As we saw at E3 and WWDC, the iPhone version of Spore is Spore Origins, which is limited to the "primordial ooze" stage you see here, with a limited version of the Creature Creator thrown in for tweaking your bug cosmetically. On the plus side, it's simple and a quick diversion, and it's fun combo-ing your way through 35 increasingly difficult levels of munching little floaties. You can also import photos from your iPhone camera to texture-map on your creatures (Benny's Michigan Fab 5 tee).

But on the downside, the game suffers from the same control awkwardness that all of the accelerometer-only games do—as you can see in our video, the camera had a tough time keeping focus because you're always dramatically moving the phone to try to reign in your creature. A training stage featured a level-like bubble for each axis that showed you when you were at the zero-point, which was incredibly helpful—too bad it disappeared after training.

And most disappointingly, Spore for iPhone does not connect with the greater Spore hive in any way, meaning you won't see any procedurally generated creatures made by real other players of the game via Spore's central server. Kind of a weird choice for such a connected phone, and most confusingly, EA says the simpler Java based game for most other cellphones does in fact have connectivity to the greater spore world.

There's still some vagueness with release date (EA's site still only says "sometime in September") but all other Spore platforms launch in the US this Sunday. Look for it then or soon thereafter in the App Store for a price that'll probably be in the $10 and below range.

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Remember what it was like to buy a CD? Apple's plans to include lyrics and additional album art via an app download for certain albums will help you remember.
• Continunig to carry the torch for political apps is Election '08 - a $1 app that collects poll data, electoral vote projections, and tons of other election data.
• And at CEDIA, all of the home automation systems are racing each other to release remote control applications, turning your iPhone into a capable touchscreen control surface for opening the blinds from across the street or jacking up the AC if your cat gets hot.

For even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

LOS ANGELES, Calif., – September 5, 2008 – EA Mobile™, a division of Electronic Arts Inc. (NASDAQ:ERTS), today announced that Spore™ Origins, an original game for the iPhone™ and iPod® touch, will be available this month. The game takes full advantage of the devices’ built-in accelerometer as players tilt, turn and twist their way through a world made of primordial ooze. In conjunction with the launch of Spore Origins, EA Mobile also announces a list of nine games in development for both the iPhone and iPod Touch platforms.

Eat-or-be-eaten in Spore Origins! Designed specifically for the iPhone and iPod touch, Spore Origins uses the platforms’ motion-sensing technology to let gamers navigate a primordial tidepool on a quest to evolve. Feast on the weak and flee from the strong through two exciting modes and 35 challenging levels. Pinch, pull, and poke your creation in the Creature Editor, customizing the texture, shape and body parts to improve your offense, defense, perception and movement as you evolve over millions of years.

““We’re really excited to bring Spore Origins to the iPhone and iPod touch,” said Travis Boatman, Vice President Worldwide Studios at EA Mobile. “By leveraging the unique capabilities of these devices, players can customize their own creatures and shape their destiny in an exciting evolutionary journey. ”

EA Mobile today also announced nine titles in development for the iPhone and iPod touch, pending regional availability. This list includes YAHTZEE Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon™, Mahjong, MONOPOLY: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed™ Undercover, and The Sims™ 3.

Spore Origins will be available globally from the Apple App Store on iPhone and iPod touch, or by simply visiting www.eamobile.com from an iPhone. Additional versions of Spore Origins are also available for the iPod, as well as other mobile devices. All iPod games are available for the third-generation iPod nano, iPod classic and fifth-generation iPod and can be sent as a gift using the iTunes gifting feature (www.itunes.com).

The political applications, sadly, tend to swing pretty far to the side of app absurdity:

Obama/McCain Inauguration Countdown: Tick down the days to January 20 for the candidate of your choice, complete with rotating quotations and photos. Also useful for reminding yourself that the one and a half years of inane campaign coverage on TV will soon be over. Sadly, they're a buck.

