The idea behind Gas Cubby is fairly simple.  Every time you fill up your car, bring along your iPhone.  You’ll be prompted to enter a variety of information — your odometer reading, the price you’re paying for gas, how many gallons you’ve filled, etc..  As soon as you save that information into Gas Cubby, it will tell you the exactly how many miles per gallon you got on your last tank.

But just how can that single number be helpful?  If you’re like me, you’re probably looking for every way to save a penny that you can.  After every fill up I try some new tricks to improve my mileage.  Tire pressure, braking style, different brands of fuel..  the list goes on and on.  Gas Cubby gives me a perfect picture of how the changes I’ve made have impacted my car’s performance.

Gas Cubby also tracks other information that can help you figure out what’s what.  Remember my mentioning tire pressure and different brands of gas?  I can enter that into every fill-up record.  Different octanes and station locations too.  There’s even a separate function that will let me track services like oil-changes and whatnot.  It has all the bases covered.

The app will save all of this data entry after entry and display it both as a list and as a graph, giving you an at-a-glance impression of your vehicles performance.  Want to make your own graph?  No problem — Gas Cubby can export the data as a CSV.  Own more than one vehicle?  Gas Cubby supports that too.  It even offers a km/L option for Canadian drivers like myself.

The only real complaint we had here was that, while Gas Cubby provides a great tool to track your mileage, it doesn’t really offer any tips to improve it.  We would have loved to have seen something simple included — like 10 tips to improve mileage, or mileage improvement tips popping up every time you loaded — but there was nothing to be seen.  To use Gas Cubby to its fullest, you’re really going to have to do some googling to find mileage improvement tips that can work for you.  It seems like such an obvious thing to include — how did they miss that?

It also seemed a little strange that entering the data takes you through a 12 step process.  It’s quick to do, but the whole thing could have been streamlined much more effectively.  When you’re standing at a pump punching data into your iPhone, you’d like to get back in your car as quickly as possible so that other cars can come in.  Spending 30 seconds or so jumping from step to step can feel like forever under those circumstances.

There’s a paid version of Gas Cubby available for $6.99, but don’t be fooled — the free version offers all the same features.  The only difference is that the free one is ad-supported, and since the ads aren’t in any way obtrusive, it would be downright silly to shell out nearly $7 when you could have it for free.

After all — you wouldn’t be downloading Gas Cubby unless you were frugal-minded in the first place.

Deceptively simple, DJ Jones will play a song from somewhere in the middle of the track and you’ll have to guess which song it is from 5 multiple choice possibilities.  Both the song and the possibilities will come from your own iPod music library, so the game can’t possibly throw you any curveballs.  When you fail a song, DJ Jones kicks you out of the game and into it’s own music player, letting you enjoy the rest of the tune to better get to know your collection.

The gameplay doesn’t offer much beyond those basics.  Scoring is based on how long it takes you to answer, and the game ends after you get a wrong answer — it’s as simple as that.  Since version 2.0 was released back in October, DJ Jones has been Plus+ enabled.   This means you can earn achievements and compete for high score against other music junkie friends with ease.  And if you’re looking to test friends and family on your musical tastes, you can create your own custom playlists to put their ears to the test.

Once you’re in the app’s music player, a number of smart on-screen controls will let you cruise through your music collection with ease.  Swiping left will take you back a tune, swiping right will move you a head.  Swiping near the top of the screen will adjust the volume.  It’s the sort of simple, intuitive controls that you can’t help but wish the native iPod music player offered.

If you’re going to complain about the bare bones gameplay in DJ Jones, you’re probably missing the point.  DJ Jones is less about being a game and more about helping you to rediscover the music you didn’t know you have.  If you’ve ever been the kind of person who built a playlist out of tunes you hardly know just to see what’s worth keeping, DJ Jones just found a way to make that adventure fun.

Looking forward to the big game this weekend?  So are a handful of iPhone developers, and they’ve decided to slash the prices on 4 major football releases to celebrate.  Make sure to snag them quick — these sale prices are only going to last through the weekend!

Madden 10 – $4.99
Click here to download from iTunes.
Electronic Art’s unstoppable football franchise made it’s first appearance on the iPhone this past fall and met with stellar reviews.  If you’ve been humming and hawing about picking it up because of the price it’s not likely to go any lower than $4.99 — at least not until Madden 11 comes out.

NFL 2010 – $0.99
Click here to download from iTunes
Madden doesn’t see many challengers on other consoles due to NFL exclusivity rights, but on the iPhone?  It’s open game.  And while it may not get the same love that Madden 10 has, Gameloft’s NFL 2010 has been a touchdown in a lot of gamers eyes.

LED Football – Free
Click here to download from iTunes
If you’re as old as me (and god help you if you are), there’s a pretty good chance you remember the original handheld gaming device: Mattel LED Football.  This game may lack the Mattel name, but that doesn’t keep it from being a faithful recreation of an old favorite.

Flick Kick Field Goal – $0.99
Click here to download from iTunes
In the real world, I couldn’t kick a field goal to save my life.  But on the iPhone?  For 99 cents I’m willing to find out.  As an added bonus, the best flick kicker by tomorrow evening will win a $100 iTunes gift card.  For contest details, check out the official Flick Kick Field Goal Football Championship Competition page here.

If you’re new to the GPS game, let me assure you that the Magellan Roadmate 2010 app offers all the bells and whistles that you’d find if you were to buy a standalone Magellan Roadmate device.  In fact, the software this is sporting more closely resembles what you’ll see in newer models of the Roadmate rather than the budget priced entry-level devices.  But unlike other GPS devices, this one has the added benefit of playing friendly with other aspects of your iPhone/iPod Touch.  Want to play music?  You can do so from in the app.  Is someone calling?  You can answer it and then go right back to driving.

The problem is that it doesn’t do any of these features incredibly well.  If you want to take a call it kicks you out of the app and then reboots, meaning if you’re on speakerphone while driving and expecting to hear “turn left in 800 metres,” you’re going to be sorely disappointed.  And if you’re expecting the convenience and music browsability that the iPod is known for, here too you’ll find yourself out of luck.  The Magellan app will only play playlists — not individually browsed tracks.  While you can build playlists in the app, the whole experience is miles away from the “OneTouch” mentality that RoadMate is famous for.

Still — everything we’ve mentioned so far is just bells and whistles.  At the end of the day the only thing that matters here is navigation, and here the performance can be a little hit and miss.  Unless your device has an uninterrupted view of the sky the GPS signal is going to drop in and out on an incredibly regular basis.  If you have a car mount kit, though, you’ll be near enough the front window that you shouldn’t have any problems maintaining a signal.  But if you’re planning on tossing your iPhone in the passenger seat while you drive?  Forget about it.

Performance from that point gets spotty at best.  While the device is almost always good at mapping out the quickest possible routes (we had a few tiny exceptions, but nothing really worth mentioning) it failed to keep up with our actual location and kept notifying us of turns 40 feet after we were supposed to make them.  It was a nightmare.

With an experience this bad, you must be wondering how we could dare describe the navigation as “a little hit and miss.”  What we’ve described so far was the miss.  What we experienced and quickly came to love was the hit.  That hit?  It has a name;  the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

Available as a seperate purchase is Magellan’s Premium Car Kit, a $129 accessory that will boost the iPhone’s GPS signal exponentially, provide an in-car mount for your device, charge it, and provide an enhanced speaker as well.  In terms of turning your iPhone into a fully functional navigation system, this thing is a must-buy.  Our experience with the Magellan RoadMate 2010 before and after using the car kit was as different as night and day.  Once connected there was no doubt in our minds that RoadMate 2010 could easily keep up with the stiff competition from standalone GPS devices.

With the kit attached no turns were ever missed, no signal ever lost, and route recalculation would happen the moment I varied from the route.  It was fabulous.  Once we got used to it we quickly delved in to all of the other terrific features the app had to offer.  Entering new addresses is a snap, OneTouch menu options let you easily find the nearest gas stations and other points of interest.  You can even assign favorite locations to the One Touch menu in case you’re looking to make return trips.  RoadMate 2010 is a fully-featured device when compared to standalone units on the market, and with the car kit in place we couldn’t have been happier with the performance.

Still, there were a few things that we couldn’t help but nitpick about when it came to the car kit.  An enhanced speaker is nice, but what this kit really needed was an FM transmitter.  Newer cars might be built to incorporate an external audio source but those of us cruising around in 10 year old cars tend to send our audio across the airwaves.  And then there’s the price.  $129 wouldn’t seem so bad if it included a redemption code for RoadMate 2010, but it doesn’t.  You’ll have to buy both products separately to get them to work together, bringing your grand total to just under $220.  That’s about the price of a standalone mid-range GPS device.

It may sound like we’re dumping on the car kit, but nothing could be further from the truth.  It has a number of great features we’ve yet to mention.  For example, unlike most car mounts this one is designed to fit an iPhone in a protective case.  I keep my iPhone in an OtterBox case and had no problem getting it to fit.  The kit provides options for mounting to dash or window, allows you to pivot the device in any direction or position you might want, but most importantly; it boosts that GPS signal to an incredible degree.

