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Update: iNewz 2.7 is now available on the iTunes App Store (as are iNewz Tech 2.7 and iNewz Green 2.7).

Busy weekend this weekend. I finally got the update for iNewz (and iNewz Tech) that I’ve been working on for a while now submitted to Apple for review.

What’s new?
Well, the most visible differences are the switch to the black top bar (somehow it looks a little more sophisticated to me), and moving the thumbnail images from the left to the right in the headlines view. “Huh?” you ask. Well, the other big difference is that when there is no image for an article, it no longer displays the placeholder iNewz icon. And with the images on the left that made for a ragged left edge which was hard on the eyes.

So, images are on the right, when available, and they’re scaled to keep their aspect ratio and feature rounded corners now (yes, I’ve been having some fun with the CG section of the SDK!).

Another big change: Maintenant, iNewz inclus les actualités français. Nouvelles de langue française vient de France et au Canada.

iNewz Tech
The technology variant of iNewz picks up the same UI changes of course, and a few extra sources, including KRAPPS and MacWorld.

One Last Thing
A new iNewz variant was also added to the family with this update: iNewz Green. For all your environmentally sound, eco-friendly green news in the palm of your hand.

Update (December 14, 2008): Version 2.5 is now available in the iTunes store.

The new version of iNewz is now with Apple for review… New features include an offline reading mode which was requested by a few people, complete with a simple bookmark option to tag an article if the summary information from the feed makes it sound as though you’d like to read more.

The offline mode will be used automatically if the application detects that there’s no network available, but it can also be switched on manually so that all articles will display in offline mode. You can then use the Open Page button to get to the full article on the web.

To make offline mode work, there’s also a bulk sync option that will update all the sources you’re subscribed to – can take a while if you have a lot of sources!

Devicescape’s new application, a version of Easy Wi-Fi especially for AT&T, has been in the app store now for a few days. The screen shot here from my iPhone shows that it has no reviews (and if you scroll down to the bottom, the place where the link to any reviews is found also says that there are no reviews.

So what? It’s only been a few days after all. But wait, if you click on that button to open the reviews page, you get this:

So there are actually five reviews. Why doesn’t the app store app indicate that?

And want another mystery? See that average ranking there – 3.5 stars, well I don’t know how they calculate it because all five of those reviews have 5 star ratings. Last time I checked, 5 * 5 / 5 is 5, not 3.5.

Seems the app store has a number of basic arithmetic problems! And this is not going to help developers much. The ratings and review system is bad enough as it is, but this makes it worse still. An average of 3.5 when all the ratings shown in the reviews are 5 star is pretty damaging. Have you checked whether your aggregate rating is correct?

I’ve seen a lot of discussion recently about application development for the iPhone and iPod touch platforms, and in particular whether the current trend for very low cost apps is sustainable long term.

The first article I read was Andy Finnell’s How to Price Your iPhone App out of Existence. My own experiences with the app store were pretty consistent with his observations, but it got me thinking a bit more about this issue.

VentureBeat also noted that the $0.99 price is going to make it next to impossible to live off of an application, and they’re suggesting that the price is tending back up towards $9.99. Driven in that direction not by consumers (obviously), but by the developers coming to the realisation that they can’t afford to write high quality applications at the lower price points.

more…

There are lots of apps out there now for iPhone and iPod users to choose from, and plenty of reviews within the App Store as well as on the web, so I’m not about to review any apps here. Instead, I thought I tell you about my three most used applications, and why I use them so much. So, without further ado, let’s jump in to the list:

iNewz
iNewz is a news reader application that aggregates content from a number of news sources, mostly US ones in the current version. I use it because I spend an hour a day sitting on a bus commuting (half an hour each way), and I guess I’m a secret news junkie. The news is organised into categories, with articles for each category from several sources listed in reverse chronological order. My top categories? Headlines first, always, then World News and Technology news. That normally fills a commute!