BAC Calc: Ahh, but here's some utility for the weekend. A blood-alcohol-level calculator to quantify exactly how hammered you've gotten while getting riled up by McCain and Obama quotes with your buddies. Just enter your consumption, alochol volume of your booze, your weight and your gender. But remember kids, the law won't care if your iPhone says you're under the limit once you find yourself in the drunk tank. Free

Beer Bounce: And once all your friends go home on Monday night, there's no sense in stopping the party when you've got Beer Bounce, the first virtual quarters game for the iPhone. As you progress through the rounds, difficulty is increased by adding blurriness and staggering to the game. Nice touch! $3

Blofeld: While it has nothing to do with anything, really, Bond fans will have to love the concept behind Blofeld. It places an image of a feline pelt on your phone, and purrs when you stroke it, evil genius style. I can't believe this costs a dollar, but again, hats off to the concept, especially the icon.

Earthscape: And just when you thought the App Store was only filled with meaningless pap, there's Earthscape, which brings a great-looking Google Earth-style satellite image browser to your phone. It's a little laggy at times, and the image quality isn't as high as GMaps, but a great way to kill a few minutes if you're stuck in line somewhere. $5

This week's app coverage on Giz:

• Tris, the free Tetris game, was pulled from the store (voluntarily) for copyright violations. Infinite sadness.
• Our Question of the Day found that a typical Giz reader has spent between $1 and $10 on apps, but with many bigger spenders also responding. Go vote if you haven't yet.
• A fairly harmless comic app Murderdrome was rejected from the store, and its creators want a rating system for apps to avoid censorship, which is a great idea.
• A quasi-hologram app looked awesome, but later turned out to be just a proof-of-concept simulation, although its creator wants to make it into reality.
• And the Android Market, Google's answer to the App Store, was officially announced and does not require an approval process to get listed.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good long weekend everybody.

Android Market builds in all of the similar functionalities found in Apple's version: providing the infrastructure to host apps in a centralized place, versioning and update control, and support for free and paid apps (although the pay apps will not be ready for version 1.0). Apple's model of a single, all-in-one app repository definitely makes sense over a Symbian or Blackberry approach, with apps scattered across the web. But where Apple has two phones to deal with, Android will eventually have hundreds, so the system will need to be all the more robust to not allow incompatible code that doesn't require prior approval to crash people's handsets. Still, iPhone developers have not been overly thrilled with Apple's development process, so this should be a relief for them. [Android Developers Blog]

While it may not make sense to rate every calculator app or variation on Breakout with an "ok for all ages" badge, as App devlopers continue to evolve what the definition of an iPhone app is (here, an 8-panel, episodic comic), for Apple to effectively censor content with their shadowy app approval process is not going to make a lot of people happy. Gadget Lab makes a great point that there are a ton of adult themed podcast floating around in the iTunes store, also free—why can't an iPhone comic be a bit more risque? [Infurious Comics, Tech Radar, Gadget Lab via CNET]

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Rooms: Until this week, IRC fans had to jailbreak to get chatting, but Rooms developed this week brings the same Colloquy-based engine to the App Store. The interface could use a bit of pretty-ing in future releases, but all of your basic IRC client functions are there, now without jailbreak. $1

WiFinder: This app pings all of the Wi-Fi networks in range and tries to load a sample web page once connected—saving you the task of checking each network individually to see if you can get a working IP. It could use an interface to then connect to the network in question (currently you have to go back to Settings) but this is handy if you often find yourself squatting, especially in major cities where there are tons of networks in any given location. $3

DianHua Chinese Dictionary: Just about all of the dictionaries in the App Store, be they English or other languages, cost money. Hopefully this excellent Chinese character dictionary, which lets you search for words in English, Pinyin, and traditional or simplified characters, starts the trend of these things being free.

Newton's Cradle: It could use a touch of MotionX's realistic physics, but Newton's Cradle is a fun diversion—bringing the ol' swinging balls rig to your phone. Responds to touch and tilt alike for hypnotizing effects. Wouldn't be cool if it wasn't free, so thankfully, it is.