When combined with the Magellan Premium Car Kit, Magellan RoadMate 2010 offers the same top notch performance as Magellan’s standalone RoadMate GPS device.  The two are comparable in price as well.  The only difference here is that Magellan RoadMate 2010 for the iPhone has the added bonus of simply being an iPhone.  It’s one less device to lose, it offers an enhanced speaker should anyone call, and you can play all of your music from inside the app.  It should also be noted that the Car Kit enhances the GPS of the device itself, and not just for RoadMate purposes.  If you need to check out other apps that utilize GPS the Premium Car Kit will make them infinitely more accurate.

While the Magellan RoadMate 2010 app can be purchased independent of the Car Kit, it’s not something we recommend.  On it’s own the app simply isn’t reliable enough to be counted on when trying to find your way in a strange city.  Still, it’s hard to blame Magellan.  The iPhone’s built-in GPS simply isn’t developed well enough to hand this sort of task.  Magellan saw this dilemma and came up with a solution, albeit at a price.

If you’re in the market for a new GPS device and prepared to spend what you’ll need to in the standalone marketplace, you’ll easily find Magellan’s RoadMate 2010 and Premium Car Kit to be a winning combination.  Just don’t expect satisfactory performance if you buy the app alone.

You can download Magellan RoadMate 2010 North America for $79.99 on  iTunes.  Check out magellangps.com for information on how to purchase the Magellan Premium Car Kit.

The paperless society is an interesting concept.  It’s been around long enough that we’ve all gotten used to it, but in the grand scheme of things it’s still a fairly modern invention.  10 years ago it was commonplace to visit an office that still posted paper memos on a bulletin board in the cafeteria or to have a boss that preferred using a fax machine to sending a quick email.  Those days, it would seem, are far behind us.

With the office conquered, paperless lifestyle choices have quickly invaded our personal lives.  We’ve gotten used to digital purchases on everything from books and music to comics and movies.  It was only a matter of time until someone decided to bring the print magazine boldly into the 21st century.  It turns out that GQ was that someone.

Beginning with the December 2009 issue, GQ now offers an iPhone edition of their monthly men’s magazine that includes every piece of content found in the print version.  In addition to everything you’d see at the newsstand, the iPhone edition of GQ has a number of positive traits going for it;

• exclusive audio, video and photo content not found in the print version
• better price: $2.99 iPhone, $4.50 newsstand
• back issues still available after new issues are published

The flipside, of course, is that unless Apple somehow creates a subscription model, regular readers won’t be able to save by committing to multiple issues with one purchase.  As well, there’s a massive download required once the app is purchased to take the issue around with you offline.

Small complaints aside, there’s a great deal of potential in making magazine’s available as digital downloads for the iPhone.  I can think of half a dozen or so print publications I’d love to buy digital edtions of (Wired, I’m looking in your direction).  What do you think?  Is GQ blazing a trail that other magazine publishers should follow?  Would you pay $2.99 for a digital version of your favorite print mag?  What would you like to see in a magazine app?

Ever since Guitar Hero hit the home console scene back in 2005, music games have been all the rage amongst gamers and music enthusiasts alike.  Tracing the iPhone’s roots back to the music-only iPods of yore, it seems only natural that the genre would eventually make its way to the iTunes App Store.  We take a look at two of this season’s most popular music games for the iPhone and let you know which one we think is the real deal.

Tap Tap Revenge 3: As the leading music game franchise on the iPhone since the platform’s launch, Tap Tap Revenge is the name to beat if you want to get anywhere in iPhone rhythm gaming.  While we’ve seen a number of licensed entries on the market over the past year (Tap Tap Coldplay, Lady Gaga Revenge) TTR3 marks the third real revision to the series formula.  This time out it brings a wealth of new changes while still maintaining everything we know and love about the franchise.

If you’re new to the series, here’s the quick rundown; Tap Tap Revenge is a music game that, like most other music games, is about tapping out notes in rhythm to the music.  Unlike other series, TTR uses a 3-note system that seems to be a perfect fit for the iPhone.  Players can wrap their hands around the device and put two thumbs on the screen, darting one of those over to the middle track when necessary.  The gameplay is easy to pick up and well-suited for the device, but the coolest feature you’re going to find here isn’t in how you play but in how you play with a friend.  Local multiplayer can be tackled via split-screen on the same iPhone, with one player holding the top of the device and one holding the bottom.  Online multiplayer is also available in a cool score-battle mode that pits you against a room full of strangers that you can chat with between rounds.

Tap Tap Revenge 3 changes things up in a few noticeable ways.  A new single player campaign mode exists where you’ll need to level up RPG-style to unlock songs.  The game now offers a customizable avatar, which can be dressed and armed via coins earned during in-game play.  And biggest of all — TTR3 now offers in-game downloads of paid content.  This means that — in addition to the 200 or so free songs available — new content from major artists will be made available for purchase every week.  Duran Duran, LCD Soundsystem, The Killers — it’s astounding the depth and range of content that’s already available.  Everything from Marilyn Manson to New Kids on the Block is in the store.  Many of these purchases have their own skin for the in-game presentation.  Oh — and did we mention you can import songs from previous premium versions of the game?  Yeah, this thing is pretty much made of win.  A+

Rock Band: Bringing a massive 4-instrument multiplayer experience to the iPhone is a hefty concept, and for what it’s worth EA Mobile handled the transition fairly well.  Rock Band has always been about that living room experience, and so long as you’re hanging out with other iPhone rockers you’ll be able to get the band back together flawlessly.  The game supports 4-person local multiplayer over bluetooth and wifi with each iPhone playing a different instrument in sync with the rest of the group.  Online multiplayer exists too, but it comes off feeling pretty pointless.  I challenge anyone to notice a difference between single player and online multi — the experiences are identical.

When playing in single player you’ll have the opportunity to jam on whichever instrument you choose, with each having it’s own individual note tracking just as Harmonix intended.  The gameplay itself isn’t without its flaws, though.  Each instrument offers up four tracks, unlike Tap Tap Revenge’s three.  This makes for tough times for the larger fingered among us, as trying to hit two notes side-by-side can just as easily spill over into the next note column.  It’s not a game-crippling issue, but it becomes pretty apparent that 4 note tracks is just too many for an iPhone music game.

The instruments themselves don’t vary as much as they do in the console version.  Removing concepts like the kick pedal and the whammy bar means that, despite different note tracking, each instrument feels pretty much identical to play.  The biggest disappointment here had to be the vocals, which — instead of offering up SingStar fanatics an opportunity to bust out our karaoke chops — just offered a vertical variation on note tracking.  Going vertical actually made the 4 tracks more user friendly than the other instruments, but I wanted to sing, dammit!  I can understand that requiring the mic to sing would have limited the available market for the game (1st gen Touch’s have no audio input), but it doesn’t seem fair to the rest of us to cripple the experience across the board.

We were also a little bummed to see that Rock Band didn’t take advantage of the franchise’s massive pre-existing music store, instead opting for an iPhone specific store that (as of this writing) offers only 11 downloadable tracks.  At least the 20 included tracks rock the casbah, offering a much better “big name” selection than TTR3.  Besides — any game that offers Freezepop’s Super Sprode as a downloadable track is a winner in my books.  B+

Winner: Tap Tap Revenge 3.

While the general vibe of the franchise is still in tact, there were simply far too many missed opportunities here to whole-heartedly recommend Rock Band over the competition.  Tap Tap has known what it’s doing since day one, and the experience is only getting better.  And to think — we made this decision without even beginning to factor the price disparity between the two into the mix!

Download Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free by clicking here, or buy Rock Band for $6.99 by clicking here.

If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for a unique image for stand-by time, look no further as we dream up 5 fresh ideas for iPhone wallpaper.  And be sure to check out our comments for even more ideas from our readers!

The Space Age – The 1950′s was a special time.  World War II had ended, business was booming across America, and for the first time ever the world was on the brink of reaching the stars.  This lead to a boom in popular discussion and popular culture about what the future would look like.  Flying cars, houses on the moon, jetpacks — nothing was impossible!  And while the fantastic world we dreamed of more than 50 years ago never came to pass, artifacts of that idealized future can still be found strewn across the internet.  Why not check out some images of what we thought the future would look like and shrink them down to 320×480?

Telephones – The iPhone is many things to many people.  Email, GPS, Facebook, video camera…  the list goes on and on.  But how many of us actually use the thing as a phone?  Maybe you should choose a wallpaper that reminds you of its intended use.  The neat thing is, thanks to the long and storied history of the telephone, there are limitless possibilities for a hip photo opportunity.  Hand-crank phones, rotary phones, big ol’ 1980′s-style mobile phones — you name it, there’s a picture online.

Comic Book Covers – As a big comic book nerd growing up, it’s pretty easy for me to link great art with great comics.  Few things are as iconic or as personal  to a comics reader as a favorite cover, so why not share yours with the world?  Getting good scans of old comics covers used to be hard, but since 2006 one website has made it easy to find any comic cover you might be looking for – CoverBrowser.com.  With nearly half a million covers to choose from, I had very little difficulty in tracking down a specific Detective Comics cover that’s been haunting me since I was a kid.  Thanks CoverBrowser!

