iPodTouch posts

Film fans everywhere will be sitting before their TVs on March 7th to catch the Academy Awards. Now, as with so many other things, there's an app for that.

Vanity Fair Magazine has produced the free Oscars app called Vanity Fair Hollywood. Users can submit their predictions for winners, browse photo galleries, share comments and prediction results via Facebook and more. Of course, you can chat in real time during the show itself from within the app and watch trailers of the nominated films. I'm not an Oscars fan, but I often fire up Twitter when watching my beloved Red Sox because the accompanying chat makes the experience more fun.

For more iPhone fun on Oscar night, check out these apps:

• The Envelope (Free) Try and predict the winners and share results with your friends.
• Awards: Oscar Edition ($0.99) Search for winners and nominees in all categories quickly, search award histories and get up-to-date information and results.
• The Adademy Awards Bible ($2.99) lists all 850 Academy Award winners, organized by name, title, category, etc. It's quite the mobile tome for Oscar bufffs.
• Oscar Pool 2010 ($0.99) Invite your friends to bet on who will win. Create a profile, add photos and more.

[Via TechCrunch]

By default, movies and TV shows in the iPod portion of the iPhone and iPod touch play in landscape view. The biggest change with respect to video orientation came about with iPhone OS 2.0, which provided the option for landscape-right viewing (that is, with the volume and silent/vibrate buttons facing up). While most videos could, and should, be viewed in landscape, there are times that call for a portrait perspective -- for example, when placing your iPhone into a dock, which is what I do when working out.

Getting your iPhone to play a movie or TV show in portrait mode requires a simple change in the video's tag, from TV Show or Movie to Podcast. Simply right-click on the file and select "get info "(or you could use the Command-I shortcut). Then, in the "Media Kind" section within the "Options" tab of the video, select Podcast. Now, the videos will show up in both the Podcasts and Videos section of the iPod portion on your iPhone.

Obviously, this isn't something you'd want to do with every movie or TV show in your library. So, to revert the file back to its old self, you'd want to follow the same process and change the video back to a TV show or movie.

App Genie [iTunes link] takes a lot of little apps and combines them into one for U.S. $0.99. Even if you only use 4 or 5 that's a good price. Some of the apps require web access, some require the 3GS iPhone, and the weather app only works in the U.S.

Here are a few I found useful... and some not so much:

Product Search uses your camera to scan barcodes on 3GS phones. It worked well, and linked the barcode to products with price comparisons. There are apps that only do this that sell for more than this app.

Language Translator. Type in one language. Translate to another. This app needs web connectivity. You can email the results which is a nice feature. There are dozens of languages. My check of German looked good. My Icelandic isn't so hot, but if you need this function, it appears to work well.

There are all kind of Country Facts, i.e. population of Angola or ethnic group distribution in Canada. Lots of facts, in a handy place.

Then there is Amazing Facts. Tap it and you'll get some piece of obscure information. Tap it again and you get more.

There's a Unit Converter, a Tip Calculator (natch). a Magnifier that lets you zoom in digitally with your camera. There is a Battery Level meter for your iPhone with voice, that gives you the percentage of battery on your iPhone, talk time, and estimates for how long you can play video or audio files. It also provides an estimate of how long you can browse the web.

There is a nice Checklists app with templates for a variety of activities like shopping, trip planning and house chores. Each checklist has sub items, and those are reasonably complete and helpful, or you can create your own.

There's a Where am I? app that shows your location on a Google Map, which I think is reaching since it's already available on your phone.

There is an up to date Currency Converter. It's web based, and handy if you are on the road a lot out of your native country.

For less than a dollar this is a great app, even though it may duplicate some functionality you already have on your iPhone or iPod touch. I thought the product scanner app alone was worth $0.99. The rest is gravy.

Some screen shots below:

Apple has upgraded the iPhone and iPod Touch software to version 3.1.3 which includes the following changes:

• Improved accuracy of reported battery level on the iPhone 3GS
• Resolves issue where third-party apps would not launch in some cases
• Fixes a bug which may cause an app to crash when using the Japanese Kana keyboard.

The software update is compatible with all versions of the iPhone and iPod Touch and is available now through iTunes.

If you read our little review of Typewar yesterday, you already know that it's an elegant and fun game for iPhone and iPod touch.

Now you have a chance to win one of ten copies of Typewar in a TUAW giveaway. All you need to do is leave us a comment telling us what your favorite typeface is.

The details of the giveaway are as follows:

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
• To enter, leave a comment telling us what your favorite typeface is.
• The comment must be left before Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Ten winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prize: One promo code for a copy of Typewar (Value: US$1.99)
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

Remember, if you're not a winner, you can still purchase the game from the App Store or play the online version. Good luck, and start studying the Font Book app to get higher scores.

