Iron Ink Media: Inked Up

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.

Appleinsider.com is told that Apple is coming out with a new “Concierge” app for the iPhone that would allow customers to make an appointment with a retail store right on the phone.

Yayyy. Thank god for this. It is so incredibly difficult to pick up a phone and actually call someone.

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!

Rockstar Games, makers of Grand Theft Auto, have announced that Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars will be available for the iPhone and iTouch this fall.

Chinatown Wars will give users the chance to control Huang Lee, a member of the Tryiad syndicate. He travels to Liberty City to investigate the death of his father and blah blah blah.

Who cares? You just want to hire hookers then beat them up and take their money.

I admittedly have no sense of direction. None. I once drove two and a half hours in the wrong direction before I realized it – and my family will never let me live it down. That’s why when I recently moved I received a GPS device as a house warming gift. But now personal navigation device companies are delving into the iPhone app world.

The WSJ wrote about TomTom’s app and believes it’s the one expensive iPhone app that people might actually buy.

The app’s user interface will be familiar to users of TomTom’s navigation devices, from its menu screens to the way the map looks. It also uses IQ Routes, a TomTom proprietary technology that helps people get to their locations based on trillions of data bits that users have contributed. It has 6 million points of interest on North American maps, and turn-by-turn functions that are available in two-dimensional or three-dimensional views.

IPhone users can get directions to addresses in their contacts list, and use some of the gestures — such as pinching to zoom and rotating the phone to go from portrait to landscape mode — that are native to the smart phone.

The app costs $100 is the US, $140 in Western Europe, $95 in New Zealand, and $80 in Australia. Those prices do not include the mount that will attach to your dash and charge the phone. Definitely a cheaper alternative to current GPS devices, but you obviously can’t use your phone as, well, a phone and see directions at the same time.

Facebook has submitted the latest version of their iPhone app to Apple for approval. Here are some notes on the upcoming features:

1. The “new” News Feed
2. Like
3. Events (including the ability to RSVP)
4. Notes
5. Pages
6. Create new photo albums
7. Upload photos to any album
8. Zoom into photos
9. Easier photo tagging
10. Profile Pictures albums
11. A new home screen for easy access to all your stuff, search, and notifications
12. Add your favorite profiles and pages to the home screen
13. Better Notifications (they link to the comments so you can reply)
14. Quickly call or text people right from the Friends page
15. Messages you are typing will be restored if you quit or are interrupted by a phone call

Let’s just hope this one actually works. Forget all the stupid bells and whistles. How about this version actually shows you all the posts in your news feed as opposed to just 60% of them.

If you are an Ebay junkie who also loves your iPhone, then you are in luck. Ebay just upgraded their iPhone app so that you can now get push messages sent to your phone when someone outbids you on something great like a 1988 Flavor Flav t-shirt.

Another new feature is that Integrated Pay with Paypal support, which allows users to pay for some items (like, say, a Larry Walker Montreal Expos jersey) within the app. This means they don’t have to go pay on a traditional computer or use the iPhone’s Safari browser.

USAA, a small bank that services mostly military personnel, is now updating it’s iPhone application to allow remote check depositing. By using the iPhone’s camera, people can take a picture of both sides of the check and use that to deposit the check.

“We’re essentially taking an image of the check, and once you hit the send button, that image is going into our deposit-taking system as any other check would,” USAA Executive Vice President Wayne Peacock said.

Does this kind of thing excite you or scare you? The world is changing, my friends.

Who cares if every elementary school in the country has one in the classroom. The iPhone is no place for learning! You can tune into prime time television every night and hear swear words, but Apple is stepping in and saving the country from corruption. In all seriousness, this is just absurd.

TechCrunch writer John Biggs rants about the censoring AND 17+ rating NinjaWords got slapped with.

In order to prevent accidental disclosure of bad words, the programming team was nice enough to require users to type in entire bad words in order to see them (”fuck” not “fuc”) – ensuring you can’t just flick through and find them – but that’s not nearly enough for Apple. No, the dictionary must be scoured of scurrilous talk.

After being rejected a first time, the programmers removed most of the bad words, missed one, and got rejected again… Finally, after a long wait they got into the app store but on double-secret probation with a 17+ rating and warnings of potential objectionable content.

Macworld reports that Apple has released the MobileMe IDisk app.

MobileMe iDisk enables iPhone and iPod touch users with MobileMe accounts to access the contents of their iDisk — the online storage component of Apple’s subscription-based online service.

The application lets you view and share files stored in your iDisk; you log in with your MobileMe user name and password, then tap the Share icon to share files with others; they’re sent a link by e-mail. You can assign a password to keep files secure, and limit the number of days the download will be available.

Viewing files is limited to iPhone-supported file types, including iWork, Office, PDF, QuickTime and others. Apple cautions that files larger than 20MB may not be viewable.

You can download the free app HERE. (*link will take you to the app store)