The week may be drawing to a close, but here at TheAppleBlog we’ve got an array of apps to get your through the weekend.

As ever, I’ve got four notable new iPhone releases from the App Store to tell you about. Before we jump into the apps, though, let’s take a look at the week that was with a quick news roundup.

The week kicked off with a bit of a downer as news broke that Apple will be charging for re-downloading premium apps that you’ve already purchased for iPhone. It’s not a big deal — it seems downloading via iTunes will still be free — but it’ll be an inconvenience to users who are prone to deleting and re-downloading apps while on the go.

Next up, Microsoft is well and truly on the warpath with its forthcoming Zune HD, and what’s more, it’s gunning for the iPod touch. The new device will have a touchscreen, web browser, Wi-Fi, HD radio and, I think, looks rather scrummy. Delicious-looking it may be, but I still don’t know if that makes it a true contender.

Our own Henry Balanon stepped up to the plate with a seriously impressive iPhone development resources article. He managed to squeeze in 43 different links to various resources around the ‘net. Coders should head on over to the article and bookmark it immediately; it’ll prove useful as a reference tool.

Another new feature coming to the iPhone has been doing the rumor-rounds: Apple is integrating geo-location within Mobile Safari. Are location-aware web sites the next big thing? Setting aside Google Latitude, I’m not entirely convinced. Hit up the article for Darrel Etherington’s take on the matter.

Pipping Apple’s new devices to the post, Palm’s Pre should be hitting the shelves today. Owners of the Pre will be pleased to hear that Palm’s new devices will sync seamlessly with iTunes.

To celebrate the recent release of Dave Matthews Band Revenge for iPhone and iPod touch, I’ve got three promo codes to give away. To be in with a chance of winning, leave me a comment explaining why you’d like to play this new game.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Put Things Off, Jaman Free Movie Fridays, Pocket Alan, and Terminator Salvation Lite.

Put Things Off ($2.99)
My essential iPhone tool for staying organized is Evernote, however, sometimes I seriously consider switching; especially in the case of Put Things Off — an app that packs in the functionality I need, with great visual design, too. The app allows you to focus on the tasks you need to get done on a given day, filtering everything else out of your immediate to-do list. The aesthetic strikes the right balance between satisfyingly tangible, with office-esque paper trays, and functional. My favorite feature is the auto-nag mode: putting off a task for too long moves it to your “Today tray,” forcing you to complete a given item rather than endlessly procrastinating.

Jaman Free Movie Fridays (FREE)
Never turn down a free dinner, and never turn down a free movie, either. Free food almost always tastes scrumptious, and free movies can make for unexpected fun. In the case of this app, Jaman bring you a new movie to watch every Friday. There are a few big names in there, like the complete collection of classic Superman cartoons and black-and-white spook-fest Nosferatu, however, you won’t find the latest Transformers, Terminator, or Star Trek films on the list. Most notably, though, there’s a great selection of independent full-length features, alongside new short films.

Pocket Alan (99 cents)
It’s interesting that Apple seems to have no sort of process in place for protecting the intellectual property of copyright holders. Interesting but, in this case, lucky for us, as Alan Partridge has unofficially arrived on the iPhone in the shape of a handy soundboard. Essential classics such as, “Ahaa,” and, “Jurassic Park,” are there, alongside oft-forgotten, but no less amusing sound-bites, including my favorite, “Jackanackanory.” Plus, fans of Partridge with friends named Daniel will be be able to make good, repetitive use of the, “Dan,” button. Cheap and fun, nothing more than a novelty item, but a perfect toy for fans of the show.

Terminator Salvation Lite (Free)
Gameloft seems to have surpassed itself with its latest movie-based game. Terminator Salvation packs in convincing 3D environments, reminiscent of console games, alongside a well-designed control-system and game mechanic. Of course, the real joy is trudging through the distopyian, post-apocalyptic devastation, offing shiny silver terminators with a variety of weapons. TheAppleBlog’s David Appleyard checked out the iPhone version of Terminator Salvation a few weeks back. If you’re looking to try out the game without spending five bucks on the full version, download the Lite edition today.

That’s all the picks for this week. I’ll be back in seven days with more news from the week and picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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Photo by Flickr user Jinho.Jung

Over in London, the experimental electronic music scene is positively flourishing.

Having lived in the UK’s capital city for the latter part of 2008, I discovered a bubbling sonic subculture — a community of creatives hijacking ice cream vans, reappropriating medical EPGs, and hacking instruments out of scraps of junk, all for the purposes of audio experimentation.

Particularly interesting is that, among these esoteric technologies, the iPhone seemed to be emerging as a burgeoning platform for sonic exploration. Since leaving London and moving to Helsinki, things have advanced even further as, in what is perhaps a world first, the iPhone orchestra (conducted via Wii controller, naturally) has been established.

The London Geek Community iPhone OSCestra’s inaugural performance was May 8 at Open Hack London, a one-day event supported by Yahoo! that brought together ultra tech-savvy hackers for a day of coding and communicating. The orchestra, a crew of eight musicians, opened with an impressive (and deliciously geeky) performance of the “Doctor Who” theme.

It seems that the iPhone is the perfect augmentation to any serious sonic-hacker’s audio artillery. Alongside its audio capabilities, touchscreen and Wi-Fi, the device can run third-party apps natively. Apple has made coding for the iPhone a breeze (even if getting your app approved isn’t so easy). Most importantly, though, the iPhone is readily accessible and relatively low-cost.

