On Sunday Skype launched the latest iteration of its iPhone app, which now allows users to make VoIP calls over a 3G connection. As of last night, the application had been downloaded nearly 5 million times, a number that has surely been passed by this point.

There is some bad news with the good, though. Skype has said they may start charging users for Skype-to-Skype calls made over 3G as early as next year. Skype has always been free for in-client calling. There are still no specifics on pricing, though Russ Shaw, Skype’s mobile GM, said he wanted to stay competitive. “We’re not going to want to price ourselves out of the market,” he said. “I can’t ignore the fact that consumers (currently) use us for free.”

You know, Mr. Shaw, even $.03 a minute is more than free. You probably won’t find many people who will be happy about the change.

Remember that app called “I Am Rich,” the one that served no purpose other than making the developer a couple grand if people actually bought it. Apple pulled the app for the fear that a glut of such products would appear, polluting the App Store with useless junk. And yet, we still have fart apps.

Well there’s a new super-expensive app on the market, and it actually might be worth something. The app is called BarMax and it’s a preparatory tool for would be lawyers headed toward the bar exam. So why a grand? Well, the prep classes often cost as much as $4,000, so a 75% discount isn’t such a bad deal.

The coolest part of the app, in my non-litigating mind, is the audio lectures. The app itself is over a gig, which puts all sorts of papers on your phone, but you also get a huge selection of lectures to listen to. Good stuff.

iTunes Link

I’ve got another app review for you today, this time from Cycle World (which is published under Hachette Filipacchi Media along with Car and Driver). The app, appropriately named “Best of Cycle World,” can be picked up from the App Store for free.

Before installing the app I read a few users reviews complaining about the update schedule and limited content. I would wholeheartedly agree if the app was billed as digital magazine, but it’s not. It’s a companion to a subscription magazine and should be considered as such. Bearing that in mind, I think the app is a great way to carry CW content in your pocket.

The app works like a content-rich RSS feed for the magazine’s best articles. It’s a simple list that links to individual articles, all of which have a picture gallery. While the content is decent, a few simple updates could improve the app. I’d recommend a system by which the reader can see what’s been read and what hasn’t. Also, adding a picture count (1 of 8, etc.) to the galleries would be a small improvement.

Overall, can’t complain much about free content. If nothing else, it saves you the embarrassment of carrying a magazine into the bathroom while your girlfriend’s over. That is, if you still care about that sort of thing.

Dev Team has found a way to jailbreak the newest version of the iPhone OS, OS 3.1. The hack requires that you’ve jailbroken the phone for either 3.0 or 3.0.1. The jailbreak was previously unavailable for the newest iPhone model. If you purchased a new phone that comes with 3.1 pre-installed, you’re out of luck. There is no method for jailbreaking the device from that state at this time. You know someone will find it within the next few months, though. It only takes so long.

If you haven’t done so already, you should get out the iPhone cable and update your carrier settings. The long awaited MMS is finally here, delayed for what seemed an eternity by the ever-failing AT&T.

For the update to take effect you’ll need to reboot your phone. From there, though, you’ll have a nifty little picture icon next to the message line of every text. The service allows you to send pictures and video at no extra charge, assuming you’ve already got some sort of bundled plan.

AT&T has announced plans for the iPhone MMS rollout via its Facebook page. We’ve known for some time that the service would be coming on Friday, but the how and when wasn’t so clear.

From the company’s Facebook page:

MMS Update: We know you’ve been eager for this service so we wanted to offer a quick update on the launch plans for MMS on Friday, Sept. 25. Late morning, Pacific Time, on Friday, the new carrier settings update enabling MMS should be live and ready to download through iTunes. We’ll provide the steps and all of the details you need right here at that time.

For my fellow east-coasters, that means we’ll be waiting until early afternoon before plugging and unplugging our phones for updates. Some people are speculating that AT&T is nervous about the update, and rightfully so. This is the kind of update that has been anticipated for so long that it is likely to kill AT&T’s networks in a lot of places. And if the service fails on day one, the public will be calling for the bodies of AT&T executives.

Thanks to the folks over at AndroidLib (and the detective work of the good people at TechCrunch) we now know that Android has reached the 10,000 app marker. That’s a big deal, largely because Android’s biggest and best competitor, Apple with the iPhone, often touts its monstrous app library. For those of you counting at home, Apple’s got something like 70,000 apps these days.

