GQ | Dec 09 | Men of the Year Issue

Price: $2.99

Writing from a female perspective, what could be better than having GQ’s men of the year just a few inches from your face on your iPhone? Well, actually, a print magazine probably is better. But that’s beside the point. This is GQ’s first whack at taking the magazine digital, and it’s actually quite a pleasurable experience. Flip through the five covers of the special issue (including President Obama, the guys from The Hangover, Chris Pine [Star Trek], Clint Eastwood, and Tom Brady) and browse through all of the featured articles in the print mag through the table of contents. Also check out the exclusive photo and video content only offered through the app.

CatPaint

Price: $0.99

If you’ve ever looked at a photo you’ve taken and thought, “The only thing this is missing is an obese cat flying toward my head,” then you’re in luck. The CatPaint app allows you to incorporate a cat of your choice from its gallery into your iPhone photos. You CAN haz magical kitteh iPhone photos! (Go check out the CatPaint gallery if you don’t believe me when I say the photos are magical.)

Image via CatPaint Gallery

Social DJ

Price: FREE

Finally, an easier way to share what you’re listening to on your iPhone with friends and followers on Facebook and Twitter. Open Social DJ while listening to a song on your iPhone, and the app will detect the song, provide album cover art, and type your Tweet or Facebook update for you. Example: “I’m listening to (song) by (artist) from the album (album name)” on Twitter. Your Tweet will also include a link to that artist in the iTunes Store. It’s fast, it looks great, and now you can remind your phones how you are so much more musically inclined than they are.

Wine DJ

Price: FREE

No matter the occasion, this app claims to have the perfect ideas for which songs you should play while sipping on wine. Wine DJ provides streaming playlists of songs catered toward specific wines enjoyed on specific occasions. So set the mood, hit the play button, and enjoy that bottle.

50 Cent “Baby by Me” Sound Lab

Price: FREE

It really doesn’t matter if you don’t care for 50 Cent, hate this song, or don’t even know who 50 Cent is. This is a FUN app. Fiddy broke down his new single, “Baby by Me,” for you to remix by adding whichever instruments, sound effects, and voice effects from the original song that you choose. I particuarly love to tap the “Fifty so crazy” voice effect over the drums and synthesizer. Oh, and if you actually take this seriously, Fiddy is offering to fly the creator of the best remix out to New York City for some one-on-one time with the man himself.

The real kicker is that it costs $99.95, $20 less than the iPhone version, even though the iPhone has a built-in GPS receiver. The given reason, is that the iPhone model has bluetooth capabilities. Any readers have the iPhone version, and can comment on what the bluetooth functionality is? Because the iPod Touch version is smaller, and cheaper. The $100 price tag probably won’t include the app itself either, which is also expensive. I wonder what would happen if you plugged an iPhone into the cheaper iTouch base…

[via AppleInsider]

Thanks Ramesh!

In an effort to aid moviegoers and fans alike, we found all of the iPhone apps you’ll need to tackle the opening day of New Moon. Utilize everything from Vampire Vocab apps to tips on when it’s safe to leave the theater to relieve yourself, in case you waited outside the theater for a few hours…or days.

"Bella, why can't you get a freakin' iPhone?"

"Just shut up and save me from these darn werewolves, Edward"

Secured Movie Tickets

If you haven’t already bought your movie tickets, you’re are most definitely out of luck for opening day. So, as soon as you can, get this Flixster app to find your local theater and showtimes. The app also has maps, and you can buy tickets through the app, which directs you to MovieTickets.com. Also, for when you’re waiting in that miserably long line a few hours before your show starts, check out all the trailers and reviews in the app to make sure you know what you’re really getting into.

Flixster
FREE
App Store

Reading Material/Reference Guide

So you finally scored your tickets. Now it’s time to either give yourself a refresher of the second installment of the Twilight series or check out for the first time (gasp!) by downloading the eBook from the App Store. The New Moon: The Twilight Saga, Book 2 by Stephenie Meyer app costs $10.99. Features like full text search, margin notes, and brightness and font size adjustment are included, so when you’re arguing with a friend over if a particular scene stays true to the book, you’re going to be the know-it-all at this party. Just think of this as your reference and “I told you so” guide.

New Moon: The Twilight Saga, Book 2 by Stephenie Meyer
$10.99
App Store

Author’s Bio

You couldn’t possibly be prepared for this if you’re not familiar with the saga’s author, Stephenie Meyer. So even if you think you know all about this vampire lover, check out UNBOUND, her 12-minute long video comic biography that chronicles her beginnings as a writer all the way up to being named the “Best Writer of 2008″ by USA Today. Like we said earlier, you’re going to need something to keep you busy as you wait eagerly to get into the theater, and this is probably the most noble of ways you could make the time pass by faster.

Twilight: UNBOUND The Stephenie Meyer Story
$2.99
App Store

Vampire Vocab

You wouldn’t go to France without speaking a lick of French, so you better not walk into that crowd without knowing a little bit of Vampire Speak. Use the Twilight: Vampire Vocabulary app to help you ease into the world of Twilight. Features include 10 “advanced” words used in each of the 24 chapters of the book, random vocab words and definitions, a quiz to help you determine if you’re a human or really a vampire, and a vocab quiz to put your newfound skills to the test.

