The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

We covered Jason Rohrer's Primrose when it first came out -- the creator of Passage, a critically-acclaimed indie game, had taken his first steps onto the iPhone with an abstract puzzle game, and in this latest interview with Edge, Rohrer says he's on the iPhone to stay. He says that when he first moved from strictly art/indie games to more commercial development on the iPhone, he worried that he was selling out: he wasn't a fan of cell phones at all or any Chinese-made gadgets sold by American companies, and yet the iPhone's platform seemed most "palatable" to him in terms of making games and a little money from them.

And yet he says the iPhone still has pros and cons -- even in an "open source, free software" world, Apple's system offers a choice: you can buy a packaged-up version of the software and throw a little money back to the developer (not a ton -- he says you've still got a better chance at making a living from Vegas than you do from the App Store), or you can still try building and installing your own version on your iPhone. As an open-source developer selling apps on the App Store, he says, "you're charging for the service and convenience, not the content."

Still, he echoes the sentiments of lots of other developers: "There is no quality filter, except for the whims of the masses." Apple's App Store offers up an intriguing system for many indie developers like Rohrer, who want to earn a little money for their games without setting up all of the complexity and burdens of a more traditional publishing channel, but it's still tough to keep from getting lost in the mix.

iPhone Savior featured this short video clip this morning by Scott Patrick showing how to use an inexpensive Contour iPhone case and some common hardware to make an iPhone tripod mount.

There are two impressive points about this mount; first, by using the Contour case, you know that the iPhone is going to be held securely (my wife used one for over a year and never had it inadvertently open up), and second, Scott made it so it will work with any standard tripod camera mount head.

With the tripod Scott is using, it would be simple to flip the camera 90° to put it into a landscape configuration. This should work well for both still photography with any iPhone or video work with the iPhone 3GS.

[Thanks to TUAW reader Michael for pointing us to this video]

When it comes to adventure and travel, who could possibly know more than National Geographic Adventure magazine?

The magazine's website has regular features about techie toys and tools, so it was no surprise that blogger Steve Casimiro would write a post featuring his choices for the top twenty travel apps for iPhone. Some of his choices, such as HearPlanet, FlightTrack Pro, the Lonely Planet Phrasebooks, and World Customs [clicks open iTunes] aren't surprising, while others (Packing, Room) are interesting apps I wouldn't have even thought to try.

Of course, all of us have our own favorite travel apps. I couldn't imagine going on a trip anywhere in the world without Geocaching, and I like the free TripIt app better than the one that comes with FlightTrack Pro. I now have Brushes with me everywhere I go to capture quick sketches, and what's travel photography without being able to take panorama shots with Pano or 3D pictures with 3D Camera?

What are some of the apps that you can't live without when you're traveling? Leave your comment below.

"A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." - William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

If we applied Shakespeare's logic to today's digital age, then it would also mean that watching mis-tagged or untagged videos on your Apple device (be it a Mac, iPhone, iPod or Apple TV) would be just as enjoyable. Okay, you got me, they'd probably be just as good. But this doesn't mean you're excused from tagging your videos appropriately.

First, a bit of background. The vast majority of videos purchased from the iTunes store, as well as "digital copy" (iPod/iPhone pre-formatted videos that are sometimes included on DVDs and Blu-Ray discs), will come pre-tagged. So, the situation for those in this camp (myself included) is peachy, especially when using an Apple TV. Your videos show up on the screen screen with proper titles, season and episode numbers, actors, and descriptions. Just the way Steve likes 'em.

But what if you already own the DVD and want a version for your iTunes library? For those of you with the time and patience to rip an MPEG-4 version (and believe me, this takes some patience, especially if you use H.264 encoding) of your favorite videos, a HandBrake-MetaX martini make tagging your videos a bit more of a pleasurable experience - as if it wasn't fun enough already.

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Fluent Mobile has released an innovative news oriented iPhone app that may be a game changer. The Fluent Mobile app aggregates mobile ready content from multiple content providers. According to M:Metrics in January of this year, mobile news sites were visited over 63 million times and the number is growing. This is a huge market.

