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The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

HearPlanet is one clever travel appToday

Filed under: Freeware, Reviews, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

My colleague Robert Palmer has reported that HearPlanet [app store link] is free for this week, so I downloaded and gave it a try. It is a nice surprise. HearPlanet for the iPhone and iPod touch is a pretty cool mash-up of detailed local information so you can search for a city, for example, and HearPlanet will tell you about all the things that are around you. There is detailed text, or better yet it will read the information to you.

Those with a 3G iPhone can use location services. HearPlanet will figure out where you are, and what things of interest are around you. The app finds items like museums, stadiums, zoos, and other landmarks or popular attractions. You click on one of the destinations, and the app starts reading about it. Some of the entries are short,

Six iPhone games still worth playingToday

Filed under: Reviews, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

iPhone games are interesting because of the App Store... most people will download them, play them for a few hours (or minutes), and never think twice about opening them again. Is this due to the App Store's "candy-esque" display of applications, or is it that some apps don't possess a high replay quality? Either way, here are 5 applications that I love to play, and keep me coming back.

Hero of Sparta
First on this list would have to be Hero of Sparta [iTunes]. It introduced something that I hadn't seen in an iPhone game yet: stunning graphics. Yes, the "pixel heaven" in this game could compare to the PSP (Playstation Portable) or rival the graphics found on the Nintendo DS. If you like RPG (Role Playing Games) games, then this is a must-have. True to the title of the game, you play a Spartan King who goes on an adventure and enc

Non-Apple iPhone Keynote controllersToday

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

One of the coolest features of the just announced Keynote '09 is the corresponding $0.99 iPhone / iPod touch controller application (iTunes link) which allows you to advance slides, see your notes, and even see your next slide on your mobile device's screen so long as it's connected to the same wifi network. Once I had a look at it, however, I was surprised to discover that there were already several similar applications available in the iTunes store which work with Keynote '08 and even have quite a few more functions.

I haven't had a chance to test them all, but there are at least four applications out there including (all iTunes links): Pointer Remote (which also works with PowerPoint) ($0.99),

2008 Best iPhone App Ever winners announcedToday

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Freeware, iTunes, iPhone, iPod touch

The voting only went underway a while ago, but they've just announced the winners for the 2008 Best App Ever awards, celebrating (according to 148apps.com and the people they got to nominate and vote in their contest) the best iPhone apps of last year. As I said for the voting, you can probably take most of this with a grain of salt, but there's no question that there are some awesome apps in here, and probably at least one or two you'll be interested in checking out if you haven't yet.

Shazam won big in the "Best Overall", "Most Innovative," and "Best WOW" categories, and that is well worth it: Shazam is super reliable and works great as a "music recognizer."

Facebook for iPhone and iPod touch updated to version 2.1Yesterday

Filed under: Macworld, Software, iPhone, iPod touch

In the online social networking space you've got your big guns: MySpace, to a lesser extent Twitter and for business users, LinkedIn. Facebook is also extremely popular and now, Facebook's client for iPhone and iPod touch has been updated to version 2.1.

Among the changes for this update include fewer crashes (that's an important one), corrected timestamps for all time zones, improved sync time and faster loading of the inbox. It's also worth noting that Facebook for iPhone and iPod touch requires iPhone 2.2 firmware.

Other iPhone and iPod touch apps updated recently include Pandora, Things, Darkslide, Lists and the trifecta of