But Android may start to get a leg up as more and more devices turn to the mobile OS. The number of Android devices already announced for next year is way too long to print here, and solid app support is one of the reasons the platform is so popular. As more apps get developed, we can hopefully start to see more talented developers head that direction.

I know, I know, I’m usually only so jubilant about iPhone apps. Honestly, though, I want Android to continue to succeed. The few times I’ve used it I really liked the OS, but more importantly I want the iPhone to have some serious competition. Right now, Android is the only thing that comes close. Yes, Blackberry has a huge installed base, but feature to feature, Android is the most comparable OS with the best long term growth potential. Here’s hoping the Android Market continues to improve.

The long wait is almost over, and it looks like AT&T won’t be making good on their promise to iPhone customers regarding the rollout of MMS support. Originally it was supposed to launch in late summer. Well guess what – September 25th is three days into fall. There have already been a number of lawsuits regarding the service delay.

It sucks to be getting excited about this so late in the game, but still, I’m excited. I’m not a big MMS user, but strangely enough my dad is, so I can finally get those on my phone. It’s also nice that the service will work just like an SMS – no additional fees apply.

There’s still no word on tethering, though. “This function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect,” an AT&T spokesperson told Gizmodo. It’s statements like this one that truly infuriate me. I know AT&T is just trying to protect its corporate image, but it needs to acknowledge the fact that its service sucks for a whole lot of people, not spout off about delivering that great service customers expect. Of course we expect it. You, AT&T, rarely deliver.

At any rate, have some fun on the 25th. You’ll be able to get access to the service via a software update for the phone. I’m sure MMS will take all of 12 minutes to bring AT&T’s network to its knees.

The iPhone is loaded with apps featuring images of hot girls (even though several have slipped up and been yanked recently), but none host the quality hotties you’ll find in Sports Illustrated Group’s SI:Swimsuit for the iPhone. The app debuted today, featuring fine looking ladies and, oh yeah, I guess there’s a calendar too.

Actually, the calendar seems pretty cool. I’ve never been the type to need a boobie fix so badly I’d download an app just to see girls in bikinis. Now, if my calendar happened to show me those same girls daily, I might not mind as much. That’s just what the SI:Swimsuit app aims to do. The calendar in question is actually a sports calendar that allows you to monitor up to six professional or college teams in full – schedules, scores, etc. You also get to pick which models show up in your calendar, so you can display your Danica Patrick love to all your friends.

The app also features picture and video coverage for all the models in the 2009 edition, including the body painting series. I’m actually shocked Apple let that one slide, but hey, they’re not exactly consistent. The app will cost you $2.99.

The folks at PocketGamer.biz recently took a look at the iPhone gaming situation to come away with some cold, hard data about what people are buying and why. I’ll spare you the full report (really I just don’t want to leech all the credit here) and focus instead on some of the more interesting details.

For standards, PG took a snapshot of the top 100 applications and then broke down the results by price, price by rank, games by publisher, and source (new IP, console port, music, movie, etc.).

Pricing was actually different than you might think. While most of the top 100 came in the $.99 category (36 titles), second place went to the $4.99 bracket with 20 titles. But that’s just number of games for each price bracket. Obviously since they are top 100 these are games that are getting downloaded a lot, but how much do the games get played after downloading?

If you look at price by rank, the top 10 games average just $1.89/download. At 11-20, the price drops to $1.19. Of course there are a load of factors that could contribute to the rankings. Are people really playing these cheap games more or are they just deleting them more often and so being prompted to rate more of these games?

Perhaps the most useful statistic, at least to industry developers, is the rate of new downloads and the desire for new IP. Of the top 100 games, 40 were released in June or July (this likely includes a few updates). Another 22 were April or May releases. As for IP, 52 of the top 100 are fresh content, designed just for the iPhone.

If you’re downloading games, where does your allegiance lie? Are you a bargain shopper, only buying apps that are cheap or on sale? Or do you look for the best IPs from hot developers, regardless of price?

Managing a city’s complaints can be tough business, even if you just think of the volume. Then there’s sorting through the complaints to see which are valid, which to prioritize, and which can be completely ignored. Most cities have implemented some sort of nonemergency hotline designed to handle the massive numbers of calls and complaints about potholes, downed trees, and wayward neighbors setting their trash out a day early.

