Want to control all your TV gadgets from your iPhone? Well, here’s something that gives you that functionality, with the additional bonus of adding an unwieldy chunk of plastic to your phone. The R? plugs into the dock port, and with the official app, it lets the iPhone function as a universal remote. It comes with a built in database of settings, and the ability to learn from other remotes.

Call it a hunch, but I don’t see this as such a useful tool. Adding an hunk of plastic to my phone to control my TV setup doesn’t sound like that great a move. But hey, I could be wrong, maybe people will want to have to plug extra things into their phone every time they want to turn on the TV.

[via Gizmodo]

We’re now the day after FSJ’s Operation Chokehold, where users tried to bring AT&T’s network to its knees by running data intensive apps. Did anyone notice a difference? 3G is spotty where I am anyway, so I didn’t see any particular change from the regular variations in level of suck. AT&T officially is saying “we saw no impact.” Over at TechCrunch, the chatter among users seems to be mixed. They range from “Totally borked” to “no problem”. Overall, it sounds it like people’s experience have been extremely variable, and often within the usual range of service from AT&T. Any of our readers notice a major shift?

In this today’s picks for Apps of the Week, track your beard growth progress, create your own classic photo booth strips, and enlarge those pesky fonts in your contacts list.

Jingle Elves:WhackAToon

Price: FREE

Like Whack-a-Mole games? This is the first in a series of WhackAToon games to be released for the iPhone that take a cue from the popular arcade game. Try to hit the pop-up candy cane to hear a holiday song from a few adorable, buck-toothed elves. As you move up in skill levels, the elves sing a little better, which will definitely be music to your ears.

Rotten Tomatoes

Price: FREE

We’re big fans of the Rotten Tomatoes site, so when we heard the site released an official iPhone app this week, all we wondered was, “What took you so long?” Despite the serious procrastination in its release, this is a solid movie reviews app, with features like buying/renting movies from iTunes straight from the app, watching movie trailers and clips, real-time Tomatometer scores, and more.

Paranormal Activity Locator

Price: FREE

Okay, we hate to admit that we’re a little afraid of ghosts, but this app, though pretty cool, scares the crap out of us. If you were one of…everybody…who saw the low-budget horror flick Paranormal Activity this fall, check out this app that claims to scan your area for any paranormal activity. We hate to wuss out on trying this one out for you, but we love our iPhone too much to risk dropping it, should we see anything questionable. You’re on your own for this one, kids.

Photo Booth Classic

Price: $1.99

With a little effort, you can easily find a vintage photo booth in a hipster bar in your vicinity. But why bother when you can get the same effect on your iPhone? This app will take a series of four photos with your camera and format them into the classic photo booth black-and-white strip. You can also send the photos to your Facebook or post them to Twitter. Classy.

My Beard

Price: FREE

For you gentlemen out there who have issues with your facial hair, perhaps it could be helpful to keep track of your daily growth with an app? With My Beard, you can upload photos of your beard-in-progress every day to keep track of just how long it takes to grow your perfect beard. We love that this app is out, but it would have been really handy during Movember or, our personal favorite, Octobeard.

Lou Zoom

Price: $1.99

What do you do when you’re an aging, legendary rocker who’s hip to technology? Create an iPhone app that makes text on your iPhone larger, of course. To quote from the description, Lou Zoom “brings style and clarity to your contacts” by enlarging the text on your contacts list and changing up the font to a classy sans-serif. We hate to date ourselves, but it is getting more difficult to read that tiny text…Plus, if Lou says it’s cool to have big fonts on your phone, then it simply must be cool.

Epson iPrint

Price: FREE

We’re not sure a lot of iPhoners out there actually print photos from their devices, but this app makes printing photos from your iPhone so easy that we’re guessing more users will start doing so. Using a wi-fi network, send your iPhone photos to your Epson printer to turn out some surprisingly high quality photos taken on your iPhone. Choose different paper sizes, borders, and other features all from your iPhone, no wires or cords required.

This is a kinda genius idea, for those who hate malls with a fierce and fiery vengeance, but are stuck using them anyway. FastMall is an app (iTunes link) that helps you navigate those bastions of capitalism, by using maps of malls, guides to needed facilities, and the ability to tag your car location. It even works without a signal, with over 1200 malls worldwide. The caveat? You pay per map, so you’ll be forking out for each mall you want the features with. While some of the features are kinda cool (bathroom reviews? NICE!), others are a bit naff (syncs with Facebook and Twitter to tell everyone what you’re buying). The full press release follows after the jump.

