Ajax Girl

This guest post was written by Bryan Barletta, lead reviewer at AppVee, a site that offers iPhone app reviews and news. Barletta has picked out some of the App Store’s best applications, and we’ve embedded video reviews for some of them (click the corresponding review link to view a video if it isn’t already embedded). Also be sure to check out our picks of the hottest iPhone apps from back in July when the App Store first launched.

The iPhone and iPod Touch have taken the world by storm. In just a little over six months time we’ve witnessed the doors of the iTunes App Store opening to the 10,000 app marker being crossed. In between that time we’ve see the $999 I’m Rich make several people poor, fart joke apps earning over $25K in one day, and Apple still looking the other way when users mention copy and paste. And with the number of total apps reaching over 13,500 less than a month since the 10,000 mark was passed, that growth is showing no signs of stopping. But some of these stand out much more than others do, so we’ve tried to hone in on the cream of the crop.

Top 10 Apps

Tweetie
An easy to use and full featured Twitter app that is speedy. The app has quite a bit of competition (other popular apps include Twitterfon and Twitterific).
Link: AppVee’s Tweetie Review

Pandora
Browse through the music genome and find new artists that fit your taste. These are automatically recommended by the site’s algorithm, so it acts like a personalized radio that works surprisingly well.
Link: AppVee’s Pandora Review

Simplify Media
Connect to multiple computers and stream their music directly to your iPhone.
Link: AppVee’s Simplify Media Review

RJDJ Album
Let your iPhone and the world around you create unique and original music. The app uses external inputs (like sound) to create a dynamic soundtrack).
Link: AppVee’s RjDj Review

Beejive IM
A multi-client instant messaging app for the iPhone and iPod Touch.
Link: AppVee’s Beejive Review

Camerabag
Emulate 5 different camera and film setting directly from your iPhone. This helps spice up the photos you’re taking with the phone (the default application doesn’t offer much in the way of effects.
Link: AppVee’s Camerabag Review

Facebook
An updated version of the Facebook app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, this allows you to chat with friends, post on walls, and use nearly every feature available on the social network’s main website.
Link: AppVee’s Facebook Review

Friendbook
A full featured replacement for the iPhone and iPod Touch contacts app.
Link: AppVee’s Friendbook Review

Vlingo
Voice control nearly every aspect of your iPhone and more - it’s like a more powerful version of the highly hyped (and still-impressive) Google Mobile App.
Link: AppVee’s Vlingo Review

Evernote
Keep track of everything you could possibly want to remember (like notes or photos) whether you’re on the go or at home.
Link: Appvee’s Evernote Review

Top 10 Games

Rolando
An epic platform adventure game for the iPhone and iPod Touch, this is easily one of the most innovate games to hit the platform.
Link: AppVee’s Rolando Review

Fieldrunners
A Tower defense game with SNES-like graphics. The classic gameply is highly addictive.
Link: AppVee’s Fieldrunners Review

Jellycar
A unique puzzle game that asks you to guide your “jelly car” to an endzone. As with most of the other games on this list, this is highly addictive.
Link: AppVee’s Jellycar Review

Scramboni
A multiplayer online word game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Multiplayer games on the iPhone are still rarer than they should be, and being able to play online definitely adds an extra dimension to the gameplay.
Link: AppVee’s Scramboni Review

Dr. Awesome
Save your friends and family from deadly micro viruses in this iPhone and iPod Touch game.
Link: AppVee’s Dr. Awesome Review

Up There
Guide your balloon through various obstacles as you attempt to get the highest score
Link: AppVee’s Up There Review

Flick Fishing
Forget your fishing rod - this uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to allow you to mimic a realistic fishing motion to cast a line. Also check out many of SGN’s games, which feature similar motion detection.
Link: AppVee’s Flick Fishing Review

Hero of Sparta
Control King Argos as you battle the Gods and their minions in this action adventure game.
Link: AppVee’s Hero of Sparta Review

Brothers in Arms
Play through 14 levels on foot or vehicle in this WWII action game.
Link: AppVee’s Brothers in Arms Review

Aurora Feint II
The popular iPhone and iPod Touch puzzle RPG game goes multiplayer.
Link: AppVee’s Aurora Feint II Review

While it’s easy to simply break down the top apps and games that we’ve enjoyed in 2008, it becomes a lot more difficult to find just five apps that took a chance and brought more innovation to the iPhone and iPod Touch. Below are the five apps we feel helped define the future of apps on these devices.