Boston is adding a tech-forward method for complaint managment with an iPhone app called Citizen Connect. According to the Boston Globe, the application is the first of its kind, allowing citizens to snap photos of local problems, an overstuffed public trash can, for instance, and send those photos back to City Hall for review.

One of the features that has mayor Thomas Menino excited is GPS positioning. The application makes use of the iPhone’s GPS to pinpoint a problem’s location, making it much easier to address the issue. After submitting a complaint, users will receive a confirmation number. If the problem persists, they can refer municipal employees to the original complaint.

The city plans to pay Connected Bits, a New Hampshire firm responsible for designing the program, $25,000 for a year of support and assess whether the benefit is worth the cost. I’d imagine it’s worth at least that much, something Connected Bits might be likely to notice themselves. As a first-of-its-kind technology, the east coast developer is probably anxiously awaiting positive reviews.

The application also has potential to start some hilarious tech wars. Imagine neighbors snapping shots of every minor ordinance violation on one another’s property. The influx of information could be overwhelming for a city complaint system that’s likely already under a lot of stress.

Citizens of Boston are already crying foul, claiming the announcement is just another election year promise, not likely to come to fruition. The city claims they’ve already submitted the application to Apple for approval. The application will be free on release.

What do you think? Would you use this sort of system if your city had one? Is this just going to create an army of overzealous, iPhone-toting watchdogs? Sound off in the comments.

A photo purportedly showing a naked 15-year-old has made its way onto the iPhone App Store through an app called BeautyMeter this week, despite Apple’s strong stance against objectionable content in the store.

Last week the application “Hottest Apps” was quickly pulled from the App Store due to “objectionable content,” namely, female nudity. It was adult female nudity, though, unlike today’s whopping PR nightmare for the iPhone.

BeautyMeter allows users to upload photos of themselves and subsequently rate one another on body, face, and clothing appeal. If you’ve been to Hot or Not, you get the idea. Today, an iPhone app review site called KRAPPS found a picture of what appears to be a 15-year-old girl topless and partially nude below the waist in BeautyMeter. Nearly 5,000 users have voted on the picture.

As of this posting, the application is still available in the app store, though the picture may have been removed. I would expect the app to at least get pulled for review before day’s end.

According to the developer’s website, funnymals.com, they do not review submissions on a photo by photo basis. Rather, they go in and clean up “from time to time.” This certainly gives plenty of room for photos like the illegal nude in question to slip through. Users have even commented in the app store that, “There shouldnt be 14 year olds nude on there [sic].”

The developer does supposedly capture your iPhone’s unique device ID when you upload a photo, making it possible to track down anyone who has posted illegal content. Neither Apple nor Funnymal will likely have legal liability in this case, though it does raise questions as to how Apple will handle user-generated content in future applications.

Update:BeautyMeter has officially been pulled.

Image from Wired

The first iPhone app showing any sort of nudity debuted today and has since been pulled from the app store.

The app, called Hottest Girls, has been around longer than the parental controls that could supposedly allow explicit content to be viewed within an app on Apple’s iPhone. Previous to today’s update, the application simply showed pictures of girls (mostly asian) in various types of scanty clothing. The app was supposed to be the first to feature adult content.

There’s been no word concerning the removal of the app from the app store yet. I’ll be surprised to see Apple try to keep the pics from returning. It’s not particularly hard to find porn on the phone, considering it has a nearly fully featured browser. You can imagine, though, the massive influx of applications we’ll see if porn apps get the official sanction.

For now, looks like you’ll have to stick to Safari to get your mobile porn on.

Being that TomTom showed off their turn by turn navigation system at WWDC, and being that AT&T has hardly mentioned their Navigator app in recent memory, it seems odd that AT&T would be the first to release a turn by turn navigation app.

They were, though, in a free app download today. Don’t let free fool you. The app will add a $10 charge to your AT&T bill.

The application was developed specifically for the iPhone 3GS but it will work with OS 3.0 on other iPhones. The app gives you turn-by-turn navigation, updates traffic information and will let you search by your location for the cheapest gas.

AT&T may have made a smart play here, giving them the early adopters. I’ll be interested to see whether other turn-by-turns run for a similar monthly fee.

Palm continues to baffle me. I wrote a post the other day questioning the judgment behind withholding the WebOS SDK from the general public, and to day I find this article from Medialets. It’s an explanation of the Palm strategy to date concerning their App Catalog and includes one hugely disturbing fact.

