Just in time for the holidays! Crazy Pumpkin is a fun little app from eZone.com which creates a simple Jack-o-lantern face on your iPhone screen. Swipe across the features to change the eyes, nose and mouth. Shake it to produce a scary sound and change the colors. Normally $.99, free for who knows how long.
Minutes of fun for the kids!
Check out these free apps! Useful and/or fun!
Apple recently took away the new apps link in the iTunes App Store, which I how I generally browsed for new and exciting apps to buy. I was unhappy.
A friend of mine referred me to AppShopper.com. And I am blown. a. way.
This is what browsing newly added apps should be all about. Very simple clean interface. It’s easy to sort by paid or free apps (or even which apps have had price changes!), by catagory, by all or new apps. It doesn’t have everything; it would be great if it included a simple search by keyword function (if you’re looking for a specific app you’re better off going straight to iTunes), but it has enough to replace what was lost in the App Store and then some.
Find an app you like? Click on the link and it will take you directly to the App Store to purchase or download it. Want to see all of the apps that have dropped their price to “Free?” Easy! click on the “Free” and “Price Change” button, and AppShooper.com will sort through the apps and display all the recently free apps. All of these searches can be easily changed into an RSS feed to which you can subscribe and get daily updates of exactly what you’re looking for in the app store.
The only other small gripe I have is accessing it on the iPhone. It’s not set to a fixed width (though it looks like it should be). So it slides around some when scrolling around on Mobile Safari. Other than that small thing, which would be a trifle to fix, it’s awesome to use on the iPhone as well.
AppShopper.com is well worth your time (and pocketbook) to check out. Kudos to Normalkid, LLC for this service.
TUAW is where I first saw this. I checked it out myself, and confirmed that if an App Store customer hasn’t bought or downloaded the App they are attempting to review, this dialog box pops up:
This goes a long way to preventing reviews on an app based solely on the price, instead of the reviewers just posting a review that says “$4.99?!??!11? Their insane if they thing I’m going to pay that!!11″
On the other hand, it leads to reviews that could be falsely positively skewed, because a person downloading an app is more prone to wanting it and liking it, rather than taking a dispassionate view of it in their review. But better that than the other way though. The ratings will get a much more fair because of this move. I’m hoping it will be retroactive, and the reviews so far will be examined and pulled if the reviewer doesn’t own the app.
Now, if only Apple could clean up it’s OWN review policy and let apps into the store that “duplicated” their own services, Podcaster being the most famous example, we’d be in good shape.
As it is, many people have lost faith in the App store ever fufulling it’s potential.
Comet Cowboy is an awesome app to break out when you want to play a game that’s impossible to lose. It’s just plain fun to lasso those asteroids floating around in space and pull them in.
The free version offers 4 levels of play. Check it out, and if you enjoy it, shell out the $3.99 for 30+ levels.
Apple has issued a recall for all 3G power adapters shipped with the 3G iPhone and sold separately. So if you have one of this little suckers, You should visit the 3G power adapter exchange web page and order a new one. You can also exchange them at your local Apple Store beginning October 10.
The adapter prongs are at risk for breaking off and getting stuck in outlets, creating an electric hazard. Apple urges owners to stop using the adapters immediately.
For a “limited time” all Pangea games are discounted in the app store. I hadn’t picked up Cro-Mag Rally yet, so I took advantage of the $1.99 price. Billy Frontier is $3.99 (I’m not sure what it is normally). But it looked cool so I picked that up as well.
They don’t give a definite end date to this sale, so if you’re interested in any of the Pangea titles, you might want to snap ‘em up while you have the chance! Enjoy!
About 24 hours after the iPhone 2.1 software update was released, and Apple had blocked jailbreaking phones via modified .ispw files in iTunes 8, the Dev Team struck again and released a tool for Jailbreaking the 2.1 firmware.
It was initially thought that the Jailbrake would require patchng iTunes, but this version of QuickPwn and the PwnageTool works without modifying anything in iTunes 8. I plan to Jailbreak my non-critical V1 iPhone today to see how it goes, and may even get brave enough to pwn my 3G.
For now there are only tools for the Mac. Windows tools should be coming soon.
At last! I’m crossing my fingers this will end the Great App Crash of ‘08 once and for all.
Apple’s list of fixes and enhancements:
Of course iPod touch owners are experiencing many of these enhancements already.
Be sure to back up your current phone setup before updating!! EDIT: I guess an automatic backup happens as part of the update process. But I still recommend a backup before ding anything.
Share your experiences with this update in the comments, please! 
A “We’re sorry were were gone and glad to be back” gift perhaps? NBC is offering free HD episodes of some of their more popular show’s. Mostly the 2007-08 season premiere episdodes. If you’re interested to see what kind of HD quality the iTunes TV store is offering, here’s a pain-free way of doing it.
An added Bonus: When you download the HD version of the show, iTunes also automatically downloads an iPhone/touch/iPod optimized version of the show.
Caveat: You must have iTunes 8 and the latest version of Quicktime (7.5.5) to enjoy the HD TV eps in iTunes.
Thanks to AppleTV Junkie for the heads up!!
App News via Google Recently Added Apps