Photohunt: My favorite bar game (aside from, you know, the normal ones like pool and darts) come to the iPhone, in a version that doesn't look nearly erotic enough, sadly. $5

This Week's App Coverage on Giz:

• Copy and paste framework OpenClip surfaced using an ingenious backdoor trick to bring system-wide copy and paste to all apps without jailbreaking, but it looks like the 2.1 firmware will close the door on the exploit. Frown.
• iBlessing and ParveOMeter keep you Kosher, make your Grandma in Boca proud of you.
• Palringo, the best App Store IM client, gets push-to-talk functionality.
• Microsoft says any Xbox Live App has to be free, and soon you'll hopefully be able to add friends via your phone with the best Live app, 1337pwn.
• We saw a preview of the next version of the Facebook app, which goes a long way toward looking like real non-iPhone Facebook.
• Snapture adds multi-touch zoom, instant-delete, color filters and more much needed improvements to the iPhone's camera. It's Jailbreak-only at the moment
• iPhone Myst is coming. I can almost smell my old Packard Bell's CD-ROM drive chewing on those Quicktime movies!

From the novelty/ridiculous bin:

• Two bucks gives you Roshambo, taking the great game us normal people know as Rock Paper Scissors and turning it into two douches shaking their iPhones at each other.
• Tie-a-Tie, your guide to being a man, comes in both Lite ($1) and Deluxe ($2) versions. Sigh.
• Lolcats lets you haz that cheezborger on the go. Free

And this week's trend: Apps for Pilots

FAA Wait: Unlike a few of the other aviation apps this week, FAA Wait is actually very useful for non-pilots as well. It pings FAA's live database for air traffic control delays at airports around the country. Great for getting news of your 3-hour wait on the jetway straight from the source. $1

FltPlan Airport Guide: Comes loaded with the full official listing of our country's airports large and small, and all the relevant info you need like radio frequencies, approach information, and nearby alternates to plan your Cessna jaunt out to them. Free.

Gulfstream Tanker: And on the opposite end of the niche spectrum is this app for owners of Gulfstream GIV or GV jets—rappers and Fortune 500 execs only, basically—which calculates how much money you might save by loading up with fuel for your return trip before you depart, factoring in cruising speed, trip distance, and the price of fuel at your two stops. Hov, your app is finally here. $20

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.

Playback can be initiated automatically or manually depending on your preference, and if your chosen client does not support PTT, the message will be delivered as a link that the recipient can follow. Whether you are into PTT or not, it is a nice addition to an app that won't cost you a dime. [Comunicano via BGR]

Wikime: Hands down my favorite app of the week, Wikime takes a location reading and then queries Wikipedia's large list of geotagged articles, showing you info relevant to where you are at that very moment. It pulled a huge list of great articles for my Brooklyn neighborhood, and it's customizable to search within a given radius or search non-English Wikipedias. Awesome stuff for touring, or just learning more about your city, especially if you live in a large metro area with lots of tagged articles. And it's a buck.

Photocalc: For folks like me that still enjoy pulling out—gasp—film-based cameras every now and then, Photocalc is a great tool for doing the types of number crunching that we've grown so accustomed to letting our digicams handle that we don't even think about anymore. Even if you shoot mostly digital, this is a fun way to learn a lot of basics like depth of field calculation and exposure compensation ratios that will make you a better photographer, no matter what you're shooting with. $3 [via Gadget Lab]

Beijing Taxi Guide: If you're in town for the Olympics, first, stop reading Gizmodo. But if you're here (we love you too) and you've got Great Firewall Web, grab the Beijing Taxi Guide. It has a searchable directory of over 1,000 popular destinations picked by real people (not Frommers), and offers your cabby big, bold directions on how to get there. It works entirely offline (no roaming data), and will be updated by the devs constantly with new locations. Let's see some location-based searching, maybe? $5

More apps we looked at on Giz this week:

• Tris is Tetris, the best game to play while waiting in line, period. Free.
• Astro Ranch is a Harvest Moon/Animal Crossing clone that's in the works.
• Simplify Media streams your home iTunes library along with 30 of your friends' collections to your iPhone.
• Frotz is a text-based game emulator, for kicking it Tandy style.
• MotionX Poker remains the coolest real-physics dice simulator poker game, but now you can grab those realistic tumbling dice for free, sans game. Great for impromptu gambling.
• And, of course, the painful conclusion to the "I Am Rich" saga.