Top 5 Innovations

Ocarina

Link: AppVee’s Ocarina Review

RJDJ Album

Link: AppVee’s RjDj Review

iFun

Link: AppVee’s iFun Review

LogMeIn

Link: AppVee’s LogMeIn Review

Slydial

Link: AppVee’s SlyDial Review

The future of the iPhone and iPod Touch is wide open, to some degree. Depending on what restrictions Apple decides to lift. Developers are already chomping at the bit to release a video recording option as well as the ability for apps to run in the background. While those factors sit solely on the shoulders of Apple as they have been proven possible by the jailbroken community, there are quite a few things that we as consumers should expect out of the apps we’ll see in 2009.

With titles like Rhythm Spirit, a rhythm fighting game based on Japanese folklore, and Myst, a remake of the classic adventure game, making their way over to the iPhone and iPod Touch sometime in 2009 we’ve got some idea of what to look forward to. The real question is: What will be our Ocarina? Our Rolando? What apps are going to challenge the capabilities of this phone and create such a large hype that we find ourselves begging for just one more screenshot or bit of information? We’ll have to wait and see what the App Store has in store for us in 2009 as we count down the remaining hours.

2008 was all about experimenting. A fantastic device emerged, developers went crazy, and we’ve been flooded. Its now time to settle down, dig in and create some revolutionary applications. 2009 is going to be all about quality and depth. We’re going to see richer games that rival the DS and PSP, applications that truly make this device a portable computer, and multi-user apps that really start connecting people. Mobile social gaming is going to be huge and we can’t wait to see what developers have in store for us in the New Year.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/3UF7BgHyVkA/

Have you ever jailbroken an iPhone? Ever used a software solution to “unlock” the iPhone’s SIM slot, freeing it from the shackles of its original carrier? Chances are, the iPhone Dev Team had something to do with it. This group, made up of some of the iPhone development scene’s finest minds, spends countless hours tearing apart the iPhone to make it do all of the things Apple won’t allow - and then figures out a way to make it work for everyone. It’s tough, unpaid, and often thankless - but they keep cracking away.

Later tonight, the iPhone Dev Team is expected to release “yellowsn0w“, a long-awaited software-based SIM unlock for the iPhone 3G. Though they don’t often do interviews, we were able to gab with one of the members, Pytey, just hours before their big release for a chat about who they are, how they operate, and a whole lot more.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eaxTsPntEkQ/

Audiolizer is a new music streaming service that lets you put your iTunes library in the cloud. After uploading your iTunes Library database file, the site will automatically compile a list of links to every song, allowing you to access your favorite music when you’re away from your home computer. Users can also manually search for individual songs.

As with a number of streaming audio sites, Audiolizer makes use of the YouTube API to serve its music (this ostensibly makes them less of a target for lawsuits, as they aren’t hosting any music). The system seems to work fairly well, through the presentation is strange - the “music video” shown alongside the player is only thumbnailed sized for some reason. You can still access the full sized video by clicking on the thumbnail, but it’s a bit odd.

Audiolizer would have been a great site if it came out at the beginning of this year - I love being able to have my iTunes library in the cloud. But SonicSwap does almost the same thing with a nicer interface. And then there’s LaLa which effectively makes both services obsolete: instead of using YouTube as a source of audio content (which can sometimes lead to incorrect results), Lala has forged deals with all the major record labels, so the majority of your music in streamed at a reasonably high quality bitrate with few false matches (check out our previous coverage for more on the cool service).