Currently 1.5% of all web content is Google optimized and nicely formatted for mobile devices and the number is increasing. Fluent Mobile takes advantage of this content and aggregates it, creating a news portal with content from Bloomberg for business, ESPN for sports, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox News and USA Today, among others, for news. Upon launch, content will be provided by 32 separate sources and more will be added as relevant sites become mobile enhanced. For the first time an app provides one-stop shopping for news.

The information is organized well, allowing you to choose from a number of categories including U.S. News, Entertainment, Sports, Business, and Travel.

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Skype (iTunes link) has been updated to 1.1, which brings it some new features making it more closely resemble its desktop sibling. So, what's new? Well, there's now support for Skype voicemail (subscription needed) and SMS text messaging.

However, SMS texting is not bidirectional. Which means that you can send SMS texts, but not receive them. And while a dialog box states that sent SMS texts will show up as sent from the sender's Skype screen name, in my case it displayed the "999-99" caller ID that typically accompanies calls from a Skype-based client. Perhaps that's because I don't have a SkypeIn number?

The 1.1 update also provides additional language support as well as more help when dialing phones.

Not too long ago we told you about an artist creating a cover for the New Yorker magazine using a paint program on the iPhone. Now an Australian photographer has won an award for a photo he took on his iPhone.

Steve Turner created a rather striking collection of images he put together, and manipulated to create a print that caught the eye of the judges at the Photo Marketing Association show in Sydney.

I tried to contact the photographer, and we had a brief email back and forth. He's traveling so I don't have too many details and the time difference between us has made communications spotty. His messages, of course, are all coming via iPhone. Steve says he has about $200,000 worth of camera equipment but loves shooting on the iPhone. He used CameraBag for the effects, and scaled the photos up on his Mac at his studio. If you go to Steve's web site you'll see the photo pop up. It's the photo with 9 small images and a larger image of a car. His non- iPhone work is pretty impressive as well. My guess is the image was taken with the older 2MP camera, allowing for time to submit his photo for consideration, but it is impressive.

There's just no predicting how creative people can be even if the equipment is not top notch. As I remember learning some years ago from an instructor in a photography course when I was complaining about my little camera, 'If Ansel Adams uses my camera, he gets great pictures. If I get his camera, not so much.' Great lesson for us all, and congrats Steve.

Thanks to photographer Gavin Blue for the tip

Looks like Stack for Jailbreak has some new improvements. For those of you unfamiliar with the application, Stack adds a quick-launch menu directly to your iPhone dock, letting you expand your dock space to hold all your favorite apps. With it you can add 16 items (using grid view) or 5 items (in fan view) for easy access in each stack. And stacks are not just limited to the dock. You can add stacks anywhere in the home screen as well.

As this video shows, you can now rename your stacks as well as use drag and drop editing. So you can create a 'Games' stack, an 'Internet' stack, and so forth. Removing items from a stack is just as easy as adding them. Just drag them out from the stack for an Apple-standard "puff of smoke" animation.

Stack, which is developed by iPhone expert Steven Troughton-Smith is donor-ware. Although not ready for public release, he has regularly been seeding early alpha builds to people who have donated to the project. But as you can see, it's making great progress.

Stack is a jailbreak-only product as Apple does not permit this kind of OS-based enhancement in App Store. That's a pity, because the relative difficulty and fear of jailbreaking keeps this kind of groundbreaking software away from the general public. It's an enhancement that Apple really should have built into the iPhone -- and hopefully someday will.

On June 29, 2007, Apple and AT&T released the iPhone for $600 to crowded stores throughout the United States. A whole lot has changed in the iPhone-world in just 2 short years. The 1.0 software is just a distant memory, and looking back I'm a little surprised how limited the original iPhone was at release. I thought for the 2-year anniversary, we could take a little walk down memory lane and see how far things have come.

Apple announced the iPhone at Macworld in January 2007, explicitly stating they were doing it because otherwise the FCC would have outed them. Cingular/AT&T was named as the exclusive carrier. The phone would cost $600, which was a completely unsubsidized price.

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