More news and apps from the novelty bin:

• GoBang Master is a Go/Othello hybrid. $2
• Freebird is the best novelty image app yet. Flash a lighter for Skynyrd, glowstick for Darude, or a candle for that renaissance lutist. Free
• Beer Counter will track your consumption as you get shitfaced. Free
• Box Office, one of our first favorite apps, is now back as "Now Playing" after being mysteriously yanked (probably for a trademark violation with the name). Phew. Still Free.

And here's a category that's been getting a lot of love in the store this week: baby apps.

Baby Tracker: Nursing: Sports timers for keeping track of when junior was last nursed, and on which side and for how long. I am not quite in the mood yet to know if this is necessary or not (some reviewers with more experience are saying it's unnecessary) but hey, if you're going to over-parent, why not do it with an iPhone! Oh, and it has a nice icon. $10.

Bishop's Score Calc: For DIY gynos, you can tell if you're about to go into labor or not with this Bishop's Score calculator. Something tells me, between the doctor and, oh, I don't know, the baby trying to get out, you won't need an iPhone for this information. Eww. $1

Pregnancy Kick Counter: Yep, pretty self-explanatory. Monitor junior as he practices Muay Thai in the womb. $5

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. Have a good weekend everybody.

To be fair, Monkey Ball has improved a lot on its spiritual forebear, with lush, fully 3D graphics and over 100 well-designed levels. It superficially reflects a few generational steps forward in handheld gaming. One thing that hasn’t changed is the control mechanism. Consider this IGN review of Kirby from April of 2001:

This tilting feature is an integral part of the gameplay, and it really makes Kirby original and a lot of fun. The designers built the game around this sensor instead of putting a sensor into the game, and it really shows... Since you cannot zoom Kirby around the mazes without screwing up, patience is needed. Of course, you can't take your sweet time—the clock is ticking.

This could just as easily describe the experience of rolling AiAi around on your iPhone. The tilt sensor technology, built into the GBC cartridge, was functionally flawless, even by iPhone standards. The tilt-sensing scheme surfaced in a few more (equally impressive and well received) games, but none ventured too far from the navigation paradigm of Tilt 'n' Tumble. Over the next few years, position-sensitive handheld gaming faded into relative obscurity.

At least, until now. Tilt gaming is now lauded by some as the future of portables, with developers and engineers making inconsistent claims about how powerful and exciting the iPhone is as a platform, even throwing out very favorable comparisons to the PSP and the DS. But does the iPhone really bring anything new to the table? The answer, as you’ve probably guessed by now, is no. Absolutely not.

Think of it this way: The best implementation of iPhone tilt control is conceptually identical to a seven-year-old Game Boy title, which itself was based on the old wooden marble-in-a-labyrinth puzzles that have been around since, well, who knows? The iPhone doesn’t have the buttons of the Game Boy (or DS or PSP), and touchscreen control overlays don’t provide the feedback they need to be adequate substitutes. (Anyone who has played any of NES/SNES/Genesis jailbreak emulators can attest to this.) Perhaps most significantly, the iPhone doesn’t address the shortcomings of tilt gaming that were helpfully pointed out to them in nearly every review of Kirby. Consider again the 2001 IGN review:

You're limited to where and how you can play the game, really... I've played the game outside and in a hotel room with no problems, but on the plane it was a little difficult because of the position you have to hold the system — it's not exactly a game you can sit in your most comfortable position and play.

And another, from the New York Times:

Children who play Kirby in the back seat of the car will learn to loathe potholes and quick turns, which can make Kirby spin out of control.

In respect to the limited locations in which you can play tilt games, the GBC cartridge system is actually superior to the iPhone, as it automatically recalibrates at the start of every game, a feature that Monkey Ball could stand to include.

