Filed under: Freeware

We're getting closer and closer to some of the stuff we see it science fiction literature and films. Siri [iTunes link] is a small Silicon Valley startup with a really breakthrough product that for now only works on the iPhone.

Here's the deal. You download the free app, start it up, and tell it what you want. It could be "Will it snow in Des Moines today?" or "Where can I find the nearest burger" or it could be "Find the nearest parks". It parses your comments, runs out to the web for a few seconds and comes back with a lot of suggestions. It gives you buttons to call the places you've found, or to show them on Google Maps and get you directions.

I tried to get a bit fancier saying "Make me a reservation for 2 at the nearest Olive Garden tonight at 7." The app figured out Olive Garden didn't take reservations through their service, but it provided me a number for the nearest Olive Garden and offered to map it.

In addition to their Quattro Wireless buy last month, Apple has picked up two more new employees that seems like additions to an incoming mobile advertising business. Theo Theodorou was picked up from Microsoft's mobile advertising sales department and will head sales in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. And Todd Tran, from mobile ad agency Joule, will serve as general manager in Europe.

Apple hasn't announced exact details of what they plan to do with all of this mobile advertising, but they did say in the conference call last week that they plan to use their Quattro Wireless acquisition to help app developers make money, especially on free apps. We don't yet know the exact specifics of that plan ("iAds," coming soon to an App Store near you?), but it looks like Apple is making a significant investment in putting mobile ads on their devices.

Let's face it -- as much as we love our Macs, sometimes you've got to use a PC, whether that be for work or at a friend's house, or just for playing some games. But when you absolutely must use Windows, maComfort can make the transition easier. It's a free Windows application (with some premium options) that brings all of the nice software things you appreciate on your Mac back to your PC. It's got a QuickLook-style feature, translates the Windows key to all of your Command hotkeys, and even replicates familiar Mac features like one-button volume control and Spaces and Active Corners. And the app also has a add-on system, so you can download extra features like homemade Docks and shadows just like on your Mac back home.

Of course, it's not perfect -- QuickLook only works in Explorer, not everywhere, and obviously all of the less-superficial features on the Mac (like Terminal and Stacks) will stay in OS X. But if you have to use a PC away from home and are frustrated that hitting what's supposed to be the Command key keeps popping up the Start menu instead, try a little maComfort. The app is a free download with limited functionality, or $20 for full use.

[via LH]

This is pretty impressive --of course there are already lots of ways to automate actions on your Mac, and odds are that you may have messed around with scripting or Automator more than once before. But Sikuli is a new app that makes automating as simple as taking screenshots. Instead of programming actions, all you have to do is put screenshots of the particular UI items that you want to automate in a list, and then the app will use visual cues to do whatever you want it to do. Not only does it make things much easier when actually writing scripts, but it also gives you countless options in terms of automation -- the app can automate any app that has a graphical user interface, because all it has to do is recognize that GUI on your screen. That includes web apps, too -- like I said, the possibilities are endless.

And since it's developed with Jython, you Python experts can insert any Python code that you like in the scripts as well. The whole thing is an MIT project, so it's available for free across all platforms, including OS X, Windows, and Linux. If you've been looking for an automator that'll do any rote task for you, give Sikuli a try.

[via LifeHacker]

There's a growing battle lately on the App Store over "check-in" apps -- Foursquare, Gowalla, and MyTown have all seen big gains in users lately (and a few other contenders have been roaming the periphery), and it looks like we're starting to see some innovation in the mix. Gowalla recently updated their free app [iTunes link], and introduced a new feature called Shared Trips. These are more or less tours (or a line of check-ins at different places around a given city), but they can feature all kinds of things: a set of bars, interesting buildings to see, the old bookstore/coffeeshop run, or any other ideas Gowalla users have. Trips can be shared and rated, and you'll be able to browse through the most popular trips and even earn badges in the app for creating or going on a popular trip.

The new version also adds bookmarks, which will let you remember your favorite check-in spot -- while you can't add them from the mobile app yet, you can browse them from there, and they're hoping to get the functionality in soon.

Obviously, this might not appeal to everybody -- there are lots of iPhone users out there (including me) who aren't so keen yet on sharing their location with everyone they know every time they leave the house. But it is interesting to note that this is a burgeoning mini-industry, brought on almost completely by the ubiquity of the iPhone and its up-and-coming competitors. Any time you have more than a few apps vying for a growing audience, you're going to end up with some interesting innovation. It'll be fun to see what kinds of ideas Gowalla and its competitors can come up with.

The other week I said a lot of good things about Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, but one of the great things about games on the iPhone is that they don't all have to be epic masterpieces. Such is the case with the free Bankshot [iTunes link], which is a simple and fun one-hit game that was created in just 36 hours: the only goal is to bounce a little neon "puck" into a target that gets placed on different sides of the screen. It's fun, it's easy, and it's the perfect kind of game to just pull up and play when you only need a few minutes of distraction.

