iPhone Daily News Digest

Do you remember Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan when the Reliant ambushes the Enterprise? There is a moment from that nail-biting sequence that seems rather befitting for this article. Just to take you back, the Reliant is slowly, silently, closing the distance between itself and the Enterprise. Lieutenant Saavik turns to Admiral Kirk and begins quoting Starfleet Regulations concerning communication protocol between starships, but she is reprimanded by Captain Spock with “The Admiral is well aware of the regulations.”

Moments later, the Enterprise gets pounded by the Reliant…which they discover has been hijacked by Khan. (Great scene!)

My point is that no matter how much you think you know a subject or topic of discussion, you’d better do your research. It was a hard lesson learned from my first novel. I knew that privateers sailed the world with Letters of Marque, sure; but in my haste to get published and in my haste to tell a swashbuckling epic, I called them “Letters of Mark” in the first printing, a first printing that had me catching a few broadsides from friends and strangers alike. The error was quickly corrected, and since then I have endeavored to get my facts straight.

When my article Myth Plausible: Could Adam Savage Have Avoid Getting Busted by AT&T? ran, I’m thinking I should have endeavored a little harder.

In that article, I asked hard questions about exactly what happened, trying to ascertain if Savage could have avoided the hoopla over his gargantuan bill. I received both praise and condemnation for the column, which I expect when writing them.

The comment that caught me off guard, though, came from Brian who said:

This assumes he was using an iPhone, which he wasn’t: http://twitter.com/donttrythis/status/2349337674 Great reporting.

When I saw this, Twitter was under the onslaught of a DoS Attack; so I was unable to reference the offered link. Instead, I starting surfing back through my resources: Savage’s original tweet (reported by Boing Boing) and a second blog that reported much the same. I was about to fire off a snarky retort when my post-article research returned to TechCrunch. In my skimming, I skimmed by this:

AT&T is apparently claiming that Savage managed to download 9 gigabytes in Canada using his USB data connection (which he calls “frakking impossible“)…

To really add insult to injury, I cited this article in my column. Tee Morris: BUSTED!

I still could take the defensive crouch popular with authors called to the mat, but I’d rather generously apply my head to my desk and say “Good catch, Brian, and I’m sorry.” I did some research, but the amount of time I invested after the article went live should have happened earlier. Do I have a reason or an excuse? My iPhone sure isn’t going to give me one. I could have enlisted the help of Read It Later Pro and set aside articles concerning this matter; and during a lunch break or train commute home, taken a bit more time to read resources other than ones I relied on. I could have also done this with Instapaper Pro, and create folders and subfolders that would organize these other news items and keep my thoughts straight. Either one would have been good choices as my preferred mobile Twitter app, Twittelator Pro, offers integration with them. (So does the new TwitterFon Pro, which I review this week.) Finally, there is Evernote, another research tool I should have implemented. After gaining security in what I knew about Savage and AT&T, I could have gathered up all these links from my pocket-sized Reference Library, organized them in Evernote, and started compiling thoughts and comments for the column. I know many writers that work with Evernote and swear by it.

There’s also Pirate Glossary, an app that would have served me well on that first novel had the iPhone been around then. When Apple makes the claim “There’s an app for that…” they really aren’t kidding.

Maybe there are a lot of “Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda’s” in this column, but I will step up and say I screwed the pooch on that last one, will work harder to not let that happen again, and take more advantage of what the iPhone has to offer in the way of reference tools. I love what I do as a columnist and critic; and with the various research tools that are out there, I have no reason to not double-check my facts and deliver commentary that you can rely (and reply) on.

Bringing it back to Star Trek II, I ponder on the moment after Kirk outwits Khan. Sulu whispers, “Sir, you did it.” Kirk spins around and snaps “I – did – nothing!” (Yes, it’s quality Shat.) He then mutters, “Simply got caught with my britches down. I must be getting senile.” Kirk then points to Saavik and says, “Mr. Saavik, you go right on quoting regulations.”