The Cold War – It may sound like a strange notion at first, but the Cold War brought to life some of the most unique imagery of the last 100 years.  Gas masks.  Soviet propaganda.  ICBM’s.  If you grew up any time before the fall of the Berlin Wall, you no doubt remember the daily threat of global thermonuclear war that quietly hung over all our heads.  Despite the terror it invoked at the time there’s a real kitsch nostalgia to the era and a rich photographic history to go along with it.  A quick search can find anything from Mickey Mouse breathing apparatuses to rusty old fallout shelter signs.

Video Game Art – I know what you’re thinking — using the latest screenshot from the hottest game just feels overdone and tacky.  But if you’re a gamer at heart and want to show some street cred, why not try and track down some tasteful shots or stellar fan art to show of your love of all things playable?  The screen above is a clip from 2008′s indie darling World of Goo (now available for Mac!) and offers up a great vibe without ever really feeling too fanboyish.  If you’re looking for fan art instead, you should do some searches on DeviantArt (here’s a personal favorite by NoBullet).

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As you have probably guessed by now, these are just one geek’s ideas and clearly cater to my own personal tastes. Maybe you loved these suggestions, maybe you hated them.  No matter how you felt I just hope it got you thinking a little bit more about the personality that can be added to every iPhone with just a simple image search on the web.

You’ve seen our ideas, but we’d love to see yours!  Tell us what you like to put on your iPhone standby screen.  Link to wallpapers you’ve used and loved.  Tear down that curtain and show us how cool your iPhone can be!

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A Few Words About iPhone Wallpaper: Setting your wallpaper is as easy as choosing an image from your Photos app and selecting wallpaper, but formatting it isnt always so easy.  You can always zoom and crop on the device, but if you want something thats going to really shine youll probably want to do some fiddling in a proper program.  Whether you prefer Photoshop, GIMP, or some free web-based alternative, you just need to know one thing:  iPhone wallpaper is 320×480 pixels.  Work within those dimensions and youre good to go no matter what image you choose.  (On a side note:  all of the wallpapers featured in this articles have been sized to 320×480, so they’re ready to use.)

Resources – While we’ve mentioned DeviantArt and CoverBrowser, there are a number of other simple but prolific options out there for finding great images.  Flickr is a terrific resource, as is the simple Google Image Search.  Check out different online communities and see what’s out there in the world of photography and art!

And while Big Fish Games has always catered to both PC and Mac audiences, Mac games — as is often the case — have always felt like an afterthought.  Today Big Fish Games sought to rectify that and has launched it’s own separate Mac gaming portal at http://www.bigfishgames.com/mac.html.

In celebration of the new Mac-friendly site Big Fish is offering more than 70 games at the special price of $2.99.  Award winning casual games like Drawn The Painted Tower and Return to Ravenhurst, as well as brand new releases like Valerie Porter and Hotel Dash: Suite Success will all be available at this special price to Mac owners until November 30th.

Click here to check out Felix’s Favorites for the full selection of games on sale, and make sure to enter the coupon code FELIX to get your games at the $2.99 sale price.

The AppStore is known for a lot of things, but easy navigation isn’t one of them.  With tens of thousands of games on the service, knowing when a real gem comes out can be more of a challenge than it should be.  Big games may get featured on the What’s Hot or What’s New pages, and they may sit at the top of the sale numbers for a few weeks, but unless you’re actively checking to see what’s new on a regular basis it’s almost inevitable you’re going to miss a golden gaming experience.

Today we’re taking a look at 5 upcoming game worth keeping an eye out for.  Why miss out on the big names if we can give you the heads up before they happen?

Ravensword
Release Date: Shortly (currently submitted for approval)
Price: Unknown

What is it: A 3D action RPG that’s been described as equal parts Oblivion and Twilight Princess, Ravensword developers are promising a richer, deeper experience than anything that’s come before on the iPhone.

Why you should be excited: Set in an expansive world with plenty of side quests, rumor has it you’ll need 3-6 hours to get through the main quest alone.  In a traditional RPG that’s a drop in the bucket — but on the iPhone?  For a game that looks this good, that’s tremendous.

Forget about how good it looks and how deep it should play for a moment though and realize this:  what you’re witnessing here is the birth of a franchise.  The game isn’t even out yet and Chillingo’s already committed to an expansion in the next six months that should add new gameplay devices in addition to content. Even bigger is the promise of Ravensword Online, the iPhone’s first true MMO in 2010.  An MMO.  On the iPhone.  And all of itstarts right here with the release of the first Ravensword.

Eliminate
Release Date: Shortly (currently submitted for approval)
Price: FREE

What is it: First person shooters on the iPhone have had a spotty reputation at best, but ngmoco hopes to turn that around with this upcoming online arena shooter.

Why you should be excited: Eliminate will offer instant, jump-in, multiplayer action from anywhere in the world.  Multiplayer on the iPhone has ranged from nightmarish to “meh.”  If ngmoco can pull off Eliminate, that’sall going to change.  The only downside to the game is that you’ll only have so much “energy” to use in a day, meaning you can only play so long before you have to let your character recharge.  Now that Apple allows microtransactions you’ll be able to purchase your way back into the game early. It sounds a lot like the business model used by Zynga in games like Mafia Wars, which is definitely something I have mixed feelings about.

Galactic Keep: Dice Battles
Release Date: 2010
Price: Unknown

What is it: A role-playing game that plays less like Final Fantasy and more like… well, a role-playing game.  Remember those nights of D&D in your parents basement?  That’s Galactic Keep. Everything down to the dice, hand-drawn maps, and monster stats replicates that old school, table-top gaming experience.

Why you should be excited: Try and forget the amazing hand drawn art style for a minute.  Forget about the brilliant table top vibe and photorealistic dice. What you’re left with after all of the spit and polish is a role-playing game for the iPhone that accurately replicates the experience of real role-playing games in five separate quests.  Tough decisions, fierce battles, and engaging stories for what we assume will be hours on end.  If you’ve ever spent a night around a kitchen table with Mountain Dew, Cheetos, and a bag of 20-sided dies, Galactic Keep could very well be the greatest thing you’ve ever put in your pocket.

The Relic
Release Date: November 2009
Price: Unknown

What is it: Think Gauntlet, but better.  Chillingo is bringing the classic hack’n'slash action of yesteryear to the iPhone in a multiplayer dungeon crawler that they describe as “Gauntlet on steroids.”

Why you should be excited: Earlier this year, Chillingo kicked off a brand new genre for the iPhone that caught on like wild fire: the twin stick shooter.  As our review of iDracula will attest, Chillingo knows what they’re doing when it comes to crazy hyper-violent top-down gameplay.  Now they’ve taken that experience and added in bigger environments, a variety of enemies, some objectives and a storyline.  While iDracula may have come up with a great mechanic, The Relic has the chance to use that in a great experience.  If someone had told me that the iDracula team were remaking Gauntlet for the iPhone I would have squealed like a little girl.  Hearing about The Relic pretty much had the same effect.

Star Wars: Trench Run
Release Date: Unknown
Price: $4.99

What is it: Remember that last scene in the first Star Wars?  When Luke and his buddies go all Red Dawn on the Death Star?  In the Star Wars community that’s remembered fondly as the Trench Run.  Thanks to THQ Wireless, pretty soon you’ll get to fly it yourself with the magic of tilt control.

Why you should be excited: It’s a little too early to tell, but judging by the screens it looks like we might finally be getting a fresh taste of the classic X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter series that graced our desktops nearly two decades ago.  The in-cockpit view and dogfighting looks strikingly similar, and it makes our hearts smile.  There’s also a definite taste of the original Star Wars Arcade here.  If THQ Wireless wanted a game that paid homage to the classics, those would be the games to draw from.

It also looks like Trench Run might let us fill the shoes of both Luke and Vader.  There’s a moment in the trailer where the screen switches to Vader’s cockpit trying to shoot down Luke.  It’s just as likely that this may be a section of game where you’re controlling Luke and trying to evade Vader’s targeting, but we’re hoping on playing as the dark lord himself.

Like the traditional Rock Band experience, you’ll get to select between four instruments — vocals, guitar, bass and drums. Each will feature it’s own authentic experience for every song in the game, and when played with friends should sync up flawlessly.  Note our use of the word “should.”  This game has been in development for more than a year now, so we’d like to think that they’ve worked all the kinks out.  But until we get a room full of band geeks jamming out on their portables, we’ll never really know how well the game will sync via Bluetooth.  At the end of the day, this will likely make or break the experience.  Knowing the top notch quality of previous Rock Band efforts, we’re inclined to believe that Rock Band iPhone should pull this off without a hitch.

