After 30 minutes of frantic searching, I found my iPhone. Under four inches of water. In a pond. Sunken deep into the sandy bottom. The story of how it got there isn't all that interesting - it involves chasing a squealing toddler running towards the water's edge - I never even heard the quiet sploosh at the time, when the phone slipped out of my pocket somehow, and into the water. But the horror I felt seeing the shiny little Apple logo glinting in the afternoon sun beneath the rippling surface is something I won't soon forget. My iPhone. Destroyed.
Luckily for me, I had a backup. For over a week, I had been playing with the brand-new Nexus S, Google's latest flagship Android device, running the stock version of the Android mobile operating system code-named Gingerbread. But I hadn't switched over to make it my primary device. Now I had no choice.
"Art should startle the viewer into thinking about the meaning of life."
-Spanish painter Antoni Tapies
IPad art browsing app Art Authority (iTunes link) has added several new features that make this little treasure all the more enjoyable: the masterpiece shuffle and favorites. One of the iTunes staff favorite apps, Art Authority looks a little clunky on the outside, but now lets you enjoy more than 50,000 great works of visual art. The vast majority of the pieces are paintings and from the Western canon. Full screen viewing of public domain works around the web and one-click launch of Wikipedia articles about the artists make this a great example of a simple interface as a big value add.
What venues nearby are the least crowded right now? A new iPhone app called What Spot Now launched today and aims to answer that question with a combination of blurred webcam photos taken every 30 seconds and automatic deals pushed to users when participating venues are low on customers. The company is launching with 15 bars and restaurants in food- and microbrew-capital city Portland, Oregon. "You can see what places are like before going there," the company tells would-be users. Non-iPhone owners can visit m.whatspotnow.com to use the service.
I've got to confess - I heard about this app months ago and thought it sounded absurd, offensive, creepy and pointless. Now that it's live, though, I'm impressed. There may not be a discount offered at the moment, but I may need to run down to the coffee and Wi-Fi spot BackSpace - the tables near the outlets are all open and available right now!
Skyfire, the proxy browser that specializes in bringing Adobe Flash functionality to platforms it cannot live in naturally, has submitted its newest browser to the iTunes app store. I got to test it this morning and while it's not perfect, I like it a lot already. If the company can continue to improve its handling of Flash, I can imagine using Skyfire instead of Safari on the iPad. I can almost imagine doing that now. The app's release date is of course unknown, that will depend on when and if Apple approves it. Update: Skyfire says they just received approval and should appear in the App Store tonight.
Skyfire sits on your iPad like any other app, but mimics many of the Safari interface elements. In addition to allowing you to watch Flash videos and listen to some Flash audio players, Skyfire adds some really cool social elements to the browser chrome. It does things that the ostensibly Facebook-centric browser RockMelt ought to do. Read on for screenshots and our initial review.
Facebook is experimenting with a new way to filter the Newsfeed: by media type (like photos, links or games), page updates only or by friend list. Unearthed by Josh Constine at watchdog blog Inside Facebook, these new options look great.
Constine argues the new options and their prominent placement "can make consuming the feed less exhausting, and lead to greater engagement, more Likes and Comments, and more time spent on Facebook." I agree. These new options are a form of allowing the all-important Newsfeed to be filtered by context, lending it a greater feeling of control and cohesiveness. The current design prompts users to view updates in time-based order only, but sometimes you want to view a certain type of update or updates from certain groups of your social contacts. Screenshot below.
Handmade marketplace Etsy is experimenting with its own recommendation engine technology called the Etsy Taste Test. The tool, available at tastetest.etsy.com, offers you a short quiz where you click photos of things you like. You can choose to look at either photos of items for women or items for men. The end result is a list of recommended items matching your taste... in theory at least; the experiment is still very new and results can be mixed.
Still - an algorithm for artistic crafts? Sign us up!
The video (above) looks great, but I tested it on some Spanish text on both my computer screen and printed out on paper with little satisfaction. The translations fly in and out, change constantly, don't make a lot of sense and are very hard to read. A write-up on TechCrunch says that the creators worked on this for more than two years. Perhaps their results have proven better than mine. Perhaps mine would be better in the field. But for now, it's not so good. I've posted a screen capture below and lucky for you, it's not moving all around like the app did.
ReadWriteWeb doesn't do a lot of mobile application reviews, but every now and then (ideally, every month, but realistically, every 2-3 months) we like to round-up some of our favorite newcomers to the smartphone application scene.
We last rounded up our picks for top new apps in October, when there were 225,00 apps available in iTunes. Today, Apple offers over 300,000 apps, according to its website. And in October, Google announced there were 100,000 apps in the Android Market. Now, independent Android app tracker Androlib puts that number at closer to 195,000 apps. How on earth can you find the good ones? We hope to help...a little.
It has only been a couple of weeks since its last major update, but today Flipboard, the social magazine for iPad, has released yet another new version of its app into the iTunes App Store. This time around, Flipboard has added support for Google Reader and Flickr, among other improvements, including navigational changes and better content sharing features.
Today, Posterous, the site we previously referred to as a "minimalist blogging platform", has again expanded its functionality in its own, minimalist fashion. This time, rather than adding rich editing features or increasing social interaction the service has gone and reinvented one of the Internet's "wheels" - the email list.
We spoke with Posterous co-founder and CEO Sachin Agarwal yesterday and he told us that the new feature is an "email list on steroids" and that it's "the last email list you'll ever need."