The game does have a little bit of hidden depth (you can score more points by bouncing the puck off the walls more times before it hits the target, but if you go more than four bounces, the game is over), but essentially, this is an addictive little pick-up-and-play game (and it's even OpenFeint enabled, if you're into that sort of thing). The game is free with ads, but they were never distracting or in the way. If you want a quick arcade hit to play during your next few iPhone breaks, definitely pick it up.

This one might require a little patience to watch, but those interested will be rewarded well, I think. The footage above is from an Apple Store in Toyko's Ginza shopping district, where none other than Keita Takahashi showed up to demo his latest iPhone game. Who's Keito Takahashi? He's the gaming auteur behind Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, two of the weirdest yet most fascinating games of the last decade or so, and he's bringing Noby Noby Boy to the iPhone.

Unfortunately, the above demo is in Japanese, but you can see what kinds of thinking is going into the game. It looks like he's completely revamping the game as a top-down physics-based version of the already very strange PS3 version. We would provide you with some more explanation, but it probably won't make things any clearer: the object of the game is to stretch out a little creature named BOY, and at the end of the level, your stretched length adds up with all the other players of the game online to another creature called GIRL, who is currently reaching out into the solar system. Told you it wouldn't help.

Nevertheless, it's pretty fascinating just to watch the four videos (start here) and see what weirdness transpires in the video -- there are some interesting touchscreen controls, and lots of quick physics on the items bouncing around the iPhone's screen. It's not that great as an actual game preview, but that might not matter much anyway: Takahashi said a while back that whenever this weird monstrosity does release on Apple's handheld, "price-wise might be like free." We can't wait to see it.

[via Panic]

Transmission, the venerable BitTorrent client for Mac, has just received an overhaul in the form of a "huge listen-to-the-users release." From the release notes the following enhancements are included:

• Added support for magnet links
• Added support for trackerless torrents
• Redesigned tracker inspector tab
• Quick Look restored for Snow Leopard users

According to the release notes there are over 100 changes that have been sourced from the users. Transmission is free and open source and can be downloaded here.

Rhythm Racer [iTunes link] is an interesting take on the growing music/rhythm genre, and while it shows some interesting promise, it's currently a little too thin to become a full-fledged obsession. The basic idea is that you're controlling a ship down a track with different colored orbs on it, and as you hit the orbs in sequence, they play music -- basically, it's Guitar Hero where you're driving an accelerometer-controlled spaceship rather than playing a guitar. And that central mechanic of the game is fun -- you move faster the more orbs you hit, there are occasionally ramps to jump off of, and at its best, the game has that "just one more try" feeling that keeps you addicted.

The problem? There's only one track to play. The game is free (and the track is good -- it's actually a song by former Nerf Herder Perry Gripp, who's been doing amazing things with his Song of the Week site), but one track? The idea is that, by paying a little more via in-app purchase, you can pick up more to play, but there's still only one other track to pay for right now in the game. It's too bad; while the game is definitely worth the free download, they don't even have in-app purchases for you to follow up with quite yet.

Hopefully, that's easily fixed (and hopefully we'll get at least a few more tracks to play through soon). As it is, the game is more sort of a demo -- a demo for what seems like a fun game, but a demo nonetheless.

Location-based social networking on the iPhone is a tough game to play, apparently -- the popular Yelp app [iTunes link] has recently updated to version 4.0, and along with a friend finder, hooks to Facebook and Twitter, and an updated version of their augmented reality Monocle feature, they've added the ability to "check-in" from locations around whatever city you live in. When you visit a great pizzeria, for example, you can send a ping out that says you've been there along with what you think of it. This replicates the functionality of another app, Foursquare [iTunes link], which is steadily building up its own social network prowess (you may have seen the "mayor of" tweets lately -- that's Foursquare doing its thing, either on iPhone or through a desktop interface).

In this case, the imitation isn't appreciated -- Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley tore apart Yelp's new feature in a recent tumblr post, both comparing the two extremely similar "check-in" systems to each other and claiming that Yelp "copied the wrong stuff," and that Foursquare is already working on improvements to their own system.

Which is the good news for us consumers, as competition tends to breed some great innovation. Personally, I haven't been too interested in an app that helps me broadcast my location everywhere just yet, but there's no question that these are popular apps and their popularity is growing. We'll have to see what new features Foursquare has planned and how Yelp eventually responds.

Here's a cool app we haven't mentioned yet here on TUAW -- SlipCover is an app that will help you put together some beautiful icons for your Mac's media files, from DVDs to video games or anything else that needs a cool looking icon. The app itself revolves around "case" files, which are basically templates like the Blu-ray, PS3, and Xbox 360 branding on their DVD cases, to which you can then drag and drop other media on to (for example, put a Watchmen movie poster on a Blu-ray "case," and you've got an icon that looks exactly like a Blu-ray version of the DVD), and then your media files on there to apply the icon automatically. No more hunting around through file names or weird previews of your media -- you can just browse through a Delicious Library-style set of thumbnails to find whatever you want to watch.

