Macgasm

Now I’m sold. Nothing else did it, but this did!

Macgasm is pleased to announce that we are partners for the second iteration of the App Star Awards to judge the best upcoming iPhone apps in the app store.

If you’re an app developer, here’s what you need to do:

1. Register for the event (but be sure to read the rules)
2. Submit a 30 second video of the app
3. Wait!

It’s simple. The judges will pick their favorites.  The apps with the top votes go on to win an iPad and a free advertising campaign.

Keep in mind that only apps that are not yet accepted in the App Store are eligible for this contest.

Winners will be announced at the 360iDev contest on April 12th in San Jose, CA.

Today, it has come to light that the Apple App Store has lost $450 million due to piracy. Ironically, as much as I’d love to jailbreak my iPod touch to get the functionality I long for, every single application I have on my iPod touch comes from Apple’s store legitimately. I’m embarrassed to say how many apps I own, in fact.

Piracy is abundant in the digital world. People who grow up with the mindset that digital means free just won’t pay for your stuff even if it was $0.10. Free a concept to them, and they’ll get their hands on freebies with whatever it takes.

There’s another element to this. Jailbroken iPhones exist for a reason. People, including myself, feel limited with the current iPhone’s feature sets. Multitasking? Nope! Apple doesn’t give a damn to offer you such a nice benefit. I won’t jailbreak my iPod touch because I don’t want to break core functionality, despite the abundant availability in games everywhere under the sun, but the thought has crossed my mind more than once.

Apple products are pretty cheap. $0.99 for a great playable game? Check. But while I’d love to support the Apple economy, I’m sure I’m in a minority of Apple iPhone/iPod users who think that Apple has a sense of entitlement it doesn’t deserve. I think the fanboyism needs to stop. Apple is not receptive enough to respond to legitimate customer complaints because it feels like it’s above everyone else.

We’re seeing a digital transition in the interconnected online space. Customers expect companies to care about them. If they can’t take heed to suggestions and feedback, they might as well die out.

Apple’s choice of removing the only functionality I relied on on the iPod touch was the final straw. I’m no longer planning to support an Apple economy. Until they show me that they appreciate my financial investment in their products, I’m done. I bought a product with a set of expectations and Apple changed those expectations during the course of my ownership to further their own agenda.

Until Apple shows that they care about their customers, customers should do what they want to avoid supporting the Apple regime. And if you’re building Apple apps, as much as I’d love to continue supporting you, you’re shit out of luck anyway; the App store is too saturated for anyone to buy your apps. You should consider the Android platform which isn’t run by greedy bloodsucking money mongers.

I hate to encourage theft.  In fact, that’s not my typical philosphy.  I’m not explicitly endorsing it either.  This post serves to understand where the others are coming from.  Apple has a “holier than thou” attitude that compels people to defy.  Good for those people.  Apple needs to get off its throne and walk amongst the average man to understand where those folks come from.  Once someone turns to jailbreaking to enable necessary functionality, all is over for Apple when these customers realize the goldmine of “free” apps that are available outside the confines of Apple’s store.

As you likely know, I’ve been using my iPod touch for tracking my son’s development. At 7.5 months old, now, I’m looking for ways to entertain him. (He is most enthralled by my wires and none of his toys.) I have downloaded a fair share of games for his enjoyment but fell in love with a suite of games by zinc Roe. The three games I tried are called Sound Shaker, Count Caddy, and Sort Slider.

The game illustrated above is Sound Shaker, which is the closest one for my son’s age. The idea behind this game is that you choose one of the above six “sounds” and touch the screen and sounds are made. This teaches children and babies what noises to expect. The little balls of items roll across the screen so there’s an added element of fun. Anyone can play this game, and as my son simply moved his hands across the screen, he was able to hear the accompanying noises.

We’re starting to teach my son how to count, but Count Caddy was tried for good measure. The idea behind this game is that you drag little balls of yarn into the center piece and count the number of balls that have been collected. My son didn’t understand this but he definitely will in due time!

Sort Slider is a cute little matching game where you either drag an item to its match or you tilt the screen to let the item fall on its match. This is probably the farthest off for my son, but I can see it having utility in the future for any young child.

zinc Roe has a lot of great games and babies and toddlers and even older children will certainly benefit. They’re probably going to want to do something with your phone when they’re older, so you might as well be sure you’re equipped with entertainment for them when the time comes!