FastMall has been developed to help you know exactly where everything is located at any shopping mall right on your iPhone. Menlo Park Mall in New Jersey is FREE to use with full interactive turn by turn guidance and shake your iPhone for the nearest restroom.

If you are curious how this all works and why you would want this application, please download and try Menlo Park for FREE and then if you love the full FastMall experience go ahead and purchase your virtual mall map. You can see the full list of what is available below. If you favorite malls are not available with a virtual mall map yet, email us Contact@FastMall.com and we will add it to the queue.

Keep in mind we have over 1250 malls completed in our database that include tons of information for just about every shopping mall in the USA.

You can read below to see the features we have adding to the FastMall experience.

Features:

1 – Interactive guidance from store to restaurant to restroom at the mall. Total OFFLINE search so the app is stable even if your signal fails once your logged in.

2 – Shake your iPhone to locate the nearest restroom!

3 – Tell FastMall where you parked and it will remember for you!

4 – Find or add a deal for your favorite store and save money and help the community.

5 – Add a review of any store, restaurant or even review a restroom!

6 – Have a stroller or a walking disability? FastMall will give you exact directions INSIDE the mall by tapping the ELEVATORS ONLY icon.

7 – If any data is missing from FastMall, you can help the community and add just about any data to make the app better. Add a restroom, restaurant, store or even an entire mall if it is missing from FastMall.

8 - Share your status on Facebook and Twitter, let you friends know what your up to at the mall.

9 – If you are a business, advertise to targeted potential customers by sponsoring any category or result.

10 – If it is not listed above and you want us to add something just ask. This is the app for the entire world to collaborate and make the best social/shopping experience of all time.

Malls included with virtual maps to purchase the step by step guidance as of 12-18-2009

Mall of America
King of Prussia
Sawgrass Mills
Aventura Mall
Menlo Park Mall
Mall At Short Hills
Shops at Columbus Circle
Westfield San Francisco Centre
The Forum Shops at Caesars
The 900 Shops
Beverly Center
The Shops at Mission Viejo
Stanford Shopping Center
Roosevelt Field Mall
The Shops At Riverside
NorthPark Center
Woodbury Commons
Kierland Commons
Burlington Mall
Brea Mall
Ala Moana Center
Grapevine Mills
Scottsdale Fashion Square
Northshore Mall
Bridgewater Commons
Laguna Hills Mall
Arden Fair Mall
The Oaks
Deptford Mall
Cherry Hill Mall
Lakewood Center
Green Acres Mall
Quaker Bridge Mall
Fashion Island
Serramonte Center
Puente Hills Mall
Smith Haven
Queens Center
Fashion Show
Rodeo Drive (Yes, the street)
Freehold Raceway Mall
Los Cerritos Center
Sunvalley Shopping Center
Great Northern Mall
The Grove in Los Angeles
Moorestown Mall
Hamilton Mall
Stonewood Center
Monmouth Mall
Montebello Town Center
Wilton Mall at Saratoga
South Bay Galleria
Antelope Valley Mall
Fair Oaks Mall

More virtual mall maps will be added weekly based on the size of the mall or number of requests we get for a specific mall.

Quick overview of features.

-Turn by turn guidance inside any mall that has a virtual mall map completed.

- Shake your iPhone to locate the nearest restroom!

- Remember where you parked.

- Find any store at the mall.

- Call any store at the mall.

- Directions to any mall.

- Add a review for any store.

- Add a review for any restroom.

- Add a review for any restaurant.

- Save malls, stores or restaurants to your favorites.

- Create a wish list of things you love. -Get a deal at your favorite store.

- Share you status/reviews on Facebook and Twitter.

- All reviews and data collected will be shown in our dynamic feeds on the FastMall.com home page.

- Total OFFLINE mapping ability even if you lose your Internet signal.

- Find or add a deal for your favorite store and save money and help the community.

- Have a stroller or a walking disability? FastMall will give you exact directions INSIDE the mall by tapping the ELEVATORS ONLY icon.

- If it is not listed above and you want us to add something just ask. This is the app for the entire world to collaborate and make the best social/shopping experience of all time.

Nuance, who brought out Dragon Dictation for the iPhone earlier this month, have just released a searchingcompanion—Dragon Search (iTunes link). Dragon Search lets you speak into the app, and then will look for results from Google, iTunes, YouTube, Twitter and Wikipedia, with options for Yahoo and Bing.

