In our continuing tradition of rounding up new mobile application releases we found interesting and/or exciting over the past month, we present you with this new list of apps for September 2011. There are some great game, new browser releases and innovative uses of augmented reality this month. There is also a new section for prominent updates you may have missed during the month. Check it out below.
The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.
News broke last night that speech-to-text software creator Nuance has acquired mobile text software designer Swype for $102.5 million. This is a big merger in the information input vertical of mobile ecosystem as it combines two of the hottest and most used features on smartphones today.
This could be the first steps to bringing Swype to the iPhone. We lamented after the iPhone 4S announcement that Siri, the voice input "assistant" coming in iOS 5, should have been Swype. Apple was a good working relationship with Nuance and if the parties can figure out a good graphical interface for Swype on the iPhone, it may be the next important feature in iOS.
The death of Steve Jobs has rocked people the world over, affecting everyone from the most hardcore Apple fanboy to Barack Obama to all those gathered outside the new Apple store in Shanghai. While Steve Jobs will be remembered for revolutionizing personal computing, the music industry, consumer mobile products, film animation and even fonts, the other side of his legacy is one of hyper-control: Apple's proprietary software, the iPhone's closed-off ecology, App Store censorship and the company's labor law violations. If there was ever a company that capitalized on American consumers languishing in late-stage capitalism, it was Apple. And they did it by inventing "cool" products that we didn't even know we needed - till we needed them.
Sites across the Web created some amazing tributes to Steve Jobs over the last day. One of our favorites was our friends at Boing Boing, who overhauled the theme of their front page with a touching, nostalgic classic Mac look. The team at WordPress loved it, too, so they worked through the night to make a retro Mac theme for WordPress users, and they're giving it away for free.
On the main WordPress blog founder Matt Mullenweg writes:
We work harder and have higher standards because of the bar set by Apple's experiences, and I don't know what WordPress would look like today if not for the inspiration he gave all of us.
Steve Jobs became an icon as one of the greatest innovators of the modern age. He follows in a great American tradition of innovation that have built the fundamental building blocks of the U.S. economy. History will be kind to Jobs. Students will read about his accomplishments in their textbooks for decades and perhaps centuries to come. In classic Jobs style, those textbooks will probably be built into iPads.
Where does Jobs stand in the pantheon of great American innovators? Certainly, he was one of the most inspiring and creative Americans of the modern era. Let's take a look at the history innovation in the United States and assess how these great people influenced how we live our lives today.
Following the news of the death of Steve Jobs on Wednesday night, millions of people took to the Web to mourn the founder and former chief executive of the biggest technology company in the world.
Everyone from Apple customers and admirers to other tech luminaries and the President of the United States expressed their condolences in the form of obituaries, blog posts, tweets and status updates on Facebook and Google Plus. Somber homepage tributes went live on Apple.com, Google.com and other major websites, and some publications like Wired and Boing Boing altered their homepages dramatically to pay tribute to Jobs.
Earlier today, the tech world was rocked by the sad news that Steve Jobs had died. I'd like to pay tribute to Steve Jobs, on behalf of ReadWriteWeb, for what he brought to the Web world. There will be hundreds of different tributes written by many tech publications - deservedly so, as Steve Jobs had a huge impact on many aspects of technology.
In this post I want to highlight 3 main things that I'm grateful to Steve Jobs for: 1) re-defining mobile computing with the iPhone and iPad; 2) his design philosophy; 3) his leadership. Steve Jobs strived for greatness in the products his company built, which resulted in a great user experience on the Web for millions of people.
The technology world was saddened to learn today that Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO of Apple Inc., has passed away. He was 56 years old.
Apple's board of directors released this statement:
We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today. Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve. His greatest love was for his wife, Laurene, and his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by his extraordinary gifts.
Was anyone else peeved to discover that the new iPhone 4S voice-command personal assistant app's voice is a robotic-sounding lady named Siri? There should be an option for iPhone 4S users to choose a voice from whatever gender they prefer. But until that day, if we're going to be stuck with only one voice, it should be Sulu.
With all the hussle and tussle over the iOS5 and iPhone 4S announcements earlier this week, we thought we would take our own unscientific and idiosyncratic poll of our RWW staffers and see whether they would be ready to plunk down their own hard cash money (we have to pay for own phones here, don't you know?) and upgrade. The answer was a resounding No. Now granted, many of us have the regular 4 models, so an upgrade to a 4S isn't as compelling. But read on for yourself what everyone has to say.