So Brian, congratulations — you’ve just received a field promotion in Starfleet to Lieutenant. It’s my responsibility to get the facts straight; but please, fellow iPhone users, keep on quoting regulations. It keeps me on my toes, and makes me a better writer.

Related Posts

• Twitter App Updates: TweetDeck And TwitterFon
• Popular Free Twitter App Gets Pro Treatment - TwitterFon Pro Now Available
• Review: TwitterFon Pro
• iNFAMY! How The iPhone Can Make You Famous
• Twitter Filtering App Changes Tweets Into “Gangsta Slang”

Call me a commie but I don’t give a crap about baseball… (American) football is the only sport that matters! And now that football season is finally here I’m on the lookout for apps that will make the games even more fun to watch.

Outlast Football is your basic survival pool where each week you pick ONE team that you’re absolutely sure will win, and if you’re right then you live to see another Sunday (or Monday or occasionally Thursday). If you choose the wrong side of an upset, though, you’re done for the season. The only catch is that you can only pick a team once during the whole season, so after Chicago crushes Green Bay at Lambeau in Week 1 you’ll have to move on to other possible winners in subsequent weeks.

You can make your survival pool public or private and you can also join other public pools if making one pick a week isn’t enough for you. There’s also the option to add a point spread if you’re fully convinced that your team will win by (x) points, and you’ll either get rewarded or penalized in “LastCreds” depending on the outcome.

I don’t fully understand the point of LastCreds, aka Outlast points, but I’m guessing it’s just a way of ranking players and their knowledge (or luck) in predicting winners. As for how this app performs in the heat of battle I don’t really know yet since the NFL season hasn’t started, but I guess we’ll find out soon enough!

Outlast Football is free, so if  you’re a football fan you need to download it and join my public pool! Just go to “Buddies”, click Search in the top left corner, look for “iphone” and you’ll find iPhoneAppReviews.net. Be sure to join the league called “(for real this time)”.

iTunes Link – Outlast Football
Version 1.0
Reviewed on iPhone 3G OS3.0.1

Techtree.com

Is AT&T losing its grip on the iPhone? CNET News Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T to offer the iPhone may end within the year, according to a prediction from financial analyst Gene … Analyst: Apple to offer iPhone on US carriers within a year …ZDNet AT&T could lose iPhone exclusivity next yearKansas City Star AT&T Gets a Fuzzy Signal on Apple's iPhoneWall Street Journal Atlantic Online -Computerworld -CrunchGear all 130 news articles »

Gamasutra

Grand Theft Auto game coming to iPhone CNET News iPhone and iPod Touch owners will be able to control Lee as he travels through the streets of Liberty City. Chinatown Wars is currently available on the … 'Chinatown Wars' targets iPhone's turfUSA Today Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars & Beaterator …IntoMobile Rockstar bringing GTA: Chinatown Wars & music game to iPhoneComputerworld ipodnn -Tom’s Guide -WELT ONLINE all 80 news articles »

Phones Review

iPhone thieves collared by Jobsian GPS Register A trio of blundering brigands have been busted after an iPhone they had stolen betrayed their whereabouts. This tale of technology overcoming uninformed … MobileMe Catches iPhone ThievesWIBW GPS nails iPhone thieves - shopping at WalmartZDNet Man robbed catches thieves with iphone they stoleGeek.com Examiner.com -the iPhone Blog -Gearlog all 47 news articles »

CNET News

Make your time fly faster with World Wars for iphone CNET News If you need something to quickly stimulate your brain while waiting for the bus, this 99-cent simple iphone game would do the job so well that … AddictingGames Brings Top Online Casual Games to the iPhone(TM)PR-CANADA.net (press release) all 2 news articles »

Student Uses iPhone to Catch Robbery Suspects FOXNews An iPhone, Skype, and Google were all it took for one lucky Carnegie Mellon student to catch a group of armed robbers. … and more »

Rockstar Games has caught the iPhone game development bug.  They have announced that they will be releasing not one but two titles for the platform: GTA: Chinatown Wars and Beaterator.