Fortunately, it sounds like Audiolizer is more of a side project than a full-fledged startup - the founders say that they developed the site in a week (they’re currently University students in Computer Engineering and Business Management in Canada).

Also, as an amusing sidenote, a TechCrunch user named Clayton came up with the domain name Audiolizer.com in a comment back in October. Looks like someone took his suggestion.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/a77c5c-wBXg/

Want to work as the community manager of a fully-funded company that hasn’t launched yet? Or an “Information Repository Specialist“? Maybe work as a managing editor at CBS Interactive?

(Here at TechCrunch, we’re still looking for a Rails Developer.)

Some other jobs currently on CrunchBoard:

• Ruby Web Ninja
  BorderStylo - Hollywood, CA

• Product Manager for FunSpace
  Slide - San Francisco, CA

• Lead Warehouse Engineer
  TripAdvisor - Newton, MA

• Freelance Web App & Social Media Developer (PHP or RoR, JS/AJAX)
  Vested Ventures, Inc - Work from anywhere (they’re in Buffalo, NY)
  

International readers can check out our British and French job boards as well. (In response to Lucio–who commented on last week’s post–Sorry, no Australian job board… yet.)

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/cpyoScybqks/

The biggest surprise fro me in the social media rankings that I posted earlier today was the appearance of document sharing service Scribd in the top 20. According to the comScore numbers, it has more unique visitors worldwide than imeem and almost as many as Bebo, with 23.5 million visitors in November, 2008. (In the U.S., it had about 4 million visitors). This is a serious accomplishment for a startup that launched less than two years ago with $300,000 in seed capital.

Scribd, which raised a $9 million B round earlier this month, grew 218 percent from November, 2007. Scribd is heads and shoulders above other document-sharing services such as Docstoc (1.6 million uniques) and Issuu (1 million) in terms of attracting users. (All three are excellent services, by the way, and Docstoc is much closer to Scribd in the U.S.). Scribd users upload 50,000 documents every day.

What this tells me more than anything is that the concept of document sharing on the Web has legs and there is a real demand for it. (Unless Scribd’s numbers are artificially inflated—Quantcast shows an unusually steep drop-off in December, but that could just be a problem with Quantcasts’s data). Desktop-bound document formats like PDFs, Word docs, Powerpoint slides, and spreadsheets are increasingly irrelevant if they cannot be viewed and shared online directly in a browser. Scribd’s paper is an embeddable Flash viewer for nearly all document types. (I’ve embedded a document with sample job interview questions below).

It looks like we are not the only ones who like to embed documents on the Web.

50 Most Common Interview Questions and Answers

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/kVR5Ut-Q0Mc/

On the eve of the iPhone 3G software unlock, the following text just went up on the iPhone Dev Team blog:

01110110 01110100 01100001 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110110 00110001 00110000 00110110 00110000 00110001 00110111 00110100 00100000

Now, any self-respecting geek should immediately recognize this as binary. If we take that block of binary and convert each 8-number chunk into it’s respective ASCII representation, we get one step closer to the final answer.

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/75f-jug9DVo/

I’ve only known 1 method for approaching a Design project. There are many variations out there, but it can essentially be broken down into 4 steps: Discover, Plan, Design/Develop, and Deploy. It didn’t matter where I worked—agency or internal design department—these were the steps, and I didn’t question them.

Then 37signals published Getting Real, and I wondered if this might be a better way of approaching a project. I’d like to share with you a few stories from past Design projects while reflecting on how Getting Real would have helped. I’ll also share some insight into how the process here at 37signals works.

More…

Source: Signal vs. Noise
Original Article: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1497-getting-real-and-design

What were the top social media sites of 2008? ComScore came out with its worldwide traffic stats for November a few days ago (so these don’t include December). They are a mix of social networks and blogging platforms. Blogger, the orange line in the chart above, still rules the roost with an estimated 222 million unique worldwide visitors in November (up 44 percent from November, 2007). Facebook, the blue line, is on pace to pass it soon with 200 million unique visitors (up 116 percent). (Note, though, that this is more than the 140 million active users Facebook itself reports—go figure). MySpace is pretty steady at 126 million uniques. Wordpress is a close fourth and gaining with 114 million (up 68 percent). And Windows Live Spaces is down 22 percent to 87 million uniques.

