Top iPhone Resource

Barnes & Noble is one of my favorite book stores here in town. I just recently checked their iPhone app and I was very impressed.

B&N Bookstore is the name of the app in App Store should you search for it. Let’s see how this free iPhone App measures up beyond the basic functionality of searching for books, music & dvds.

In the first screen you’d see a bookcase where you can swipe to see book covers like in a carousal. Under that is the area where you see different sections like Recommendations, Bestsellers, New Realeases, Review & Studio. This is tagged as the Discover section and is like virtually strolling through the bookstore.

I was looking at the Bestsellers and you can see the online and list prices there. Nice.

One of the newest features is that now you can read book reviews right from your iPhone! Extra nice!

Now comes the cool factor for you iPhone owners. Let’s say you have a book in front of you that you want to check a price for.

Go to the ‘Search’ page and click on the green camera button. Take a picture of your book cover and the app will find your book from the millions of books in the store!

Amazon’s iPhone App has had this feature for a while but I was still impresses with how accurately and swifty it found this Drupal Book for me.

And the Stores page lets you quickly find a Barnes & Noble around you with a simple click of the familiar ‘Locate me’ button near the search box.

B&N Bookstore App is a must have for a book lover, IMHO. Plus, the the price can’t be more right - Free.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Hello there! Hope you found a nice app, or a cool hack or the latest iPhone news. Don't miss future updates, grab our RSS feed or follow us on Twitter and get free updates.

My favorite iPhone blogging app WordPress has updated to version 1.3. It gets complete OS 3.0 compatibility along with a bunch of bug fixes.

I couldn’t find a list of new features from the iPhone WordPress blog but you could get details by looking at the blog.

Also, you might see that the version is shown as 1.21.1 in the About section but be assured you have 1.3 if you see it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

For all you pinball fans, there is good news!

Wild West Pinball is an excellent pinball game with crisp graphics and excellent game play. If you are used to going through a couple of screens before you start playing a game, you will appreciate the simplicity in Wild West Pinball.

As soon the game loads you just tap the screen to get started. I noticed that this game had dropped from $1.99 to FREE at lunch and loaded it up. You can see I didn’t score much but I was really impressed by the way the screen zooms in the area where the ball is and then comes back down just in time so you don’t lose it.

Wild West Pinball boasts of

• Full hi-res 3D graphics
• 40 fps frame speed
• Camera effects
• Live scoring table
• Realistic physics
• Shake your iPhone to shake your pinball table
• Pause/play game play anytime

Wild West Pinball is an excellent pinball simulator game!

Available in:  App Store

Price: $1.99 -> Free

Popularity: 1% [?]

Animoto Videos is an excellent app for quickly creating 30-sec videos from your pictures with a background music of your choice. It comes with professional looking transition effects.

You can read our Animoto iPhone App review here.

Animoto’s current version adds a bunch of new features

• It syncs with your Animoto account
• Lets you create longer videos
• Save videos to your iPhone to watch it later even offline
• Better image timing/fitting in video
• Lots of new song options

If you get a chance, check out the web-based Animoto as well as it offers lot more options. With the 3MP camera in the new iPhone 3GS, creating videos from your iPhone pictures can’t be easier.

Also, I had great luck with creating better Animoto videos with these tips.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Digits is one of those Apps that make you wonder why it wasn’t included in the iPhone OS natively.

Digits lets you quickly add a phone number to a contact. And that’s it. It lets you quickly type in a phone number with the big numbers as you seen in this screenshot. Then you enter a first name and last name and then you save it to your Contact.

Digits [iTunes] is an excellent buy!

Price: $0.99 -> Free

Popularity: 1% [?]

iPrivate Browser is a simple and secure web browser that lets you surf the Internet without leaving any history or cookies behind.

Apple makes a great effort to not let any lewd apps get through to the AppStore.

iPrivate app lets you browse with anonymity and saves you the embarrassment of unwanted history or cookies showing up when you are using Safari. It goes a step further by letting you quickly hide the page you are surfing by providing 2 big buttons.