Twilight: Vampire Vocabulary
$0.99
App Store

Updates

Don’t miss a minute of the vampire action going on all around the world as you wait impatiently. Use the official Twilight Tracker app to keep up with updated news feeds, message boards, and the rest of the blood-sucking community. And, while you’re at it, get your Team Edward/Team Jake fix with photos and videos from the new film.

Twilight Tracker
$2.99
App Store

The Final Test

Do you really know your Twilight trivia? Put your skills to the test with trivia questions in the Twilight Trivia - New Moon (Book 2) app. Set the timer to make sure you’re able to spit out facts at a moment’s notice, try it out in multiplayer mode with your friends, then compare scores to see who’s the last TwiFan standing.

A Twilight Trivia - New Moon (Book 2)
$0.99
App Store

Minor Details

A word to the wise: Do not, we repeat, do not consume any liquids at least one hour prior to entering the theater. The last thing you want is to have bladder issues at a key moment in the movie; we understand this is a big deal, but no movie is worth risking a burst organ over. But, just to be safe, get the RunPee Mobile app to give you the rundown of when it’s safe to exit the theater for a few minutes to relieve yourself without missing anything terribly important. Yes, we realize it’s all terribly important, but we’re just looking out for your health, here.

RunPee Mobile
$1.99
App Store

Dear Mr. Jobs,

My name is John Devor and I’m the co-owner of a small Mac shareware company named The Little App Factory and a long-term Apple customer and shareholder. I doubt you’re aware but we recently received a letter from a law firm working on Apple’s behalf instructing us that we had violated several of Apple’s trademarks in our application iPodRip and asking us to cease using the name and Apple trademarks in our icons.

We have been distributing iPodRip since 2003 with the aim of providing a method to recover music, movies and photos from iPods and iPhones in the event of a serious hardware failure on their Mac which leads to data loss. Our goal has been to provide the highest quality product coupled with the highest quality service in a bid to resolve some of the angst that is generated by such an ordeal; service befitting of an Apple product. In this department we think we have succeeded as we have approximately 6 million customers, many Apple employees, music artists and other notable people in society. In fact I’d argue that our customer service is the best of all competing applications in our niche as many of them are scams and frauds that leave Apple customers with a terrible taste in their collective mouths. We fear very much that tens of thousands of Apple customers looking to recover their own music and having heard of our product via word-of-mouth or otherwise, will instead find a product produced by one of our competitors, and will wind up the victim of a scam (one closely-named competitor charges a hidden monthly fee, for instance).

It is quite obvious that we mean Apple no harm with the use of the name iPodRip, or of the inclusion of trademarked items in our icons, and in fact I believe that we have been providing an excellent secondary service to Apple customers that has potentially caused you many repeat clients. In fact, we are quite aware that Apple support and store staff have recommended our software on numerous occasions as far back as 2004 so we have felt that we were doing something right!

With this in mind, we are in desperate need of some assistance and we beseech you to help us to protect our product and our shareware company, both of which we have put thousands upon thousands of hours of work into. Our company goal is to create Mac software of the highest quality with the best user experience possible. I myself dropped out of school recently to pursue a path in the Mac software industry, and you yourself have been a consistent inspiration for me.

If there is anything at all you can do with regards to this matter, we would be most grateful.

Best,

John Devor

Would you believe that Steve Jobs responded? And he was a bit of a dick:

Change your apps name. Not that big of a deal.

Steve

Sent from my iPhone

iPodRip is now available as iRip. So there you go.

[via CrunchGear]

I don’t know why you’d go anywhere for news other than Everything iCafe, though. Seriously, Google News is the premier news aggregator, and bringing better functionality to the iPhone is a great move.

TORONTO, Nov. 19 /CNW/ - Virgin Mobile Canada will launch iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS in Virgin Mobile Retail Stores and online in Canada in the coming months. For more information on iPhone, please visit www.apple.com/iphone.

[via BGR]

Sony have announced their intentions to launch “Sony Online Service“, an iTunes like service to send content to their devices, and hopefully to other electronics too. The SOS is said to be based off the PlayStation Network, and unlike iTunes it will feature a degree of user generated content. Users will be able to upload photos and videos to their personal page on the site, and Sony is talking about potentially opening up the platform to outside app developers.

The big problem with this is apparent if you’ve ever tried to use Sony software and content before. Sony, more than any other major company, are mired in the world of proprietary content and DRM. There’s no doubt that whatever you purchase from their store will be in an obscure format that only the most recent of their devices can use, and will become obsolete in six months (coughmemorystickproduomark2cough). However, maybe they’ll have a change of heart, and use their substantial media network to sell popular content in common formats, for every device on the market. Also possible: moon made of cheese, Apple Tablet being released tomorrow, world peace

[via AppleInsider]

However, the calculations used to hit that number are more than a touch suspicious. The report says ”As a point of perspective, iSuppli has reported the bill of materials on the iPhone 3GS is $179. Backing out the phone functionality, we believe the bill of materials is about $160. Assuming the tablet is 3x the size of the iPod touch implies a bill of materials for the tablet of around $480.” However, anyone who’s been TV shopping knows that you can’t linearly shift the price to account for the size. An 84-inch TV isn’t twice the price of a 42-inch. Screen price increases dramatically with size, especially with OLEDs, which rumors point to the iTablet having.

[via AppleInsider]