Touch Arcade were given a hands-on preview of the game, and are reporting that the following 20 songs will make up the initial set list;

30 Seconds To Mars “ “Attack”
AFI “ “Girls Not Grey”
All American Rejects “ “Move Along”
Beastie Boys “ “Sabotage”
Blink-182 “ “All The Small Things”
Blondie “ “Hanging on the Telephone”
Foo Fighters “ “Learn To Fly”
Foo Fighters “ “Everlong”
George Thorogood & the Destroyers “ “Bad to The Bone”
Jethro Tull “ “Hymn 43″
Joan Jett “ “Hymn 43″
Lynard Skynard “ “Simple Man”
Motorhead “ “Ace of Spades ’08″
Pixies “ “Debaser”
Presidents of The United States of America “ “Ladybug”
Rise Against “ “Give It All”
Silversun Pickups “ “Lazy Eye”
Smashing Pumpkins “ “Cherub Rock”
Steve Miller Band “ “Take The Money and Run”
The Go Go’s “ “We Got The Beat”

The one disappointing thing we gleamed from the Touch Arcade preview was that “every instrument has its own track that you tap along with.”  If true, that means that vocals have replaced actual singing with yet another instrument track.  It’s understandable (not all App Store shoppers have access to a mic), but still disappointing.  We would have loved to learn that iPhone rockers could belt out the hits into their microphones.  Doesn’t look like that’s going to be the case.

We’re also very glad to see that this release have gone in a very different direction than Rock Band’s other recent portable incarnation, Rock Band Unplugged for the PSP.  The PSP version had players attempting to keep all four instruments in play at the same time in a frantic, mad balancing act.  It was not unlike Harmonix’s breakthrough PS2 game Frequency, but it just didn’t seem to be a great fit for the portable player in our opinion.  Keeping things streamlined and as close the original experience as possible, much as EA Mobile seems to have done here, is really the best way to bring this to the portable market.

No word on price yet, but a number of sources are reporting that this has already been submitted to Apple for approval.  Hopefully this means we’ll be seeing it in the coming weeks.  In the meantime, enjoy every second of Tap Tap Revenge you can.  Once Rock Band hits, something tells me Tap Tap won’t carry the weight it once did in the court of public opinion.

This isn’t the first time Sesame Street has showed some integration with our fruit-flavored overlords.  Last year the video podcast The Word on the Street debuted, featuring man on the street interviews with the new muppet Murray on a certain topic and classic Sesame Street clips that explore a similar theme.  As a parent to two little ones, having The Word on the Street in my pocket has made me a hero on more than one occasion.

The Word on the Street has recently been replaced by “Happy Healthy Monsters” in the same Sesame Street podcast feed on iTunes. Parents can also find other Sesame Street moments floating around iTunes.  The 1986 childhood classic Follow That Bird is available for rent or download, special episodes that touch on important subjects are available for free, and regular season episodes can be purchased in the Store.

If you’ve ever wondered where Sesame Street fits into last year’s popular ad campaign, Elmo is indeed a Mac.  Parents rejoice!

Jim Whitelaw is a man with a problem.  Jim bought his 10 year old daughter an iPod Touch so that she could play some games without having to break the bank on her allowance.  He set her up with an iTunes account, gave her an iTunes gift card, and told her to go at it.  Only, she couldn’t.  Apple Canada doesn’t allow iTunes gift cards to be used for App Store purchases.

Whitelaw contacted Apple customer support via email and was given the following reason;

“…you will not be able to purchase software, games, or applications with store credit or an iTunes Gift Card in Canada. Customers residing in Canada may only purchase software, games and applications using a credit card. This is due to Canadian Commerce Laws that the iTunes Store must strictly enforce.”

This story seemed all too familiar to me — not because I’d heard it before but because I’d lived it myself.  Earlier this year I had gone through the exact same situation.  What’s worse, the gift cards in Canada give no such warning.  At the time this occurred I attempted to look up the law in question, and failing to do so assumed the fault lie with my research abilities and not with Apple’s argument.  Jim Whitelaw, however, wasn’t content to walk away without a better answer.

When Apple customer care was unable to cite the law in question or put him in touch with someone that could, Whitelaw contacted his MPP (think Congress representative, but Canadian) for answers.  His MPP, too, could find no such law on the books, and like Whitelaw, refused to leave well enough alone.  The matter was escalated to the highest authority on the issue in Canada, the Hon. Tony Clement, Minister of Industry.  Here is the minister’s official response;

“(I) am unaware of which Canadian laws the company representatives are said to be enforcing.  I am not aware of any laws that prevent a company from accepting its own gift cards when it sells certain products.  That said, merchants are generally free to set their own policies respecting the payment methods they accept.”

So there you have it.  If the Canadian Minister of Industry can’t name the law that prevents Apple from accepting their own gift cards for certain purchases in Canada, my money says that no such law exists.  Furthermore, with no such warning printed on iTunes gift cards in Canada one could argue that this is nothing more than a dubious business practice intended to force people to spend additional funds in the iTunes Store than originally intended by referencing an imaginary law.

Mr. Whitelaw has sent an email to Steve Jobs, and is awaiting a response.  To follow his story as it develops, visit jimwhitelaw.com.

Software exclusivity is quickly becoming a thing of the past.  What once was a killer app for one system or another has now turned into the consumer connundrum of which software to buy for which device and why.  Determining a winner based on techincal differences and personal preferences takes time and research, yet one thing has become readily apparent: the iPhone is home to some tremendous bargains on some amazing software.  What you may spend $20 on elsewhere could only cost you $2 in the App Store, and it’s entirely possible you’ll end up with a better experience too!  Don’t believe us?  Take a look at these 5 examples of spectacular AppStore savings;

Burgertime Deluxe – Mac $19.95, PC $6.99, iPhone $1.99

What is it? It may not get mentioned as much as Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, but Burgertime is an old school classic that every gamer from the arcade generation holds near and dear to their hearts.  Peter Pepper needs to navigate a series of platforms to drop all the parts of a burger down to the plate, and he has to do it while battling evil foodstuffs come to life.  Namco recently resurrected this much beloved franchise with Burgertime Deluxe for the PC and Mac, with an iPhone port following shortly afterwords.  $6.99 for the PC version is an excellent price, but they have the outrageous audacity to ask nearly $20 for the Mac version!  Apple fans, don’t spill the big bills on this fast food classic.  Grab it on the value menu instead — the iPhone version is only $1.99!

Is there a difference? Technically no.  Visually the game is dead on.   So are the levels.  The controls though?  That’s a different story.  While no means a deal breaker, it’s not always as easy as it should be to get young Mr. Pepper off a ladder.  This problem only pops up from time to time, but it was definitely aggravating enough to mention.  Still — for $18 in savings it’s a small price to pay.

Star Wars Legacy: Broken – Trade Paperback $17.95, Original Issues $17.94, iPhone $1.98

What is it? Star Wars Legacy is an ongoing comics series published by Dark Horse Comics.  Set more than 100 years after the events of Return of the Jedi, it tells the story of Cade Skywalker, padawan-turned bounty hunter in a dark and sithly future.  Broken collects the first six issues of the series.  With the trade paperback you’ll need to spend $17.95 to get started on the adventure — but on the iPhone?  Broken Vol. 1 and Broken Vol. 2 are 99 cents each on the App Store, and collect all six issues when combined.

Is there a difference? You’re going to lose the tactile feel and smell of a real comic, but if you can live with that you’ll find reading comics on the iPhone is even better than the real thing.  The panels are bigger and easier to read, the backlit screen makes the colors pop, and the panel-by-panel navigation feels more comfortable than we’d like to admit.

Toki Tori – WiiWare 1000 points (roughly $10), iPhone $4.99

What is it? One of the best puzzle platformers ever created, Toki Tori tells the tale of a chicken trying to save his friends.  Rather than controlling our hero first hand, you’ll simply point him to where you want to go.  When it debuted on WiiWare last year it seemed like a good use of the system’s much touted motion controls.  But let’s be frank — this thing was made for touching.  Thankfully you can pick up our recently hatched hero on the iPhone for half the price of it’s WiiWare predecessor.

Is there a difference? Yep — it’s better on the iPhone.  Drastically in fact.  We had two major complaints with the Wii version — the default view was zoomed out much too far, and the motion controls required far too steady of a hand to be effective.  On the iPhone, both of these concerns have been addressed.  Of all the versions of Toki Tori we’ve seen over the years, the iPhone version is easily the best.

Droplitz – PC $9.99, PS3 $9.99, iPhone $1.99

What is it? Sometimes it’s the simple things in life that we become the most passionate about.  Tetris.  Bejeweled.  And now, Droplitz.  The goal in Droplitz is to rotate pipes in an attempt to guide their contents down to the drains below.  On the PC and PS3 they expect you to droplitz $10 of your hard earned cash, but on the iPhone?  You’ll only have to droplitz $1.99.

Is there a difference? The PS3 and PC versions are definitely prettier, and the larger screen allows for a bigger playfield too.  Despite this, the iPhone version is crazy addictive and captures the spirit and intent of the game perfectly.  You’ll technically be settling for less, but it’s really 10% less the experience at 80% less the price.  You do the math.

Awaken – Mac: $15, iPhone $1.99

What is it? Awaken is the Mac’s leading iTunes-friendly alarm clock.  Want to wake up to your complete collection of Anne Murray classics?  It’s all yours, Snowbird.  With everything it has to offer, $15 has always been a pretty good price for Awaken.  But if you can live with the delicate sounds of morning coming from your iPhone?  You can do that for $1.99.

