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TheAppleBlog
TheAppleBlog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
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Random House Giving Away Books to Stanza Users
Stanza is easily the most popular book app available for the iPhone and iPod touch. Recently, it expanded its library even further, adding 40,000 new titles to its library, thanks to the acquisition of a license for eReader’s eBook format. Lexcycle’s Stanza now boasts over 100,000 book and magazine titles, and that number grows daily. Some are crediting the app with helping to turn the iPhone and iPod touch into formidable eBook readers, despite the relatively small screen. Lexcycle claims 500,000 Stanza users, downloading tens of thousands of books a day.
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Flickr Mobile Makeover

It was only two months ago that Flickr unveiled a beta version of their mobile site optimized for iPhone and iPod touch users, but now it’s official.

Compared to their previous mobile endeavor, this update of the site is nothing short of leaps and bounds ahead. Beyond a svelte new interface that makes browsing, not only, your and your contacts’ activity a breeze, it also puts Flickr’s much touted “interestingness” photos within easy reach.

However, undoubtedly the biggest boon to come with this update is the ability to play back videos — or “long photos” as Flickr so poignantly likes to refer to them as. (It should be noted, though, this only applies to videos uploaded since December 3. Videos on the site previous to that date will be updated for mobile playback in the coming months.) Without delving into the technical details, Flickr is able to do this by utilizing their parent company’s, Yahoo!, Video Platform. Via said platform, Flickr can serve video to the dizzying array of available handsets on the market that support it, and accommodate for their varying screen sizes and codec dependencies, including the iPhone/iPod touch.
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6 Ways to Trick Out Your Mac This Holiday Season

As you do your holiday decorating this year, don’t forget to trick out your Mac, too. Fortunately, it’s a lot easier than hauling out heavy decorations or hanging 40 miles of outdoor lights in sub-zero temperatures.

I am always amazed at the creative widgets people devise and create for the holidays, and this year is no exception. Have a look at some of the festive widgets, games, and goodies that commemorate this holiday season.
- My favorite this year is Snow in the Dashboard. It’s not a particularly useful widget, of course, since it doesn’t do anything but make light snow fall across your dashboard. Since I live in Florida, though, it’s as close to the white stuff as I’m likely to get this December.
- If you’re looking for computer-based games, there are plenty of fun ones to choose from that will get you in the holiday spirit. I could try a different one every day and still not be done in time for Christmas, but I gave a few of them a whirl and found Christmas Swap and Christmas Crisis are the best bets if you’re looking for a little mindless fun. The former tests your reflexes and keeps your brain sharp, while the latter is just a fun arcade-type game.
- Children all over the world play the Dreidel Game during Hanukkah. This year, treat your kids to a version that’s played on an iPhone or iPod touch. Same great game and same great fun as when played with a real dreidel, but this one has a 21st-centruy slant. Though the Dreidel Game won’t help you trick out your Mac, it’s still a fun little app that you won’t want to overlook.
- Want to know just how many shopping days you have left before you’re out of time and have to show up at the company party with a re-gifted fruitcake? Put this Christmas Countdown on your Dashboard as a gentle reminder, or for a quick answer to your kids’ constant question, “How long until Santa comes?”
- If you really don’t feel like hanging lights all over your house, just string them across your monitor instead. NightLights Screensaver can be customized with mini or novelty lights and even lets you choose whether to let them randomly blink or remain lit . For a really festive screensaver, try 3D Christmas or Christmas Village.
- Speaking of lights, there’s a really neat Kinara widget that lets users light seven virtual candles in honor of the Seven Principles of Kwanzaa. Though the widget is free to download, it’s creators request users consider a donation to the ECOLIFE Foundation.
Have you found other cool holiday downloads and apps for your Mac? Tell me about them in the comments.