A portable gaming device that necessitates a certain type of location and position to play isn’t truly portable. Anyone who has tried to play any of the iPhone’s tilt games in a moving car, bus or even train will tell you that slight acceleration in any direction can make sensitive games like Crash Bandicoot Racing and Monkey Ball almost unplayable—and what good are handheld games if you can’t play them in transit?

Since the launch of the app store, nobody has come forward with a truly exciting and original implementation of tilt control. The iPhone has demonstrated that is it capable of retreading tilt gaming territory quite well, but that’s about it.

It sounds harsh to deem iPhone gaming a mere novelty, but until a developer steps forward with something profoundly revolutionary it may be just that. For the most accurate summation of the iPhone’s tilt gaming, don’t listen to John Carmack’s breathless speculation, or Scott Forstall’s eery, glossy-eyed presentations. Look back again, this time to Gamespot:

Yes, Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble is a gimmicky game, but it's a gimmicky game done well.

For Nintendo, handheld tilt gaming was a fanciful tangent; when the genre was exhausted, they were able to retreat to traditional controls. This option is unfortunately—and maybe fatally—absent from the iPhone, potentially relegating it to the unfortunate status of a impressive, elaborate gimmick.

Nobody plays interactive adventure games for the adrenaline rush, but the stories are often great and occasionally brilliant. They're also great fun for a stop-and-start time killer, as you can resume where you left off without too much trouble, working your way through a game at whatever pace you choose.

The app is surprisingly full-featured, considering the stripped-down aesthetic of the games. It handily organizes your downloaded titles and even provides an in-app web portal to the Interactive Fiction Database, where you can download more public domain text-based games than any single person could play their way through. The most obvious downside here is that you're stuck with the on-screen keyboard, and during the course of a typical game you can expect to peck out thousands of words, many of which will do nothing.

Any text gamer that hasn't been held up by social stigmas or distracted by flashy new games and their "graphics" won't be stopped by a slightly undersized on-screen keyboard, and its hard to argue with Zork, The Hobbit and The Hitchhiker's Guide in your pocket. [TouchArcade via Kotaku]

After AT&T's ToS came to light, they asked Apple for a refund, who directed them to Nullriver, NetShare's developer. Nullriver's Alex Lovett responded that it's actually in Apple's hands. Fearing the runaround, the blogger replied and pointed out Nullriver's 30-day return policy. Alex hit back with this:

"Ah, the support was set up in a rush and is still being worked on, normally for all our apps we do have a 30 day refund policy, but it is simply not possible to do that with the AppStore as its all operated and handled by Apple, otherwise we would offer it. If you speak to Apple they may grant you a refund/reversal on a one off chance, ive heard of them doing that."

Back to Apple, who again replied:

As previously stated, unfortunately there isn’t anything I can do for you. All iTunes purchases are final, and I am unable to refund you for the app.

You will need to contact NetShare directly, as this is there product and we can do nothing with it. You can contact them from the link below:

http://www.nullriver.com/support

Sincerely,
Andrew
iTunes Store Customer Support

The thing is, Apple can issue refunds: They did for at least two of the suckers who bought the $1000 idiot app. The situation might be a different from NetShare, however. The NYT says Apple "reversed" two of the sales, so it's unclear if the money was already in Armin Heinrich's pocket before Apple hit the brakes. NetShare has had people's money for well over a week.

Still, any way you look at this, it's not a pretty picture for hosed customers. If refunds are entirely in the hands of developers once the money is safely ensconced in their bank acccounts (as Apple support implies), well, you better buy from someone you trust—if the dev doesn't wanna give you your money back, you aren't getting it. Or, more charitably to Nullriver, perhaps there is just a big ol' hole between Apple and developers on getting refunds to users—then it's one that needs to be patched so users don't fall into it. The last possibility is that it depends solely on Apple's mercy. Would they offer refunds for a malicious app that they killed with the remote detonator? Right now, there's no way to tell.

