AA Best of Britain
Mobile Commerce has partnered with the AA, a UK motoring organisation and travel publisher, to deliver the AA ‘Best of Britain’ iPhone application. The application provides all the information the user needs to find and book a weekend, or week, away in Britain and acts as a guide locating local entertainment and points of interest.
It can be frustrating at the best of times that you cannot simply copy files to and from your iPhone. The closest we have at present is the DCIM folder which computers treat as a digital camera but you still can’t add files to this from a computer. Third party apps can access this data (which is why apps can easily make use of your photos and videos) but that is about it.
The Beta SDK for iPhone OS 3.2 is currently only for the iPad but there’s nothing to suggest that it won’t be made available to the iPhone either in a 3.2 update or a 4.0 update. OS 3.2 provides a shared storage folder for files to be easily shared between apps and synced to a desktop (much like photos are currently handled but hopefully with write permissions from a desktop!).
My 5th generation iPod and it’s predecessor the Creative Zen Xtra both have/had a great feature that I used practically every day. This feature, Album Shuffle, was ideal for someone like myself who prefers to listen to a whole album as it was released rather than just a random song. I also have a number of live recordings that need to be played in order. Apple, in their infinite wisdom, decided to disable the shuffle by album feature in both the iPhone and iPod Touch. Did you notice how I say ‘disable’ and not ‘remove’? The feature is present in the .plist file for Settings.app but this is only available to jailbroken phones and those with access to Xcode – which dramatically reduces the number of people it is available to. It also requires connecting to a Mac every time you want to change your shuffle mode from ‘by album’ to ‘by track’ so is no good when you’re on the road.
So, what are the other options? Well, as Apple rightly advertise: ‘There’s an App for That’ although in this case there are 3 that do the job and are currently available in the UK AppStore. In alphabetical order we have: ‘Album Mixer – Shuffle by Album‘, ‘iAlbum Player‘ and ‘Quick Music‘.
From the makers of the awesome iPhone game Edge, Mobigames has released a new hit called Cross Fingers. A highly polished game as you would expect from this design house. http://www.mobigame.net/
I have been playing this game for about two weeks now an I have to admit it is addictive, and like it’s predecessor I can imagine it’ll be some time before I put it down.
The tasks are quite simple move the blocks into the dark area of the board and make them fit. Some of the puzzles are way too easy and some are much harder, but I was a little disappointed not to have any really fiendish puzzles to get my teeth into. This is offset by an immensely difficult and infuriating Arcade mode but lack of variety here makes for a short-lived experience.
This app is a real finger frenzy with some of the puzzles requiring the use of five fingers on the screen at once which for the older iPod touch is a little too much to handle but on the iPhone the issue is just how dextrous your fingers are. I did really like this app as I like puzzle games and the polish of this app is evident however it lacks depth that some might hope for and can be played to completion in only a few days, but for .59p it is still a bargain and one I wish to hope will have some updated levels soon.
I have been trying to unlock my 3GS for some time now. The first attempt failed completely. I had my confirmation email but then after nearly a month nothing had happened. I phoned O2 and after some time I got through to customer services representative who told me that for some reason my original form had not been sent through to the correct dept. He sorted that out and told me it may be up to 14 days before my phone would be unlocked.
I had a text from O2 which I thought was telling me I had been unlocked. Foolishly I upgraded my iPhone from its YellowSn0w jailbreak/unlock to OS 3.1.2. Then I found that my phone had not been unlocked… I checked the text from O2 again and realised it was not the unlock confirmation…
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Traffic Media UK is an iPhone app, and one that offers access to regional traffic radio reports and Motorway network cameras. It doesn’t use GPS but for anyone planning a long journey over the holiday break it might prove useful.
Using a simple map interface you can hear reports for your region and look at still photos from motorway cameras to check traffic and, given the current snow, weather conditions.
Currently Traffic Radio is only available for England but Alerts are available for the whole of the UK. You can choose which alerts you wish to receive and at £1.19 it’s cheap and simple solution that works well.
For more information see the Traffic Media web site at www.trafficmediauk.com or download from the iTunes Appstore.
Tesco finally announces tariffs for for their iPhone offer due to go on sale on abouts 14th December. They are only currently offering three options, Pay as you go, 12 Month contracts and 18 Month contracts for the 3G, 3GS 16Gb, & 3GS 32Gb. These are £20 pm and £60 pm.
Downsides are having to buy the iPhone upfront, but the upside is only being tied into a 12 month contract. And if you compare this with the Orange offerings on a like for like basis the Tescos option looks to be the smart choice, although the draw of not having to buy the iPhone upfront may be a win for Orange.
Released shortly after the surge of zombie-based games that plagued the AppStore around Halloween, Westbright’s ‘Zombies’ breathes a breath of fresh air and comedy into a somewhat stale genre.
Zombies is a turn-based game where your aim is to, rather unsurprisingly, kill the zombies. This is not, however, the usual gore-laden shooter commonly associated with zombie games but, rather, an amusing little gem that is so addictive in it’s simplicity. How many other zombie-based games have the lead character saying in their best British accent ‘oh dear’ when devoured by the living dead?!
We all know about the crazy sales called “Black Friday” in the USA the day after the Thanksgiving holiday, well ALK have hit the road early with a huge $15 discount on the CoPilot Live GPS Navigation App. Normally sold for $34.99 the price has been reduced to $19.99 from now until midnight on Monday 30th November.
This special offer pricing applies to both the iPhone app in the Apple AppStore and the Android app from Android Market. Happy Holidays!!!
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Tesco is to sell iphone
Hot off the press is news that Tesco have joined in on the iPhone war here in the UK. On the Tesco Direct website confirmation of their move has already been made. It is suggested they will do both the 3G and the 3GS but nothing as yet on pricings.
It is also to be noted that this is a joint partnership with O2 so we could speculate that the rates will stay the same but if tesco history of price slashing is anything to go by we may see them set a president for Orange and Vodaphone to follow.
Let the wars begin?
Should be in before Christmas.