Peripheral manufacturer Logitech has released a free app that lets you turn your iPhone or iPod touch (or probably even your iPad, if you're Stephen Colbert) into a wireless mouse and keyboard. The free TouchMouse app [iTunes Link] is perfect for those situations where you've connected your Mac to a TV and want a way to control it from the comfy confines of your favorite couch.

There are actually two components to TouchMouse; the iPhone app and the Logitech TouchMouse Server software. The latter comes in Mac OS X and Windows (XP, Vista, and 7) versions, and must be installed on the Mac or PC in order to "host" the virtual mouse and keyboard created by TouchMouse.

The "mouse" has three buttons for your "clicking" pleasure, and uses the majority of your iPhone screen as a touchpad. With the touch of a button, you can bring up a keyboard to type on your Mac or PC.

There are other apps that can do the same thing if you're not a fan of Logitech. Air Mouse Pro [US$1.99, iTunes Link] is probably the most powerful and popular Wi-Fi mouse in the App Store, while Rowmote Pro [US$4.99, iTunes Link] has a large and vocal fan following. If you're looking for free (and who isn't?), Logitech's TouchMouse app can give you a taste of remote control at absolutely no cost.

I first heard of Typewar from a Twitter pal who challenged me to beat his score on the web-based game. I was happy to see that my 26 years of Mac work had given me a fine eye for different fonts, as I was able to easily slam my buddy to the mat. If you've never played Typewar, it's deceptively simple -- you're shown a letter and asked to choose which typeface (i.e., "Optima" or "Gill Sans") is being displayed. Your score is calculated depending on the number of correct choices you make, and you're then compared to other people who are playing the game. Every once in a while, you get pushed to a new level and a new typeface is added to the game.

Now Typewar is available for the iPhone and iPod touch, so I decided to give the game a try in a portable format. It made the move well, and it's still a fun and challenging game. The app [US$1.99, iTunes Link] is from game inventor Eldarion and developers at Massively Overrated, and does an excellent job of moving the game to the iPhone.

You log into the game using your Twitter account or create an account to join in on the fun. The account allows you to keep track of your statistics, both so you can gain bragging rights against the rest of the Typewar world and know just how awesome your typeface identification skills really are. The game moves along quickly, with short delays at each level change as Typewar downloads a new typeface to your iPhone.

If you're a designer or just a Mac or iPhone user who likes typography, you'll love Typewar. Take a look at the gallery below for more pictures of the game in action.

Podcasting is an art best learned by experience. In order to be a good podcaster, it helps to have a good speaking voice, excellent topics to talk about (or fun guests), and equipment and software to assist you in recording and editing your podcast. It also helps to make a lot of mistakes, since you'll learn from them.

A while back, I wrote a post about how to use an iPhone 3GS, Garage Band, and Posterous to do "quick and easy" podcasting. While that method has the desired results -- your podcast has a feed that can be subscribed to, and it actually sounds pretty good -- it forces you to stick with one website on Posterous to create the feed. Many podcasts are associated with a website, so it's important in many cases to have the ability to upload a podcast file to an FTP server.

That, and my continuing quest to make my podcasting as easy as possible, is what got me interested in iPodcaStudio from Vault Multimedia. iPodcaStudio [$0.99, iTunes Link] is an iPhone app for recording, editing, and uploading your podcasts easily. While it isn't as full-featured as it could eventually be, iPodcaStudio is a good start at a complete podcast studio on your iPhone or iPod touch running iPhone OS 3.0 or greater.

I admit it. I am iPadded out. I am iTired. I am suffering from iBurnout. So it was with pleasure that I found an addicting little game for the iPhone and iPod touch called Crush the Castle [iTunes link]. It's a free medieval game where you use an ancient trebuchet to smash a variety of castles and the inhabitants standing nearby. Crush the Castle is physics based, so you have to swing a heavy projectile in the air and release at just the right point to flatten the castle off to the right of the trebuchet. After a few tries it gets damned addictive.

You have more than a dozen castles to crush in two different kingdoms. If you do well, you get some medals. If not, you are rebuked by the king. The animation is good, the physics seem accurate, and the sounds of castles coming down and soldiers screaming adds to the fun.

At each new level, the distance to the castles from your siege machine increases, so you really have to get the release point for the projectile just right.

Crush the Castle is a port of a Flash-based game which you can play for free online. If you really get into the mild mayhem, I'd suggest you look at the US$1.99 version [iTunes link] which has 90 levels, 10 types of ammo, and an editor so you can design your own castles before you knock them down.

Both versions get great reviews from users, and I'm in agreement. It's helping me forget all the endless iDebates over the iPad and work my iAggressions out on my iPhone.

The free version is no risk, except for the time you are sure to lose. Let me know if you get hooked too. Check out more screen shots below:

The iPhone wasn't designed from scratch to print things, but it can be done. I've reviewed some solutions in the past, including one that required you to run a small print server on your computer, which then directs your print jobs to any local printers. There are also some apps that print photos directly to printers.