Pre users have downloaded more than 600,000 apps.

When I read that my thoughts looked something like this: “..” “….” “……??!?!?!??!?!?!” Seriously, what the hell. The phone launch was a relative success, we know that. It wasn’t huge. It wasn’t earth-shattering, but for both Palm and Sprint it was a success.

People want apps, we know that. There have been more than a billion downloads on the iPhone, the Android market continues to grow, and now this. With just 30 apps in the Catalog, users are piling apps on to their phones. Why doesn’t the market at large have the SDK yet?

Medialets cites some interesting theories. First, most of the available apps are in beta. So what, the apps need more testing? Several of these apps are running version 0.9, as in, the last major revision before 1.0. Will they really be so different? Can developers even vouch for their app’s stability under hundreds of thousands of scrutinizing fingers? No, they can’t. Apps are nearly never bug-free at launch, and the growing pains of a new platform are part of the geeky fun of owning a brand new device.

Medialets also suggests the App Catalog isn’t ready for the deluge of submissions that would come with a public SDK. I can understand this. It’s a lot to sort through, and it’s no secret that Palm has been struggling. The number of people required to handle a hundred submissions a day, making sure they (the apps) won’t brick anyone’s Pre, is enormous. Paying those employees will be a serious expense, which leads us to the last problem: money.

It always comes down to money, and the App Catalog has no way to make any. As of today, there’s no payment system in place to reap the rewards of a well-developed app. Palm isn’t the only one hoping for a revenue stream from the store. Developers need to be paid for their time, and their best efforts should be justly rewarded, affording more time for people to put together more great apps.

The problem remains that this wasn’t planned well enough before the Pre’s launch. I can understand and even empathize with Palm for their troubles, but they botched this thing. You can’t expect to launch a phone like the Pre without planning for a payment system for apps you know people will want well in advance. I don’t want to hear “we’re working on it,” or “it’s not ready yet.” Those are crap excuses, and the only reason for them is a complete lack of foresight.

AT&T’s free myWireless Mobile app has been out for quite a while now so if you live in the US and don’t have it already, you should. This app is a simple way to view just about everything related your wireless account as well as add features to your plan and monitor your usage. It’s quite convenient and in my opinion, should have been available since the iPhone was first released.

So, from the home page, you can click Bill & Pay, Usage, or Features. Under Bill & Pay, you can view your last payment, payment date, current balance and due date, as well as bring up PDF copy of your current bill. Pretty handy to have that all in one place. AT&T also gives you the option to make a payment from this screen as well. It was nice of AT&T to give us the ability to pay the bill from this app because we all want to make sure AT&T gets their money on time.

The Usage section is just what you’d expect. You are able to view Anytime, Night/Weekend, Mobile to Mobile, and Rollover Minutes used from the main screen. A nice addition for those of us on family plans is that you can also see all this information per individual. This would be convenient for parents as well as nosey husbands or wives. Also available in Usage is your data used which includes messaging as well as internet.

Finally, the Features section is a way to upgrade your plan. AT&T wanted to make sure anyone, anywhere with and iPhone and this app can always add more features to their plan. Not paying enough for your iPhone plan yet? Well go ahead and add Roadside Assistance or maybe VoiceDial for Postpaid. In all seriousness though, if you are traveling abroad it is easy to use this app to add Expanded Internation Roaming or 20 MB Data Global Add-On without having to call customer service.

So there you have it, AT&T myWireless Mobile app for the iPhone. It’s free and convenient so I recommend downloading it.

I like the Palm Pre. I really do. I’m starting to wonder, though, if Palm does.

For all the excitement surrounding their best phone release in years, Palm seems to be doing their damnedest to let the Pre slip into obscurity. Perhaps the best feature of the new Pre is its operating system, named webOS because it comes built on web technologies that supposedly make developing on the platform a breeze. The platform also supports multi-tasking, a feature missing from the Pre’s ‘roid-induced cousin, the iPhone Unfortunately, Palm has yet to release the webOS SDK, which would give developers a chance to put some great apps in the hands of Palm fans and iPhone malcontents. In fact, the SDK isn’t coming until the end of summer.

“We’ve been working very hard on the SDK and are eager to open access on a wider scale, but the software and the developer services to support it just aren’t ready yet,” says Palm. I have to ask, then, did they pick the right time to launch the phone? It’s all well and good to try to gain ground before the new iPhone drops, but why launch when a solid app development platform could greatly improve the phone’s appeal? There are plenty of unsatisfied Apple/AT&T customers. Why not pick them up in the wake of the 3GS?

