Is the App Store working just right? That's what Mike Schramm wondered the other day after this Newsweek article appeared, discussing the state of publishing apps on App Store. Tomorrow, we'll be hosting a live chat with real App Store developers, both successful and struggling. Please join us. You'll have a chance to hear about the current state of iPhone development and ask your questions about whether App Store is a gold rush, a business opportunity, or a disappointment.

(Full disclosure, I was interviewed for the Newsweek article, although I do not appear in the article itself.)

This afternoon I had the opportunity to talk to Jason Citron and Eros Resmini of Aurora Feint, the company behind the OpenFeint social gaming platform. At 360iDev, Aurora Feint announced the availability of OpenFeint 2.1 to the developers on hand, as well as touting that over 200 active games using OpenFeint are now on sale in the App Store.

Citron noted that there are about 500 indie developers, like those in attendance at 360iDev in Denver this week, who are working on other gaming titles using the OpenFeint platform. OpenFeint 2.1 is available immediately for download at www.openfeint.com, and information on the open and free business model for the platform is on the site as well.

OpenFeint is being used in some of the top games in the App Store right now, including geoDefense Swarm (which debuted at #2 when it launched), Rope 'n Fly 2 (currently in the top 50), and Apple featured games Unify and Above & Beyond. The platform provides a way for developers to add social gaming elements to their work without reinventing the wheel, as standard APIs are used instead.

TUAW will have more news from 360iDev tomorrow, so stay tuned!

In February of last year I did a two-paragraph writeup on an interesting development in higher education, noting that Abilene Christian University was doling out iPhones and iPod touches to incoming first-year students. I didn't, at the time, have many details on the goals of the program or its implementation, I just gathered that there was a good deal of planning and thought behind the initiative. Little did I know that, over a year later, I'd be talking to the minds behind the program and finding out exactly how it went.

I recently got a chance to follow up with George Saltsman (Faculty Development), Scott Perkins (Director of Research) and William (Bill) Rankin (Director of Educational Innovation), meeting up for a multiparty video chat which revealed the excitement these guys have for what they are seeing become the platform for education: the iPhone. We talked for well over an hour, and their intensity and enthusiasm never dwindled. I got a great look at what they planned, how they did it, and how it turned out after the first year. Read on to see how the iPhone (and the iPod touch) has played a role in creating a new model for higher education at ACU.

I had a moment to talk to Technical Director Christina Wick at WWDC. She told us about the Mapquest app, plus a cool lifestreaming feature coming soon to AIM. Christina was featured in a video by Apple about developing on the iPhone, and it's clear AOL has embraced the platform, with several apps performing exceptionally well on the store. We've covered AIM, DailyFinance and MapQuest in the past, but there are others as well (and we think a certain blog will get one someday...). Christina's team has been working hard not just on the iPhone, but polishing up the old AOL client for Mac too in a push called "Back to the Mac" -- it has been completely re-written and is much more Mac friendly than... well, it just wasn't Mac friendly at all 3 years ago. We can't wait to see what apps and desktop software her team releases in the future.

Note: AOL is also the corporate parent of TUAW & Weblogs Inc.

Have you ever wondered what goes on "behind the curtain" at TUAW? Podcaster extraordinaire Chuck Joiner is the man behind the popular Mac-related podcasts MacVoices, MacNotables, and the MacJury. Chuck recently spent some time with Mike Rose, Christina Warren, David Winograd, and myself discussing the past, present, and future of The Unofficial Apple Weblog.

The episode has just gone live, and you can listen to us by clicking this link to MacVoices or by subscribing to the podcast [opens iTunes].

A long, long time ago (May of 2008), The Neat Company introduced their Neat Receipts for Mac scanner / software combo. We wrote about it here on TUAW, and even gave away a few of the scanners.

Fast forward to Macworld Expo 2009, and Neat Receipts is no longer an "Advance Release". Neat has unbundled the software from the scanner, and calls the resulting scanning software and digital filing system NeatWorks for Mac. It's available for US$59.95, while the version with the Neat Mobile Scanner is still available for US$229.95.

The application still provides the core ability to scan in receipts and capture information from them for searching and totalizing in a spreadsheet or Quicken. NeatWorks now also scans business cards, and is synchronized with Address Book -- scan in a card, make any necessary edits, then drag the item from the NeatWorks inbox to the Address Book. Finally, NeatWorks creates searchable PDFs for storage to help you build a paperless office.