You can switch instantly by hitting the black ‘http://www.’ button or the Google button to look like you were doing something else.

You can set the homepage for this app and a bug preventing access to secure links has now been fixed. Version 1.2 is coming soon with password protection and 3.0 web loading.

Even though it is called iPrivate, it screams to be named iPorn browser. And some folks might appreciate the thoughtfulness of the developers. :-p

Price: $0.99 -> Free

Popularity: 2% [?]

Dev Team has reinforced that they were able to jailbreak the 5th beat of iPhone 3.0 firmware. And they are pretty confident that the jailbreak will work in the final release of the iPhone 3.0 OS to be released in Apple’s WWDC event in June.

Here is what they said about the iPhone 3.0 jailbreak

As we’ve said in previous posts, nothing other than a hardware respin can prevent our jailbreak from working on all exisiting iPhone and iPod Touches.  They’ve chased our jailbreak so far down in the chain of trust, the only way they can fix it is in hardware.

In fact, I am impatiently waiting to get my hands on the rumoured new iPhone as well. Expect us to come back here in TiR with a vengeance. A site re-design is also in the making!

If you are thinking of trying out one of those hijacked versions of PwnageTool or Quickpwn for any of the beta releases of iPhone 3.0, Dev Team advises you to hold your horses.

If you care about the yellowsn0w unlock, don’t go anywhere near the beta releases. You will lose your unlock, possibly forever.

A lot of people I know who tried have reverted back to iPhone 2.x as most of the jailbreak apps and winterboard themes don’t work there anyways.

[via Dev Team]

Popularity: 2% [?]

Amazon recently just launched their new Kindle 2 (Latest Generation wireless reading device) and priced it at $360.

Amazon just launched a free iPhone Kindle App that lets you read Amazon eBooks with your iPhone or iPod Touch.

You can read any Kindle-compatible book you’ve purchased from Amazon’s catalog in your iPhone or iPod Touch. In fact, you can read the first chapter of any book for free if you want to try out the App without buying a book from Amazon Kindle.

It has a lot of the Kindle features like resizing text, bookmark pages, viewing notations you made on Kindle, etc.

The price point for Kindle is kind of out of my league at the moment and I have my entertainment budget lined up for stuff elsewhere this year.

But, the iPhone Kindle App creates a sweet spot where I can buy and read eBooks on my iPhone from the vast eBook Catalog with one of the most competitive pricing elsewhere.

If you already own a Kindle or planning to buy Kindle 2, the iPhone App makes a compelling statement.

Reason - WhisperSync. This feature automatically keeps track of where you left off in each book and it allows you to pick up from that spot in any Kindle-friendly devices you may have. You can leave your Kindle 2 bedside in the night and pick up on the reading on your way to work in a train/bus from your iPhone.

As Amazon’s Kindle service expands to more mobile devices, this feature is going to be kick-ass.

With Amazon moving into the iPhone eBook market, it’s time the other players stood up and took notice as the competition is going to be really stuff from now on.

If you are a iPhone eBook app writer, what do you think about this development?

Popularity: 1% [?]

Not so comfortable wearing your own ties?

Tie-a-Tie Deluxe app shows you how to tie your different knots for different occasions. You don’t have to grab your laptop and Google anymore.

You can look at both diagrams and photos to make sure you can learn to easily make that perfect knot with your tie.

You can do 7 different knots

• Windsor
• Half-Windsor
• Four-in-Hand
• Small Knot
• Cross Knot
• Pratt Knot
• Bow Tie

The diagrams and photos guide you through each step of the knot. Also, there are descriptions of appropriate use for each type of knot helps you decide which one you should do. You can just swipe between different steps and flip between diagrams and photos.