ComScore keeps a list of what it calls “social networking” sites, but these include blogging platforms and other social media sites as well. While the audience for blogs is still showing healthy growth overall, Facebook stands out as the social gorilla taking share from not only other social networks but blogs and other social media as well.

Below are the top 20 sites on comScore’s social networking list. It is really more of a social media site list, which is what I’m renaming it for this post. It is not definitive, but it gives a good lay of the land. (Here is a similar ranking from 2007). Note on this list the stubborn persistence of Yahoo’s Geocities at No. 6, the rise of Yahoo’s Flickr at No. 7, Six Apart at No. 10, and the presences of Chinese sites like Baidu Space and 56.com. The real surprise, though, is document-sharing site Scribd at No. 16, with nearly 24 million worldwide uniques.

Top Social Media Sites (ranked by unique worldwide visitors November, 2008; comScore)

1. Blogger (222 million)
2. Facebook (200 million)
3. MySpace (126 million)
4. Wordpress (114 million)
5. Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
6. Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
7. Flickr (64 million)
8. hi5 (58 million)
9. Orkut (46 million)
10. Six Apart (46 million)
11. Baidu Space (40 million)
12. Friendster (31 million)
13. 56.com (29 million)
14. Webs.com (24 million)
15. Bebo (24 million)
16. Scribd (23 million)
17. Lycos Tripod (23 million)
18. Tagged (22 million)
19. imeem (22 million)
20. Netlog (21 million)

Here’s a screenshot of the actual data (as you can see, I rounded above):

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0gZ2B3je3dE/

We are aware that customers with the Zune 30GB are experiencing issues with their Zune device. We are actively working now to isolate the issue and develop a solution to address it. We will keep customers informed on next steps via the support page on zune.net (zune.net/support).” - Zune spokesperson

The “issues” 30 GB Zune owners are experiencing is a mass failing, all overnight, that is yet to be resolved. From Gizmodo: “Apparently, around 2:00 AM today, the Zune models either reset, or were already off. Upon when turning on, the thing loads up and… freezes with a full loading bar (as pictured above). I thought my brother was the only one with it, but then it happened to my Zune. Then I checked out the forums and it seems everyone with a 30GB HDD model has had this happen to them.”

Just a couple of months ago I wrote that the Zune was something of an anti-iPod, attractive to people who think Apple fandom has gone a little overboard.

But a massive, synchronized operating system failure on a Microsoft product is a fact-is-stranger-than-fiction story that’s too good to pass up on a slow news day. And it also lets people dust off blue screen of death jokes, which will forever send chills down the spine of Windows users. (The image to the right is not an actual Zune failure, though. It locked up in a less dramatic fashion with a frozen status bar).

When Apple products fail, as they often do, they tend to be less dramatic affairs that don’t affect all users at once.

This probably won’t hurt the Zune over the long run unless bricking becomes a habit. But some owners are saying they’re now done with the device: “Listening to music is about the last thing I do with my Zune. I always have to reinstall, download new firmware, or wait for the slow software to catch up. Now this? I want to throw it away and never look back.”

Perhaps he’ll feel better in a day or two.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/yV5wjmb6xf0/

Apple is facing opposition to putting up one of its gigantic glass-everywhere stores in one of Washington D.C.’s historic neighborhoods, the complaint being that it’d be too big and too modern to fit in with all the other quaint, cute buildings in the area (see our artist’s rendition above).

I propose, however, that the complaint is a cover-up for a much more massive and sinister conspiracy involving Apple, Satan, and the White House.

In related news, there might be a new Mac Mini next week.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch
Original Article: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/NhS9cYi_GVc/