I spoke wth Mark Gollin of Neat during the final day of Macworld Expo. To see a demo of NeatWorks in action and hear about possible future directions for the app, view the video by clicking the Read More link below.

If there's one game company that I really like, it's Freeverse. These guys have come up with some great iPhone games like Flick Sports Bowling, Flick Sports Fishing, and Wingnuts Motochaser, and they have even more titles in the works.

On Friday, January 9th, I had the opportunity to talk with Brian Akaka of Freeverse about the upcoming apps from the company, including Flick Sports Baseball, Slotz Racer, Days of Thunder, and Roads of Ruin. In particular, the Flick Baseball title looks like it will be a winner, with very detailed rendering of players as well as accelerometer-based gestures for batting and throwing.

Brian noted that if Macworld Expo does happen in 2010, Freeverse won't have a booth -- like Apple, they feel that the cost of exhibiting at the Expo could be better spent in product development and other marketing.

Enjoy the ride as Brian takes us through both the existing and upcoming games from Freeverse. You can find the video in the second half of this post.

This is Julie Rodriguez's first Macworld Expo, but it won't be her last. Coming all the way from Fargo, North Dakota, she stopped and talked with us briefly at Moscone's south hall, and told us about what she saw, what she liked, and why she'll be back next year.

"Some [companies] I've never heard of before, so that's actually why I was here: to find these people I just can't find otherwise," she said. "I'm here to find these little vendors that I don't hear of elsewhere, and get a chance to get some hands-on with the products."

In appreciation, TUAW gave Julie a brand-spankin'-new TUAW t-shirt. Thanks, Julie!

Simply stated, it's the fastest tablet computer on the planet, and it's a Mac.

Axiotron surprised everyone in 2007 by demoing a tablet Mac, the Modbook, made by transferring the inner workings of a stock Apple MacBook to a new chassis with a touch / pen interface. At Macworld Expo 2008, the Modbook actually shipped. Now Axiotron has raised the bar for all tablet devices by announcing the Modbook Pro, a new model made with the 15.4" MacBook Pro electronics.

I talked with Axiotron's CEO and Chief Engineer Andreas Haas this afternoon. Andreas was with Apple's Newton group and said that he always wanted to get back to a pen-based device. The new device is impressively fast and powerful, and Andreas was willing to show us the insides of the new box. Enjoy the video after the break.

Update: One of our readers asked about VESA mounting points for the Modbook. We believe there are holes in the Modbook to allow mounting, but we'll double-check with the product managers and let you know shortly...

If you were one of the many people who were expecting Apple to announce some sort of Mac mini-based home media server yesterday, you weren't alone. We talked about another media server solution, HP's MediaSmart Server, a small Mac-compatible device that can be used for Time Machine backups, iTunes and iPhoto library storage, and more.

I visited with Rick Spillers, HP's Mac-connect Worldwide Product Manager, at the HP booth yesterday to talk about HP iPrint, printer and scanner solutions, and other products from their Mac group. Also on the video is Glen Roberts, who discusses the MediaSmart and how it works well in homes with both Macs and PCs.

The video is after the break.

Kensington is well-known in the Mac and iPhone space as a provider of peripherals. At Macworld Expo 2009, they've introduced a ton of new products, many designed to help you (in the words of Jim Morrison) keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel.

I visited with Olantha Boeker of Kensington on Tuesday to see what's new from Kensington. There's the beautiful SlimBlade Trackball for those who prefer using trackballs, the new Bluetooth Hands-Free Visor Car Kit, some new wireless mice, power peripherals, and more.

Check out the video on the next page for more details, and visit the Kensington website to see what's new for '09.

Rolando has been a long time coming -- we first heard about the game on a tip directly from Simon Oliver, the game's creator himself, while he was working with an unofficial iPhone development kit part time on a little physics-based puzzle game. And now, six months later, he's working full-time as an iPhone dev, his little game has expanded into a full-fledged story-driven platforming game with more hype and expectation behind it than perhaps any other App Store release, published by one of the biggest companies to come out of the iPhone gaming scene so far. Not to mention that the App Store itself has grown from a crazy experiment Apple thought up to distribute iPhone software, to a multimillion-dollar enterprise.