Now, you may say that you just get all your media from iTunes, and that those come with thumbnails and covers already, and that's a fair point. But for those of us who obtain media from all over the place, it's nice to have a way to make it look all professional and purty. Slipcover is a free download over on their website.

[via Lifehacker]

I'm not sure if this is a fascinating peek at the way we're wired or an obvious conclusion based on reason, but I'll let you decide. Despite the fact that they seem to be polar opposites on Internet forums and comment sections, Android, Blackberry, and iPhone users all end up using mostly the same apps. That's according to an "app discovery service" over on Facebook called Mplayit, which tracked 42,000 visitors and the apps they preferred for a set of "genres." Turns out that for the various categories, the same cross-platform apps tended to be the most popular on the different platforms. Evernote topped the charts for Lists and Notes, Shazam and Pandora were on all three lists for music, and apps like Yelp and Facebook sat high on the chart for multiple platforms. In the end, an app is an app is an app, "app"arently, and it doesn't really matter which platform you're using it on.

There were a few difference of course -- in the "Utilities" section, things were different for each platform. Bump is the most popular for iPhone, Google Goggles was most popular on Android, and Vlingo won on Blackberry. As far as I know, with the possible exception of Bump, those are all platform-exclusive apps. But in general, if an app is available on multiple platforms, a popular app on one platform means it'll be popular on the other. Good to know both for developers (a hit in one place means a hit somewhere else, too) and for consumers: next time you choose a smartphone, the apps probably won't matter as much as the hardware features.

Mozilla has dropped a Firefox 3.6 release candidate which you can download and install it now if you want to try the browser's latest and greatest. It's a big, significant update, including many bug fixes, built-in Persona support, fullscreen for open native video, and an improved automatic form fill. For developers, there's even more updates, including support for the HTML5 File API, and new features in CSS and DOM as well.

Despite the recent emergence of Chrome and the continuing popularity of Safari, Firefox remains my browser of choice. It's good to see that the latest release pushes the envelope. Of course, it's fine to wait for the official version, but if you want to get your hands on the new features right away, here's your chance. Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate is a free download as always.

As we wait on the threshold of 10.6.3, there are still some hiccups and interesting issues in Snow Leopard that might make your life a bit more difficult (as Aron mentioned recently). In particular, getting your Apple Remote to behave properly with all the apps that it's supposed to control may be an exercise in frustration.

In the case of my unibody MacBook Pro, I couldn't get the machine to recognize any remote commands at all - even after verifying that the batteries were fresh (by looking for infrared flashes via the iSight camera) and trying to pair/unpair the remote. I wasn't alone; there's a five-page thread on Apple's discussion boards detailing a litany of woes with 10.6.x and remote use, with many reports of Front Row overriding remote commands destined for other apps like EyeTV.

Good news, though: even if the upcoming OS update doesn't clear up the remote issues, there's a fine & free solution right now. The Candelair driver, provided by the developers of Remote Buddy, installs simply and works like a charm. You can disable/enable the driver via the provided preference pane, or activate a legacy compatibility mode to help old apps behave as expected. For me, I'm just happy that my remote is working again.

We know the Magic Mouse is selling well. I was one of the many who was pretty excited when I heard about it and grabbed one the first week it was out. When I actually went to use it, however, it was a major downer. On my Mac Pro the tracking was erratic, slow, and pretty unusable. I wasn't the only person reporting this. I put the mouse on my shelf of forgotten tech until a friend told me about MagicPrefs.

MagicPrefs is a free utility that runs from your menu bar and fixes the problems some Mac Pros had with the Magic Mouse.

This app goes way beyond fixing the tracking speed. This little utility allows you to assign actions to two, three and 4 finger clicks. Also to one, two, three and four finger taps. You can define two and three finger swipes for left, right, up and down. You can even define drag and pinch movements on the surface of the mouse. Pre-defined actions include control of Spaces, Dashboard, Expose, Quicklook and many others. You can create, load and save presets as well. Some of the gestures are a bit difficult and take some practice, and the app warns you which ones might be tricky.

There is even a real time display on the app that lets you test different combinations of motions to see how they will work. For people who have a Magic Mouse that works great, you will love the power of this app. If yours was a dog with your Apple hardware, this app may fix all that.

The developer says the app will eventually wind up as a preference pane, and that it will always remain free.

The app requires OS X 10.5 or above. The price is very, very right, and the app fixes a lot of the weaknesses in the Magic Mouse. I say, go for it, and let us know in comments how it works for you.