While it’s not clear when the The London Geek Community iPhone OSCestra will perform next, it’s actually surprisingly easy to get started making music in the same way. In particular, the musically minded among you who have been inspired by the iPhone orchestra will be pleased to hear that a combination of free iPhone and desktop tools were used for their performance.

The orchestra downloaded mrmr (free) from the App Store, an app that allows you to create highly customizable audio controllers and send the data to other devices using OSC (Open Sound Control). A controller could be a piano-style keyboard, a bank of faders, or an array of twisty knobs and flashy buttons — essentially interactive widgets that allow you to control sound and music.

Free desktop application OSCulator caught all the data, beamed wirelessly from mrmr on the iPhone, and sent it to Ableton Live. Live is my musical tool of choice, an incredibly powerful performance and production platform. In this instance, the orchestra performed using a bank of synthesizers running within Live. If you’re interested in going beyond Garage Band and making music on your Mac, it’s worth checking out the Live demo.

Thanks to the iPhone and, in particular, the growing number of sound toys and audio tools in the App Store, it’s becoming easier than ever for listeners to become performers. Drop by the comments, and let me know if you’ve been using your iPhone to make music.

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Who’s that knockin’ at your door? Why it’s none other than the freshest pickings from the App Store, joined by a smattering of Apple news.

Before we get stuck in to this week’s iPhone picks and recommendations from the App Store, let’s shift our focus for a moment and have a quick recap on what went down this week.

There’s so much to get through here, so let’s kick off by rewinding back to Monday where Apple launched a new iPhone OS 3.0 beta, sliding in a selection of new features including settings for push notification and audio scrubbing in the iPod app. Plus, David Appleyard took a look at iStat for iPhone. The $1.99 app is a useful tool for remotely monitoring your system performance and resources.

The very next day, Amazon swallowed up iPhone developer Lexcycle. A significant purchase indeed because Lexcycle is the brains behind Stanza, a wonderful — and absolutely free — eBook reader for the iPhone. Also on Tuesday, our own Clayton Lai continued his Jailbreak series, looking at how to jazz up the sedate iPhone lock screen.

Rumors abound as Verizon CEO Lowell McAdams has apparently, “talked to people at Apple.” Speculation has turned to the possibility of two new Apple products: an “iPhone Lite,” and apparently a “media pad.” The latter of which would essentially be an oversized iPod Touch.

The latest addition to TheAppleBlog’s journalistic lineup, Gavin Bowman, launched the App Store Roundtable article series. His first post brings several developers together to look at the growth of the App Store and the initial gold rush. And finally, Apple stealthily launched Live Chat support for MobileMe. (It’s still not going to convince me to move over from DropBox, though.)

And in other news, UK-based artist Jon Burgerman has teamed up with UsTwo, the app developers behind Steppin and MouthOff. The team are currently cooking up an iPhone music toy, titled Inkstrumentals, featuring a crowd of Burgerman’s odd and awesome characters.

Moving on to the picks, this week I’ve been looking at Pixel Contact, Wolfenstein 3D Lite, MusicNeon and Lilt Line.

Pixel Contact (99 cents)
Since purchasing my iPhone, I’ve been disturbingly fastidious when it comes to keeping my Address Book tidy. It’s particularly important to me that I have an image for every single one of my contacts. The problem is that when swapping contact details, it can be somewhat awkward to ask someone I’ve just met if I can take their photo. Can give the wrong impression, you see? This app allays an awkwardness by providing an array of pixellated people that you can assign to your Address Book contacts. It’s super cute and incredibly useful, too.

Wolfenstein 3D Classic Lite (FREE)
The original PC-based Wolfenstein was, I’m proud to say, my first FPS. The seemingly massive environments, the strange new control scheme, stealing weapons from dead enemies — it was a fresh and exciting challenge, something I’d never experienced before and, crucial for me as a young lad, it felt like games had started to grow up. Doom would, of course, take all of this even further for me, but until then, Wolfenstein reigned supreme. The iPhone version hit the App Store a couple of months back for only $1.99; those looking to try before they buy, download this free version and try out three levels.

MusicNeon (FREE)
Burgerman’s forthcoming Inkstruments toy for iPhone got me on the hunt for music games in the App Store. After searching for something fun but also free, I tracked down MusicNeon. Coming from the collective mind of Shanghi Gokei, an app development outfit from Japan, MusicNeon is a nonsensical sound toy meets Bejewelled-esque puzzle game. As the clock counts down, it’s your job to link the glowing neon tubes up from left to right, ensuring you trigger the seemingly useless bonuses along the way. The gorgeous glowing visual style, paired with the jaunty music selection (including a few Christmas classic, for no apparent reason) make this a tongue-in-cheek but nevertheless fun game.

Lilt Line ($2.99)
However, fans of music games looking for some serious action should perhaps skip the weird Japanese oddity that is MusicNeon and skip straight to Lilt Line. The game combines a deliciously messy Dubstep soundtrack — courtesy of London-based crew 16bit — with retro high-speed shoot-em-up action (except without the shooting). As a white line glides through empty neon caverns, you play by tilting the iPhone left and right and tapping the screen to the shuffling groove. Developer Different Touch describes the game as, “hack’n'slash dubstep vehicle synthesis simulation action.” Whatever it’s meant to be, it’s one of the most original games to hit the App Store so far and is highly recommended.