Is there a difference? This is the only app on our list that has some pretty drastic differences, but that has less to do with handicapping the mobile version and more to do with the needs of each device.  While both devices serve as an alarm clock built entirely around you music library, the Mac version offers a few neat twists like the ability to set alarms to launch programs or the ability to control the alarm from across the room with your Mac remote.  If you tend to wake up, shower, watch a video podcast, and then check your email over breakfast, you can program the Mac version to do all of these things for you.  Well, almost.  You’ll need to eat that grapefruit yourself.  Awaken for the iPhone is a great choice for an iPhone alarm clock, especially if you tend to travel.  But if you want a fully-featured alarm clock that will cater to you daily desktop needs, you may actually want to spend the extra.

GPush is the first app for the iPhone that will send you a push notification any time you get a new message in your Gmail inbox.  It’s a fairly simple app that tackles a fairly simple problem, and it works.  After a simple username and password set up, you’ll receive a push notification whenever a new message pops into your Gmail account.  The push notification is similar to any text message you might receive.

One of our earlier complaints about the app, and one which we intended to focus on here was the inability to access your new mail directly from the notification.  This was addressed in a recently released update to the app, and we couldn’t be happier.  Now when you receive a new push, whether you’re in a application or not, you’ll be given the option to view the email or close the push notification.  If you choose to view the email you’ll be kicked out of your current application and taken to GPush.  Once there, GPush will take you to the new Gmail tab where it loads up a mobile-friendly version of your Gmail inbox that’s identical to the one seen in the Google Mobile App.

This new view feature is a great addition and well appreciated, but that doesn’t mean it’s not without flaws.  Clicking view only brings you to your inbox, not the email itself.  For folks like myself who much prefer using the iPhone’s built-in Mail app, having to use the web-based Gmail mobile feels a little too slow and clunky.  And the view option doesn’t work in every circumstance — if your device receives a push notification in standby you won’t have the option to view or close.  Instead sometimes you’ll be forced to open GPush the next time you unlock your device, and sometimes you won’t.  It’s flaky and inconsistent from the standby state, which is a fairly significant stumbling block when it comes to using the feature properly.

There are other annoyances with the app as well.  Many folks have multiple Gmail addresses for business, personal, etc.. but GPush only allows for one account.  And speaking of Gmail, why only the one client?  Sure Gmail is the biggest freemail provider out there, but does that mean users of Yahoo, Hotmail and Live need to be left out in the cold?  Or how about server based emails?  I happen to use several addresses, both Gmail and otherwise, and would have been delighted to have an app that could cater to all my push notification needs.

Despite our nitpicky complaints, GPush sets out with one thing in mind and it does that one thing incredibly well — it keeps me from bringing up my inbox every 5 minutes.  If it can accomplish that, it can probably accomplish anything.

GPush is available from Tiverias Apps on the iTunes AppStore for $1.99.

Accessing the Genius function is a simple enough process.  At the top of the App Store App beside the New and What’s Hot options that we’ve grown accustomed to will be a new to access Genius.  The first time you access this you’ll need to read and agree to the Genius Terms of Service, but once that’s out of the way it’s pretty much smooth sailing as it compiles a list of recommendations.

iTunes Genius has, in my experience, offered a wonderfully appropriate list of suggestions based on my listening tastes.  They’ve turned me on to new music, suggested music I already know I love — all in all it’s been a quality service since it launched.  It’s baby sibling, however, isn’t fairing as well.

While iTunes Genius seems to base it’s recommendations off of the purchases of like-minded individuals, App Store Genius feels as though it’s pulling random apps from similar categories and dumping them in your lap.  Paypal was recommended based on my use of CBC Radio.  NFL 2010 was recommended because I have Pac-Man Remix.  While these things might technically fall under the same category, their purposes and audiences couldn’t be less similar.

Still, it’s not all bad.  Based on my use of Tweetie a number of Twitter-related apps were suggested my way.  My use of Twitpic led to a recommendation for HP iPrint Photo.  These are all things that are thematically the same.  They make sense.  The problem is that more often than not I would be recommended MLB at Bat based on Twitpic or DOOM based on Civilization Revolution.

Looking at your purchases on the whole and making recommendations based on those might have made a little more sense.  If it did Genius would learn pretty quick how much I love tower defense games, and recommendations of those would have been a welcome addition to the sea of nonsense that’s currently presented.  It may break from the system used by iTunes Genius, but maybe that’s what’s needed here.  Music and apps are two very different beasts, and those beasts need two very different approaches to be tackled effectively.

One thing that surprised me was that Genius only factored in apps currently on your device.  If you’ve purchased apps in the past but removed them, those aren’t included.  One can appreciate the logic behind this — if you’ve deleted an app you probably don’t like it — but there’s a flipside to that argument.  What if you loved the app, but just didn’t need it right now?  Secret of Monkey Island SE easily ranks amongst my favorite iPhone games, but I deleted it once I was finished because of the space it took up.  In my mind, that’s something that should absolutely be factored in to any recommendation engine that’s trying to learn about my shopping habits.

App Store Genius is a great idea, but it’s execution is poor and contrary to the it’s own purposes.  Without consistently sensible recommendations, this just isn’t a part of the App Store that you’ll find yourself visiting.

It’s not a major update by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s definitely some unexpected additions in there.  Shopping for ringtones, App Store Genius, and more.  Here’s the complete breakdown;

Shopping

• Select from over 30,000 ringtones in the new Ringtones section of the iTunes app
• See available iTunes Store credit in both the iTunes and App Store apps
• Use redemption codes like iTunes gift cards and promo codes in the App Store app
• App Store Genius introduced, recommends new apps based on previous purchases

Video

• Trimmed videos can now be saved as new clips
• Save video received via email or MMS into Camera Roll

Phone

• Voice Control via Bluetooth on 3GS introduced
• Phone numbers can now be pasted into keypad

Performance

• Improved wi-fi performance when Bluetooth is active
• Improved syncing for audio, video, and photos
• Improved calendar syncing with Microsoft Exchange
• Corrects issue that displayed incorrect app icons for some

Other

• Use MobileMe to remotely lock iPhone
• Content organization for iTunes U
• Adds options to turn on 3GS accessibility features via Home button
• Safari will now warn you of dangerous/fradulent websites
• Other fixes to support changes in the upcoming release of iTunes 9

As someone who prefers shopping for apps on their iPhone, the addition of App Genius and code redemption are a welcome change.  Beyond that though, I’m not seeing a lot offered here.  Mind you, we shouldn’t really be expecting a major update so soon after the release of 3.0.  If anything, I think Apple’s spoiling us.

iPhone OS 3.0 and iPod Touch OS 3.1.1 are available as a free update on iTunes now.

Given PopCap’s track record it only stood to reason that PvZ would be ported to every console known to man.  That’s why it comes as no surprise when PopCap Games announced this morning that, in addition to an upcoming port to Xbox Live Arcade and a recent retail box release, Plants vs Zombies will be arriving in the AppStore for iPhone users in late 2009.

PopCap has had a tremendously good track record with iPhone Games.  Peggle, Bookworm, and Bejeweled 2 have all been ported to the popular portable with great success.  Few of these games, however, required the visual real estate that Plants vs. Zombies will.  It’s a question that’s begging to be asked — how are you going to manage to fit the fast paced, screen-filling action of Plants vs Zombies on a 3.5″ widescreen?

That’s not to say that PopCap won’t be able to do it.  I have no doubt in my mind that they’ll execute a perfect port — it’s what they’re known for.  But how?  Will they retool the game to create a smaller playfield?  Will they offer a “scan-and-pan” camera that lets you move around the board?  It’s a befuddling conundrum to be sure, but one I’m looking forward to seeing solved.

No price or solid release date has been announced, but PopCap assures us you can expect to see this one in the AppStore by the end of the year.  In the meantime, why not check out our review of the original Mac version?

A recent study by the market research group NPD showed that digital music purchases continued their steady rise to market dominance during the first half of 2009.  While that fact in and of itself isn’t all that surprising, what share of the overall music market iTunes now makes up is enough to knock the socks off even the most passionate Apple devotee: 25%.

That’s not 25% of the digital market — that’s 25% of the total market.  This makes them the largest music seller in the US, beating out their closest competitor Wal-Mart, currently sitting at 14% of total music sales, by a whopping 11 points.

Other figures are just as impressive.  In the digital arena iTunes isn’t only #1 — it’s blasted away the competition.  In terms of digital music sales iTunes now represents 69% of the market.  It’s closest competitor AmazonMP3 comes in at only 8%.  This runaway lead in the digital music market is in stark contrast with the relatively balanced sales in physical music.  The four leaders of CD sales — Wal-mart, Best Buy, Target and Amazon are all within a few points of each other, covering 20%, 16%, 10% and 10% of the CD market respectively.

How could one market showcase such a distinct leader while another seems to offer up a balanced competition?  Brand recognition?  Strong hardware support?

AmazonMP3 has attempted to buck the trend, offering up DRM-free music and better prices and a host of other options.  When Apple saw that the service was gaining traction it went ahead and changed its feature set to offer up the things that were making AmazonMP3 so popular.   What can a company like Amazon do to climb past 8% of the market, or more accurately, bring iTunes down from 69%?