The $2.99 app is FREE in App Store for 48 hours. So grab it now but even at $2,99 it can be such a time/life saver at those occasions you’d need it.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Magic Touch is a great photo retouching app for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

If you are bored with just taking plain old pictures with your iPhone, you can put your artistic touch to your pictures easily with this cool app. And just with the touch of your finger.

Some of the things you can do with Magic Touch are

• Touch up tools - Clone stamp, smudge, paintbrush, color, overlay, etc
• Extended color pallete - Antique white, bisque, & azure
• Image resizing - canvas size 80×60 to 1024×768 with an output size of upto 2048×1536 (3MP with upsampling)
• See before/after pictures by just rotating
• Change eyes or lip color
• Change nose shape
• Teeth Whitening
• Night Vision
• Sunset

And lots of other features to list here.

And you’d be amazed to know that such a full featured app is on sale for $0.99 right now in the AppStore. I remember seeing it for $4.99 but I am not sure.

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you are a wine lover or just getting into learning about wines, Wine Snob is the perfect iPhone/iPod Touch app for you.

Wine Snob not just lets you track your wine tastings but it also lets you learn about different white and red wines.  You can learn about different wine and food pairings, all the wine lingo. You can keep track of all the wines you taste, notes, prices and vintage.  You can even save a picture of the label along with your notes.

Wine Snob lets you

• Save picstures of labels with each wine
• Tag tasting keywords for easy recall
• Search for wines by name or tasting tag
• Save detailed notes on wines
• See average price, rating, etc.
• Automatically get the wines geotagged
• Sync with your online database for safe backup

Wine Snob is definitely worth at $4.99 but until Valentine’s Day, you can get it for FREE! Try it now at this incredible price.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I am definitely impressed at the speed with which DevTeam releases these updates after the firmware release.

If you are a Mac user or have access to a MacBook, read on as you can use PwnageTool 2.2.5.

If you are a Windows user and rely on QuickPwn to jailbreak/unlock your iPhone, we have to wait a little longer for QuickPwn 2.2.5. Do not update to 2.2.1 via iTunes or use the current Quickpwn version to jailbreak.

Things to Remember while Jailbreaking Firmware 2.2.1

Don’t let all these version numbers throw you off. Just read it over and over again until you understand and before starting with the jailbreak.

• If you have a iPhone 3G running 2.2 firmware, only use the custom ipsw using PwnageTool 2.2.5 to update/jailbreak 2.2.1 firmware
• Yellowsn0w - the iPhone unlock Cydia app will not work with firmware 2.2.1’s baseband (02.30.03). You have to use the custom 2.2.1 ipsw which doesn’t update the baseband.
• Yellowsn0w has been upgraded to version 0.9.7 - so remember to use that from Cydia

Also, make sure you read the different issues and how to fix them over at DevTeam blog before you start.

Here are the download mirrors for Pwnage 2.2.5

Mac PwnageTool

• http://iphone-dev.fgv6.net/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg
• http://iphone.schwarzmetall.cn/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg
• http://rabstalk.bplaced.net/mirrors/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg
• http://jmcoon.net/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg
• http://downloads2.ipod.backshot.eu/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg
• http://www.iphone-storage.de/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg
• http://miphone.ca/iphone-dev/PwnageTool_2.2.5.dmg

Mac QuickPwn

• http://iphone-dev.fgv6.net/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg
• http://iphone.schwarzmetall.cn/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg
• http://rabstalk.bplaced.net/mirrors/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg
• http://jmcoon.net/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg
• http://www.iphone-storage.de/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg
• http://downloads2.ipod.backshot.eu/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg
• http://miphone.ca/iphone-dev/QuickPwn_2.2.5.dmg

Windows QuickPwn

• Coming soon - Do not update via iTunes or jailbreak yet
  

I hear there are some significant sync speed improvements with firmware 2.2.1 over at Twitter from those who have updated already. Do you see that as well?

You can follow us at @TopiPhone to receive recent updates on the release of QuickPwn 2.2.5 for Windows.

Popularity: 4% [?]