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Regain Precious Hard Drive Space With Drive Genius
An unheralded new feature Apple quietly added to OS X 10.5 Leopard is the ability to create, expand, or shrink hard drive partitions without erasing the entire drive. Several third-party applications can repartition drives as well, but it is a function that had never previously been built into the Mac OS.

Provided there is open, unwritten space left on your hard drive, using Disk Utility you can add a new partition, remove a partition thereby merging two adjacent partitions, or shrink an existing partition.

You can, in most instances, also achieve more flexibility in resizing or creating new partitions by running a disk defragmentation/optimization using a third-party utility like AlSoft DiskWarrior or ProSoft’s Drive Genius, the latter of which also incorporates a full-featured disk reformatting function and many other drive maintenance, optimization, repair, and troubleshooting features.

I used Drive Genius to repartition the hard drive in my G3 iBook a few years back, needing more breathing space on the primary partition with introduction of OS 10.4 Tiger. The entire operation went smoothly, I encountered no problems, and the computer is still in daily use by my wife.

The latest Drive Genius version 2.1 has, among other enhancements, added DriveSlim, a feature that can free up hard drive space by identifying unnecessary files cluttering your hard drive and allowing you to mark them for deletion.

A Slim Plan Options menu lets you, by adjusting sliders and checking various options, fine-tune your data reduction and filter out specific duplicate or unnecessary files that may be bloating your hard drive, after which you may not need to repartition.

Incidentally, Drive Genius is currently offered till December 18 as part of the MacUpdate Holiday Bundle of 10 applications. The bundle has a retail value of $450, but is available for $49.99, or half the regular price of Drive Genius alone.

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Daily Apple: More Macros, Mous-iversary, Psystar, iPhone Advertising & OpenCL
Keyboard Maestro 3.5 Released - The Mac macro software gets a big update today, bringing in support for their new iPhone and iPod touch app, which allows you to execute macros remotely from your device. Combined with new iTunes control actions, it nicely supplements Apple’s own Remote app.

The Computer Mouse Approaches Middle Age - Our little human interface device grew up so fast! Where does the time go? Stanford researcher David Engelbart revealed his creation this day in 1968. It was a three-button device, which means Apple actually took two steps back with their original one-button design.

Psystar Saga Continues - The first Mac cloner (there’s now a second, in case you hadn’t heard) continues its legal battle with Apple. Today, Psystar dropped their counterclaim, which held that Apple was in violation of anti-trust laws. They’ve instead shifted their strategy slightly, saying that Apple is going beyond the bounds of their copyright by trying to shut down hardware that is merely compatible with their OS, which is what Psystar claims to be making.

Amobee Media Systems Optimizes Ads for iPhone and iPod Touch - Google isn’t the only one trying to get ads onto your iPhone. Amobee Media Systems is now providing a holistic solution for adding advertising support to apps. Thank goodness! I’m always forgetting what to buy.

OpenCL Goes Beyond Apple - An industry consortium ratifies the Open Computer Language 1.0, a 3D graphics and computer audio standard that originally began as an Apple proposal. Some consortium members include heavyweights like Electronic Arts, IBM, Intel, and many more.

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Stand Out From 13M Others With Infectious iPhone Art
Since the Zunes inception, for all its faults, one thing that it did that seemed worth emulating was its Originals line, which are devices etched with original artwork from an array of designers. There’s no doubt that, even before comparing it to the Zune, or even the iPod nanos for that matter, the iPhone doesn’t offer a lot in the way of expressing ones individuality.

Thankfully, Infectious (see disclosure at bottom) is happy to fill that lack of identity with its line of iPhone Art adhesive decorations. Featuring artwork from well known illustrators and graphic designers like David Lanham, Jeremy Prasatik (aka JP33), Emil Kozak, and MAD, among many more, Infectious currently offers 38 designs to adorn your iPhone with. Each comes with a full and mini sticker that covers the full back of phone (with a cut-out for the camera lens) and the bottom portion of the front, respectively; as well as an Infectious logo sticker for good measure.
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App Store's 300 Million Downloads is Remarkable No Matter How You Look at It
Click image enlarge

This past Friday, Apple advertised iPhone apps in the New York Times and also mentioned that there have been 300 million app downloads. While most people realize this is pretty amazing, there are some comments quickly rushing to pour water on the app store's fire…

How many of those 300 million were free apps?

