Nanosaur II comes to iPhone

Pangea Software has announced the release of Nanosaur II: Hatchling for the iPhone and iPod touch. The game costs $3.99 and can be purchased and downloaded from the App Store.

An iPhone conversion of Pangea’s popular Mac game, Nanosaur II puts you in control of a pterodactyl from the future who’s been sent n a mission to locate stolen dinosaur eggs and return them to the future by throwing them into wormholes.

You can collect powerups and weapons including heat-seeking missiles, blasters, cluster bombs and more, which you use to battle other dinosaurs and disable robotic sentries that litter the environment.

Review: Spore Origins for iPhone

Leave it to EA to leave no stone unturned for its Spore franchise. The brainchild of Sim City and The Sims maker Will Wright, Spore is living up to its concept and is evolving a broad range of game titles for various devices. Spore is available for the Mac and PC, and soon there will be expansion packs for it as there have been for Sims games. Spore Creatures was released for the Nintendo DS. And Spore Origins has been brought to the iPhone and the iPod.

Spore Origins for the iPhone roughly follows the same track as the iPod game (), though the interface has been improved for the iPhone and the game benefits from the device’s larger screen too. But it’s essentially the same game, culled from the “full” Spore game’s first stage, when you’re responsible for the care, feeding and evolution of a microscopic spore swimming in protoplasmic ooze.

It’s basically a game of eat or be eaten; you collect microbes and nutrients that are free-floating in the liquid around you or you collide into smaller creatures, consuming them whole or in parts to improve your health and increase a DNA meter. You move by tilting your iPhone or iPod touch up, down, left and right—everything is displayed in landscape orientation.

Review: YouNote for iPhone

Both the iPhone and iPod touch come with a built-in notepad app, which works very simply and efficiently. You type in your note, you save it; the app notes the date and time. Onward and upward. Who could ask for anything more?

YouNote answers that question with a bevy of features you may not realize you need until you use them. YouNote is Notepad injected with a super-soldier serum and exposed to dangerously high doses of gamma radiation. And this monster of an app is available for free.

A rogues' gallery of iPhone apps

Over the past couple months, there’s been a fair amount of controversy over Apple’s decisions to reject particular iPhone applications from the App Store. But beyond the few snubbed titles that have gotten a good deal of publicity, which Apps have actually been turned down (or removed post-acceptance)? A new Web site, the iPhone Application Graveyard, aims to be the go-to resource for “remembering the applications that Apple has killed.”

The site claims to list every application that Apple has rejected, although the site’s maintainer told Macworld that it includes only those apps for which the developer has made the rejection public. As of today, that totals 11 applications, from NetShare, which allegedly violated Apple’s agreements with AT&T, to Shaker, which was removed due to a copyright complaint from Tetris Company. (Based on comments Macworld has heard from developers, additional apps have been rejected. Some are eventually accepted after changes have been made; others are rejected outright.) For each app, the site lists the app name, developer, release and kill dates, reason for rejection, current status, information source, and a summary of the app’s history.

iStylophone to bring classic electronic organ to iPhone

The Very Cool Software Company has announced the forthcoming release of its Dübreq iStylophone software for the iPhone and iPod touch. It's expected to debut at the App Store on December 1, 2008 for $5.95.

It's based on the original 1968 Stylophone, a pocket electronic musical instrument that has seen broad use over the decades by professional musicians from David Bowie to Erasure, Marilyn Manson to They Might Be Giants. It was originally developed as a children's toy, and came complete with stylus.

Its kitschy design and vintage sound has seen resurgent popularity in recent years; in 2007, a new version of the Stylophone was produced with volume controls and an MP3 feature.

Apple asks judge to make iPhone lawsuit moot

Editor’s Note: This story is excerpted from Computerworld. For more Mac coverage, visit Computerworld’s Macintosh Knowledge Center.

Apple has asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit brought by dissatisfied iPhone 3G owners because they did not ask the company to repair their iPhones or refund their money, according to court papers made public Friday.

In the motion, Apple’s lawyers moved to dismiss the suit filed in August by an Alabama woman who said her iPhone 3G dropped calls, couldn’t reliably connect to AT&T’s network and was slower than advertised.

Trapster warns of speed traps on iPhone

Trapster is now available as a native iPhone app. It’s available for free download from the App Store.

Trapster alerts you as you approach police speed traps, red light cameras and other traps. It uses location-finding on the iPhone 3G, using GPS and Wi-Fi location capabilities.

Trapster requires an iPhone equipped with iPhone 2.x software.

iPhones go to front of the class at Texas university

Editor’s Note: The following article is reprinted from Network World.

When almost 1,000 freshman students showed up at Abilene Christian University on Aug. 16, they got something more than the usual medical release forms, parking permits and Welcome Week T-shirts.

They got a choice of a brand-spanking-new Apple iPhone 3G or iPod touch, plus a package of ACU-written Web applications to use on them. (Watch a slideshow of the coolest iPhone apps.)

Review: WunderRadio for iPhone

The original iPhone and iPod touch were terrific devices for playing music you’d placed on them. With the advent of the App Store, they’re now capable of playing music streamed from such online music services as Pandora, Last.fm, and AOL. But what about terrestrial radio? Weather Underground’s WunderRadio has you covered.

This $6 application for the iPhone and iPod touch works in league with RadioTime, the Dallas-based service that provides the means for streaming terrestrial radio content to devices such as Logitech’s Squeezebox and applications such as Rogue Amoeba’s Radioshift. WunderRadio uses RadioTime’s services to locate and deliver streaming radio to your iPhone or iPod touch. (Downloading this content is not supported.) Additionally, it can play audio weather reports from Weather Underground and feeds from emergency scanners located throughout the U.S.

The interface is a cinch to navigate. Along the bottom you find three icons—Stations, Favorites, and Now Playing. Tap Stations at the bottom of the screen, and you’ll see three categories—Weather Underground, RadioTime, and ScanAmerica.us. Thrilling as listening to weather and police reports may be, you’re going to spend most of your time listening to RadioTime stations, and WunderRadio makes them easy to find.

United Lemur announces Puzzllotto for iPhone

United Lemur, a group of veteran Mac and iPhone developers, on Thursday announced the company's first product, Puzzllotto for iPhone. Available sometime in the next few weeks for $4.99, Puzzllotto is described as an “exploration puzzle game,” in the spirit of Zork and Myst, set in the dark jungles of an “eighth continent.”

Among the contributors to Puzzllotto is IconFactory’s David Lanham, who worked on the game’s artwork. At a press event on Thursday, United Lemur noted that the game’s graphics are so detailed that you can tell the difference between male and female lemurs. (None of the press in attendance asked for proof of this claim.) The game’s audio includes nature sounds licensed from Dr. Douglas Quin, a well-known sound designer who also did the audio for Spore.