Earlier this week, there were reports that Angry Birds, the casual iOS game that is sweeping the mobile market, was in talks with some folks to make an animated series out of the property.
Well, it appears that the rumors are true, AppAdvice.com has an article quoting Rovio Mobile CEO, Mikael Hed that it’s all but a sure thing. There is some question as to how the show will be distributed. Web based or television or both.
Still, what an amazing journey Angry Birds has made in just a short year.
To be fair, there are a lot of note applications for iOS, but what strikes me as humorous is that Microsoft released OneNote for iPhone (currently free for a limited time) where Apple has yet to release a stand-alone note app that sync’s with a stand-alone app on the Mac/Windows.
The Apple Notes app does sync with Apple’s Macintosh Mail.app (great for Mac users, sucks for Windows users), MobileMe and Gmail. However, MobileMe costs $99 a year and Gmail is Google’s web application.
When the iPhone first came out, there was no way at all to sync notes written on the iPhone to something on a desktop computer. So at least this has been resolved, but I would still prefer a free stand-alone application of some kind from Apple.
All that said, Microsoft’s OneNote is one of Microsoft’s strongest Office applications. I’ve personally never used OneNote, but have seen what it can do with Microsoft’s Tablet OS (older stylus type tablets) and was pretty impressed.
I just wonder if having OneNote on the iPhone will help Windows users that are on the fence with smart phones make the decision to iPhone instead of Blackberry or Android.
RichTech’s Atomic Web Browser [$0.99] has been updated recently to add a download manager to allow the browser to download files that can then be sent to DropBox, Emailed, or opened by an external app on your iDevice.
I’ve been on the fence between Atomic Web Browser and Life Web Browser [$2.99]. Now that Atomic Web Browser supports a download manager, it has become my iOS web browser of choice!
Unfortunately, iOS doesn’t support the ability to choose which web browser is the default web browser, so Atomic Web Browser has a bookmarklet that will bring up the current web page in Mobile Safari in Atomic Web Browser.
To download a file in AWB, all you have to do is tap-and-hold the link to the file you want to download. AWB will bring up a page prompting where to store the file on the iDevice. It will then start downloading the file and take you back to the web. Once the file is downloaded, you can tell AWB to send the file to DropBox, send an email with the file attached, or open the file with a compatible iOS application.
I’m sure there are other alternative web browsers in the App Store that can also download files, but AWB is also a very good web browser with tabbing, full screen mode, ad blocking, multitouch support, and much more. All for the very cheap price of $0.99!
Apparently all the complaints from users of Apple’s iPad about Apple’s decision to change the “Orientation Lock” switch to a “Mute” switch has been heard by Apple and in the latest beta of iOS 4.3b, they have added a Settings entry to let the user decide if the switch will be an Orientation Lock or Mute switch.
We won’t know for sure if this setting is actually in iOS 4.3 until it’s released, but considering all the uproar over the change Apple made, it seems like a likely change.
Well, this is fun. Lima Sky, Doodle Jump creator, is trying to trademark doodle. The word doodle. As the article notes, there are several games on the App Store with doodle in their title. And I don’t find the artwork in Doodle Jump particularly unique. The doodle guy reminds me a lot of Q*Bert. The most disturbing part of the article comes as an update toward the bottom:
Update 2: We got a standard form letter back from the lawyers representing Lima Sky confirming that Lima Sky is seeking to have apps with Doodle in the title change their names as they are claiming a trademark on the word Doodle.
See also: stupid, wasteful, burning bridges.
We discussed Google’s search and our increasing disappointment with it in our most recent podcast (see above). It seems the spammers are slowly winning this war. I did some searches looking for alternatives and came across a post of the top 100 Google Search alternatives. Yes, it’s lengthy and exhaustive and exactly what we all need to be determining. If Google, who’s primary income is based on search, is failing, then we need a Google search alternative and this is where we start: with a long lists of players and we work our way down from there.
Go!
According to the Wall Street Journal, the iPhone lands on Verizon this coming Tuesday. From the article:
It wasn’t immediately clear when Verizon would have the device in stores.
The Verizon phone will be similar to the iPhone 4 but run on the carrier’s CDMA technology, people familiar with the matter have said.
The article doesn’t include a confirmation from Apple, but astutely notes:
“This is the worst case scenario for the other carriers,” said Roger Entner of Recon Analytics. “When Verizon comes out with the iPhone, there’s only one carrier in the U.S. that will gain customers, and that’s Verizon.”
I guess Tuesday will tell.
I know this isn’t Apple or Mac related, but it’s such a great idea that I hope Apple takes a look at this idea and looks at a way of doing something like this themselves.
Motorolla has announced a smart phone that doubles as a notebook computer when plugged into its dock. The Motorolla Atrix 4G is a dual-core processor based smart phone that can plug into a notebook formfactor dock and become a notebook computer. Really an amazing idea.
If Apple could make a MacBook Pro with a docking port for the iPhone and allow the iPhone to display resolutions greater than it’s current 640×960 to the MacBook Pro screen, I get a feeling that it would sell like crazy.
Another manufacturer has announced a tablet that doubles as a notebook computer as well. I don’t remember the manufacturer, but the notebook opens to Windows 7. However, when you remove the “screen”, it becomes an Android 3.0 tablet. You can even switch between the two when the screen connected. It’s not out yet and wont be until later this year when Android 3.0 is released, but it’s such a great idea for a Tablet PC that again, I would love to see Apple pull something like it off.