The hardass take is that if Apple screws up and lets something in the App Store it shouldn't have, it should absorb the fallout and make amends to users (except for the "I Am Rich" morons, they suck). NetShare is an app users purchased with the reasonable belief they could use it because Apple allowed it into the store. (Twice even.) Part of being the store's One Supreme Guardian is bearing responsibility for everything that goes down under your watch. [Horrid Voices - Thanks JimiX!]

There's supposedly some unwritten rule among app developers that you're not supposed to use the phone's vibration feature for anything but alerts, not game enhancements. That's right. No force feedback when your race car hits a wall or when your avatar takes a blow to the face. Seems quite arbitrary to us, seeing as most people should be able to figure out that a vibration in a game comes from the game itself, not from an SMS message that didn't also pop up a visual notification.

The second was from another developer who didn't follow Apple's design conventions and put a toolbar at the top of the screen instead of the bottom (yeah, notice how all your apps have the toolbar at the bottom?). Not only that, they didn't change the shade or color or icon of any of the entries on the toolbar to allow the user to see which one was selected, which is a bad design decision if we've ever seen one. Not too bad that this one's rejected.

We're sure there are a few more unwritten rules of iPhone development that we don't know about, so if you're a developer that's been rejected for some reason, drop us a note at tips@gizmodo.com. [TUAW]

Update: Jonathan points out that the force feedback rule could be to avoid paying the patent on rumbling controllers that all the major console makers had to dish out on. Most recently (and notably) seen on Sony's PS3.

And in a slightly unusual candid comment, for Steve anyway, he's admitted that the apps won't be making Apple much profit—instead future sales hopes are pinned on the applications tempting people to buy more iPhones and iPod touches. "Phone differentiation used to be about radios and antennas and things like that," he argues, suggesting that now the differentiation is about software.

Clearly the app store has been a success so far for Apple and the developers: The top 10 made close to $9 million in one month. What about the infamous "I Am Rich" app? Apple decided to pull it as the result of a "judgment call."

Steve also confirmed the existence of the kill switch for malicious apps, despite last week's news to the contrary. "Hopefully we never have to pull that lever, but we would be irresponsible not to have a lever like that to pull." And you can't argue with that logic. [WSJ]

Details are still hazy and very unofficial, but here are a few stray notes:

• Development will be allowed for the Android, WinMo, Sidekick and Java platforms.
• Apps will be presented to users according to popularity, giving independent developers a greater chance for success.
• The approval process has yet to be discussed, so it's still up in the air how rigorous getting an app to the store will be or whether free apps will be allowed.

This could be the start of a new trend among mobile providers. Check out the entire story at [mocoNews].

THIS IS NO JOKE...DO NOT BUY THIS APP AND APPLE PLEASE REMOVE THIS FROM THE APP STORE....APPLE MUST MUST MUST START TO SCREEN THESE FAKE APPS AND RIDICULOUS SCAMS.

Dear Lee5279xx,

No, Lee, this is not a scam. The application clearly said what it did and—if you are telling the truth—you went ahead and clicked on "BUY." That's not a scam. That's you being a moron.

Still, you've got a point. After all the fuss about only allowing good quality developers into the iPhone application store, the whole thing is loaded with crap. Crap with no real functionality, crap with bad design, crap with horrible icons. Except a few quality applications, the screening process is obviously useless. The I'm Rich application is just an extreme example that highlights what's wrong with the store, no matter how good it is in other aspects.

Still, dear Lee5279xx, we hope you can cancel that charge. Dummy.

Lots of love,
j.

[Digg, Thanks Marius]

Dynolicious is an all-purpose automotive performance meter, utilizing the built-in accelerometer in the iPhone and iPod touch to record your driving characteristics. BunsenTech, the makers of the software, claim that it can record 0-60 times within .08 of a second, accurately estimate your current speed and monitor and record any directional G force. The system seeks to perform nearly every function of (much) more expensive dedicated monitoring units, which seems like an awfully tall order for a $12.99 piece of cellphone software.