Apparently this is supposed to matter since it would show that Apple isn't making a lot of money here. So what? It wasn't Apple's plan to make a lot of money on the app store. This should be obvious from the fact that they take only 30% of the cost of sold apps, and host free ones for nothing. That’s hardly a model designed to make a big profit. The app store is about content, and people using that content to make the device better for them.
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9 iPhone Puzzle Games to Keep You Entertained
Continuing with our round up of iPhone/iPod touch apps, here are 9 puzzle games (in no particular order) worth checking out. Each item on the list links to a full review with feature and pricing information.

Quordy
Find the most words, get the high score.

Smiles
Two games in one. Play the Drop mode for Bejeweled-like game play or the Zen mode for a Solitaire-esque game.

Spin
Rotate the object to match the silhouette.

Puzzloop Endless
Fend off a non-stop barrage of colored balls.

MetaSquares
Compete against the computer or another player in capturing the most squares.

Dizzy Bee
Use your touch device’s accelerometer to control Dizzy Bee and save its fruit friends.

Lumen
Use mirrors and colored filters to guide a laser beam through check points.

Imangi
It’s Scrabble meets the Rubick’s cube.

Amazing Sudoku
A flashy, stylized version of the cult game.

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Backblaze Online Backup Service

These days our lives revolve around our computers — for better or worse. We keep our finances there, photos, purchased music, and much much more. It seems like a no brainer that we should all be backing up our data regularly, but it still surprises me how often I hear from a friend that they’ve lost everything. I’ve written about the importance of backups before — illustrated by my own dead drive experience – so don’t write this off as something that can’t happen to you.

All you need to backup your computer is software, external storage space, and the will to set the two up. From my experience, the last of the three represents the greatest barrier to entry. Whether it be a lack of understanding or possibly a fear of how to setup the actual backup, and which files to choose for inclusion, I’m not sure — maybe both?

Well friends, I present you with Backblaze. For $5 per month (that’s the price of Starbucks for one day after all!) you have an internet based exclusion (that means you only choose what NOT to save) backup solution with unlimited storage space. That’s correct — there is no limit to the amount of data you backup with Backblaze. Ever. Your data is stored securely (via AES, military grade encryption) in the 365 Main datacenter, and can be further protected with your own private password. Versions are kept for 4 weeks in the event you overwrite something accidentally. And then when it is time to retain your backed up files, you have three options for doing so: Download a zip file, have DVDs burned of your data, or order a USB drive to be sent to you.
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Now That Rumors Have Subsided: Is a $99 iPhone Good or Bad?

Now that recent rumors of a $99 iPhone seem to have been settled — Wal-Mart will sell the 8GB model for $197 — we can get back to the broader discussion of just what an eventual $99 iPhone could mean to Apple.

I believe the answer to the question depends on just what a $99 iPhone is. Prior to the latest rumors, it was usually discussed as some sort of "iPhone nano." Maybe a flip phone, and generally acknowledged to be much more limited than the current iPhone. I’m sure these rumors will creep up again soon.
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Earn Money With Your iPhone 3G

My iPhone bleeds money. I buy apps, the bulk of which I never look at again. My monthly bill, in order to guarantee enough data available, is pretty expensive, especially when compared to what I was paying for earlier phones. And, to top it all of, I buy tons of accessories for my iPhone, spoiling it like a loving grandparent. Occasionally (not often, but occasionally), I find myself asking what my iPhone has ever done to pay me back? Yes, it’s a great tool, but I mean really pay me back, in cold, hard cash. Now, the folks at Navizon have come up with a way for you to get a little return on your investment.

