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.

Twitter has launched its official application for smartphones using Google’s Android operating system. The new app allows Android users to access the microblogging site on a number of different places on their phone.

See a photo or a link you like? Share it! Use the “share” button in an application and choose Twitter. Actually, how was this not out before?

Twitter announced this on Friday and posted some photos on their blog.

The great part about this is that the app will only work if you are using Android 2.1. Older Android phones won’t be able to use the Twitter app, meaning you’ll have to go buy a new phone if you really like your Twittering.

There is a popular desktop computer game in Europe known as Football Manager. And supposedly, it is so addictive that it destroys marriages. Well if that’s the case, now you can destroy marriages while on the go!

That’s right, there is now a version called Football Manager Handheld 2010 that is available for download on your iPhone. It features more than 20,000 real players and has 34 leagues for you to choose from. You decide who to keep, play, trade or drown in a dirty river (that last part probably isn’t true) as you manage your way to victory.

We know it sounds kind of boring, but we see how it can be addictive. We know people that start leagues on Fifa ’10 and stuff like that for XBox 360 and it can get out of hand. So be careful when you download it and be mindful that it doesn’t ruin your marriage.

Oh, and this one ain’t cheap. It’s $10 in the US, £7 in the UK, €10 in Europe and $15 in Australia.

Isn’t this cute. An app from the web browser company Opera was approved by the Apple app store today and should be available for download later today or tomorrow. That’s right, a new web browser will be available for surfing on the iPhone. Don’t like Safari? No worries, help is on the way.

Opera claims that this web-browsing application will let you surf the web six times faster than with the standard Safari browser that is available on all iPhone and iTouche devices.

“We are delighted to offer iPhone and iPod Touch users a great browsing experience with the Opera Mini app,” said Lars Boilesen, CEO of Opera Software. “This app is another step toward Opera’s goal of bringing the Web to more people in more places.”

It comes as a bit of a surprise to us because Apple can be a bunch of Nazi’s when it comes to letting apps in that compete with Apple stuff. In this case, the Apple stuff is Safari. Maybe Apple is softening up a bit and willing to let competitors throw their hats in the ring. And…..maybe not. We have a feeling that they only reason they let this in is because either they don’t see it as a threat or they see some way to make money on it.

For just a $1 application, you could possibly sidestep AT&T on your iPhone. Line2 is a new application that would certainly make us wonder why we pay so much for cell phone minutes.

The new application allows you to make calls where AT&T’s signal is weak and can even turn an iPod Touch into a cell phone. Sounds amazing, huh? It is.

Line2 is essentially a second phone number for your iPhone, complete with its own contacts and voicemail. The company behind it, Toktumi, envisions users setting up Line2 as their business phone and giving out their regular number to friends and family.

You can set up Line2 with an 800 number and even put in a phone menu. “Press 1 for sales, press 2 for billing….” etc. This is awesome!

But it gets better. Line2 works with WiFi so that you can make calls over the internet…for free. The app even retains all of the iPhone’s call functionality like the look and feel and even the sent and received calls.

The service is still $15 a month, but that is nothing. If you could virtually eliminate (or at the very least get the minimum minutes) your cell phone minutes, why wouldn’t you? We have to check this out. This must have cell phone executives losing sleep.

Finally, you can Digg stories on your iPhone. The popular website Digg.com, which tells you whether your story is great or crap based on how many people vote good or bad on it, has released its free iPhone app in the app store.

Once you launch the app, you’ll immediately be able to browse the popular stories on Digg.com. They also make it really easy to like or dislike a story. Just tapping a link launches the story inside an in-app browser. And then, a bar below contains thumbs up and thumbs down buttons so you can let everyone know what you think of that person’s journalism.

One of the downsides, however, is that you can’t comment on any of the stories. For that, you’ll need your regular computer. Or, you can probably just go to Digg.com on your iPhone’s Safari browser and comment there is someone has sufficiently pissed you off to the point where you just need to tell them how you feel.

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.

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!