There has been a lot of hype about Twitter, and there are thousands of Twitter apps in the iTunes store. I have a handful of them on my iPod myself, in fact, but there is only one at the present time that really stands out for me. Tweetie 2 ($2.99) is a fantastic Twitter app and is well worth its price. Tweetie 2 features the greatest parts of Twitter all in one handheld application. These include:

• List views.  You can access any list and view tweets just as you could from the Twitter web interface.
• Easy access to replies and direct messages.
• Tweets by geolocation where possible.
• Shared images on Tweets where possible.
• Threaded conversations.

These features will be explained in the screenshots I’ve included below.

First, we have the location of Tweets, thanks to location tracking (and hopefully bolstered by Twitter’s recent acquisition of Mixer Labs).

We also can see associated images based on TwitPic or yfrog:

And here’s my favorite part: threaded conversations.  If someone sends a tweet and you reply, wouldn’t you like to know what it’s in reference to?  This isn’t a native feature to Twitter, but Tweetie does such a good job at this that I think they should just build it out into the Twitter interface itself.

(Apologies for the expletive in the screenshot above.)

But wait, there’s more.  For those of you who handle multiple Twitter accounts, perhaps due to an identity crisis handling business-related Twitter accounts, Tweetie 2 makes it easy to maintain these identities separately. You simply tap on the name on the home screen and load the corresponding account, lists, tweets, and DMs.

You can also search through your Tweets, refresh the timeline quickly, preview short URLs, view Twitter in portrait or landscape mode, access Twitter in offline mode, translate your Tweets, and a whole lot more.

Tweetie 2 is like Twitter candy. It makes the experience sweet and you know you need to have more. But it’s one of those indulgences that you can enjoy all the time — and thus far, it’s been really great to me. You’d be silly not to check it out.

Christine Morris told us in November that Bed Bugs ($1.99) was one of her favorite games on the iPod, and I can see why. It’s a great game — it’s super cute — and it’s addictive.

The object of Bed Bugs is to tackle all the “baddies” that the sleeping man encounters though the night. You want him to catch as many Z’s as possible, avoiding anything that might get in his way to prevent that. There’s a lot of enemy popping, but at the same time, you need to be careful to avoid the angels that make sleep enjoyable.

Christine called the design “crisp” and “imaginative.” That it is. And she’s absolutely right that Bed Bugs “uses the device in a way that makes us really get that adrenaline pumping through the manic gameplay.” Through each level, you need to really be cognizant of what and when you should (and shouldn’t) squish throughout the night. That’s right — timing and careful decision making is everything.

Bed Bugs comes from Igloo Games, who has brought greats to us in the form of Dizzy Bee and Dizzy Bee 2, two other addictive games we already reviewed, and this is no exception. Igloo Games brings a lot of well-designed and superbly-executed games to the table. It looks they’ve since released a fourth game, Flipside, which based on my experience with them is a game I am excited to try.

I rang in the 2010 New Year by watching Slumdog Millionaire. Of course, I wanted to get an understanding of what exactly 20 million Rupees was equivalent to in American USD. So I whipped out Currency Calculator, a $1.99 app currently on sale for $0.99, and rang it up, which was helpful because Google wasn’t giving me the conversion I needed. Within seconds, I discovered that it was equal to $428,695.65 $428.178.81, which isn’t a bad sum of cash to own. (The strikethrough was because the exchange rates changed, and I was given the new value immediately.)

Currency Calculator can do hundreds of conversions — it has 226 currencies in its database. You can access regularly-referenced conversions on the top tab, and you can swap conversions at any time. There’s a breadth of information at your fingertips, and this app has it all. If you’re traveling abroad, it’s a must-use. I just wish I had it in March when I was in Israel.

Currency Calculator delivers function and utility in its extremely easy-to-use app, and no bells or whistles are really needed to polish this to make it better. It’s great as-is, and it would be an excellent addition to a traveler’s arsenal. Highly recommended.

Mach Ball ($0.99) is an iPhone game with an interesting twist. In Mach Ball, your job is to get the ball to the goal while it is going at super fast (or very slow) speeds through a maze. The challenge, though, is that you must guide it with your fingers, creating “paddles” that the ball actually needs to bounce off of in order to be guided to the right direction. It’s a bit difficult, especially when you hit the barrier blocks and your ball gets sent to oblivion.

The game features five (only five?!) levels, which is a bit disappointing. If there were more levels, this game might possibly have potential. For now, though, it doesn’t seem to make sense to me that it’s contending with games that have hundreds of levels, including Blockban which recently had an amazing promotion.

Evolve does a semi decent job with Mach Ball, despite the fact that their English isn’t great as seen in the app’s description. Don’t let that get to you; the game play is pretty good and the graphics aren’t half bad (though I’m not a fan at all of the fonts they used). If there were more levels, this game would actually have a future. I’m just hoping that they plan on expanding upon the current version.