What is iTunes doing right that everyone else is doing wrong?  What, if anything, could competitors do to level the playing field?

TwitPic for the iPhone lets you log in to your twitpic account, upload any photo stored on your device, comment on it and tweet it…  and that’s it.  Essentially TwitPic is a twitter client for twitpic photos only.  In a world where Twitter clients offered zero photo functionality, this would be a godsend.  But that’s not the world we live in.  In fact, most iPhone Twitter clients not only offer image uploading features but allow you to pick from a list of hosts including twitpic.

The developers behind this app couldn’t have been oblivious to this fact, and yet their design decisions suggest just that very thing.  Adding in twitpic specific features such as browsing your photo history or the photo history of other users would have added something fresh and new here, but such features are conspicuously absent.  Going one step further they could have added in features that have been glaringly omitted from the site like a search functionality, but again, this app functions as little more than the image uploader you already have in a client.

Even as an image uploader, it’s far from perfect.  Once you enter the portion of the process where you “comment” on your photo, giving the tweet text, you’re officially locked in.  If, say, you change your mind at the last minute and decide you’d rather not post the image for whatever reason (logged into the wrong acct, don’t want to embarrass your wife, etc..), tough beans.  There’s no way to cancel at that point.  Even worse?  Logging out of the app will then force your pic to post when you boot it back up.

If you’re looking for a quick way to pop your photos on to Twitter without booting up your Twitter client for whatever reason, this is definitely going to be a handy little tool.  The problem?  I can’t imagine anyone who that situation might apply to.  It’s like entering the word processor market and offering a fantastic app for backspacing.  No matter how good it is, it doesn’t matter — every app already does that.  And this app?  It’s a sub-par backspacer at best.

Considering there are so many options that already exist for uploading photos to twitpic, this app feels completely edundant.  Had they added in some basic features like the ability to browse your twitpic acct or search through the photos of others, they may have had something worth checking out.  As it stands though, TwitPic for the iPhone offers a tiny set of features that you’ll already find built into the vast majority of Twitter clients in the App Store.

TwitPic is available for free on the iTunes App Store.

Facebook and Instapaper Integration: One of the biggest problems Shovel faces with the current lack of a fully-featured Digg API (coming soon!) is how difficult it is to bookmark stories for reading later and how tough it can be to share a good story with friends.

With the current version of Shovel you can email a story to yourself or a others, but that’s hardly a convenient solution.  Shovel 3.0 will introduce Facebook integration thereby allowing you to post stories to your wall for all of your friends to enjoy.  And if you want to simply bookmark something for future reading and not share it with the rest of the world?  Shovel 3.0 will also integrate with Instapaper, a fantastic web-based app that allows you to quickly shove web pages into a “I’ll read it later” file.  Instapaper also offers a free iPhone app (as well as a paid Pro version) that will let you access your temporary bookmark list on the go.

Built-in Email: Prior to the release of iPhone OS 3.0 it was incredibly difficult to compose an email in an app without simply triggering the Mail app, which in turn would close the program you were using.  Now that 3.0 is here, Shovel is more than happy to adapt with the times.  This means no more exiting and re-opening every time you choose to use the e-mail option.

Improved web browser: Again, Shovel 3.0 is all about keeping up with the Joneses.  New features introduced in OS 3.0 didn’t just automatically appear in third-party applications, which means that the current version of the Shovel browser (Shovel doesn’t simply open Safari for a host of navigation-friendly reasons) is lacking new features like cut and paste.  Except Shovel 3.0 to rectify that.

Story Search: A feature suspiciously missing from previous versions, story search will take Shovel from an app that acts as a browsable diggtionary to a full fledged search for stories of interest.

The One Way Mirror: You still can’t digg stories.  You can’t comment.  You can’t submit.  All of these things are coming just as soon as Digg releases their new API.  But what about what what other Diggers are doing?  All of the data on users in available in the current API, and Scott saw this as an opportunity to bring a touch of the social experience to the current platform;

“It’s always interesting to see where a person is coming from, and Digg comments are no exception.  By clicking on a person’s username you are taken to a profile view where you can browse their previous comments and get a feel for how they feel about various other topics.”

Again, until the new API is released this is entirely a way one street.  It’s not unlike engaging in a conversation as a mute.  You can hear what everyone else is saying, but you can’t make a peep of your own.

The Sticking Point: All of these improvements will come at a cost – literally.  Shovel has been available as a free app since it’s original release, but as it rolls into 3.0 users will have to choose between a free version and a new paid version.  While the free version will feature a number of basic enhancements over it’s 2.0 predecessor (e-mail, browser, and story search improvements) the two biggest additions, Facebook and Instapaper integration, will be exclusive to the paid app.  A newly introduced landscape mode will also be exclusive to the Pro version.

While no price has been announced, we should find out soon enough as the Pro version is expected to hit the App Store in the next few weeks.  The free version of 3.0 will be following at a slightly later date.  User’s of the current version should experience a seamless transition from one free version to the other once the update is released.

How will it all pan out?  Make sure to check back here for our review once it becomes available.  In the mean time, be sure to check out the current free version of Shovel.

Apple isn’t the first company to get involved in live streaming of musical performances, but they are the first to try and put it in your pocket. This past Saturday the UK electronic group Underworld performed a concert live from Oakland, California, and for the first time ever you were able to watch this streamed live to your iPhone.

Live concert streaming seems to be gaining a lot of traction in 2009, and this is just the latest attempt to incorporate that into an already successful platform.  Back in June, for example, Hulu brought its users a live performance by the Dave Matthews Band.

While nothing has been confirmed regarding future concerts on either the iPhone or Hulu, I find it hard to believe this is the last stop.  There’s a lot of potential for both platforms to shape an experience that’s unique to what they’re offering.  It’s not inconcievable to think that we might see a “Concert Series” subscription come to iTunes, or some brilliant behind-the-scenes NBC performances live on Hulu.  Who wouldn’t want to live stream the rehearsal’s of Saturday Night Live musical guests?

The idea of streaming a concert over the internet is far from new.  A number of performers have attempted to stream concert footage dating all the way back to 1998, when John Tesh performed an intimate concert online by opening up whopping 100 phone line connections.  When you realize how many millions upon millions of people will tune in tonight, it’s kind of quaint and awe-inspiring when you think about the lengths Tesh had to go to perform to 60 people in the dial-up era.

It seems kind of strange that this Underworld streaming was announced so last minute (the news broke Saturday morning), yet there seems to be a general consensus amongst a number of blogs on why this information was held back.  The folks at NewTeeVee are suggesting that AT&T held onto the announcement for fear of their network being overloaded, which certainly doesn’t seem too far fetched a possibility.  Despite the delay in announcement, I’m sure the AT&T network went through a real stress-test Saturday night.

And yet things weren’t necesarily as “live” as advertised.  TechRadar is reporting that the concert itself actually took place the night before.  While the event was likely recorded in its entirety, and the broadcast still went out live, there’s definitely a difference between live and live-to-tape.  Regardless, multiple sites are reporting the event was executed flawlessly, with high quality video and audio broadcast to the masses with nary a stumbling block in sight.

To our readers who were lucky enough to hear about the event on Saturday, did you check it out?  How did you find the quality?  Was the stream as flawless as everyone is saying?

We reached out to Sprikit Software’s Scott Fitzhugh, developer of the iPhone app Shovel, for comment.

As a developer you’ve been fairly vocal about wanting Digg to open up to third-party applications such as yours.  Will the introduction of this new API mean that users will be able to login, vote, and comment from Shovel?

YES!  As a programer, one of the most difficult things to accept is that something simply “can’t be done.”  We’ve been hard at work on the newest version of the Shovel and the foundation is there.  I can say without hesitation that as soon as Digg makes these features available, they will be featured front and center in Shovel.

Has Digg directly reached out to your or other notable developers in the Digg marketplace to encourage adoption of this API?

Digg has been very responsive to thoughts and suggestions about the new API.  There’s no release date yet so they haven’t quite moved on to that phase of things, but it’s nice to know that someone is listening.

Do you have any concern that this may somehow lead to Digg developing their own iPhone app?  Does the release of this API make that possibility more or less likely in your eyes?

Yes and no.  We’ve definitely had this discussion.  But I get the feeling that Digg, in general, prefers web-apps over native apps.   With or without their public API, I suspect if they wanted to be in the iPhone app business they would have done so already.

Digg has clearly lagged behind other social networks in terms of third-party involvement.  Why is this?

One word.  Spam.  The Digg community hates it with a fiery passion that could consume a thousand suns, and the developers there have gone to great lengths to eradicate it.  Creating an API that allows for programatic submission of comments, stories, and Diggs is likely to result in bots that automatically submit mass amounts of advertising.   I’m sure they resisted the move as long as possible for this reason.

With no anticipated release date available for Digg’s new API, what can we expect to see from Shovel in the near future?

Shovel 3.0 is due out sometime in the next month (assuming the app review process goes smoothly) and will come in both free and pro flavors.  It’s been recoded from the ground up, includes a story search, Instapaper integration, Facebook integration, has built-in email, a much more full-featured built-in browser, and is far and away a MUCH more rich experience than the current version of Shovel.  We’re really excited about it.  The free version will of course be a free (seamless) update for our existing users.