Basically, Navizon adds to the basic location services of your iPhone. Your handset can determine your location using a combination of cell towers, Wi-Fi, and GPS, but using the included Maps application, you have no way of knowing which is active at any given time. Navizon displays your position (on Yahoo!, rather than Google Maps), but it also displays a little badge to let you know which method is being used to determine where you are. That way I know, for example, why the map was showing me as located three blocks North of where I actually am. The answer? My phone was only using cell tower data to find me. You can also take advantage of built-in buddy features to locate friends or family, if they’re using Navizon’s service. You can also configure alerts by logging on to the website to receive notifications by email or web when your buddies enter into specific areas you designate.
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Wal-Mart to Sell iPhones

News broke yesterday that Wal-Mart will indeed be selling Apple’s iPhone, most likely by the end of December. The source of the information is employee training materials, and employees of the U.S.-based retail giant themselves. Wal-Mart is still keeping mum about the news, having made no official statement as of yet.

Early speculation held that the 4GB iPhone would make a return, at a new, $99 price point, designed to attract frugal customers in increasingly uncertain economic times. Today’s reports, supported by a number of sources and documents, maintain that a $99 iPhone is unlikely, and that Wal-Mart will instead offer a $2 discount, selling the 8GB model for $197, including contract discount.

Analyst Andy Hargreaves of Pacific Crest Securities told Reuters that Apple, while unlikely to cut a deal that would affect its profit margins, is probably seeking distribution through Wal-Mart in order to access different market demographics. UBS analyst Maynard Um, on the other hand, thinks a Wal-Mart deal alone will not be enough to broaden the iPhone’s reach, and suggests it should instead be only a first step to even more distribution deals with large retailers.

Details remain unclear, and conflicting reports from various sources indicate that nothing is confirmed, besides the iPhone’s imminent arrival. The arrival date, for instance, is cited by Bloomberg as December 28, but by CNN Money as possibly sometime before Christmas. Likewise pricing and storage space options, with Boy Genius Reports still maintaining that the $99 4GB model is a possibility.

Apple has refused to comment on any rumors or speculation at this point.

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Brothers In Arms for iPhone/iPod Touch
In the course of playing and reviewing a number of iPhone games, I realize I’ve come to expect, and even allow for, certain shortcomings. I expect lag in a graphics-intensive game. I expect buggy controls that feel less than intuitive. I expect omissions that are promised to be fulfilled in later updates. All of which is why Brothers in Arms: Hour of Heroes ($9.99) caught me off guard. The new shooter from the prolific gameloft (iDP) studio is a polished, pleasurable gaming experience that lacks a lot of the usual iPhone platform caveats users have unfortunately learned to live with.

The game belongs to the Brothers in Arms franchise, which began with Gearbox Software’s 2005 title Road to Hill 30. The Brothers in Arms series is set in WWII, and console and PC versions feature first-person shooter gameplay mechanics. Hour of Heroes, developed, by gameloft, who also brought the series to the Nintendo DS, is a third-person over-the-shoulder shooter and finally escapes the single-track, limited character control found in similar games like Star Wars: The Force Unleashed.
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Setting Up Xcode & Beanstalk Hosted Subversion
If you are planning on getting started in developing for the Mac, one of the first things I recommend setting up is a version control system. Beanstalk is a hosted Subversion system, so you can access your code from anywhere you have an Internet connection, team up with partners across the world, and keep a safe copy of your code off site, just in case. It’s tempting to rely on Time Machine for the ability to roll back changes, but Subversion has some key differences that make it a clear winner in ease of use and features.

For one, you can host a Subversion repository anywhere, either locally on your own Mac, or on the Internet, or on your local private network. Second, Subversion is built to work with multiple users, and can handle conflicting commits to the repository. Finally, Subversion can integrated directly into Xcode, which is what we are going to look at here.
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Weekly App Store Roundup: Dec. 6, 2008
As we speed down the information superhighway, we’re left with a few moments to glance in to our rear-view mirror and see the week that was fade in the distance.