GTA: Chinatown Wars will be the platform’s first official Grand Theft Auto title.  Chinatown Wars was initially released as a Nintendo DS exclusive, but recently Rockstar had announced that the game would be making its way to Sony’s PSP, and now the iPhone and iPod touch.

“Chinatown Wars is a perfect match for the iPhone and iPod touch. We are very excited to bring this incredibly ambitious version of Liberty City, with this level of detail and immersive gameplay on Apple’s new gaming platforms.”

The other title, Beaterator, is another Sony PSP game, which is kind of ironic considering Sony has actually been trying to bring some iPhone games and developers over to their platform in the form of Minis.  Beaterator is a music-making game that allows you to create beats and songs with ease, and it features thousands of loops and sounds made by both Timbaland and Rockstar.

“The simple, pick-up-and-play nature of Beaterator lends itself so well to the Apple platforms. We are happy to deliver an application that allows for such unprecedented sharing and ease-of-use.”

Both games are said to arrive this fall, but no exact price or release date has been set.

It’s definitely nice to have another AAA game developer take notice in the iPhone and iPod touch.  Hopefully they can figure how to successfully combine the platform’s power with its unique controls.  At least that should be easy enough with Chinatown Wars, since it already featured touch-based controls on the Nintendo DS.

[via Joystiq]

Related Posts

• Nintendo Warns Of Profit Decline, Blames iPhone
• EA Releases Boggle For The iPhone And iPod Touch
• Our FaceFighter Download Code Giveaway Winners Are…
• Popular iPhone And iPod Touch Games On Sale This Weekend
• Witness The Cinematic Trailer For Gameloft’s Upcoming Dungeon Hunter

Apple’s Find My iPhone feature has once again had a hand in returning an iPhone to its rightful owner after it had been stolen, and thankfully this time the victim decided to turn to the police instead of trying to personally solve the case.

The victim, whose name has been withheld, told the Pittsburgh police that three robbers held him at gunpoint, which later turned out to be a pellet gun, and forced him to hand over his wallet, PIN number, and iPhone.  After the confrontation he quickly called police and cancelled all of his credit cards, but he didn’t stop there.

Later on in the day, the victim decided to use MobileMe’s Find My iPhone feature to attempt to hunt down the perpetrators, assuming they weren’t savvy enough to realize the iPhone’s capabilities and simply shut the device off.  As it turns out, they weren’t.  The Pittsburgh Police were able to apprehend the suspects at a local restaurant after the victim had tracked their location.

The three suspects remain in police custody and they will be charged with two counts each of access device fraud, conspiracy, receiving stolen property and possessing instruments of crime.

The moral of the story is that crime really doesn’t pay, especially when you are trying to steal an iPhone.

[Pittsburgh Post-Gazette]

Related Posts

• An Elaborate Find My iPhone Story With A Happy Ending
• TomTom iPhone App Now Available In U.S. App Store, Priced At $99.99
• Apple’s Official MobileMe iDisk App Released, View And Share Files On Your iDisk From Your iPhone
• New MobileMe Functions In iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 3
• TomTom Car Kit Hits FCC, More Details Revealed

The good news: Rockstar Games is bringing an installment of Grand Theft Auto to the iPhone. The possibly good, possibly terrible news, depending on your tastes: It’s going to be a top-down affair. iPhone-owning GTA fans of various vintages, fight!

Devising a decent control scheme for a GTA3-style third-person on the iPhone sounds laughably hard, so I see the fact that GTA: Chinatown Wars will be a top-down shooter, a la the original 90s crime simulators we all fell in love with back in the late 90s, as a good thing. Plus, the DS version of this same game was pretty great, aside from the terrible graphics. The forthcoming PSP version, pictured above, looks way better, as should the iPhone’s (no screens yet, oddly enough), which is due in “fall.” [Rockstar Games]

« Previous entries