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 We’re heading towards the holidays, and this week at 148Apps.com we premiered a new Gameloft contest for the ultimate holiday gift – a brand spankin’ new iPhone 4S. To enter, just become a 148Apps and Gameloft Facebook fan – www.facebook.com/gameloft and www.facebook.com/148apps.
Or you can follow both of us on Twitter as well at www.twitter.com/148apps and www.twitter.com/gameloft. Then, write the following public tweet: “Upgrade to a 4S yet? Follow @Gameloft & @148Apps & RT for a chance to win an iPhone 4S! Gameloft gaming on the 4S: http://glft.co/uIR3Y1″
For a link to the official rules, plus more information, read the full article on 148Apps.
Our GiggleApps sister site featured a new review of Transport Jigsaw Puzzles 123 for iPad from writer Amy Solomon. She writes, “Transport Jigsaw Puzzles 123 for iPad is the terrific sequel to the original app, Farm Jigsaw Puzzles 123 for iPad. Seven scenes are included here that wonderfully introduce many vehicles and means of transportation, both traditional and unique, as well as a very fun, puzzle experience with the choice of using 2 to 16 puzzle pieces per scene and include hints if needed. There is also an iPhone version of this app available with 5 puzzle scenes included.”
Read the full review on GiggleApps.
$1.99  iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-09-30 :: Category: Games  Finally, on 148Apps.biz, site founder Jeff Scott recapped his recent visit to the Sprint Open Solutions Conference, saying, “During the keynote from CEO Dan Hesse, he mentioned many times how great it was to have the iPhone on Sprint now (and to no longer have to answer the question of when they would get the iPhone). The addition of the iPhone 4 and 4S should allow Sprint to have their best year ever this year. Needing to have just one million adds to reach that record level. The iPhone should easily help them retain users and gain new ones.”
Read the full recap on 148Apps.biz.
We’re done for this week! As always, check our Twitter and Facebook feeds for the latest news, reviews, contests and giveaways. See you next week.
 This week at 148Apps.com, writer Rob Rich previewed the upcoming freemium Charlie Brown game, Snoopy’s Street Fair. Rich was pleasantly elated by the game’s trailer, as he writes, “(The Peanuts characters have) been around a long time. Long enough, in fact, to have spawned more than a couple video game iterations. Now it’s time for the unnaturally bald man-child and his friends to try their luck on iOS with Snoopy’s Street Fair. I’ll admit I was somewhat surprised and confused by the odd choice of gameplay style at first, but after only a few seconds of that trailer down there I’ve completely changed my tune. I’m legitimately excited for this game.”
Read the full article on 148Apps.com.
Kid-friendly site GiggleApps plumbed the depths of the mysterious with its review of Boquitas: The Hunt for the Chupacabras. Writer Amy Solomon comments, “There is so much I really appreciate about this app. It is wonderfully colorful, with a bright and lively palette that I greatly enjoy. The look of these illustrations is highly stylized, reminiscent to me of the great, iconic cartoons created by Genndy Tartakovsky, and include clever interactions that add richness, whit and whimsy to this pitch-perfect storybook application. The art direction here is perfectly realized as the reader’s attention is focused in all the right places to further this story along, creating nice moments of suspense and great humor.”
Hunt for more chupacabras and read the full review on GiggleApps.com.
$2.99 iPad Only App - Designed for the iPad
Released: 2011-10-05 :: Category: Books Finally, on 148Apps.biz, Rob LeFebvre got some initial impressions of iCloud from a developer’s perspective when he spoke to Dave Howell of Avatron Software. LeFebvre writes, “Howell suggests that iCloud is now allowing developers like him to reduce costs, and use iCloud to store information for app usage, including Key Value Storage. This allows developers to leverage the free nature of the basic iCloud service instead of incurring server costs, or using higher priced options like Dropbox and Box.net.”
Read the full interview on 148Apps.biz.
With Halloween coming up, don’t forget to check 148Apps often for great weekend and holiday sales on the apps and games you love and want. Or, just Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news, contests and more delivered right to you.
See you next week after your early week candy binge!
 This week at 148Apps, we celebrated the release of iOS 5 in style, providing guidance on setting up the now-iCloud-friendly device in a home with multiple computers, multiple iPhones and multiple iTunes accounts. 148Apps founder Jeff Scott writes, “If you have multiple iTunes accounts, you can sign in and out of the different accounts without issue from the Store settings. That is unless you turn on automatic downloads. New to iOS 5 are automatic downloads for the iTunes Store for Apps, Books, and Music. If this device only uses the one account, it’s safe to turn on any of these that you wish. But, turning this on will lock this device to this iTunes account for 90 days. So if multiple accounts are used, do not turn on automatic downloads.”
Read all of this need-to-know info on 148Apps.com.