And what a week it has been, with TAB pointing out AT&T’s 12,000 redundancies and apparent defiance of the economic slump, iPhone devs finally getting the tools they need to promote their apps properly, Tapulous presenting their iPhone offering for the holiday season and our very own ultimate roundup of Twitter apps.

So now it’s time to slide our brains in to fifth gear and cruise through the weekend, and to aid your journey I’ve picked several of the latest apps especially for your iPhone.

This week I’m looking at The Spirit, Buddha Machine and iTie.

The Spirit (free)
Frank Miller, the creative mind behind gritty comic-noir Sin City, has directed a forthcoming movie called The Spirit. This app is a free promo for the movie, allowing you to take a photo of yourself and then view a short clip from the movie, starring you! Just like The Dark Knight: HaHaHa, this is gimmicky fun, when it works.
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Channel Your Inner Ancient Riverboat Gambler with MotionX Poker Quest

My attention span when it comes to gaming, and especially mobile gaming, is not very long. Most titles on my iPhone never get a second play, in fact. Hence my surprise when I spent many hours over the past few days on MotionX’s newest title, Poker Quest.

MotionX is the developer behind MotionX Poker, one of the most talked about and impressive early titles for the iPhone and iPod touch. The dice poker game features an incredibly well-rendered virtual dice simulator, with realistic physics. MotionX has since released Dice, a free version of the dice simulation without the Poker game features, and GPS Lite, a tracking and navigation app.
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Marry Address Book With Google Maps

Apple’s Address Book is a clean and concise way to manage all of your contacts. It does what it needs without a bunch of frills, and for the most part, that’s a good thing. My use of Address Book is fairly infrequent — and by infrequent I mean that it’s pretty much only utilized around this time of year when I have to send out the annual newsletter or photo card of the kids.

Recently when my younger sister moved into the Big City and sent her ritzy new Manhattan address around to all of us, I entered it into Address Book like a good boy, and promptly forgot about it. It wasn’t long after that my lovely wife wanted to know about the new City digs, but I didn’t know a whole lot. So being a good nerd, I copied the address from Address Book and then copied it into a Google Maps session in Firefox to see what the area looked like. That’s when it hit me — why should I have to go through such a process?!
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The iPhone: A Marketer's Fantasy
There’s a trusted maxim in the marketing game: cheap razor, expensive blades. It comes from the practice of selling razors like the Mach3 or Fusion for next to nothing, and then selling the disposable blades for said razors at a rather more expensive price. Consumers tend to overlook the long-term price of purchase, and instead see the initial price as a bargain. The iPhone may not be cheap, but apps generally are, and they seem to be provoking a lot of pricey ‘blade’ purchases, so to speak.

A recent post on the Sonos forums emphasizes my point. In it, the poster provides an anecdote about how, despite prior resistance, the Sonos remote app for the iPhone convinced him to drop a considerable chunk of change on a Sonos system. The poster’s argument is this: the mere potential the iPhone offered in terms of perceived future added value actually motivated the purchase. When contacted, a Sonos PR rep confirmed that sales of Sonos systems have definitely benefitted from the release of the Sonos CR for iPhone. The company has even produced a video for people who may have the app, but no Sonos system to control, demonstrating how the controller will work.

It may sound ridiculous, but I can’t claim to be immune. Apple’s own Remote app has me contemplating an Apple TV purchase, despite the limited content library iTunes offers here in Canada, and our inability to access Hulu. The appeal is in how easy it would be to use Apple TV with the iPhone, not in what I would do with the media hub itself.
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Printer Review: Epson Artisan 800
At the $300 price point, the Epson Artisan 800 is a very nice all-in-one (AIO) printer. For most small office/home office users (SoHo’s), it could easily meet their needs. It is very small (18.4″ x 23.0″ x 7.8″) compared to most of the printers in this price range and offers both wireless as well as wired networking.