As of today, the Pre’s App Catalog sits at just 30 apps. At that level, they have no chance. Even if there were a couple hundred the Pre might have just enough appeal to lure in some the folks who spurned Apple’s advances. Show them multi-tasking with apps they love and you could start to build a base of very satisfied customers, and that’s exactly the way to gain market share.

For now, a lot of Pre users are content to homebrew their apps, porting games like Doom and piecing together tethering on the fly. But that magic can only last so long before serious developers get bored, or get so entrenched in the iPhone or Blackberry development that they all but forget about the Pre. That’s something Palm can’t afford. We’ll see how hungry developers are by the end of summer, assuming they stick around.

With all the excitement surrounding the new iPhone release it’s difficult not to notice the absence of a certain, rumored to be healthy CEO. Apple restructured their laptop line, announced two OS updates, and announced the newest iPhone, all without their captain at the helm. Hopefully Jobs will soon be well enough to return to his handicapped parking space.

We’ve talked Macbooks, we’ve talked iPhone, but Apple spent most of the keynote on OS 3.0 and the new options it yields for developers. All of this stuff was really old hat – landscape keyboard, copy and paste, tethering, MMS. The big disappointment so far is that tethering and MMS are both unsupported by AT&T at this time, with support apparently coming at the end of the summer. Why AT&T can’t get it together when 20 other carriers can baffles me.

One cool feature coming to OS 3.0 on the 17th is “Find My iPhone.” The service, which is only available to MobileMe customers, allows you to locate your phone on a map using a web browser. Using the service you can also send alerts to the phone, including a message stating, “This phone is lost. If found, please call me at [number you specify].” (You can actually input any message, this is just the one Apple demoed.) You can do this from a distance, allowing you, hopefully, to get your phone back. Find My iPhone also includes a sort of kill pill, allowing you to remote wipe the phone. It would be really nice if it could disable the phone, rendering it useless to whomever snags it should they not acquiesce with your return requests. The remote wipe is really there to ensure your privacy, though, allowing you to restore the phone to factory settings from a distance. I smell some nasty pranks coming with this one. Don’t leave your MobileMe password where your friends can find it.

Apple relinquished the stage late in their 3.0 presentation, allowing developers to showcase new functions like GPS navigation and in-game purchases. The developer presentations dragged on, plagued twice by technical difficulties and eating up precious minutes. By the 100 minute mark I would bet few people were hoping for an iPhone update. It came, though, fitting the remaining time slot well as more of an evolution than a revolution.

I’m not sure what to think about this one. According to numerous rumors, Apple will start charging you to re-download already purchased apps to your iPhone/iPod Touch. You can download the app again from your PC or Mac, but not from the iPhone. iClarified has some thoughts on this.

The warning message pictured below has been appearing to some users on the iPhone 3.0 beta firmware. Previously if you had purchased an iPhone app you could remove it and then easily redownload and install it on your iPhone as many times as you like.

Now the warning dialog suggests that you must re-download it using your computer; otherwise, you will have to pay full price for the app again.

The iPhone Blog believes that this is due to the on-device account management coming to iPhone 3.0. The ability to log in and out of multiple iTunes accounts on your iPhone could lead to the sharing of iPhone purchases with others who haven’t paid for them.

I can kinda see where they are going with this. Kinda. Apple is trying to fend off people from signing into each others phones and downloading already purchased apps. But couldn’t they have come up with a better way of preventing this? I’m no genius but I would think that the brain trust at Apple could have worked this out in a more convenient way for the end user.

Last week we reported on a pretty little ereader for the iPhone that didn’t make Apple’s crazy approval process because it allowed access to the Kama Sutra. It sounds like Apple’s smarter thinking prevailed, and Eucalyptus has been reinstated at the original $10 price tag.

Though it’s tough to say what really made the difference, I’d like to think rampant posts about the ridiculous rejection brought it to Apple’s attention, at which point they actually thought, instead of just mashing the ‘declined’ stamp on seeing the words ‘Kama Sutra.’

As for the app, I’m not sure I’d spend $10 to read public domain books (read, old) on the go. It’s a nice model, though, and hopefully something others can look at to make future apps with some added functionality.