This Week at 148Apps: January 30 - February 6
In celebration of last week's announcement of the winners of the 2010 Best App Ever Awards, 148Apps is giving away hundreds of promotional codes to some lucky contest winners To be in for a chance of winning any of these codes, head over to our contest page and read the details. We tallied almost five hundred thousand votes in the 2010 Best App Ever Awards - this is both the developers' way and our way of saying thanks.
The main news this week came from News Corporation Chairman & CEO Rupert Murdoch, in conjunction with Apple's Vice President of Internet Services, Eddy Cue, with the announcement of the launch of the highly-anticipated iPad only newspaper called The Daily. Available now on the iTunes App Store, the free-to-download application will provide new content each and every day. "The app will be free, with a subscription available for $0.99 per day, or $39.99 per year. The first two weeks will also be free, thanks to sponsors like Verizon and Virgin Atlantic. It has Twitter and Facebook integration as well as ways to make audio notes on the content" writes Rob LeFebvre.
In other news, Blake Grundman reported earlier this week on the pending arrival of the next instalment of Angry Birds, Rio, due in March 2011. "The game will be getting a newly christened graphical upgrade, forty-five new stages with the promise for more via update, and several new wrinkles to the game mechanics" writes Blake. "Developers have pared up with 20th Century Fox to help complement the launch of their upcoming animated film, Rio. Entitled the very original, Angry Birds Rio, the game will focus on melding the two worlds together in a way that will hopefully pass along little bit of Rovio’s secret sauce onto the cinematic release."
And that's not all on the gaming front. Earlier this week, Gameloft launched Secret Odyseey: Rise of Ayden for iPhone and iPod Touch, a fantasy / RPG game that is free to download, but will cost $6.99 to unlock the full game. "This is a curious gambit from Gameloft" writes Carter Dotson, "and it will be interesting to see how users react to it, and if future releases adopt a similar pricing model or not."
Sacred Odyssey: Rise of Ayden FREE
FREE!
Dotson also posted about iOS Gaming on Your TV, through the Apple VGA cable. "The iPad may have a big and beautiful screen, but sometimes, you want to play those games on an even bigger screen, like your TV. Thankfully, there are a selection of iOS games that allow you to hook up your iPad and/or iPhone/iPod touch to the TV using the VGA adapter." Click the link to see some of the apps that support this integration.
148Apps also awarded two applications five-star reviews, as well as the Editor's Choice badge, earlier this week. First up, PoweryBase's Bills ~ On Your Table HD, the iPad-only version of the popular iPhone application. "Bills does just about everything except pay the bills, in a beautiful, wooden interface" I wrote. "I’m thoroughly impressed with Bills ~ On Your Table HD. Cataloguing bills is refreshingly simple yet advanced where it needs to be. If only paying them was as painless."
Version 2.0 of Camera+ by tap tap tap stands at the same position also. "It’s probably the best camera replacement app on the App Store" writes Carter Dotson. "The great thing about Camera+ is just the sheer number of options you have ... If you need a camera replacement app, Camera+ is a fine selection, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a better feature-packed alternative to the default camera app."
Camera+ Legacy
$4.99
To keep up to date with the top apps out there, 148Apps releases an updated-daily list for a number of different categories, including All Time Top iPhone Apps, Top Games and most-downloaded iPhone Apps. You can subscribe to each list via RSS, or follow our twitter feed if social networking's more your thing.
And finally, we're pleased to have launched an all-new, updated search to 148Apps. Now it's easier than ever before to find what you're looking for, whether it be app results or blog posts. Go ahead and try it out!
Thanks for reading, and be sure to check back the same time next week for a summary of the most eventful happenings.