Next, it has an amazing 7″ touch screen for easy operation of the AIO. This is probably the most impressive feature of the printer and definitely adds to the sexiness factor. Another bonus is that the printer comes with an extra black cartridge. This was a pleasant surprise during the out-of-box-experience.

The Automatic Document Feeder (ADF) holds up to 30 pages, although it does not support duplex copying or scanning. If you are not copying or scanning two-sided documents, then this should not be an issue for you. For most folks, that will probably be the case.
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Developers Get Promotional Codes to Give Free Copies of Apps
According to this MacRumors report, Apple has started to dispense promotional codes to App Store developers. With them, developers will now be able to grant free access to their app for up to 50 users. Previously, developers would have had to resort to the ad-hoc distribution method or iTunes gift cards to give promotional copies of their applications. While the 50 user limit might seem paltry compared to the ad-hoc’s 100, the promotional code limit is reset with version updates. Additionally, and probably most welcoming to both developers and recipients alike, is no longer having to deal with the hassles of the mobile provisioning that the ad hoc method is reliant on.

Via mobile provisioning, for promotional copies to be granted, developers would have to get the UDID of the touch device from each person receiving a copy and from there generate a .mobileprovision file to send with the actual application file that would bind that app to each specified device. Once both files were received, the end user would drag and drop them into iTunes to sync it. With the promo code method, all that is eschewed for a system that as easy as redeeming an iTunes gift card.

In the future, we can see this opening the door for more than just a developer/reviewer relationship, and extended to contests and giveaways. With complexity removed and the fact that the codes are linked to a specific app, developers would be able to invite people to win copies of their app without relying on gift cards, which is a hockey method since there value of the gift-card may not match the price of the app thus costing the developer additional money and there’s no guarantee that the recipient will actually use it to buy the app.

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Finish Your Holiday Shopping With Amazon Mobile for iPhone
Just in time for last minute Christmas shopping, Amazon.com has released their mobile app for the iPhone and iPod touch. It offers searching, Wish List and account access, and purchasing directly from the app. If you’re already an impulsive internet shopper, then this may just be your worst nightmare. If you dread the mall and don’t have time to spend hours finding the right gift at your computer, than it could be your new best friend.

Amazon isn’t just porting their website’s functionality to the iPhone platform, either, although all of the central features of the site are there. They’ve wisely taken advantage of the iPhone’s specific abilities to add a new feature called “Amazon Remembers,” which is similar to the standalone SnapTell Explorer app. It’s kind of like Shazam but with pictures instead of sound.You take a picture with your iPhone’s camera, and the images are instantly uploaded to Amazon.com’s servers. Amazon tries to match products in its database to the ones taken by your camera, and then returns the results to the user to either purchase or save for later.

iPod Touch users can join in the fun, too, since Amazon Remembers also allows you to use images stored in your device’s photo album. Testing out the feature produced good results. A photo of the Iron Man DVD saved from Google Images returned the Two-Disc Special Collectors’ Edition, as did a photo of the actual DVD from my collection. Oddly, results seemed to only be returned if I exited and reentered the app.

It’s a good beginning, and the Amazon Remembers feature is surprisingly accurate for an experimental first release. A colleague pointed out that the app lacks support for special deals, like Gold Box, Deal of the Day, and Lightnight Deals. Maybe those will come in future updates, or maybe Amazon doesn’t want me to spend as much money as I possibly can at their site. Ball’s in your court, Amazon.

Amazon Mobile is a free download from the App Store.

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First Look: Tap Tap Dance & Christmas With Weezer
Tapulous, maker of the popular Tap Tap Revenge (now with 3 million users), has today announced two new applications for the holiday period. Tap Tap Revenge has attracted game and music lovers alike with tracks by Katy Perry, Kaiser Chiefs, Weezer and The Offspring all being fans of the software. The new applications build further on this acclaim, featuring original music from Weezer and a series of remixed dance tracks.

