Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

functionality posts

Filed under: Gaming, Freeware, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Call of Duty for the iPhone will track your World at War kills

Activision has released Call of Duty for the iPhone... but don't get too excited, it's not exactly what you think. The first-person shooter hasn't quite been ported yet. Instead, they've released a "Call of Duty: World at War companion," which instead lets you track the activity on the popular World War II shooter game. You can track all of your ingame stats, and even follow your friends in the game and what they've done with their characters as well. And the app also comes with a news browser, to keep you up to date on the latest map releases and updates with the game. It's completely free, though you of course need a Call of Duty: World of War game for Xbox 360 or Playstation to actually get anything out of it.

In that sense, this app isn't quite so notable for what it is (World at War wasn't nearly as popular as Call of Duty 4, and this app is specifically about Treyarch's game), as what it portends: with Blizzard releasing their Armory app and a few other game companies releasing "companion" apps like this, we could be in for a very interesting holiday videogame season this year. Ports or translations of games don't do much to sell copies of the real games (as they tend to be either too similar or too different to the parent games), but "companions" like this can represent added functionality, and thus can do a lot to help and promote games on other platforms (imagine a Halo ODST app that sent you a push notification when your friend was playing or got a higher XP score than you did). This is far from the last we'll see of "companion" apps like this.

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Freeware, Leopard

Leopard killed these freeware apps?

Here's an interesting list of applications supposedly killed by Leopard. There's no question that there's a huge amount of functionality in Leopard that was taken care of in Tiger by third-party apps (and this is just a list of freeware-- commenters pointed out last week that Jisho was made almost obsolete by the Japanese dictionary included with Leopard), but I'm not so sure this list is all it promises to be. No amount of tweaking to Spotlight will ever replace Quicksilver, and as good as iChat has gotten, I still like Adium for its easy customization.

And apps like CenterStage, who used to have a one goal (an open source Front Row replacement), have now been able to spread out and become more their own program instead of worrying about Apple's missing functionality.

As always, the best app for the job depends on both the job and the person doing it, so there are probably more than a few places where Leopard stepped up to fill functionality that users used to trust third-party software for. But it's a stretch at least to say Leopard killed these apps-- replication of one function now built into the OS doesn't mean all the apps other functions are useless.

[Via Fake Steve]

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools

Packrat can now edit Backpack notes, too


I don't mean to post an update every time the developer of Packrat sneezes, but this one is for those anxiously waiting for editing functionality (including when offline) with their Backpack account. I just noticed on Packrat's product page that the feature list now says: "New: edit your lists and notes." Sure enough, it works just like the lists update I mentioned a week ago.

Packrat offers a free demo, and a license will run you a mere $24.95.

Filed under: Software, Cool tools, Productivity

BuddyPop makes Address Book useful

Continuing on my quest for apps that make me go "that should've been in OS X," I found BuddyPop at the ever-useful Hawk Wings. BuddyPop makes Address Book a bit more accessable and useful by offering a searchable pop-up window for your contacts. A user-definable keyboard shortcut calls the highly-configurable pop-up window, and various pieces of contact info are linked to actual applications. Clicking on a phone number can call the contact using Vonage or Skype, while clicking an email address opens a message addressed to the contact. This is the kind of super-handy stuff that really should have been built into operating systems years ago, in my humble opinion. BuddyPop costs 10 € (10 euros) which the Unit Converter widget tells me is just under $12 (USD).

Like Tim Gaden over at Hawk Wings, however, Quicksilver does all this stuff for me already, and much more. But for a lot of people who simply need quick access to contacts and not all the (sometimes confusing) extras of Quicksilver, I'm sure BuddyPop is a great, functional solution.

Tip of the Day

Want to drag a file to another folder and copy it instead of moving it? Press the Option key when you drag that file and it'll be duplicated rather than moved entirely.


Follow us on Twitter!
 TUAW [Cafepress]

Featured Galleries

DNC Macs
Macworld 2008 Keynote
Macworld 2008 Build-up
Google Earth for iPhone
Podcaster
Storyist 2.0
AT&T Navigator Road Test
Bento for iPhone 1.0
Scrabble for iPhone
Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer Briefcase
Apple Vanity Plates
Apple booth Macworld 07
WorldVoice Radio
Quickoffice for iPhone 1.1.1
Daylite 3.9 Review
DiscPainter
Mariner Calc for iPhone
2009CupertinoBus
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
MLB.com At Bat 2009
Macworld Expo 2007 show floor

 

More Apple Analysis

AOL Radio TUAW on Stitcher