Interested in checking out what Shovel has to offer?  Click here to download ver 2.0.1 absolutely free of charge.

Power Pros Touch isn’t the first baseball game to make its way to the AppStore.  In fact, with more than a dozen baseball titles currently available for purchase some might say that Power Pros is a little late to the game.  But as the old saying goes, sometimes the best things in life are worth waiting for.

Whether this is your first time stepping up to the virtual plate or your fifty-first, Power Pros Touch offers the perfect blend of exciting baseball action and accessible gameplay.  Like many baseball games, Power Pros Touch is largely about pitching and hitting.  Making excellent use of the touch screen, you’ll choose your pitch from a selection wheel and pinpoint exactly where in the batter’s box you want to throw it.  When the shoe is on the other foot and you’re stepping up to the plate, a small target will appear that you’ll need to tap at just the right time to connect with the ball.  Little touches, like sliding your finger upward to try for a power hit, round out the core experience.

The visuals in Power Pro are so sugary sweet that those judging by appearances alone would almost instantly assume this is a children’s games.  The characters, with their rounded heads and giant eyes, feel like vinyl dolls come to life.  Power Pros Touch is simply the latest handheld iteration of Japan’s wildly successful Pawapuro series, so the teams and uniforms will be unfamiliar to most.  While entirely fictional (as opposed to having roots in real world Japanese baseball), teams like the Dolphins and the Pawapuro All-Stars have long been a staple of Japanese sports gaming.

What strikes me as odd about this release though is the lack of a Major League Baseball license.  Konami had previously brought the Pawapuro series to North American gamers as MLB Power Pros for the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation 2, featuring all of the teams and players in the MLB.  While I can understand their desire to keep the roster small for the iPhone version, it’s surprising that they didn’t pick six teams from North America in an effort to appeal to a wider audience.  Still, wide eyes trump a wide audience any day, and Power Pros Touch definitely has wide, adorable eyes.

Despite it’s cute as a button presentation, an amazing amount of depth is available for players that want to amp up the challenge.  Much like its console predecessors Power Pros Touch can be customized to offer as simple or as deep an experience as you like.  By default the game boots up on the easiest settings, but a little tweaking in the options can change a number of items from automatic from manual.  The default controls automate everything outside of the pitching and batting, which means that base running and fielding are all controlled by your AI teammates.  And while the simplicity of this is downright elegant, gamers who want to step outside of the batters box and get live in the field can do so with ease thanks to the level of customization offered.  Full season and exhibition modes are also offered with adjustable numbers of innings, rules, and difficulties all popping up at the front of every game.

The team at Konami have done the seemingly impossible: they’ve created a baseball game for everyone.  Not only that, but they’ve created it to be played anywhere and for any length of time.  You can play a quick one inning match while waiting for your cab just as easily as you can work your way through a full season over a few months of lunch breaks.  There’s no doubt about it, Konami have really hit this one out of the park.  At $3.99 Power Pros Touch may be the best value you’ll find on the iPhone this summer.  You can find it exclusively in the iTunes App Store.

LucasArts and Aspyr Media have just announced The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition for for both Mac and PC.  So what makes this release so “ultimate”?  Journey with us to the dark side and find out.

In addition to offering the God of War style Star Wars experience that gamers were given last fall, expect to find new costumes, new characters to play as, and three new levels.  And while the prospect of playing as Luke, Obi-Wan or C3PO sounds pretty cool (if not downright confusing — what kind of powers could 3P0 use?) the real draw of this title for repeat players would have to be the three additional levels.

Contributing to the Infinities universe which takes a “what if?” approach to existing Star Wars mythos, the new levels break from the existing Star Wars universe (which Force Unleashed is considered a canon part of) and show how things would have unfolded in a world where the Apprentice defeated Darth Vader to become the Emperor’s right hand.  Expect to visit the Jedi Temple on Coruscant in an effort to discover the truth about your father, be sent to Tatooine to assassinate Ben Kenobi (and make a stop at Jabba’s Palace), and crush the Rebellion once and for all on Hoth.

Screenshots made available alongside the announcement showcase some of the new costumes, which appear to be less bonus content and more an integral part of the story presented in these three new levels.  Starkiller appears to be disguised as a sand person when on Tatooine, and is donning his new “king of the universe” threads when on Hoth.  Gamers who’ve gone through this adventure once before will be happy to hear that these three new levels will be available from the main menu rather than tacked on at the end of the single player campaign.

While action heavy third-person games don’t always pan out with a mouse and keyboard as well as one might hope, the addition of this new content should persuade even the most embittered of console veterans to check this out.  No specific release date or price have been given, but the powers that be have assured us that we should see a Fall 2009 release.  They’ve also assured us of something even more exciting; while no specific price has been set, The Force Unleashed: Ultimate Sith Edition will not be shipping at the $59.99 MSRP that the console versions debuted at last year.  Fingers crossed that we get a real bargain.

When it comes to depth of content, lets get one thing straight; the database in Movie Genie isn’t just IMDB-like, it is IMDB.  Less a movie database and more an method of presenting IMDB in an iPhone-friendly way, Movie Genie acts as your go between for IMDB when you’re on the go and it does what it does incredibly well.  The fine folks at IMDB have been dragging their heels on developing an iPhone app for far too long.  Now that Movie Genie is here, they may very well have regretted the wait.

Any actor, director, or film can be found in seconds via the search feature.  Once you’ve found what you’re looking for, the profile is streamlined to make for easy navigation.  At the top of each page are two tabs; one that brings up a person or projects details, and one that brings up the cast & crew or filmography.

The Details page offers up all of the relevant information that you would find in an IMDB profile that’s not pertaining to the list data on the second tab.  Plot, trivia, goofs, user reviews, taglines — you name it, it’s on there.  In fact the only thing that seemed to be missing were trailers, and even they won’t be gone for too long.  The developer currently has trailers slated for a future update.  To keep things streamlined, each of the items on the details page offers up only a few short lines of text.  If you want more, you can just click on the feature to get all of the information.  This makes sure that the Details page provides access to everything you could want without ever getting cluttered.

In addition to the basic search feature Movie Genie also lets you keep track of favorites so that you can revisit material at a later time.  If you’re a big fan of Pauly Shore for example (and who isn’t?) you can bookmark his IMDB profile to your favorites for a quick visit whenever it’s needed.  Even better than the favorites feature (which, lets be honest, was totally expected) is the history tab.  Just give it a quick click and see all of the pages you’ve visited in reverse chronological order (ie most recent first).

Because it uses IMDB as its source material, Movie Genie can help you keep track of more than just movies.  TV shows and video games are also organized here, as well as all of the people associated with them.  If you want to know all the video games Ron Gilbert has worked on or all the TV shows Norman Lear has produced, the information is all at your fingertips.

The only negative to be found with Movie Genie is its nearly total lack of offline functionality.  Because it depends on IMDB for its database resources, Movie Genie needs to remain online for it to work.  And while this should pose no problem for iPhone owners, iPod Touch users will be left out in the cold.  Sure they can browse explore and enjoy when near a wifi point, but let’s be honest — how much of this app’s appeal is for users sitting near a wireless router at home and how much is it for those wanting a point of refernece while in a video store?  Or settling an argument with a friend while out and about on the town?  The idea of Movie Genie is to have a movie database on-the-go.  For iPod Touch users, that simply isn’t the case.

Still, that’s not to say the app would have zero appeal to those who are stuck offline in public.  Let’s say you’ve used your favorites tab to assemble a list of movies you’d like to see.  That list will still be visible regardless of internet connection.  If you want to go any deeper than that though, like finding out who is in the movies on your list or reading a quick synopsis, you’re fresh out of luck.

The lack of offline functionality will definitely be a dealbreaker for a number of iPod Touch users, but when it comes to everybody else?  Movie Genie is easily the best movie reference tool in the iTunes App Store so far.  IMDB should consider dealing directly with developer Taylan Pince when they finally get around to developing an iPhone app, because they’d have a hard time topping what he’s produced with Movie Genie.

There was something magical about it.  The small of the vinyl and cardboard.  Grabbing a record by the edges so as not to scratch it.  Dropping the needle.  And of course, picking up a 45 in anticipation of an albums release.  Now Apple wants to recreate this experience with Digital 45′s, virtual reproductions of classic singles on the iTunes Store.

At a glance, this whole thing might sound like a marketing ploy to simply bundle songs together at a discounted price, and should they begin to clutter the Digital 45 Store with new albums together it would be an easy argument to make.  As it stands now though, the Digital 45 Store is offering up reproductions of actual 45′s, complete with the original sleeve art and matching B-side.

In the cases where sleeve art isn’t available, they’ve opted to show the label art from the center of the disc on a vinyl background.  It’s a great look, one that some will actually prefer to the sleeve art.  For those who missed the heydey of 45′s and later, CD singles, the real highlight to these releases always lay in the B-side, which usually featured a song not available on the album.  Adding B-sides to the iTunes catalogue should seriously satisfy the needs of music fans who think they’ve heard everything from their favorite artists.

