Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

There have been a ton of third-party Twitter applications for the iPhone, but nothing officially from Twitter. Well, no longer! Twitter has unleashed their official app for the iPhone and it looks pretty sharp.

This is actually an upgraded version of Tweetie, which the company bought recently. But still, it’s pretty clean and easy to use. It’s also free of all the obnoxious ads and spam crap that can show up in other third-party apps.

But it’s got everything you could really want in a Twitter app. You can search tweets, make your posts, shrink your URL’s, pretty much everything you’d need Twitter for. And of course, it’s free. So you can go to iTunes or just use the search function on the app store on your iPhone to go ahead and download it.

I might do that right now. I’m sick of Twitteriffic.

Three months after releasing their Bing app for iPhones, Microsoft has announced that they are pulling it off of all non-U.S. iTunes stores.

“When we released the iPhone application, we inadvertently made it available to all countries in which the Apple Marketplace has a presence,” Microsoft said in a statement posted on enthusiast site Neowin.Net.

“We are planning to release international versions of the Bing iPhone application, but we have no dates to share at this time,” the company said. “Similar to our larger international strategy with Bing, we don’t want to take a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, we want to be thoughtful and ensure we’re customizing the product for specific markets.”

So yeah. That will stick it to non-U.S. residents. No Bing app for you.

Wired.com has gotten a hold of some incredibly important information. It seems that certain iPhone application review websites have been getting paid to review apps for developers. There is a lot wrong with this, most of all being the fact that they don’t make it clear that it was a pay-for-play review.

This is a huge problem. When people read stories in the media, the assumption is that it’s journalism or some facsimile thereof, where a writer is giving you their honest opinion. This as opposed to someone essentially writing an advertisement. This is criminal as far as we are concerned.

Photo Caption: We call bullshit.

The two sites that Wired.com keeps hearing about with regards to this practice are TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. One developer said that TheiPhoneAppReview.com told him that they wouldn’t review his app if he didn’t pay a $25 fee. Here is the email:

I would be interested in writing a review and having it on our website (www.theiphoneappreview.com). We do charge a $25 fee for reviews (this is used to compensate our authors), so the decision is yours. If you want a review written, but have no promo codes left, I can purchase the app and add the price of the app into your invoice. Let me know either way. Thanks!

–Sarah Parker
The iPhone App Review

Editor-in-chief of this site Shaun Campbell, disputes the idea that his website pays for reviews.

“I have never once sent a request for a fee to a developer to review their app,” Campbell told Wired.com. “That is not our policy, which is why that is not stated in the About.”

Campbell said that they require a fee for a quick turnaround on a review because it would be an “impossible task to review all the apps we receive, paid or unpaid.”

He started making sense and then he goes here.

“The iPhone App Review is not a PR charity,” Campbell said. “We’re a business, and like in any business, there are costs that need to be recovered.”

Hey, moron. You are supposed to pay your staff with the money you rake in on advertising revenue. You are supposed to have a responsibility to your readers to provide them with information they can trust. By not clearly stating that someone paid for a review, the person reading the review has no clue that the opinion given is tainted with money.

Again, this is criminal. Reviews are supposed to be independent and not paid for. This goes for anything, whether it’s speakers or headphones or car tires….you name it. So, we highly recommend not visiting these sites and just be alert when reading app reviews.

Some German student made an app that works with camera-based input. Check out the video below to see what I’m talking about. This is really neat.

Ok everyone, listen up. If you haven’t played Assassin’s Creed II for PS3 or XBox 360 or whatever, it’s probably a good idea for you to do so. Forget having a life or whatever, just go get it.

So we were just perusing some iPhone news and saw that Assassin’s Creed II: Multiplayer launched today for iPhone. And it’s free for the first 48 hours! After that, it jumps to $2.99. That’s not insanely expensive, but hell, it’s more than free. So go download it and check out the iPhone version of this sweet game.

Then urinate away the next four hours of your life playing it.

We’ve heard people crying for a while now. “Why can’t I get Flash on my iPhone?!” And Adobe said that Apple is being stupid about it and Apple said that Flash is lazy and unstable and on and on. But, MacDailyNews.com posts some interesting comments from Morgan Adams, an interactive developer.

So why isn’t Flash good for mobile devices?

It’s because of the hover or mouseover problem.

Many (if not most) current Flash games, menus, and even video players require a visible mouse pointer. They are coded to rely on the difference between hovering over something (mouseover) vs. actually clicking. This distinction is not rare. It’s pervasive, fundamental to interactive design, and vital to the basic use of Flash content. New Flash content designed just for touchscreens can be done, but people want existing Flash sites to work. All of them—not just some here and there—and in a usable manner. That’s impossible no matter what.

It seems like there is a reason that iBoobs got kicked out of the Apple app store. It would seem that Apple has some new rules that are really clamping down on anything remotely adult oriented. The app store is family friendly and that’s the way it’s going to stay apparently.

So, here are the new rules that the developer of iBoobs got directly from Apple:

1. No images of women in bikinis (Ice skating tights are not OK either)
2. No images of men in bikinis! (I didn’t ask about Ice Skating tights for men)
3. No skin (he seriously said this) (I asked if a Burqa was OK, and the Apple guy got angry)
4. No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs (yes – I am serious, we have to remove the silhouette in this pic)
5. No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
6. Nothing that can be sexually arousing!! (I doubt many people could get aroused with the pic above but those puritanical guys at Apple must get off on pretty mundane things to find Wobble “overtly sexual!)
7. No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content (not sure how Playboy is still in the store, but …)

The research firm IDC predicts that by the end of 2010, the iPhone and iTouch will about 300,000 apps available for download. Certainly not a crazy prediction considering how many apps come out on a daily basis.

Our question is this: How many apps will be out by then that are worth a damn? Now that is a much better question.

Here is a good article from ZDNet.com on their top business apps for the iPhone.

While the Google Voice app is being held up by Apple’s review process, Vonage got theirs approved. Today, the VoIP company is releasing an app that allows users to make low-cost international calls, with rates varying from country to country.

“Given the penetration of smartphones and the global increase of phones that can access broadband networks, the time is now for a company like Vonage to take advantage of the market,” said Marc Lefar, Vonage’s chief executive.

With the voice over WiFi stuff out there, how long is it before cellular service gets changed completely? If we have the technology to speak over WiFi, why would I continue to pay for minutes and crap like this? What a racket!