That’s all the picks we’ve got time for this week. Meet me right here, same time, same place, next week for more of the week’s news alongside fresh picks from the App Store.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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Learn to play the leaf trombone, perform your repertoire before a global audience, and prepare to be judged.

Since the App Store’s launch last year, Smule has been steadily building an impressive portfolio of sound-based social apps for the iPhone. With Dr. Ge Wang — an assistant professor in Music and Acoustics — at the helm, among a smattering of clever and fun sonic toys, their biggest hit to date has been the multi-award winning Ocarina.

Smule’s latest app, Leaf Trombone: World Stage, is a social musical instrument designed specifically for the iPhone. Players can download new songs and perform before a judging panel of other leaf trombonists.

Leaf Your Troubles Behind

In terms of igniting the musical imagination of touch and iPhone owners around the world, Smule’s standout moment has been the creation of Ocarina. The app is an enchanting recreation of the palm-size wind instrument, incorporating several features that take advantage of the iPhone’s tech to connect instrumentalists around the world.

Leaf Trombone: World Stage takes the wind instrument concept even further than before. For musical beginners, Ocarina was a serious toughie, whereas playing the leaf trombone is a breeze for musicians and fresh starters alike.

There are two methods for tooting on your leaf trombone. For beginners, there’s touch mode. Simply tapping and holding on one of the vertical note-markers plays the note. Advanced players can take it further by blowing in to the iPhone microphone — ideal for adding nuance to a performance.

Song Selection

Despite having just been released, there’s already a stack of tunes ready to toot in the song library. The selection on offer is constantly growing, too, as Smule’s provided a song composition and submission platform on their site.

There’s something for everyone in the library. Classical picks like “Ave Maria” and “Auld Lang Syne” sit alongside rock and metal renditions, such as “Iron Man” and “Through The Fire And The Flames.” Notably, there are video game tunes in the mix, too, with several pieces from Legend of Zelda already on offer. The only major drawback with the library is that there’s no way to differentiate between pieces for beginners and more accomplished players.

If you’re familiar with rhythm action games like Rock Band or Tap Tap Revenge, it’s easy to get your fingers around performing the songs. Once the track begins playing, accompanied by a dainty Mario-esque music box, leaves begin floating towards the different note-markers. The note-markers glow when a leaf collides, meaning there’s a clear guide to playing the correct note at the correct time.

There is, like any musical instrument, an initial period of getting comfortable holding and touching the leaf trombone and familiarizing yourself with the interface. However, actually playing a complex score should be surprisingly intuitive, even for non-musicians.

World Stage – Judging & Performing

Fire up your leaf trombone for more than a few minutes and there’s a good chance that your solo soliloquy will be interrupted with an invite to be a judge on the World Stage. As a judge sitting on an “American Idol”-esque panel with two other players, picked from across the globe, you’ll critically appraise a fellow leaf trombonist’s performance.

Represented by three smiley-styled emoticons, the judging panel listens to the performance — posting comments and changing the emoticon to reflect opinion and mood. At the end of the song, you’re invited to score the performance and provide closing thoughts.

Playing the role of judge is an excellent twist on traditional multiplayer gaming. There’s something deliciously addictive and downright fun about judging — whether you’re praising, encouraging, or just laughing at someone’s trombone tooting.

Judging a performance also earns you Leaf Tokens, the currency of the budding Leaf Trombonist. Each performance on the World Stage costs one Leaf Token, an exceedingly cunning solution, on Smule’s part, to ensuring players are involved in both performing and judging, and also encouraging performers to practice a solo before playing online.

Performing works slightly differently compared to the judging. After selecting a song from the library, you’ll perform alone. Once you’ve completed your performance, the judging panel is then selected to appraise it — meaning you’re able to initially perform without being distracted by a shower of praise, or worse, an onslaught of criticism.

Summing Up

Leaf Trombone: World Stage is everything we’ve come to expect of Smule. The instrument part of the game draws non-musicians in — it’s so easy to get satisfying results and is enjoyable to play (plus endearingly individual with its comedic tooting and parping).

And it’s daring, too, linking players up for social fun a refreshing way: Being part of the judging panel is compelling fun and performing on the World Stage — and getting right — just feels good, too.

Leaf Trombone is a wonderful instrument and an incredibly accomplished social toy. Furthermore, like any musical instrument, it’s something that you’ll delight in playing and growing with over time. Smule’s ability to manifest pure gold out of a downright silly concept, earns this app TheAppleBlog Gold Award.

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Amplitude pushes the iPhone in a new direction, transforming the device in to a hand-held James Bond-style surveillance tool. An intriguing concept indeed, but would Q approve?

Setting aside the more recent Bourne-esque gritty romps of the latest Bond movies — which are, for the record, utterly brilliant — I’ll be forever enchanted with the classic laboratory scenes where Q presents 007 with an array of innocent-looking yet lethal gadgetry.

Amplitude transforms the iPhone in to a surveillance device, allowing you listen in on distant conversations.

Covert Conversing

Originally released under the guise of iHearClear, the app was designed specifically for individuals who are hard of hearing. The intention being that the iPhone could act as a tool for amplifying quiet sounds.

Gripwire, the folks behind the app, suggested that iHearClear could be used in a variety of ways such as improving the sound quality at a movie theater or at parties and gatherings to communicate easier with friends.

