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On Friday night, the "Year of the iPhone" began in China when the device officially went on sale there.
The following pricing is listed on Wired.com: "An 8GB model of the iPhone is estimated to sell for 2,400 yuan ($350), and a 16GB may be sold at 4,800 yuan ($700)", while China Daily is reporting that "An iPhone 3GS handset (without connection) costs 4,999 yuan ($733), more than half of the country's per capita urban disposable income, and about 25 percent more than what it sells for in Hong Kong." However, the phone will come without wi-fi at the behest of the Chinese government.
Yesterday I posted about a new app, Babelshot, that lets you take a photo of text in a foreign language and then translates it. Today I learned of another: PicTranslator. It has 16 languages, compared to Babelshot's 33. It's cheaper at $0.99, but that only includes one language. You can buy additional languages via in-app purchasing at $0.99 each, or you can buy all languages for $1.99. Five of the languages include audio translation, which is helpful. Again, I think this is a pretty cool use of the built-in camera.
Free Halloween Sounds (free) is just plain fun, what it is is fifteen free spooky sound effects (bats, ghosts, chainsaws, creaky floors, etc) and a spooky soundtrack you can play in the background. To kick it up a notch just get a mini jack to 1/4" stereo jack and plug it into your sound system for Halloween and really give the kids a fright! I've been playing with this thing so much even my son is getting tired of it, and he's 7!
I'm amazed by all the creative uses developers are finding for the iPhone camera. One of the latest is the just-released Babelshot. If you're in a situation where you have a bit of text in a foreign language that you need to translate, such as a restaurant menu, you can simply take a photo of the item, select the portion of the text you want to translate, and Babelshot does the rest. It supports automatic translation between 32 languages. You don't need to do any typing or anything. Babelshot only works for small amounts of text. You can also optionally enter in text manually. The app is $1.99.
Apple's App Store has been a rousing success, given the nearly 100,000 apps. Yet it's also been a headache for developers, and many iPhone users also complain about it. In my opinion, its function is changing. Whereas initially it was a way for consumers to find apps and for developers to get noticed, that function is not scalable. After all, how can you possibly shoehorn 100,000 apps into 20 categories? In my opinion, the App Store is simply a mechanism for buying apps, like a shopping cart. Consumers need to find other ways to locate useful apps, and developers can no longer pin their hopes on making the top 10 or top 100 in a category.
Now unless you have been living under a rock, or you are a rock, in which you are fully excuse from knowing about this game changer. Google is now providing turn by turn navigation on enabled mobile devices for free. That means any smart phone that has GPS and Interwebs connection will most likely be able to use this… except the Iphone. Apple makes a pretty penny for those REALLY expensive Nav apps out there and AT&T is trying to sell a monthly service for their app. I saw this video last night (at the end of this post) and its a game changer not only because its free, but because it uses what Google is very good
Better yet, how to make traveling fun for yourself! I found Travel Games Ultimate Edition very fun, and I’m over 18 (just a little). The app features five games: Rock, Paper, Scissors; Slug Bug; License Plates; Find it! Pictures; and Scavenger Hunt.
The big news today is the announcement of the Droid, a new smartphone from Motorola and Verizon that uses Google's Android software. As Todd posted yesterday, the iPhone market share is surging ahead. But the Android market really seems to be heating up too. A press release out today from Wirefly says that five of the top 10 most-anticpated smartphones right now are Android phones, with the Droid leading the list. And clearly these devices are going to push the envelope.
Sorry but I haven’t posted lately as I’ve been preparing my materials for tenure review here at West Chester University of PA. But, after attending a recent conference hosted by the Association for Technology in Music Instruction (atmionline.org) I have some great new apps to share with you. I’ll roll them out over the next few weeks. Here’s the first.
I’m not really quite sure who the target audience for this game is. With the whole “three little pigs” motif you’d almost think it was a kid’s game, but the atmosphere seems a bit violent. When you shoot the wolves with an arrow they bleed, and in the intro cartoon the pig comes off as kind of a gruff, mean protector. Not to mention the fact that this game gets tough rather quickly. That being said, it is a somewhat amusing game that will definitely keep you challenged. Did I mention it was tough?
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