So today, on the release of one of the first games that really got us excited about the potential of the iPhone as a gaming device (yes, you can buy it right now if you want), we sit down again with Simon Oliver for an exclusive interview, this time to talk about the road he's traveled over the past few months, and how far both he and his game about little rolling "Rolandos" has come. He talked with us about the Ngmoco partnership and how it helped him as a developer, the viability of Rolando as a $9.99 game, and the future of both what he's working on and what the App Store needs as a gaming platform.

Happy Thanksgiving! I'm super thankful that I have been able to spend the last 13 months blogging for TUAW and interacting with all of you. On a more superficial note, I am also thankful for my Macs and all the cool stuff Apple products enable me to do.

The newest member of my Apple family is the Apple TV. Yesterday, I had the opportunity to talk to Avner and Andrew from boxee, the company behind the social media player of the same name. Boxee released an update earlier this week, but the next big version is set for December 4, 2008. Avner and Andrew were nice enough to answer my questions, share some details about the future of boxee and best of all, provide a link so that TUAW readers can join in the fun! If you want to try boxee on your Mac or Apple TV, enter your e-mail address at http://boxee.tv/tuaw and you should get an invite within 24 hours.

In the comments, on Twitter and via e-mail, many of you have asked questions about boxee, its limitations and its future. I took these questions and comments to Avner and Andrew, and here's what I got back.

On .MKV support for Apple TV

Boxee supports the .MKV container and if you are using a Mac mini, MacBook, iMac or Mac Pro, boxee can play back 1080p .mkv files without a problem. Apple TV is limited by its processor and GPU, and it maxes out playing back 420p and 720p .MKV content. I don't usually deal with .MKV, but a quick Google search turned up a lot of information about programs that can be used to convert files. Apparently, the PS3 has this same limitation.

Hulu performance

A number of users have complained about the quality of boxee's Hulu playback. I also noticed a decrease in quality after the latest update. The update on December 4 is going to address this. The big problem, for Apple TV owners, is once again the limitations of the hardware. Seeing as Apple TV's can stream HD content from iTunes (when downloading anyway), I think this is something that can be greatly improved, but it might take some time. Boxee is still in alpha and the goal is to enter beta sometime next year, so while I think the fact that Hulu is supported at all is fantastic, the Apple TV experience might take some time to fully evolve. If you are using a Mac for boxee playback, your performance will be much better.

On June 23rd an announcement was made at the Marketcircle Blog which revealed that an iPhone companion to their business productivity application, Daylite, was being developed. The news has been greeted with great enthusiasm from current Daylite users, and we got a chance to talk to Marketcircle's president, AJ, about their mobile development plans.

First, for those not familiar with Daylite, it's what AJ refers to as a Business Productivity Manager. "It's more than a PIM," AJ stated, "it's more than groupware. Our premise is something called a Productivity Pyramid. The bottom layer is tasks, notes, files, meetings, urls, et cetera. The second layer is people: contacts, your companies and users. The top layer is what we call objectives, which is projects and opportunities." Daylite is geared towards helping small business -- ranging from one to fifty people -- move forward.

Very recently, Marketcircle released a new version of Daylite which integrates with the iWork suite. Daylite can also integrate with Mail.app and supports Sync Services for iCal and Address Book syncing.

The developers at Marketcircle were receiving constant requests for mobile applications for Palm, Blackberry, etc. AJ says that, at that point, the richness of data provided by Daylite didn't sync well with the available platforms. "And no offense to those platforms," he went on, "but they're quite ugly." All of that was "until we got the iPhone."

Screensteps, the software documentation generator we've come to love, has reached an official 2.1 status and has been released into the wild. Well, as wild as software documentation gets, anyway. This gem is a TUAW favorite and I'm personally very psyched about the new upload-to-blog feature, which has come a long way since we first announced it in the beta. The other 74 enhancements, changes and fixes can be found in the release notes.

You'd expect software in this genre to be well documented ... you won't be disappointed. In addition to the extensive, ScreenSteps-generated online manual, there are new screencasts available on the updated website. You can also grab a 30-day trial of ScreenSteps Pro on the download page. The Standard version is priced at $39.95 and the Pro version comes in at $59.95 (feature comparison).

I happened to have a chance to sit down with Trevor and Greg, creators of ScreenSteps, at WWDC. It's quite by coincidence that I managed to finish editing and uploading the video right before they let me know about the 2.1 release. Our chat is after the jump.

[Viddler Link|QuickTime version]