Amplitude is a re-skinned, re-imagining version of iHearClear, designed with a younger audience in mind and pitched more as a tech-styled spy gadget than a listening tool.

With both apps, your iPhone essentially becomes the electronic equivalent of one of those unsettling old-time ear trumpets. Certainly not as glamorous as Bond, but perhaps a more accurate description of what the app does.

Seeing & Hearing

The app is designed to look like a kids-version of a spy gadget with all dark brushed metal, exposed screws with a couple of buttons, and a big slider. The centerpiece to Amplitude’s visual is an oscilloscope, a pulsing green screen ripped straight out of a scientific laboratory.

The idea behind the oscilloscope is that it allows the user to view, and visually quantify, signal voltages, as you’re able to see the volume of the sound your listening to. More importantly though, it lends the app some much needed visual authenticity — in short, it looks super-cool.

The slider beneath the oscilloscope controls the amount of microphone boost to be applied. This is essentially the active component of the app — the useful bit — as, in essence, Amplitude is merely boosting the volume of the sound coming in to the iPhone mic.

There’s also a mute button, enabling the app to be muted (useful in instances where the sound-level may have jumped up unexpectedly) and an info button. The info button, aside from displaying the credits, provides access to a settings screen where you’re able to set the app to mute on startup (advisable as a precaution for your ears).

Spy Games

In testing the app, I decided to try out a few different situations. My initial experiment consisted of listening in on two friends whispering to each other.

Pointing the iPhone’s mic towards the duo and plugging my headphones in (note that the app works best with headphones without a built-in mic), I discovered that, despite a bit of hum, I could hear them whispering.

However, upon removing the headphones, I discovered that I could still hear them whispering and, without the hum of the boosted iPhone microphone, everything sounded much clearer. My next test — listening to a friend’s heartbeat — ended similarly. I discovered that while Amplitude could aid me in listening to their heartbeat, my ears did a much better job.

The creators of the app posed the question, “Have you ever heard the sound of a hummingbird’s wings beating back and forth.” Yes, it’s like a tiny motorcycle being driven by a little biker man. “Using Amplitude it’s a truly amazing experience.” No, if I could locate a real, live hummingbird, using Amplitude, I’d most probably discover that the sound is slightly louder and more annoying than just listening with my ears.

Summing Up

According to the marketing text in the App Store, Amplitude can be used a tool to help fix your car. Or to spy on baseball players communicating in the batting circle. Or any number of a variety of utterly bizarre situations where, in actual fact, I doubt Amplitude really would work. Unless of course you stood next to these people, in which case you wouldn’t need the app anyway.

Amplitude is about as much actual use as a novelty fart apps. However, setting aside the grotesquely exaggerated claims of Amplitude’s ability by the app’s creators, it’s good fun as a 99 cent novelty app.

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Do you tweet? Then maybe you should Boo! It’s like a multimedia Twitter, designed especially for iPhone users.

Over in the UK back in 2008, Channel 4 (Britain’s edgy TV channel) launched a unique funding program entitled 4IP. Cut to 2009 and, having just announced a dedicated iPhone 3.0 fund, the suits over at 4IP seem particularly keen on Apple’s device as a platform for pushing interactive wares. In fact, 4IP has announced a fund for developers, with almost $150,000 up for grabs at a maximum of approximately $40,000 per app.

Made possible by 4IP and developed by BestBefore, AudioBoo is among the first of Channel 4′s original iPhone commissions to hit the App Store. As developers ready their funding proposals, AudioBoo is set to be a showcase of the kind of app 4IP will be looking for — making use of various media formats, community-focused, and integrating with the most popular social platforms.

Designed to work alongside Twitter and iTunes, AudioBoo is an audio blogging platform created especially for iPhone.

Anatomy of a Boo

On paper, AudioBoo’s feature set reads excellently — it’s a tour de force of current buzzwords and trends. Using the iPhone you can record an audio message, the message pops up on your Twitter stream and there’s even an automatic, iTunes-compatible RSS feed for your followers to subscribe to.

The sign-up process is simple, taking place either on the iPhone (via a Safari link within the app) or on the desktop version of the web site. Plus, once signed in, it only takes a couple of clicks to link your Twitter account and activate Facebook Connect. The site even grabs your Gravatar, saving the hassle of uploading a profile picture.

It’s worth noting, however, that there’s not much to do on the desktop version of the site. AudioBoo really has been designed for iPhone; the app is where are all the key features are and, as such, there’s no way to record a Boo via the site.

Making the Perfect Boo

Once logged in on the iPhone, the app displays the main Boo stream, similar to Twitter’s public stream. Unlike Twitter, though, there’s no way of following other users; this seemed somewhat odd to me initially, until I realized that — with Twitter and Facebook Connect integration — it’s not needed: AudioBoo pushes messages to the big social platforms where all the action happens.

The focus throughout the app is on simplicity and ease of use. This is reflected in the audio-recording interface — there’s no friction with the technology and so creating a Boo is so quick it retains a real sense of fun throughout.

Although the App Store page states that recordings can be up to three minutes long, there’s actually a maximum length of five minutes. It’s the perfect amount of time to do a blog-style update, sing a little tune or make an impassioned rant.

EmbeddaBoo

Each Boo can be posted alongside a photo, either from your photo album or taken with the iPhoto camera. You can also add tags and, if you’re not the secretive type, even include GPS data. After that it takes a few seconds to publish a Boo — even over slower Edge connections — resulting in a page like this.

