Stickam Live Video [Free - iTunes link] brings the popular live streaming website’s content right to your iPhone or iPod touch… and it even works over 3G!
No doubt they’re using some magic behind the scenes to transform the Flash-bound web content into racy H.264 for the iPhone, similar to how other video platforms have adapted. With it, you can watch featured shows and popular live shows, and view, search, and chat with live friends and users. It also supports both portrait and landscape mode.
If you’re a Stickam fan and you try it out, let us know what you think!
UPDATE: Just so everyone is clear, the developer did this as a parody, Apple didn’t censor anything. B’okay? Read the full 8008135 story on Three Letter Acronym…
PCalc RPN Calculator [$9.99 - iTunes link] for iPhone has just updated to version 1.8, and the update is… rather unique:
Have you, or somebody close to you, ever turned your calculator upside down and accidentally seen a mildly suggestive word? Have you ever been in a maths class, and had to put up with groups of giggling boys performing elaborate calculations that are not part of the lesson?
Yes, it’s one of the main problems affecting the calculator industry today, the so-called “calculator words”. These otherwise harmless devices can be made to display smut at the press of a few buttons. Added to that, the iPhone App Store is very strict about having inappropriate content in apps. Nobody wants their app to get a 17+ rating, or worse, to be rejected entirely.
Which is why we are happy to announce that the latest version of our PCalc scientific calculator for the iPhone contains a new patent-worthy profanity filter.
Simply enter a number such as “5318008″, turn the calculator upside down, and the offending word will be discreetly censored. Many common calculator words have been included as standard, and we plan to increase this over time via software updates.
The new version also comes, you know, calculator features, and a $9 off coupon for the Mac version (which doesn’t seem to change when you turn your Mac upside down… hmmm… feature parity?!)
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Huge internet content backbone Akamai is introducing their new on-demand, streaming HD Network, along with support for… the iPhone. Says Macworld:
Akamai worked with Apple to make HD Network video run on the iPhone using the standard H.264 format. The iPhone 3.0 software upgrade, introduced in June, added support for live video. Content providers can use the HD Network to deliver programs for the iPhone through the Safari Web browser or an application offered on the App Store. The videos can play on the phone’s video player, as YouTube videos do now.
We’ve heard about iPhone 3.0’s HTTP Live Streaming capabilities before, and if this uptake is real, we’re getting increasingly excited about our iPhone media future…
We were going to post some long preachy editorial about Tweetie 2.0 being a paid upgrade but it looks like everyblog and their siblingsite has already done that. So here’s our quick take:
We’re buying it, and happily. We asked developer Atebits why they went the route of a new app vs. an in-app purchase, and the response is worth quoting:
If all I were adding were features, then the in-app purchase route would have been an option (but then again, if all I were offering were features, I’d probably release it as a free update). Tweetie 2 is a fresh start, 100% rewritten, shares no code with the original . The only thing they have in common is the name.
So bottom line, Apple doesn’t (yet?) provide a mechanism for paid upgrades, and in-app purchase allows for more content, not for replacing an old app with a whole new one. So, yeah. This is the option Atebits took, and it works for us. New great app, same great price. And it is a great app, one which took considerable time and effort to make, and we want to support that because we want the developer to be successful enough to make Tweetie 3.0 just as big an update next time.
Sure, scale factors into that — $3 is a no brainer, so if you ask us what we’ll do if a GPS app wants $100 again next year, well… We’ll light those torches when and if we come to them.
Yes, the iTablet rumors just keep on coming, with the latest from Gizmodo being that Apple is in talks with traditional print publishers — text books, newspapers, and magazines, to redefine their industry they way they have music (and are trying to do with video).
Two people related to the NYTimes have separately told me that in June, paper was approached by Apple to talk about putting the paper on a “new device.” [...] A person close to a VP in textbook publishing mentioned to me in July that McGraw Hill and Oberlin Press are working with Apple to move textbooks to iTunes.[...] Apple also recently had several executives from one of the largest magazine groups at their Cupertino’s campus, where they were asked to present their ideas on the future of publishing.
Why?
The eventual goal is to have publishers create hybridized content that draws from audio, video, interactive graphics in books, magazines and newspapers, where paper layouts would be static. And with release dates for Microsoft’s Courier set to be quite far away and Kindle stuck with relatively static e-ink, it appears that Apple is moving towards a pole position in distribution of this next-generation print content. First, it’ll get its feet wet with more basic repurposing of the stuff found on dead trees today.
Gizmodo is also backing the rumored January announce date. What remains uncertain is, of course, the market for next generation print media. The Kindle was recently, and very publicly, panned by Princeton students as being unusable. Apple will have the benefit of the existing iTunes and iPhone ecosystem to fall back on, and buy them time — people can browse the web, listen to music, watch videos on the iTablet — but they’ll have to present a much more usable solution to get that print dinosaur cyberized for the next millennium.
According to a Gizmodo reader who took his iPhone to the Apple Store Genius Bar due to issues with dropped calls, he was told a 30% failure rate in New York City is normal.
Now, we all know AT&T’s network crumbles beneath the weight of the iPhone (and suspect any other single network might as well), but it’s not often we get numbers to go with it.
DVD Jon, who gained fame and notoriety for cracking DVD and iTunes encryption, has since devoted a lot of his time and energy into DoubleTwist, and iTunes replacement. The above video is, of course, a parody of Apple’s anti-IBM “big brother” commercial that aired during the 1984 SuperBowl, this time recasting Apple — and Steve Jobs — as “big brother” and intimating they’ve become what they once mocked. All this by way of promoting the next release of DoubleTwist for Mac, coming Oct. 6.
TechCrunch has a few more details, while Fake Steve, in much harsher language, calls him a remora.
Still, we’ll be interested to see what they have coming, as no doubt will Palm Pre users…
Apple.com has gone and souped up their iPhone app promotion page, carrying forward the “Apps for Everything” tag from their latest rough of commercials.
Featured categories include apps for cooks, keeping current, the great outdoors, music, work, students, moms and dads, working out, going out, managing money, traveling, and the fun and games.
Another attempt to provide curated recommendations, along with featured apps and staff picks on the App Store proper, it will no doubt give a boost to any developer who gets the spotlight, but it remains to be seen how much it aids iPhone and iPod touch users still struggling with the discoverability of the App Store.
If you check out their listings, let us know what you think of their picks.
Dropbox [Free - iTunes link] is now available in the App Store, and allows iPhone and iPod touch users to access their online Dropbox storage remotely.
For those unfamiliar with Dropbox, it provides something similar to Apple’s MobileMe iDrive, but with a free option at 2GB, and paid options at $9.99/month for 50GB and $19.99/month for 100GB, and syncing between any computers the Dropbox app.
The iPhone version lets you:
Access your Dropbox directory
View your files
Download files to your iPhone
Sync downloaded files
Take photos and videos and upload them to Dropbox
Share links to Dropbox files
View photos
If you give it a whirl, let us know how it works for you!
. The only thing they have in common is the name.
