zombie dungeon, you must employ a vicious arsenal of axes, blades, and bombs to hold off hordes of the undead. Find the exit, before time runs out! [$1.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]

• Harbor Madness: Dock as many water craft as possible without crashing them into each other or the shore lines. If you think that’s easy, think again. [$0.99 for iPhone - iTunes link]

• Magic Academy: hidden object castle quest: A fascinating hidden object puzzle adventure game that mixes hidden object hunts with mini-games. [$2.99 for iPhone - iTunes link] [$4.99 for iPad - iTunes link]

• Seamless Food Delivery: Order food for delivery or takeout from restaurants in your area quickly and easily. [Free for iPhone - iTunes link]

Any other big app or game releases or updates today?

Have an app you’d love to see featured on TiPb? Email us at iosapps@tipb.com, tell us about your app (include an iTunes link), and we’ll take a look.

Apple has released iOS 4.3.4 for iPad, iPod touch, and GSM /AT&T iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS, and iOS 4.2.9 for Verizon iPhone, which addresses the dangerous PDF security exploit utilized by Jailbreakme.com.

Plug into iTunes and check for updates to get it. As always, if you’re Jailbroken already, stay away or you’ll lose your Jailbreak.

[Apple knowledge base article]

[Thanks to @brandon_m70 for the head's up]

Your iPads's secure passwords could be at risk from a new breed of thieves that peer over your shoulder as you enter passwords into your device. They could then steal your bank log in details, PayPal password or anything else that you have secured by a password.

The technique known as "Shoulder Surfing" could become a whole lot easier to carry out as demonstrated by a South African security research company. It has built an app that can decipher the key presses you make on your iPad. It works on a jailbroken iPhone, iPad or even on Mac OS. All you need to do is stealthily capture a video of a users key presses with your chosen device. The software can then get to work and reveal the password. In fact it gets even worse than that, the software can even be used with surveillance cameras or long distance lenses; making it even easier to capture the information without being spotted!

When a user types on an iPad's touchscreen, each key glows blue for a fraction of a second after it's struck, a helpful bit of feedback for any virtual keyboard. ShoulderPad's image recognition algorithms, based on Open CV's open source image recognition software, look for that flash of blue. "At any distance, if the blue is distinguishable, shoulderPad can detect that keystroke.

Of course software providers always protect a users password entry by showing asterisks on screen rather than the actual letters. If this sort of software gets in the wrong hands, that measure would not stop your passwords from being stolen and could open up a whole new phase of online crime! There is a short video demo after the break!

[thinkst via Forbes]

Apple has announced their Q3 2011 conference call will take place Tuesday, July 19, 2011, 2:00 p.m. PDT/5:00 p.m. EDT. We’ll get updated iPhone and iPad sales numbers, almost certainly, and it will be interesting to see if Apple gets asked any questions about the Lodsys lawsuits… the kind Google’s Larry Page completely non-answered yesterday during the Google’s results call.

As always, we’ll cover highlights for you right here on TiPb. Anyone care to make any predictions?

[Apple PR]

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Superfunctional 2: The Walking Dread sees Geoff and Rene answer your questions about standing desks, then dive into the benefits of walking. Your body feeds on motion and you've got to fill it up, so grab your iPhone or iPod, load up some music, hit Nike Plus, and get going! We cover when, where, and how to walk, and what kinds of exercise equipment can — and can't — fill the gap.

To help inspire everyone to get going, Superfunctional is giving away a brand new 8GB iPod nano! All you have to do to enter is jump on Twitter, follow us and our hosts, and re-tweet:

• #FF @superfunctional @deadlyexchange @reneritchie iPod nano giveaway, follow and retweet to enter! Details: http://bit.ly/pooAOO

• Details and show notes

A guitarist decided to video himself playing an acoustic guitar and, to be different, he stuck an iPhone 4 inside to capture the action from behind the strings. The results are really dramatic. The video has not been edited to emphasize the guitars oscillating strings; it is a natural occurrence with the iPhone 4 video camera. It is caused by the way the iPhone 4′s rolling shutter works. Most consumer grade digital cameras do not take instant pictures; instead they scan the CMOS sensor diagonally from the top left to the bottom right. Fast moving objects create problems for this technique and produce these weird and wonderful distortion effects.

Take a look at the video after the break; it is definitely worth a few moments of your time!

[YouTube via TUAW]

Reuters is reporting that Apple is conducting trials with Taiwanese chip manufacturer TSMC for its next generation A6 processor; according to sources familiar with the matter.

TSMC has got all the authorization and details ready. Whether Apple puts in a formal order will depend on the yield rate, said the source, who was not authorized to speak to the media. The source did not provide further details of the orders.

This could be a significant development in the ongoing "copy-cat" lawsuit between Apple and Samsung. Samsung is currently the sole supplier of the current generation A5 chip which is used in the iPad 2. The A5 chip is also widely rumored to be the chip of choice for the next generation iPhone 5 too. It appears that Apple may be looking to sever its ties with Samsung for its future chip production.

The A6 processor will likely debut in the iPad 3 when it is launched next year. Apple tends to introduce new processors to the iPad line of devices first, then introduces them to the iPhone and iPod touch when they are updated.

[Reuters]