If you clicked the link to my test Boo, you’ll have heard that the audio quality from the iPhone mic itself is surprisingly good. And, because I’m a Twitter user, I’ve linked up AudioBoo to auto-tweet for me too. The site even generates code so that you can embed specific Boos on your blog or web page of choice.

There’s one feature, though, that seems to be a real stroke of genius on the part of BestBefore: Alongside an RSS feed, your Boo page also has an iTunes button — clicking this button automagically subscribes users to a podcast feed within iTunes of your Boo updates.

Summing Up

Despite having launched in the App Store, AudioBoo is still clearly in its infancy. The site design is incredibly dull, profile pages lack any sort of personalization options and the iPhone app can be a little crash-happy, too.

While there’s still a long way to go with the main site, the core technology works and, after configuring your account, you’ll find yourself primarily using the iPhone app and never having to visit the main AudioBoo site again — everything is automated for you.

The technology, and all the other added extras, more than make up for any complaints. It’s genuinely exciting to be armed with this fun little tool that enables you to record an audio message (with accompanying photo) and instantly publish to Twitter, Facebook and iTunes.

Simply put, AudioBoo is great fun and totally free. For Twitter users, Facebook members, potential podcasters, and regular folk who have something they’ve just got to voice, it’s well worth a download.

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It’s the weekend, traditionally a time for quiet contemplation of the freshest iPhone releases, welcome to the App Store Pick.

Hang on there one moment though because before we run headlong in to a stack of apps, we’ve got but a few moments to look at the latest happenings on TheAppleBlog this week.

First up, Neil Gaiman’s creepy Coraline just hit the App Store in eBook form. It’s available to download now for $5.99 but we’ve got four Coraline promo codes to giveaway. If you’d like to bag yourself a copy of Coraline, just drop a comment at the end of this post (and make sure to leave an address for us to email the code to), we’ll dish out the promo goodness on a first come first served basis.

Over in iTunes, HD movies are now available for sales and rental too. It’s great that we can reap all the benefits of HD via download, however the price point, $19.99, seems super expensive and thus utterly ill-considered to me. In other film-related news, in a rare publicity move, Apple has opened an official Twitter account, specifically for new trailers, check it out at twitter.com/itunestrailers. Those who doubt the account’s authenticity should check out the Apple Trailers site which now sports a Trailers on Twitter link.

None of this matters though when we consider the real Apple news this week: the long-awaited über-happening that was Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 event; and though they may be Jobless, that didn’t stop a flurry of rumor-mongering activity and excitement focused on the unveiling of the latest iPhone software update, arriving this Summer.

For me, it didn’t disappoint, while there’s still no mention of Flash coming to the iPhone, cut/copy/paste will finally arrive, as will MMS and push. There’s also an array of awesome new features beyond those must-haves. For instance, there’s the iPhone’s new Spotlight page — it brings search to the iPhone — meaning you can simultaneously hunt through contacts, messages, mail and music.

For developers, there’s some serious potential for advanced apps that the iPhone update’s APIs will bring. In particular, access to the iPod library for apps — potentially bringing an added dimension and layer of interactivity to our music collections: think Tap Tap Revenge creating new levels with your iTunes music library.

Moving on to the app picks, this week I’ve been looking at Nimbuzz, Yamanote Soundrop Lite, iGamesDev and Cardsnap.

Nimbuzz (free)
Over at GigaOm, Om Malik mentioned that he’s looking forward to checking out Nimbuzz, a super communication app that touts just about every major IM service, alongside VOIP too. On first look this app is undeniably impressive — setting up is quick and easy, even providing a degree of control over the buddy list — essential for users with tons of contacts over several services. The app looks and sound great too, even — quite unexpectedly — flipping in to landscape mode when needed. For me, and I suspect many others, this is an essential download and has already taken pride of place on my Home screen.

Yamanote Soundrop Lite (free)
I’ve got a soft spot for absurd apps that seem to slip in to the App Store, created by developers who seem to have no notion about who their target demographic might be. I think this is a good thing — it shows that there’s still a spirit of fun floating amidst the dirge of quick-buck, sound-fx apps and useless business tools. This app plays the music from various stations on what I think is a Japanese train-line. With its absurdly long twinkly melodies, this app is useless and cute and, as such, made me smile.

iGamesDev (free)
The concept behind this convoluted game of cards is fantastic. The app is intended as a witty critique of the iPhone game development. The game itself, though, is crazy complicated — resembling something more akin to The League of Gentlemen’s Go Johnny Go Go Go Go, with its nonsensical myriad rules. Unfortunately, the game ends up being amusing only because it’s ironic that this iPhone game about iPhone game development is so poorly coded.

Cardsnap ($9.99)
I’m always interested to know if the expensive apps are actually worth it or if the price is simply the developer’s wishful thinking. Cardsnap — an app for snapping images of business cards which are then processed server-side and synced to your address book — isn’t really worth the price but I imagine business-folk will buy it anyway. The big issue is that the iPhone camera immediately fails when it comes to taking pictures of business cards. The idea is great but the iPhone just ain’t up to it yet.

That’s all from the App Store for another seven days. I’ll return during the week with TheAppleBlog App Review and, as always, on Saturday with my Weekly App Store Picks.

In the meantime, what apps have you been using this week?

