For the first time ever in the U.S., T-Mobile is now offering an official micro-SIM card. That’s the precise type of SIM you’d need if you wanted to use, say, an unlocked iPhone 4 on T-Mobile’s network.
Previously, using an unlocked iPhone 4 with T-Mobile required that you break out some sharp tools—or at least a SIM cutter. Now that T-Mobile’s selling ready-made micro-SIM cards, however, such physical hackery will become a thing of the past, perhaps easing the way for consumers looking for an alternative to AT&T (the Verizon-compatible iPhone 4 doesn’t use a SIM card and thus can’t be used on T-Mobile’s network). Apple began selling an official unlocked verison of the iPhone 4 last month; before that, unlocking could only be performed by first jailbreaking your iPhone.
If you thought those birds were angry before, hooboy. Lodsys—the company suing iOS, Mac, and Android developers for patent infringement—has added several major mobile gaming companies to that patent lawsuit, including Angry Birds developer Rovio. Also knocked over by Lodsys’s latest legal slingshot: Electronic Arts (for The Sims 3 for iPhone), Atari (for Atari’s Greatest Hits for iPhone and iPad), Square Enix (for Big Hit Baseball for iPhone and iPad), and Take-Two Interactive (for 2K Sports NHL 2K11 for iPhone).
As Florian Müller reports, that brings the total number of defendants from Lodys’s initial patent lawsuit to 11; the original suit targeted seven developers, Lodsys has now added the five additional defendants listed above, and Vietnamese developer Wulven Games has been dropped from the suit.
Rightly or wrongly, the foosball table became the symbol of the Dot-Com Era excess. Seemingly every big-spending tech start-up of the late ’90s featured a foosball table in its office in an effort to paint itself as a free-wheeling haven for innovative thinkers. Usually, though, it just illustrated how the company was willing to throw good money after bad.
It’s fitting, then, as the mobile apps bubble continues to swell a decade after the Dot-Com Boom went bust, that the foosball table is making a comeback. In this instance, though, it’s a virtual version of the table soccer game built for your iPad. And rather than serve as a symbol of irrationally exuberant excess, Foosball HD is a well-designed iOS game that makes great use of the iPad’s screen and touch controls.
Gooooooooal!: Foosball HD faithfully recreates the table soccer games you’d find in arcades, rec rooms, and the occasional dot-com office.
Ever wish you could see photos of your favorite bands and musicians while listening to their music? Electric Pocket Limited has launched Coverjam Pro, an app to do just that. Released on Tuesday for iOS, Coverjam Pro visualizes the music-listening experience by playing a slideshow of images tagged with an artist’s name, as their music plays.
Specifically, the app searches through and retrieves images from photo-sharing services Instagram and Flickr. Users can select the songs, albums, or playlists for which they want images and Coverjam Pro does the work of fetching and compiling the photos. The app is also compatible with the default iOS iPod player, so you can launch Coverjam Pro without interrupting your songs.
The Google+ iOS client offers quick access to most of the service's features.When Google+ launched late last month, Google released an Android app for the service and promised that an iOS app would join it soon; on Tuesday, Google delivered with an official native client for Apple’s mobile platform.
At least, for some of Apple’s mobile platform. While the Google+ iOS app is designed for iPhones running iOS 4.0 or later, there’s currently no support for either the iPad or, bizarrely, the iPod touch.
Upon launching Google+ for the first time, you’ll be prompted to log in to your account, after which you have access to your Stream, Photos, your Profile, and your Circles, along with a new mobile-specific feature called Huddle. One feature that’s not present is Google’s Hangout video chat, but given that it relies on a Flash plugin, that’s not exactly a surprise.
Just because Apple hasn’t released a new iPhone in more than a year doesn’t mean demand for the handset is waning. The latest survey from market research firm ChangeWave Research shows that Apple’s mobile platform is maintaining a high level of demand as well as attaining solid satisfaction numbers. And, in good news for Cupertino, the announcement of the company’s iCloud online service may actually bring in more users.
ChangeWave surveyed 4,163 consumers in June, asking those who planned on buying a smartphone in the next 90 days which platform they would prefer. iOS clocked in at first with 46 percent, followed by Android at 32 percent—both were up, from figures of 44 pecent and 31 percent respectively, since ChangeWave’s last survey in March. RIM, meanwhile, has dropped back down to a meager 4 percent of intended purchases, matching its all-time low. Keep in mind, however, that the survey numbers mainly refer to the domestic smartphone market, as only 11 percent of respondents were from outside the U.S.
Another week, another installment of our ever-popular iPad-case roundups. This week's selection includes some interesting contenders, from the exotic allure of kangaroo leather to the iPad generation's answer for the eighties boombox.
One of Aranez's kangaroo-leather cases
Aranez: All the way from Down Under comes Aranez’s selection of kangaroo-leather cases (iPad 2; price unavailable), each made from authentic Australian-kangaroo leather. A boon for lovers of the exotic, the company says its leather is a byproduct of a culling campaign conducted by the government to control the kangaroo population, rather than from kangaroos raised specifically for tanning.