I've just tried ePrint, which has some limitations, but gets the job done without any print servers. There are two versions of the app: The free version, ePrint Free [iTunes link] lets you print contacts, notes (more on that later), photo albums, and even brings up the camera so you can fire off a snapshot and print it immediately. The paid version [iTunes link], meanwhile, is U.S. $2.99 and adds the ability to print web pages as well

Setting up is easy. The app will find your printers in a snap if your phone is in Wi-Fi mode, and you are running Bonjour zero configuration setup on your network. You can also elect to enter the IP addresses of your printers as well. If your printer is color, and you send color images, you'll get them in color.

There are a few catches, however. To print a web page you either have to enter a URL for it in ePrint, or set a preference to bring up the last web page viewed. When you go to print notes in either app, it doesn't mean from your Notes app. ePrint can only print from the ePrint Notes app, although you can still copy and paste any text into it and print away. That's how I test-printed an email, because Apple doesn't allow any way to print an email or anything else directly. After doing a 'select all' on an email, I copied and pasted it into the ePrint Notes app, and it worked just fine.

If there has been an editorial theme about the iPad over the last few days, it's been this: it disappoints. Pundits and consumers alike have been underwhelmed by the name (I mean, seriously, does anyone in the product naming department use feminine hygiene products? How many of these devices are going to be named "Max"?), by the physical design (Can you say "Un-Ives-like Bezel" three times fast?), by the missing features (no camera, no multitasking, still no Flash), and so forth. And yet, despite these seeming flaws, I'm wildly enthusiastic about the tablet. I think part of that enthusiasm is attributable to the fact that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool netbook user... and we are the actual target audience for the device.

Steve Jobs laid out the raison d'etre for the tablet right at the start of his presentation. Apple was going after the part of the market that wanted light computing: more than a phone could deliver and less involved than a laptop demanded. Ergo, the netbook. The list of things in the middle column of his main slide reflected the exact way that netbook users operate: checking the mail, surfing the web, enjoying some media. That's exactly how my parents use their netbook, how my friends do, how I do. We're coffee-shop, hotel, and passenger-seat netbook users. To that, you can add city commuters and airline passengers among those who have driven the netbook craze.

Netbooks are great. They are small, they are insanely cheap, and they offer just enough functionality to get a few things done without jumping into serious work that would demand a full-sized screen and keyboard. I know approximately three badzillion netbook users, and with very few exceptions, they are all Windows users.

TUAW is commonly provided with not-for-resale licenses or promo codes to permit product evaluations and reviews. For more details, see our policy page.

• Note: As of testing the app about 20 minutes before the post is scheduled to go live, I found that pictures will upload, but it gets stuck on 'processing', eventually timing out. My uneducated guess is that their servers are temporarily down.

In just a few days, a UK couple will welcome their "iPhone baby."

After three years of unsuccessful attempts at pregnancy, the couple downloaded an unnamed fertility calculator app. The mother-to-be, who wishes to remain anonymous, entered her temperature and other information daily. The app then did the necessary calculations to determine when she'd be most fertile. Just two months later, the couple had a little one on the way.

Since the Telegraph story doesn't name the app the couple used, we've gathered a few with similar functionality:

1. Fertility and Pregnancy Calculator [iTunes link] Much like the app in the story, this one will help a woman determine when she's most fertile. After that, she can use it to track Jr.'s development. Free.
2. iFertility [iTunes link] iFertility helps women track their Basal Body Temperature and adds an option to share logs with her doctor either via the app or email. $1.99
3. Fertility Foods [iTunes link] This ebook for the iPhone and iPod touch by Dr. Jeremy Groll presents a diet-based method of increasing ovulation and getting pregnant. Dr. Groll is an OB/GYN specializing in the treatment of infertile couples. This book is an Iceburg Reader book, which are very well done. $15.99

A Barry White album wouldn't hurt, either.

As a parent of toddlers, I get much use out of Pocket God [iTunes link], which my 6-year-old loves, PicPosterous [iTunes link] for uploading snapshots to a family gallery and Pickin' Time [iTunes link], which both the 6-year-old and 5-year-old love. We even used Ambiance [iTunes link] for my son when we left his white noise machine at home while on vacation.

Last week an iPhone app helped save a life, and this week it helped create one. The tablet better have some REAL magic up its sleeve in order to top that.

I don't know if this is a great idea or an invitation to clog up your Twitter feed with inanity (go ahead, hit me with your best shot in the comments on that open invitation), but Tweet Defense takes the usual tower defense game to a new "social" level by upgrading your towers based on how much you tweet. What's the worst that could happen, right? Slidetoplay says it'll debut at $.99, but what price could you put on leveling up via Twitter, really?"

[Via Joystiq]