Easy Wi-Fi
I have to include Easy Wi-Fi since I spent so much time working on both the initial jailbreak version, and then this App Store version. But aside from that, I do truly find it incredibly useful and I use it almost every morning at Starbucks – handy having that free Wi-Fi account from AT&T simply for using a registered pre-paid Starbucks card. The iPhone normally latches on to the Wi-Fi as I walk in, and one tap gets me online. Not quite as convenient as the background mode the jailbroken version had, but still a lot faster than typing my user name and password into the AT&T web form every morning (and I only have a few minutes in Starbucks most mornings to buy coffee, sync email and load up the Daily Irrelevant).

Truphone
Last, but not least, Truphone – the voice over IP application that has been around for other mobile phones for a while (and one I use on my Nokia N95 via its built in SIP stack). Needs Wi-Fi to work, but that’s fine by me as I’m usually somewhere where there is Wi-Fi when I need to make international calls. Combined with Easy Wi-Fi to get me online in public hotspots, this means I can keep in touch with folks around the world for very little money. I called my mother over in England while sitting outside a Starbucks in San Jose last weekend – free Wi-Fi from AT&T, Easy Wi-Fi to get me online and Truphone to make a very cheap international call.

How can the AT&T network have so many dead spots in the heart of one of the most high-tech areas on the planet?

And look at the signal strength – I had 4 our of 5 bars. I guess when they say more bars in more places they took it literally: the signal is strong, but the service is still unavailable.

Tried to blog about this a couple of days ago, but that was when Flickr was having problems, and blog posting seemed to be one of the things that wasn’t working!

Schmap have now launched a version of their online city/region guides formatted for the iPhone. This is a very handy tool since you can access it over the iPhone’s cellular connection while you’re actually traveling (I don’t normally carry my laptop around when on vacation, but I do take my mobile phone with me).

No special URL needed (though I’d like it if one was available); the site will automatically give you the iPhone version when you visit from Mobile Safari.

I installed a new app on my N95 the other day from the Nokia Beta Labs: Location Tagger. This is one of the things that should have been built into the camera application from day one on a GPS enabled phone, but I’m glad to see they’re catching up.

The photo on the right is my first test of this new feature. The photo was automatically geo-tagged (so, if you visit the photo’s page in Flickr, you can see it placed on a map). Flickr seems to be confused about the city (it thinks Alameda is Oakland!), but it shows up in the correct place on the map.

Why was I at Starbucks? Well, I stopped by to see whether AT&T had disabled the free Wi-Fi for iPhone users. The special free login page has indeed gone, replaced by the older iPhone login page, though it did still let me on using the iPhone credentials I had stored in my Devicescape account

Finally, I finally signed up for Twitter, and added the Twitter feed to the left column on the blog. Since it is connected to my IM client (Adium, for those wondering), I can send it short messages about what I’m up to, and they’ll end up here on the blog as well as on my Twitter page.

Well, to be more accurate, free for AT&T iPhone users. If you have your service through AT&T still, then you should get this login page when you connect to the attwifi SSID at Starbucks, or anywhere else. Enter your 10 digit AT&T mobile number and you’re online.

Devicescape users can add the special ‘AT&T Wi-Fi (iPhone)’ credential type to their account, and they will get online automatically.

There have been rumours around that the same will be enabled for anybody with an AT&T mobile data plan at some point; I expect the iPhone is being used as the test platform here since they already had mobile pages for the iPhone (my N95 still sees the full page).

Update, May 4, ’08: Seems that the web page has been taken down now (guess too many folks were abusing it by changing their browser agent string and getting online with non-iPhone devices).

Arrived at Sugar Bowl this morning to discover that my iPhone has no service here. Oddly though, my N95, which is also on AT&T, does have coverage, and in fact pretty much full signal strength.

Luckily, here in Judah Lodge there is free Wi-Fi (SSID: EXWIRE or exwire depending on where you are). That too is a little strange as the same network is available in the main lodge, but there it is a paid hotspot network instead (which I have now added to Devicescape’s collection as well).

Also, if you’re going to provide Wi-Fi, especially paid Wi-Fi with a 2 hour minimum and day pass option, you really need to make sure that there are plenty of power outlets available as well.