Fortunately, bloggers more experienced with the dedicated units have dispelled fears that this app is a waste of money. Dynolicious can actually do what it claims, and presents its data in a useful and attractive way. Realtime speedometer graphing and skidpad display may not be much more than pretty toys, but a bevy of data analysis tools can properly process your driving after it's done. Entering your car's weight and estimated power even allows Dynolicious to fulfill its namesake, calculating actual wheel horsepower and drivetrain efficiency with surprising accuracy. Data is recorded for as many vehicles as you want, and car mods can be noted and taken into account over a course of multiple tests.

Some reviewers are scoffing at the $12.99 price, and others are pointing to the cheaper g-tac, though it only records straight-line performance and doesn't offer nearly as complete of a feature set. Perspective is important though, and considering the high cost of roughly comparable dedicated systems and the amount of money avid car tuners spend on their rides, the price is a veritable bargain. This is one of the most creative uses of the iPhone's hardware I've seen that actually delivers.

[Dynolicious, App Review Marathon]

There's another current SpeechCloud voice dialing app on the App Store, and even though it may be free, it's got an average rating of 2.5 stars and reviews saying that it's pretty lousy. We'd make like a petting zoo and pony up the $25 for a good voice dialing app if we really needed one. Oh, and don't pay attention to the lousy 1 star reviews on the site, all these idiots are reviewing the app based on its $25 price tag and not how well it's functioning. [VoiceDial]

There were a handful of multi-client IM apps available via Installer, my personal favorite being Fring, which also has the ability to do VoIP calls over Wi-Fi. You can count on Apple putting the kibosh on Fring in the App Store unless it drops the VoIP feature due to SDK guidelines, which is a shame.

Palringo on its own sports a nice interface (which is a little jerky at times, though), and it tosses all of your new messages via any client into a universal inbox in the bottom-left corner. Like the official AIM client, it vibrates on message receipts, even if your phone is locked (and Palringo is still active, of course, which is another thing the Jailbreak apps had on it). On other platforms, Palringo supports voice chat over its supported protocols as well (not VoIP)—that feature's not in the iPhone version yet, but is forthcoming says the devs. [Palringo, App Review Marathon]

As seen in the video, controlling Mario is fairly natural, though quick turns and exact jumps are difficult to execute (playing Mario with the stock controls is often worse, though). Bomberman sort of works, but in that case—and many others—the old touch control overlay is much easier. Obviously none of these games were designed with tilt control in mind, but a surprising number are at least playable. Add this to the pile of reasons we still want an active app black market. NES.app 2.3.0 with tilt control is available now in Cydia. [NES.app]

By the looks of it, it works fairly well, using the magnifying glass tool to drag out a selection, although it looks like it's difficult to place the cursor correctly since you're unable to drag through a line of text without making a selection.

Proximi is planning on releasing its own proof-of-concept videos which further illustrate how their method could be used system-wide (how they will do that under the developer NDA is unkown). But first, the truly interesting question is whether MagicPad will get the stamp of approval from Apple and make it out to the App Store. They've said they don't care, but whether they let a 3rd party app tease what's in such high demand will be the true test. It looks like it's using an unorthodox email system (CAPTCHA??) to email notes as well, which probably lessens its chances. [Apple iPhone Apps]

And here's the original video demonstrating Tenori-On's seemingly infinite capabilities:
[Pakl.net]

The only hitch is you can't email the clips out from the phone, but how often do you actually need to keep your quick audio notes? Just break out the headphones, transcribe, delete. Done. [Ed. Note: I love emailing the clips from my Olympus digital voice recorder so I can email them to India and have them transcribed overnight.] Quality and range won't match a dedicated recorder, but definitely get the job done—I was able to hear my voice well enough to transcribe talking quietly from the other side of a 12-foot room. There are a couple other voice recorders in the store, but at $1.99 we're liking QuickVoice. [QuickVoice, Our Favorite Apps, App Review Marathon]

In the meantime, remember these things:
1) We do not pull data from your contact list before notifying you. There is now a notification in-game when this is done. And it is only done on the community page by YOU pressing the submit button.
2) We never store your contact list on our web server.
3) All data sent over the wire is now completely encrypted.
4) No contact data is saved on your phone's hard drive anymore. This has been removed.