As with Dragon Dictation, the speech sample is sent to Nuance’s servers, where it’s analyzed, turned to text, and then the results are sent back to your phone. So it requires some degree of internet connectivity, be it 3G, EDGE or WiFi. The app is presently free, but word is that it won’t be indefinitely.

[via TUAW]

In a December 2009 survey conducted by Consumer Reports, Verizon Wireless received the highest overall satisfaction. Who came in last? Well, that would be AT&T, the current exclusive carrier of the iPhone. Much as been written about AT&T’s network and there are no shortage of unhappy iPhone customers. Data traffic has increased 5000%.  If Verizon were to get the iPhone and that’s a big if, would their network be up to the task? According to Anthony Melone, Chief Technology Officer for Verizon Wireless, upgrades made to their network would make them more than capable of handling the extra traffic.

“Absolutely, I think we could handle it,” said Melone. We have put things in place already. We are prepared to support that traffic.”

Verizon has invested almost $19 billion in its wireless network over the past three years.  “It comes down to backing that process with money,” says Melone. “We’ve been more consistent than any carrier in the last 10 years investing year over year.”

If Verizon gets the iPhone in 2010, anyone want to take up Melone on his claim?

[via Business Week]

Consider me surprised Blockbuster has even realised that phones can get on the internet now. Actually, I’m even more surprized Blockbuster is even vaguely solvent. The perennially three steps behind company has finally released a free iPhone app (iTunes link), which contains one of the most unintentionally hilarious press releases I’ve seen. They insist on writing the company’s name as BLOCKBUSTER, which is still internet shouting.

Carry BLOCKBUSTER in Your Pocket

Have more movie experiences, and enjoy them more too. With BLOCKBUSTER’s new app you can search an incredible 95,000 movie titles. Add, delete and reorder movies in your BLOCKBUSTER Movie Queue. Find your nearest BLOCKBUSTER store, and see if the movie you want is in stock. You can even link the app to your BLOCKBUSTER by Mail account and manage it all from your iPhone. And the app updates you on all that’s new and exciting at BLOCKBUSTER. It’s like having all of BLOCKBUSTER right in your pocket. Speaking of updates, come back to the App Store often; BLOCKBUSTER will be adding even more functions along the way.

Application Features:

* Search for movies
* Find your nearest Blockbuster store
* Check-out store inventory, including local Top 20s
* Manage your Movie Queue – add, delete, rearrange
* Link your By-Mail account (user name/password)
* Keep up with all the latest at Blockbuster, and more

Another of Apple’s iconic iPhone ads has hit the airwaves, this one riffing on “The 12 Days Of Christmas”

The 12 Apps of Christmas are:

12. The Betty Crocker Mobile Cookbook - Free
11. Postman - $2.99
10. My Christmas Gift List - $0.99
9. TabToolkit - $9.99
8. Holiday Bells - $0.99
7. Snow Reports - $1.99
6. Christmas Fever - $0.99
5. Anna Sheffield Jewelry - Free
4. myStarbucks - Free
3. Flight Search - Free
2. Weather Pro - $3.99
1. Schlage LiNK - Free

Ah, rampant consumerism. What would our holidays be without you? Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah, one and all!

According data from Impress, the iPhone accounts for a whopping 46.1% of the smartphone market in Japan. The previous champ was the Advance W-Zero, which plummeted from 27.2% to 14.6% due to Apple’s intrusion. The Japanese cellphone market has always focussed on models jam-packed with features you tend not to see beyond its shores. I must admit to being rather surprised that a phone which doesn’t even boast a TV Tuner managed to rank so high—as that’s a standard function in most Japanese models. In fact, here’s an (admittedly contentious) article from Wired about why the iPhone won’t do well in Japan. . I’d be very curious to find out what constitutes a “smartphone” in Japan, as most of their dumbphones would blow our mind; and what the difference in user base is between smart/dumb.

[via 9to5Mac]

When Ralph de la Vega talked of penalizing heavy data users earlier this month, the reaction was immediately visceral and negative. Now, AT&T have come out, saying that tiered pricing isn’t their plan. de la Vega told the Wall Street Journal “We have not made any decision to implement tiered pricing.” de la Vega says they plan to try and roll out more free WiFi hotspots to alleviate stress on the network. Of course, this very well could just be a quick reaction to all the negative press they’ve been getting, and de la Vega did say previously they will offer incentives for people to use less data—which just means a punishment for heavy users.

[via 9to5mac]