Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

Pit bosses in Las Vegas have a new problem to worry about: the iPhone. A new card-counting application caused the Gaming Control Board to send casino operators a memo last week warning them of the electronic device.

According to the Las Vegas Review Journal…

Card counting is not illegal in Nevada casinos. However, using a device to aid in the counting of cards is considered a felony under Nevada laws governing cheating, control board member Randy Sayre said.

Gamblers using the iPhone card-counting program can be detained by casino operators and arrested by state gaming agents.

The program is also able to run in a “stealth mode” that makes the phone appear to be off. Although the front screen is all black, users familiar with the program can still navigate the app keys.

The World Series of Poker already has strict rules on using electronics during the tournament, specifically stating “iPhones, iTouch, Treos, Blackberrys, and other similar devices will not be allowed.”

Macworld’s iPhone Central blog has posted a review of Ustream’s new iPhone app. The website Ustream.tv allows you to broadcast your own show and have people watch and comment.

While Macworld really likes the app, they say that the big problem is Ustream’s poor content. I guess there is no getting around that.

Didn’t we already know or assume this? Apple says that messing with the phone that you bought is against the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. They say:

Jailbreaking therefore involves infringing uses of the bootloader and OS, the copyrighted works that are protected by the TPMs being circumvented. Unauthorized derivative versions of the bootloader and OS have been created. Copies of those infringing works have been stored on web sites, and infringing reproductions of those works are created each time they are downloaded through Pwnage Tool and loaded onto the iPhone.33 In addition, as discussed in Section II.B.2 above, the jailbroken OS enables pirated copies of Apple copyrighted content and other third party content such as games and applications to play on the iPhone, resulting in further infringing uses of copyrighted works and diminished incentive to create those works in the first place. In sum, the jailbreaking of the iPhone that would be permitted by the proposed Class #1 exemption in 5A and 11A would result in infringing uses of copyrighted works. It would involve the creation, distribution, and copying of unauthorized modified versions of the bootloader and OS, and it would facilitate and encourage the making, distribution, and use of infringing copies of copyrighted material such as games and applications, owned by both Apple and third parties, that run only on jailbroken phones. The proposed exemption therefore does not satisfy the fundamental prerequisite of the statute that it aid “noninfringing uses” of copyrighted works and should be rejected.

This is hilarious. TUAW made this video tour of fart applications for the iPhone.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIVN6-yd-xU&hl=en&fs=1]

You want to watch the NBA All-Star coverage this weekend, but the little lady (or little man, who are we to judge) wants to have a candlelit dinner and talk about “feelings.” You used to have two choices, one of which would land you in the doghouse for at least a week. But not anymore.

While reading Adweek today I discovered that the NBA and Turner are playing Cupid for just 99 cents. Their new app will allow fans to view NBA All-Star Saturday Night and the 2009 NBA All-Star Game on Sunday on their iPhones. It will be unique footage, not seen in the regular TNT broadcast. Viewers will also be able to choose between four different camera angles while watching the games.

Kobe and Shaq are looking forward to their special night this Saturday.

While most of us are clipping coupons, Apple execs are probably burning bundles of $100 bills for heat. Yesterday, Macworld announced that according to Apptism, the App Store has reached the 20,000 mark.

Being the math whizzes we are, we let Macworld do the calculations:

If Apptism’s count is accurate—when contacted for comment, Apple declined to confirm the number of apps available for download—it would mean that 5,000 new programs had arrived on the App Store in less than a month. After all, it was only January 16, when Apple officially announced that it had topped the 15,000 app mark.

Then again, a 5,000 app influx isn’t outside the realm of possibility. On December 5, Apple announced that there were 10,000 apps in the store—meaning it took the company a little more than a month to add the 5,000 apps needed to reach the Apple-confirmed 15,000 mark.

Can someone please explain to us why the iPhone is so god awful at receiving multimedia text messages? We get this message saying so and so “sent you a multimedia message. You can view this message at…” and then they give you some website with a weird log in and password. The phone can all but heal sick children, yet it can’t receive pictures and video via text.

Google is releasing their beta version of Google Sync for iPhone and some other phone(s) that we don’t care about. This will sync your Gmail contacts with your iPhone.

Some notes that Google mentions:

* Only five Google Calendars can be synchronized with Google compared to Nuevasync’s eight
* Modifying recurring events does not always work (awesome)
* Deleting recurring events does not always work (even more awesome)
* Calendar guest attendee information is also not reflected
* Contact information is limited to two home numbers, one home Fax, one mobile, one pager, three work numbers and one work fax number. Fax numbers? Seriously? We still talking about Fax numbers? Fax numbers? We are sitting here discussing a revolutionary mobile device (that’s you, iPhone) that can do all this stuff and we’re talking about Fax numbers? Where is Allen Iverson when you need him?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frsId3goYYE&hl=en&fs=1]

Davitz, a company that does stuff for this and that, is promising to demo an MS Office editing app for the iPhone at the upcoming Mobile World Congress trade show. It will also work with Android phones or some other crap that we really don’t care about. We are here to talk about iPhones.

This is a big deal because right now there is no app that lets you edit Word and Excel documents. QuickOffice’s MobileFiles Pro lets you edit Excel documents on the iPhone, but not Word.

This app should be something else because Dataviz is well-known for making nice apps.

Of course you know what we think: most of these are worthless. More worthless iPhone apps. But they are free and sports related so we’ll cut them some slack. So yeah, this guy lists 100+ free sports apps.

Why are some of these worthless? Because many of them allow to get the schedule for your favorite team. You know what else let’s me do that? The internet.

Check them out anyway just so we can feel useful.