OINK is out to rate the world, but will it have a long curly tail?
Posted Friday, November 4, 2011 at 3:16 pm by Jason Cartwright
Today the newest creation from internet celebrity Kevin Rose hit the App Store. OINK is an application designed to rate the world and everything thing in it. Avoiding comparisons to check-in services like Facebook and Foursquare, OINK specifically asks you not to rate places, but rather the things inside those places.
Right now it’s fun and very new and exciting, but that hype will wear off, so the question remains.. why would someone go to the trouble of rating everything?
The app features all the standard things you’d expect, a slick UI, ability to take photos or upload from your camera roll and even basic filters to apply before uploading. Judging from the photos that have gone up so far, OINK looks fantastic. People are tending to select high quality, interesting photos to attach with their ratings. Naturally you can share out to existing social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare as well as build your friend list on OINK. This provides a personalised stream of ratings from your friends, but the public one tends to be much more interesting.
Watching this public Live Stream of ratings flow by is particularly mesmerising, something I wish I could leave running on the big screen.. Air share maybe? So it’s a visual treat.. but why are we doing this again?
My personal favourite so far is ‘Darya loves the Ceiling’… A-ma-zing.
You can check out OINK for yourself at http://oink.com or download the iPhone app now, it’s free.
Get early access to the My Telstra iPhone app
Posted Thursday, November 3, 2011 at 5:02 pm by Jason Cartwright
Telstra have announced today that a new iPhone app is on the way. The My Telstra app will allow Telstra customers to access important information about their accounts. Everything from checking data usage, to paying your bills and even recharging right from the app will be on offer.
While many Telstra customers have found their ways to 3rd party apps to monitor usage, there’s no other app that has offered this many features for your Telstra services. From the list of service icons in the screen shot provided, it seems any of your Telstra services will be supported, Mobile, home broadband, home phone etc.
Don’t bother searching the App Store for My Telstra app, you won’t find it. Right now they are after people to help them test and flush out the bugs. This likely means less than 100 people as per Apple developer agreements.
Today, we‘re looking for a group of digital thought leaders and power users (and Telstra customers…) who are interested in getting the new app before anyone else and sharing their feedback with us and we are calling this group the ‘Digital Customer Circle’.
For more information about the My Telstra app and to sign up for early access, check out Telstra Exchange.
Foursquare updates, waits for Facebook to copy
Posted Wednesday, March 9, 2011 at 8:48 pm by Jason CartwrightWell its SXSW time again in Austin, Texas, where the social, location-based, group messaging services all go to launch. Prior to the conferences official start on the 11th, the mobile app updates have begun to arrive. One such app is Foursquare, which coincidentally launched at SXSW back in 2009.
What’s New in Version 3.0
Big change 1: Personalized recommendations
- We always look at our friends check-ins and Tips to get ideas of good restaurants in the area. Starting today, in the app, there’s an easier way to do that. Tap on the ‘Explore’ tab and you’ll be able to see recommendations based on where you go, what your friends do, and what the entire foursquare community likes. It’s the easiest way to plan your nights out.
Big change 2: A whole new leaderboard
- A lot of you use foursquare to help motivate you to do things (get that Gym Rat badge!) or to compete with friends (who can get to the most new places in a week). We’ve updated our point system to reflect more of the things you’re proud of, like going out with old friends or trying out an new restaurant in the neighborhood.
Big change 3: More and more types of Specials
- We created the first version of Specials because Mayors asked to be rewarded for their loyalty. But with over 7 million users, earning a mayorship is pretty hard now. So, we’ve created six new ways for businesses to reward your loyalty, and, starting today, you’ll see them all in the app. More ways to save at more places: check in with friends, swarm specials, and more!
There are also a ton of small fixes and updates.
More info @ iTunes Web
Gameloft and Audi drive Asphalt Audi RS 3 to App Store for free
Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 9:47 am by Jason Cartwright
Mobile game developers Gameloft and Audi are teaming up to in a new promotion for the Audi RS 3. In a free app, now available in the App Store, you get a pretty decent driving demo and chance to win an actual real car – the Audi A3 Sportback. A little strange that an Audi RS 3 isn’t the prize, but lets move on.
The demo is actually a snapshot from the game Asphalt 6: Adrenaline and features 3 levels. Turns out the game is actually pretty fun to play.
To get into the comp, you’ll have to play between March 3rd-16th and join in competition to race three laps on the Bahamas track. The highest score can then be posted on Gameloft Live with a chance to win an Audi A3 Sportback 2.0 TFSI quattro. You’ll actually be competing with racers from all over the world, including United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Hong Kong, Russian Federation, Spain, Austria, Mexico, Belgium, Netherlands, China and South Korea.
Download the game now from the App Store
Twitter for iPhone gets Promoted to 3.3
Posted Friday, March 4, 2011 at 9:14 am by Jason CartwrightIn a brand new update to the Twitter application for iPhone, a bunch of new changes have arrived. Probably the most important is the addition of ‘Promoted’ tweets. Previously these were displayed on twitter.com and desktop clients like TweetDeck, but this is the first time the mobile client supports it.
If your not familiar how Promoted tweets work, its quite simple. Searching for a term displays a list of results that can be scrolled through, but the promoted tweet is always shown first in the stream. There is a difference in the updated twitter app.. Promoted tweet or trends are displayed at the top of your friends’ stream, so its always front and centre every time you fire up the app.
Other changes include Autocomplete for @usernames – very handy, saved searched are now collapsed by default (probably so you can see the Promoted trend. Trends are now available for your location, not just the global trends. The compose a tweet screen has been overhauled with a cleaner interface and large ‘insert image’ icons.
Unfortunately one main annoyance of using the Twitter iPhone app is the unread count on Direct Messages, it appears that’s still not resolved.
Twitter 3.3 is available now from the App Store.
How to: Remove Blue tint from iPhone photos
Posted Thursday, February 17, 2011 at 6:51 pm by Jason Cartwright
Many of us iPhone owners know too well how our images are being ruined by a flaw in the iPhone’s camera. When taking photos under fluorescent lights a blue tine appears on photos, radiating out from the centre as a circle. Unlike a photo with under or over-exposure, these photos can’t simply be adjusted using an image editing program. Because the tint affects only a region of the photo not a blue tint over the whole image, we can’t just use hue-adjustment techniques.
Introducing the Cam Spot Fix iPhone application. This application easily fixes the blue tint on photos.
Checkout some sample before and after photos below. While the application is A$2.49, to make a completely unusable photo into something usable can be invaluable.
Download the app via iTunes