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I like my Airport Express with AirTunes. I use it to connect my home theater set-up to my iTunes library, and more frequently, for listening to Internet radio via iTunes. But it’s always bothered me that I couldn’t use it to listen to audio from any other source beyond iTunes. I don’t know about you, but the majority of my video collection is in non-iTunes-compliant format, and so when I’m watching movies, I have to run a super long mini-stereo capable from my Mac to my stereo to get the sound working.

Overnight, a solution appeared via my iPhone (and iPod touch) in the App Store. It’s called AirPhones ($6.99, App Store), and it’s an app that lets you stream any audio directly from your Mac to your iPhone or iPod touch. Or, at least it claims that you’ll be able to hear any audio. I found out that wasn’t exactly the case, but more on that later. Let’s just say that it definitely lets you hear more audio than your iTunes-connected Airport Express.

The iPhone app that makes up half of the AirPhones setup is not much in and of itself. Basically, all you see is a volume slider on a blue background with the AirPhones icon above it. It will display warning messages if you’re not connected, instructing you how to connect, but if it is working, it won’t tell you anything. On the computer side (which currently has to be an Intel Mac), you’ll need to download and run AirPhones Server, from which you will activate the audio streaming.

Setting up AirPhones was not at all difficult, and I actually like the server app, which takes up very few system resources, and hides itself well as a menu bar item (dock icon can be turned on, but there’s really no need). From the preferences window, you just turn on the server and it will automatically detect and connect with any devices on your local wireless network running the AirPhones app.

Once they’re connected, your Mac’s volume is muted, and instead any sound is played via your iPhone’s speaker or connected headphones/speakers. At least that’s the case with audio from most sources. iTunes, Quicktime, and Firefox all played nice, but popular media player VLC did not, with sound playing from the Macbook’s speakers despite the connection being up and running between AirPhones Server and the app on my iPhone.

If you try using this in conjunction with AirTunes, you’ll notice there is a slight delay when it comes to the sound delivered to your iPhone or iPod touch, which means it’ll have to be an either/or solution when it comes to playing music. Likewise, the video is ever so slightly out of sync with the audio with AirPhones. I still found it very tolerable, because the lag is minimal, but some perfectionists might take issue. Hopefully future updates will correct this minor latency.

Overall, it’s a handy solution, especially if you’ve got mulitiple iPhones and iPod touches lying around the house. They could easily become the basis for a wireless set-up that Sonos would charge you an arm and a leg for, and you’ll definitely hear it when you have a call coming in, to boot. And while $7 is a little steep for an iPhone app, once you have it, you can put it on as many devices as you want, so you can go ahead and recruit the whole family’s devices for the cause.

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Wrapping up another seven days and bringing you the freshest picks, it’s time for this week’s App Store Roundup.

Tom Reetsman kicked off the week by calling Technologizer’s Ed Oswald out on an article he wrote about MobileMe, the general gist of it being that Oswald canceled MobileMe, only to lament the disappearance of his data.

By Tuesday, Google added Tasks syncing to the already impressive Gmail web app. Wednesday saw a roundup of iPhone time tracking apps, essential tools for freelancers managing multiple projects. As I’ve mentioned before, Harvest — my favorite time tracking service — has a fantastic web app available for iPhone.

Finally, our own Matthew Bookspan pitted two productivity services against each other — DEVONthink Pro Office and Evernote Premium. Contrary to my preference (I’m an avid Evernote iPhone and OS X app user), it seems that DEVONthink’s tool came out on top.

Moving on, let’s talk about apps, this week I’ve been looking at ExZeus, Aggravate Nails on Chalkboard, Audio Memos Free – The Voice Recorder, Epiphany Recorded and Rolando Lite.

ExZeus ($5.99)
Giant robots, laser cannons, alien invasions, explosions — these are inherently exciting things. Distill these things down to videogame form and there’s a good chance you’re on to a winner. ExZeus finds you playing a robot with a laser cannon causing explosions while fighting off an alien invasion: this is hyperbolic space shooter action at its best. The gameplay captures old Sega classics like Space Harrier while the rainbow gun metal 3D graphics bring Transformers instantly to mind (plagiaricious!).

Audio Memos Free – The Voice Recorder (free)
On to serious stuff then, as we take a look at this voice recording tool. There’s a bevy of options available to those looking for a memo recorder for the iPhone. For those still searching for a audio recording tool, this free, ad-supported app is a good starting point. The app can use either the built in iPhone mic, or the headset mic, records in up to 44100 kHz and even has a scrub tool — letting you skip to the essential parts of each recording.

Epiphany Recorder (free)
While Audio Memos Free is a traditional voice recorder app, Epiphany Recorder has a unique angle on the whole memo recording concept. The idea behind the app is that often you’ll hear something worth recording and, before you get the opportunity to capture it, the moment will be gone. To combat missing those all-important moments, Epiphany Recorder captures the previous two minutes of audio from the moment you hit record. Of course, you have to keep the app open, but it’s still a commendable way of solving an issue for students, journalists and seminar attendees everywhere.

Rolando Lite (free)
Released last year, Rolando is a fantastic tilt ‘n’ touch based puzzler for the iPhone and touch. I wrote up a comprehensive and complimentary review for it a couple of months back, stating that Rolando is an essential for iPhone and touch gamers, “… what we have here is the benchmark for what a complete iPhone (or touch) gaming experience could be and, furthermore, should be.” If you don’t have Rolando and you’ve never tried it, you’re now fresh out of excuses as Rolando Lite is a free demo containing the first few levels of the full game. Get it now!