Click here to check out everything that is currently offered on the Digital 45 Store.

Earlier this morning at the Developer Conference in Brighton, Chillingo (one of the iPhone’s leading game publishers) announced their plans to create a social gaming network that would become “the de-facto social gaming standard for iPhone and iPod touch” according to Chillingo director Chris Byatte.

PocketGamer.biz reports that the network will be released under the moniker Crystal and is set to feature friends lists, achievements, and the ability to issue direct challenges to other gamers on the network. Equal parts Facebook and Xbox Live, Crystal is intended to offer up a way for iPhone gamers to stay in touch while deepening the gaming experience by offering new goals and challenges that place you in direct competition with your friends.

Like many product announcements, this morning’s unveiling raised more questions than answers.  Will the network only be available for titles published by Chillingo, or will the social platform be available as a sort of middleware that any publisher can license?  Can games that predate Crystal be patched to include it, or would they need to be rebuilt from the ground up?  Will Apple adopt this as “the de facto social gaming standard,” or will this launch a dozen imitators all fighting for the crown?

Chillingo isn’t the first company to attempt to craft a social gaming experience on the iPhone.  Competitor ngmoco launched their Plus+ network last month as a means for gamers to issue challenges, track friends and earn awards — exactly like Chillingo is planning to do.  It’s hard to gauge how well Plus+ will perform as it’s barely out of the gate, however early reviews from Star Defense players (the only game supported by the service so far) have been mostly positive.

Competition isn’t the only issue Crystal faces.  In its currently announced form, the networking platform does nothing to overcome social gaming’s greatest obstacle on the iPhone: a lack of online multiplayer.  Until Apple somehow makes it easier for online-enabled games to be developed with multiplayer in mind, social gaming on the iPhone is never going to attain the level of success that it has the potential to achieve.

There’s no word on a release date as of yet, but Chillingo has committed to keeping the service free for gamers and intends to integrate other major social networks like Twitter and Facebook.  There’s a lot of potential here.  We’ll just have to wait and see what, if anything, Crystal can offer that Plus+ can’t.

It’s this spirit of preservation that has allowed the underground world of digital comics to flourish.  Rather than risking damage to that Action Comics #71 you have tucked away for a down payment on a house, digital reproductions allow you to view the comics in your collection without ever taking them out of their protective plastic.  The lack of a decent portable program that allowed for the reading of these digital iterations has kept many a reader tied to their desktop… until now.

Comic Zeal allows you to transfer your digital comic book collection directly to your iPhone or iPod Touch, and presents you a number of great viewing options for reading.  Each page can be zoomed and navigated using the same tap and zoom mechanics that iPhone users have grown used to.  Comics can be read in landscape or portrait depending on your preference, with pages being flipped through by simply sliding your finger to advance through the story.  The fundamentals of page navigation, something that is at the core of any good comics reader, should be second nature to any iPhone user.

Clarity is the other cornerstone of a solid comics reader, and here too Comic Zeal excels.  While the default view even in landscape blurs the words a little too much too be readable, a light zoom fixes that right up.  And since you can still navigate from the zoom, you can simply set it once and forget it forever.  Presentation outside of an issue is just as good as inside.  Comics are displayed in “boxes” of series, which when clicked on will give you a cover view of every comic in that box.  It’s a nice touch, and a fantastic step up from the boring old text lists that most programs of this nature rely on.  Comics is a visual medium, and Comic Zeal embraces that fact.

Not everyone who loves comics has ventured into the world of digital reproductions, and unless you’re willing to scan your own or step into some of the internet’s shadier locales to download back-ups of comics you already own (MacApper in no way supports piracy, comic books are a dying medium, please support it!) you may not have much of a use for Comic Zeal.  Thankfully the developers at bitolithic recognized this and added some built in functionality for those looking to pick up some public domain comics to get a taste of something new.  Links to downloads from the indie superhero imprint Flashback Comics as well as a selection of Golden Age classics ranging from Atomic War to The Blue Beetle are available to anyone looking to expand their collection.

Despite these inclusions, Comic Zeal isn’t really aimed towards the reader with little previous experience with digital reprints.  Those with massive collections filling their hard drives have been dying to get their hands on a convenient portable reader that would allow them to read their collections.  Fantastic single issue iPhone apps have demonstrated the devices amazing capabilities pertaining to digital comics on the go, and while Comic Zeal can’t offer the amazing readability they do, it does allow you to port your comics to the iPhone with ease.

While one might hope for out-of-the-box support for the standard .cbr file type that most comics are read in, it’s not entirely the case.  Rather than reading .cbr files, Comic Zeal require you to convert your comics to their proprietary .cbi format via their freeware desktop application.  It may seem like a nuisance, but it makes a lot of sense when you see the reason behind it.  Traditional cbr’s exist at resolutions that are ridiculously high for iPhone usage.  Converting to cbi brings these down to a reasonable size, helping to conserve battery life by putting less strain on the processor.

When the app first launched there were endless hoops you’d have to jump through to get your files converted.  Before installing the desktop coversion software Comic Zeal Creator, you had to install supporting software.  Then you had to sort out server nonsense.  It was a mess.  Bit if past experiences with Creator turned you off of Comic Zeal, you might want to give it a second shot now that they’re released Creator’s successor, ComicZeal Sync.

Sync cuts out all the run around of it’s predecessor and opts for drag and drop simplicity.  After you drop an item into Sync, it will immediately begin the conversion.  If file names follow a certain structure, Sync should be able to sort out what file belongs to what series and keep your collection tidy without any first-hand involvement from you.  If your files aren’t that tidy, don’t worry.  While processing you can add basic info for the item such as series name, issue name, and issue number.  This will make sure that when you pop open Comic Zeal on the go everything is ready and waiting for you.  The only real problem here is that you can’t go back and edit that data after the file has been converted.  It’s not a major hassle, but it’s downright silly that the option to edit after conversion isn’t available.  And while you can also bulk convert, the necessity of providing correct info to keep your collection nice and neat kind of suggests that maybe you shouldn’t.

Syncing is a fairly painless process as well.  Clicking the sync button on the desktop app and the sync button in the iPhone app will get all of your new comics copied and sorted for you with no fuss or muss.  It’s all handled on the backend through the universally-acclaimed SyncDocs, so it’s highly unlikely you’ll find yourself running into data issues as a result.

The only real downside to the app, apart from the inability to edit your collection once converted, is how it underperforms compared to those single issue apps that exist for comics like Atomic Robo or The Terminator.  Being designed to specifically capture an individual issue means that each “page” can be a single panel, navigated frame by frame.  Using pre-existing scans simply doesn’t allow for that level of ease.  Despite this, ComicZeal offers up a fantastic experience for readers looking to take their collection on the go, even if it means they’ll have to pan and zoom to get through each page.

Unless Marvel and DC start to offer single issue downloads of their complete back catalogue in the AppStore, Comic Zeal will reign king as the premiere app for comic book lovers looking to take their favorites on the go.

Comic Zeal is available on the iTunes AppStore for $2.99.

Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.

But while Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr may have taken this stance in a comment made to CNN.com’s Wes Finley-Price, there are still questions that remain unanswered.  Why does the iPhone Developer Program allow developers to make changes directly from the server in the first place?  Shouldn’t there be a system in place that restricts any changes to an app without a formal Apple approved update?  And if Apple “will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography,” then why do they issue a rating that includes the warning “Frequent/Intense Sexual Content or Nudity”?  What are they expecting?  Tasteful, non-pornagraphic frequent and intense nudity?  Outside of a breast-cancer self-exam or a medical app, I can’t imagine  an app with frequent nudity.  And I certainly wouldn’t expect an app like that to have a 17+ rating, would you?

Apple doesn’t want to be seen as condoning pornography, and that’s understandable.  But pornography is about intent.  Covered breasts or not, Hottest Girls was approved by Apple.  If that’s the sort of content that does get approved, I can’t see why they’d have an issue with a parental-controlled version of the exact same software showing off a little bit of the boob.

Columns Deluxe, normally $1.99, offers up a tremendous value even at its regular price.  Not only does it include the classic jewel-dropping puzzle game that SEGA dreamed up to compete with Tetris back in the Genesis days, but it also includes a version of Puyo Pop built right into the same app!  While the name Puyo Pop might not be too familiar in the ears of western gamers, they’ll likely be very familiar with the formula.  Back in the day it was brought home on 16-bit machines as Dr. Robotnik’s Mean Bean Machine and Kirby’s Avalanche.  Matching like-colored blobs is simple, but incredibly addicting.  And like any good puzzle game, it never really gets old.

Some might find it strange to receive a gift on such a patriotic holiday from a company few would think of as domestic, but in all actuality SEGA has some very American roots.  Originally launched in 1940, Service Games (later shortened to SEGA) was an entrepreneurial venture by three Americans looking to provide coin-op amusements to US military personnel fighting the war in the Pacific.  So when you think about it, SEGA is a company with roots as red, white and blue as they come!

Click here to grab SEGA Columns Deluxe from the iTunes AppStore. Hurry though!  Sale ends Monday!