Meanwhile, on sister site GiggleApps, Amy Solomon reviewed an app sure to help your child become more adept with the alphabet, while also cultivating them into kiddie foodies. Solomon says that ABC Food is, “the latest and possibly greatest app from Peapod Labs’s series of ABC apps focused on both letter recognition as well as teaching about a specific topic, be it animals, music, modes of transportation or sports and includes the use of beautifully detailed photographs, videos from Youtube and sometimes fun facts as well. ABC Food includes a new feature to this series as this app contains fun interactions for each food highlighted within this application.”
Read the full review with a quick click over to GiggleApps.
$2.99 + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-09-02 :: Category: Education Data was the name of the game on 148Apps.biz. Rob LeFebvre writes that, “App search company Xylogic has released 220 app download reports from 29 different countries in order to provide partners with a huge amount of data to be used in decision making process across app publishers, developers and the like. The data is sortable across countries and mobile app platforms, including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.”
Read what all of this data could mean for you on 148Apps.biz.
That’s the long and short of it for this week. Keep watching our Twitter and Facebook feeds for lots of news, updates and contests. See you next week, crimefighters!
This week at 148Apps.com, writer Blake Grundman offered part one of his developer interview with the folks behind Squishy’s Revenge, Toy Studio. Grundman writes, “Despite only having been in existence since September of 2009 the team working behind the scenes at Toy Studio have been hard at work, churning out an impressive thirteen games in that short span. Having successfully released titles on both the Nook Color and Facebook, it seemed like the next logical step was to transition into the iOS space.”
Read the rest of part one at 148Apps.com, and keep checking in for parts two and three soon.
FREE! + Universal App - Designed for iPhone and iPad
Released: 2011-09-29 :: Category: Games Over at 148Apps.biz, founder Jeff Scott reported on Unity’s big announcement at Unite11. Scott says, “Shown during the Unite11 keynote, Unity 3.5 includes lots of new, very impressive sounding features like Multi-threaded rendering, Improved occlusion culling, and Radiosity Normal Mapping lightmaps. All in all, about 40 major new features. I’m thinking this will make some developers very happy — and me, as a game player will reap the benefits! For a full list of new features in Unity 3.5, check out the press release.”
Read more about the big announcement on 148Apps.biz.
GiggleApps writer Amy Solomon contributed a review of Snap and Share Kids Cam, stating, “I take a lot of photos of my son, who will also now ask me to take a snapshot many times of things he finds amusing, sometimes asking me to email them to family members. This app easily allows a child his age to take and send photos himself, as this app is very simple to use and contains nice spoken prompts explaining each event leading up to the emailing of photos. So easy to use in fact, that I plan to use it myself as this application is surely quicker than taking a picture, finding it on the camera roll, tapping to email, typing the recipient’s email address and tapping again to send the email on its way.”
Read the rest of Solomon’s review on GiggleApps.
$1.99 iPhone App - Designed for the iPhone, compatible with the iPad
Released: 2011-09-06 :: Category: Photography And thus we come to another weekly round-up of 148Apps network goodness. There’s so much more to see on the various sites, so check them out for yourself – and don’t forget to follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for daily news updates and contests galore. See you next time.
 148Apps founder Jeff Scott posted this news update over at 148Apps.biz:
The first HTML5 Developers Conference is set to launch next week. And just announced they will be hosting a hackathon with a special focus on mobile gaming.
Everyone is talking about HTML5 — it’s the future, right? Developers from all over the world are getting together to learn more about HTML5 and those ubiquitous plans next week in San Francisco.
For the full story, head on over to 148Apps.biz.
 It may not be a huge trend, but it appears that a growing number of companies are offering funds to assist developers to create and/or promote their apps in the Apple and Android markets. These companies foresee that the number of mobile phones and tablets purchased is only going to keep on rising for the foreseeable future along with the number of apps for these users. It’s a good time to get into the marketplace. Case in point: Gamevil recently announced a $10 million partnership fund for external developers who have smartphone gaming ideas.
Read the full review at 148Apps.biz.
 iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad developers – rejoice. Yesterday Apple released a statement announcing the removal of a number of restrictions placed on developers, relaxing the development process and making the approval process significantly more transparent by publishing official guidelines for the application approval process.
Beforehand, developers were unaware of the official process, creating a significant grey area where writers of applications remained in the dark with regards to certain policies – adult content, the use of physical buttons on iDevices etc. For example, earlier last month the developers of ReadItLater – a tool similar to Instapaper that saves webpage content for later reading – had version 2.2 of their application rejected by Apple due to a registration process seen on thousands of other applications live on the App Store. “Applications cannot require user registration prior to allowing access to app features and content” wrote the statement of disapproval from Apple. The application was later resubmitted – unchanged – and approved. It is not yet known when the guidelines will be published for viewing by developers.