Sounds good to us. [Aurora Feint]

Enter in your logins to your Wells Fargos, your Netflixes, your Comcasts and your Diggs once and you'll be able to check them out on the go. Wondering whether that check cleared? Just tap your bank's name and it'll come up with your account info. Want to know when that movie is due from Blockbuster Online? When your next utility payment is due? Easy.

The only thing we'd potentially worry about is having all your logins and passwords held by one institution, reducing each company's security systems to a single point-of-fault held by Pageonce. On the one hand, the service is supposedly pretty safe and has stuff like 256-bit authentication, and on the other hand, we're too lazy to individually visit each web page when we want to look up stuff. This seems like a win-win. Except when you lose your phone, then it's a mad dash to delete your info from Pageonce. [Pageonce]

Developers can’t touch or enhance iTunes or iPod functionality in any way, shape or form—they can’t even access your music directory, meaning you better like the way the iPod button works just the way it is. Don't expect any apps to use your wonderfully curated music library either.
Casualties: Instinctiv Shuffle, a smart shuffle application that learns your skipping behavior to figure what you actually wanna hear next. Tap Tap Revolution became the watered-down Tap Tap Revenge.

No processes can run in the background—apps have to completely quit when exited, completely contained in their little sandbox.
Casualties: IM is a popular example, but Apple’s upcoming push notifications will probably make them a moot rallying point. It also means that third-party copy-and-paste solutions won’t work, since you can’t move the text to another application. Also impossible is a fantasy app of ours, TrippWire, that would record phone conversations (all legal considerations aside).

Devs can't integrate apps or functions into the OS. Third-party apps will always be second-class citizens, and can't significantly alter iPhone functions, including accessing the calendar or SMS messaging or adding any content to the otherwise useless lock screen that appears when you wake up the phone.
Casualites: Intelliborn’s Mario Ciabarra lamented to us that the SDK actually doesn’t give you all the same APIs and tools as Apple, and is missing a whole bunch of critical ones that’d let you add content to the lock screen, access calendar events or mail, or change the way the iPhone responds to events, meaning there’s no way for him to build his app Intelliscreen (above) using the SDK. Instinctiv CEO Justin Smithline also told us that you simply "can't create a well-integrated app," like Instinctiv Shuffle. This set of restrictions "flies in the face" of Apple's own philosophy of the creating beautiful software with the best possible user experience, says Smithline.

Pirated games, movies or whatever are a no-no in the App Store, obviously.
Casualties: NES.app, or any emulator, really, dooming us to bloated, over-priced renditions of Tetris by videogame mega-publishers. Also off limits, a dedicated video streaming app for something like the old Stage6 or QuickSilverScreen, which traffics in content that’s, um, not legally spotless, to say the least.

A bit different than the piracy concern, apps using copyrights, trademarks or intellectual property of a major company are sticky, and the App Store will steer clear of them if they're not developed by the company itself.
Casualties: Apps like TiVoRemote would have to be developed by TiVo or else they'd have dicey prospects, at best. Basically anything involving a company’s intellectual property or trademarks from anyone but the company themselves. An app that'll stream movies from your Netflix "Watch Instantly" account by anybody but Netflix would be another obvious foul.

Devs don't have deep access to the hardware. Jonathan Zdziarski, creator of NES.app and author of a few iPhone books, told us "much of the lower-level functionality has been hidden" in the SDK so "if your application is going to meet the necessarily political requirements, these more powerful features are off-limits."
Casualties: Stuff like Camera Pro, which gives you a ridiculous amount of control over the camera, would have a hard time complying with SDK rules. More than that, Zdziarski says, Apple has "privatized" the CoreSurface framework, which is "making it very difficult for developers to write their own movie players, 2D games, and similar kinds of renderings," especially with performance approaching passable.