Tap Tap Dance

Built on the 2.0 engine of Tap Tap Revenge, Tap Tap Dance is an all new version of Tap Tap Revenge featuring top hits from the biggest DJs in the world like Moby, Daft Punk, Tiesto and many more. The application offers a far richer gaming experience than previous releases from Tapulous, starting to feel almost like an interactive music video.

At the most basic level, you tap to the beat as the balls cross the line. When you see an arrow, you give a ﬁrm shake to the left, right or forward (as you would hit a pingpong ball) as the arrows cross the line. Levels are unlocked as the game progresses, and there are ‘boss tracks’ at the end of each difficulty level: Daft Punk’s Technologic (Easy), Moby’s Disco Lies (Medium) and an epic 7-minute version of Justice’s Phantom Pt.II (Hard).
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Boxee Adds Netflix Support

Today, boxee is releasing their latest alpha build for the flexible media player. The big news for this release is the tantalizing Netflix support and new custom interfaces for various channels like Hulu, CNN, Flickr, Picasa, and YouTube. There are a few new content sources as well.

Netflix takes center stage for this release at the request of users. The boxee team ran a survey just two weeks ago and the results put Netflix out in front as the most requested new addition to the media center app. The initial implementation for the desktop seems to be pretty complete even at this early stage. You can browse content available in Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” category, add items to your Instant Queue, and play the streaming content. Here’s a couple shots to tide you over until you can download and install for yourself.
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Funtastic Photos Offers User-Friendly Photo Editing & Sharing
Funtastic Photos is an amazingly powerful, feature-packed, easy to use little photo editor application. The user interface is clean and uncluttered in homage to iLife conventions, but a vast array of photo correction and enhancement tools are included.

Funtastic Photos taps into OS X technologies like the Quartz graphics engine, Spotlight, and ImageIO Kit, and offers advanced photo enhancement technologies like non-destructive editing with unlimited “rewind” undos, shadows and highlights, blurring, digital flash, contrast, saturation and more.

The app opens with a browser window that displays photo archives stored in iPhoto, folders, or even on other connected volumes. A tool bar at the top of the window taps into Apple’s OS X Leopard Quick Look feature, with buttons for other basic navigation and organization tasks.
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iPod touch Gets VoIP Thanks to Truphone

The iPhone no longer gets to have all the VoIP fun among Apple handhelds, thanks to the just released Truphone for iPod touch. The release comes hard on the heels of the official release of the new In-Ear premium headset compatible with the 2G iPod touch, and the timing is probably not coincidental.

Truphone Touch allows users with Truphone accounts to make VoIP calls to each other using either iPod/iPhone, Nokia, or Blackberry smartphones. Google Talk and other open VoIP networks are also supported. The app comes from an established pedigree, since the original Truphone app is one of the most downloaded and highest rated VoIP apps available.

The app is significant because it ushers in an entirely new level of functionality for iPod touch owners. Truphone turns Apple’s portable media player into a true communication device, although with the iPod touch version you’re limited to calling other VoIP users, and not able to dial out to actual numbers, as you can with the original iPhone app. It’s likely that the app could also support dialing out, but Apple might be preventing the company from offering this feature, as it could potentially affect iPhone sales. As it stands, the app could potentially replace home phones, many of which are barely used as more and more consumers move to cellular-only setups.

Truphone stands to gain the most from the app, so long as no other VoIP services receive iPod touch compatibility updates. Truphone-to-Truphone is, after all, the only way for iPod Touch users to call each other, so they’ll likely see a significant spike in subscribers. It probably won’t be too long before other VoIP clients follow suit, though, so expect Skype-capable iPod Touches just around the corner.

Get Truphone for iPod touch free in the App Store.

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