Aggravate Nails on Chalkboard (free)
Wonderful, yet another way to simultaneously alienate your close friends while illustrating the fact that your state-of-the-art iPhone, with GPS, Bluetooth, 3G and all that digital jazz, is nothing more than a shiny digital whoopee cushion. Except this app is actually quite good, for starters, it knows its place in the pricing pantheon (next to worthless) and is free. And therefore worth the 5 minutes of unadulterated joy you’ll derive from watching your friends’ skin crawl as you screech your fingers down the iPhone’s screen.

Just One More Thing

I’ve noticed a fantastic new trend emerging over at the App Store. It all started two months ago when Olivier Bernal, a French iPhone app developer, decided to pinch stock photography from iStock Photo. Then a too-close-to-the-bone clone of Nintendo’s famous zapper game Duck Hunt appeared on the App Store, only to be pulled last week following a complaint from Nintendo.

It seems that app developers are already running out of original ideas and instead running rampant with other people’s copyrights. I picked three copyright infringing apps, released in the last week, that flaunt it like a middle-aged divorcee speeding round town in a second-hand Porsche with a “Single and Lovin’ It” bumper sticker.

First up is The Eggs, described by the developers as, “A simulation of a popular Soviet game ‘Electronica IM-02′ which was a clone of Nintendo’s Game&Watch series game ‘Egg’.” So, effectively, we’re talking about an iPhone simulation of a simulation of a game which, in itself, was an emulation of a classic Nintendo title.

There are several things I’m not sure about here; firstly, I’m not sure whether I correctly used simulation and emulation. Most importantly though, I’m not up on my Soviet copyright law — was the game originally infringing copyright? Or, in Soviet Russia, does copyright infringe you?

Then there’s Flipt – Heroes Edition, a traditional tile matching game that uses images culled from the Heroes TV series and is almost certainly not an official spinoff. The app description is a giveaway, “Find pairs of matching images all themed around the popular sitcom Heroes™.”

Because, of course, Heroes is indeed a sitcom. I’ve always thought that Sylar is the Chandler of the bunch. And, I particularly enjoy that the app description used the ™ symbol while totally infringing the trademark.

And I’ll skip straight to the point with CuBert — it’s a direct rip of classic Q*Bert, heck the character is exactly the same as the original retro hooter-nosed weirdo. To the guys at LagMac, the game’s developer, this may apparently be “… in homage to Q*Bert creators,” but it’s still a massive copyright infringing bag of profit-generating plagiarism.

How can the people behind these apps be smart enough to program a game for the iPhone and then actually get it on the App Store, but either have no concept of copyright or are simply just risking it? How can you be that smart and yet also that dumb?

I’ll leave you to ponder that final question and see you next Saturday for another App Store Roundup. In the meantime, let me know which apps you’ve been downloading in the comments.

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Still wanting to experience HD Radio as inexpensively as possible, I recently purchased a Sony XDR-F1HD HD Radio Tuner and, despite owning every cable known to human-kind, I lacked the RCA-male-to-3.5mm-female cable required to directly connect the tuner to my desktop speakers. Not wanting to trudge down to the family room to hook it up to the stereo for testing, I got out my trusty Griffin iMic but did not want to crank up anything as complex as Garage Band just to do listen to the radio. While I could have used something like Audacity, that program is overkill for the task I wanted to perform.

Then, I remembered that Griffin provides a free companion tool for the iMic called Final Vinyl [direct download link to 2MB disk image]. This tiny utility lets you choose any input source (an iMic is not a requirement for using the program as it works with any standard OS X input source) for monitoring, recording and in-stream effects manipulation. I really just wanted to “play” my Sony through my Mac just as I would use the radioSHARK, so I fired up Finyl Vinyl, made the appropriate configuration changes and enabled the monitor feature (highlighted in yellow):

Instantly, I was listening to KPLU-FM‘s Jazz24 HD Radio channel with practically no effort. Just to give it a try, I hit “record” and captured a very short sample [364 KB MPEG-4 audio file direct download] from the broadcast to show just how clear the signal comes through and how well the application does its job. While it will never be as straightforward as the radioSHARK when it comes to scheduling tuning and recording, Final Vinyl is a great way to solve simple audio routing, monitoring and recording needs.

One could argue that there is no need for either an HD Radio receiver or this handy setup given the plethora of internet radio streams available. While it is true that there are many streams to choose from, the physical radio does not require any extra bandwidth consumption (which is not a trivial consideration given the introduction of enforced bandwidth utilization limits by providers such as Comcast) and the digital radio source has had many fewer artifacts than the online counterparts have had (remember, “HD” does not stand for “high definition” so there are still imperfections).

If you have an alternate audio tool to suggest for this simple job (preferably one that is scriptable) definitely let me and other TAB readers know by sharing your suggestions in the comments.

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Following in the ambient footsteps of Eno’s inaugural iPhone app, Bloom, comes RjDj. Developed by Reality Jockey, an Austrian dev outfit, they describe RjDj as, “the next generation of walkman or mp3 player… a digital drug which causes mind twisting hearing sensation.”

Wrapped up as a cute little iPhone toybox, RjDj is actually a platform for Reactive Sound Art. The “reactive” bit means that the app responds to sensory input. In the case of RjDj, this could find you jiggling, touching, tilting, shouting, murmuring, wiggling and generally seeking out all sorts of noises to generate entirely strange sonic experiences.