The press release also announced that Apple “are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code.” In other words, no longer are developers limited to tools made by Apple specifically for iOS software development. “This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need” the release continued.
Finally, Apple also relaxed restrictions on mobile advertising, an unexpected change given Apple’s recent iAd integration. Specifically, the new changes allow developers to choose which type of ads (if any) they want their application to include. “The new terms provide immediate clarification about the status of mobile advertising on the iPhone and will benefit users, developers, and advertisers. Users will benefit from more free, or low cost, apps that can now more readily be supported by advertising” wrote Omar Hamoui, Vice President of Product Management at Google Mobile. “This is great news for everyone in the mobile community, as we believe that a competitive environment is the best way to drive innovation and growth in mobile advertising.”
The changes represent a big step forward for developers, who now have much clearer rules regarding application development. And that’s good news for the end user as well as the developers.
[Image courtesy of Apple]
A group of independent iPhone app developers have gotten together to try another method for increasing their app sales. They are, as a group, putting their apps on sale and promoting them together. It’s the latest in a series of inventive ways that small application developers have tried in the increasingly packed iTunes App Store to get some attention for their apps.
Starting 12/31, some apps and games from some great indie developers will all go on sale for 48 hours. The promotion, titled New Year’s App Blowout will see apps discounted from 50% – 80%.
Some of the apps that will be on sale include:
* Pinch n’ Pop ($0.99 price drop from $3.99 – iTunes Link)
* BurnBall ($0.99 price drop from $1.99 – iTunes Link)
* ScribBall ($0.99 price drop from $3.99 – iTunes Link)
* Mouse House ($0.99 price drop from $4.99 – iTunes Link)
* DuckDuckDuck (FREE price drop from $0.99 – iTunes Link)
* Blackbeard’s Assault ($0.99 price drop from $1.99 – iTunes Link)
Currently there are 16 apps listed on the page, but more are expected to be added before the new year. I suggest you bookmark the site and return on 12/31 to see the updated list.
It’s great to see independent developers teaming up to try to solve one of the greatest downsides to the app store — getting some attention in a sea of 13,000 apps.
[Source: New Year's App Blowout]
Steven Frank of Panic has said the things that many developers are thinking, but due to the NDA not sure if they can.
I work in the software industry so I can (A) solve problems that annoy me, and (B) make money on which to live. While I respect the GPL and Open Source movements, I believe that commercial software is a necessary and important part of the ecosystem — however NOT at the expense of the above basic freedoms.
The iTunes App Store distribution model mangles almost every one of those tenets in some way, which is exasperating to me.
If you are a developer or not, read the entire article here, it’s worth your time.
A couple days ago, Apple turned on daily download stats for developers. This has confirmed that sales in the app store are going strong. While few developers have disclosed any information on what their numbers are, we do know a few things.
Sega has stated that they are on track to sell 1 million copies of Super Monkey Ball (App Store) this year.
Tapulous stated that Tap Tap Revolution (App Store) has had over 900,000 downloads while their other app, Twinkle (App Store), a twitter client, has had just over 80,000.
The Facebook (App Store) native application has hit over 1 million users already.
According to 9to5mac.com, developer Erica Block is getting over 400 paid downloads a day, adding up to over $2000/day in income from a single application, 2Accross (App Store).
It’s obvious that free applications are dominating the top downloads while paid application are still getting respectable download numbers.
Check out our daily updated lists of top paid and free application in the app store. We are also tracking what’s hot in the app store.
The App Store that launched wasn’t really built for application distribution — it was built to deliver DRM controlled media files to iPods. Apple decided to extend the iTunes Music Store and enable it to deliver applications to the iPhone OS devices. While this short-cut probably got the App Store launched faster, it’s apparent that it wasn’t designed for application delivery. This short-cut has made life difficult for developers. Those developers have started to find ways around some of these restrictions though.
One of the main ways that shareware developers get new users is through downloading of demo versions of their software. The App Store doesn’t directly provide a method for developers to distribute demo versions of their software and Apple reportedly has some pretty strict rules on crippled / demo software.
Apple will not allow, according to some developers, software with features disabled or limited in any way. Applications can not present greyed-out options or pop-up messages noting that the selected feature is only available in the full version. Both common methods used in demo software. Even though in a few cases these restrictions have gotten past Apple, most notable in Twitterific, there are multiple reports of applications being rejected for doing this.
So if developers want to release some sort of demo version of their application, and the App Store is the only way they can release ANY application for the iPhone, they have to abide by the rules that Apple has laid down. A few developers have gone to the trouble to release demo versions — those demo versions have sometimes shot to near the top of the free applications list. Most are going without demo versions for now.
Over time, Apple will most likely add the ability to deliver demo versions of the applications, much as they have with iPod games. But when they will do this is unknown (don’t hold your breath).
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