The app is split in to several different ‘scenes’, which are in essence very simple iPhone apps, providing different ways to create and interact with a selection of bold new soundscapes. Each scene handles your input in a different way; for example, Gridwalker plays an evolving, twinkling 8-bit melody, depending on how loud or quiet your environment is, while WorldQuantizer grabs noises and recycles them in to an organic rhythmic groove. There’s also a record function enabling you to hang on to your favorite RjDj sessions for future listening.

A typical Pure Data patch

Most exciting for burgeoning coders is the opportunity to create and submit your own scenes to be featured in future RjDj releases. The scenes are coded in an open source programming environment called Pure Data (PD). The really special thing about PD is that, unlike traditional text-based coding, it’s a visual modular language, meaning that creating a scene is somewhat like building a fairly complicated Lego model out of very sophisticated bricks. To the beginner it would take practice, but it’s certainly achievable (and a fun starting point leading to more advanced coding). If PD tickles your creative fancy, you can download it for free, right now.

With RjDj, you really get out of it what you put in — the packaged scenes seem to be most effective wandering around a city and hearing different sounds swirl about your ears, re-jigged by this smart little app.  Effectively, RjDj is something incredibly clever masquearading as a bit of fun. And while it is indeed bags and bags of fun, if Reality Jockey develop the concept carefully, RjDj will become an effective sub-platform for distributing some of the most exciting experiences available on the iPhone.

Two versions of the app are available for download now: RjDj Single (free) and RjDj Album ($2.99), the latter of which features six different ‘scenes’ while the former is a one scene freebie.

Reality Jockey’s iPhone app certainly makes for weird listening, if you do download it leave a comment below describing your RjDj experiences.

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Seemingly not content with having fathered an entire musical genre, pioneered generative music, produced U2′s Where The Streets Have No Name, collaborated with Bowie and generally rubbed-shoulders with a raft of modern music legends, Brian Eno has now released his first iPhone app dubbed Bloom ($3.99).

Developed by Peter Chilvers, in collaboration with Eno, the app is described as, “Part instrument, part composition and part artwork…” The idea is that anybody can play with Bloom and coax gentle melodies and ambient soundscapes out of their iPhone.  Having downloaded the app, plugged a pair of speakers in to my iPhone and cranked up the volume, it took only a few moments to compose an authentic ambient piece that sounded like a convincing out-take from Eno’s Music for Airports.  It works and it is a joy to toy with.

Being a sound-based app, the screenshots on the store do it absolutely no justice, Bloom ends up looking somewhat staid.  It’s in hearing Bloom and experiencing the ambience that it creates, that you truly understand how magical it is.  According to the App Store product page, “… Bloom’s innovative controls allow anyone to create elaborate patterns and unique melodies by simply tapping the screen.”  Setting aside the marketing spiel, Bloom is utterly unique — a truly enchanting experience, like nothing else I have experienced on the iPhone, this is an app that will make you smile.

Those familiar with Eno will have seen this app coming a mile off — he’s always been keen to exploit the latest technologies and platforms for his artworks, all the way back to creating Mac-compatible Media Art distributed on CD-ROMs. These days there are several Eno-inspired tools and toys available on Apple platforms.

Arty folk with a bit of a creative block may want to check out Oblique Strategies. Originally developed by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt as a deck of cards, each card features obtuse, odd and frequently stimulating tidbits of advice to re-energise the flow of creative juices; favorites include, “Not building a wall, making a brick,” and, “Move towards the unimportant.” The virtual Oblique Strategies decks are available both in widget flavor and iPhone/touch app flavor, for free.

Back on the desktop, TAB readers inspired by the ambient experiences offered in Bloom should investigate the joys of generative music a little further. For his seminal ambient album Generative Music 1, Eno made use of a piece of software called Koan to generate the album. With Koan, you’re able to feed the software a few basic variables and values and it’ll pumps out a piece of unique music at the other end.  The software has long since evolved and is now superseded by Noatikl, available for OS X.

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Today, Smule released a really cool (or hot, if you want to be go that route) app for the iPhone called Sonic Lighter.

Sonic Lighter is an iPhone-only app (sorry iPod touch users), that makes use of the accelerometer and sound to affect the flame it shows. Simply flick the flints on the screen to light the flame and then turn the iPhone from side to side to see how the flame reacts. Turn it too far and it will digitally burn the side of the screen…how 21st century. You can even run your finger through the flame and it will react accordingly. To put the flame out you just blow in to the microphone and it puts it right out.

What I think is infinitely cooler, though, is its ability to ignite other iPhones. The flame gives off a faint crackling sound through the iPhone’s speaker, so when you put your phone up next to another iPhone (with Sonic Lighter installed), it will light the flame in the app. It does this through the receiving iPhone’s mic by picking up the crackling noise to detect proximity of the flaming iPhone.

There’s also a world map of everyone who has set their iPhone ablaze. San Francisco and New York appear to have burned to the ground.

Sonic Lighter is more of an experiment in sound and physics than an actual featured-laden application that you can do a lot with. So in that sense, it is a tad gimmicky considering you have to pay for it. Though, for only 99 cents, I can definitely say it’s worth it for a quick entertainment fix…especially if you can get some other friends to buy it. Then you can all sit around, light each other’s flames and sit in a dark room listening to Free Bird. Or not.

Here’s a quick YouTube video of the app in action.

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