Report: Apple Clamping Down on App Store USATODAY.com - A recently reported decision by Apple could impact how iPad and iPhone owners use popular e-reader apps allowing them to access e-books across multiple devices. The New York Times reports Apple rejected Sony's e-reader app for the iPhone offering access to content from Sony's Reader Store. The denial is reportedly part of a broader plan to prevent developers from not only selling e-books within apps or outside Apple's App Store, but deny access to purchases not made inside Apple's store. The head of Sony's digital reading division, Steve Haber, tells The Times all purchases within the Reader app would have to go through Apple. "We always wanted to bring the content to as many devices as possible, not one device to one store," Haber tells The Times. As the article points out, Apple's move could impact other e-reader apps offering similar features, such as apps for Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook. Apple also competes in the e-books market, with its own iBooks app for iPad and the iPhone and an iBookstore for digital purchases. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/02/report-apple-clamping-down-on-app-store/1

http://lifesimplifiedforyou.com/2011/02/20/say-cheese/ My favorite photos apps: A few weeks ago at Sundance Film Festival (#13 on my lifetime list) , I was shooting some photos through Hipstamatic and got this great shot of singer Janelle Monae at the bing bar. I was using the John S lens, Ina’s 1969 film with the flash off. $1.99 for standard equipment My friend Sarah Truckey turned me onto the Pocketbooth. Pocketbooth perfectly replicates the intimacy, spontaneity, and hilarity of a traditional photobooth and is only $0.99 for a limited time. The third and final is Instagram. It’s a FREE simple photo-taking and photo-sharing app that is filling Twitter with fun, cute photographs. New York Times Magazine contributing writer Clive Thompson explained how the photo sharing app Instagram had changed his life in this video and explains how it can help writers escape the tunnel vision of mobile devices and see the world around them in a more artistic way. Read the article in its' entirety (with more photos) at the Life Simplified link above.

LetterMpress: A Virtual Letterpress on Your iPad http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/821242145/lettermpress-a-virtual-letterpress-on-your-ipad This app looks awesome!

A true newbie here, are any Android apps anticipated? My smartphone is far smarter than I after 8 yr of college!

Angry Birds' Plan for World Domination AUSTIN (CNNMoney) -- With very little cash, the developers at Finland's Rovio Mobile created the wildly popular Angry Birds game. Now they have $42 million in venture capital to throw at expanding their "mean pigs, cranky birds" empire. "I think it's pretty clear that this is an unbelievable consumer phenomenon," says Richard Wong of Accel Partners, who led the firm's investment in Rovio. "We believe it can be an incredible consumer franchise beyond just being a mobile game." The funding, announced Thursday, is the first venture-capital money Rovio has taken. Founded in 2003 as a mobile game development studio, Rovio steadily built up a reputation as one of Europe's most innovative game shops. The company partnered with key global players like Electronic Arts (ERTS, Fortune 500), Nokia (NOK) and Vivendi, and developed a portfolio that includes dozens of mobile games, like "Need for Speed" and "War Diary Torpedo." Then came Angry Birds. Hatched in 2009, the game took flight last year, dominating Apple's list of top-selling paid iPhone apps. From there it sailed to other platforms like the iPad, Android, and almost every other smartphone out there. (A Windows Phone 7 version won't be available until later this year -- the subject of much moaning in Microsoft's ecosystem.) The birds' creators are ready to escape the digital realm. "We're going to expand the franchise in a lot if directions, so we're working on the movie side, broadcast, TV," Angry Birds developer Peter "Mighty Eagle" Vesterbacka told CNNMoney at the SXSW Interactive conference. Check out the rest of the article here: http://money.cnn.com/2011/03/13/technology/angry_birds_sxsw/index.htm?source=cnn_bin&hpt=Sbin

WHO: Cell phone use can increase possible cancer risk (CNN) -- Radiation from cell phones can possibly cause cancer, according to the World Health Organization. The agency now lists mobile phone use in the same "carcinogenic hazard" category as lead, engine exhaust and chloroform. Before its announcement Tuesday, WHO had assured consumers that no adverse health effects had been established. A team of 31 scientists from 14 countries, including the United States, made the decision after reviewing peer-reviewed studies on cell phone safety. The team found enough evidence to categorize personal exposure as "possibly carcinogenic to humans." What that means is that right now there haven't been enough long-term studies conducted to make a clear conclusion if radiation from cell phones are safe, but there is enough data showing a possible connection that consumers should be alerted. "The biggest problem we have is that we know most environmental factors take several decades of exposure before we really see the consequences," said Dr. Keith Black, chairman of neurology at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The type of radiation coming out of a cell phone is called non-ionizing. It is not like an X-ray, but more like a very low-powered microwave oven. "What microwave radiation does in most simplistic terms is similar to what happens to food in microwaves, essentially cooking the brain. So in addition to leading to a development of cancer and tumors, there could be a whole host of other effects like cognitive memory function, since the memory temporal lobes are where we hold our cell phones." The voices urging caution to consumers have gotten louder in recent years. More: http://www.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/05/31/who.cell.phones/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

Kick to Pick: The app that lets babies name themselves For parents torn between "Jaden" and "Caden," this iPhone app is a stress-reducing miracle. Others deride it as pathetic Parents unsure what to name their soon-to-be-born baby can now spare themselves the hand-wringing, and let the fetus decide itself. Developer Nathan Parks has created a 99-cent iPhone app called "Kick to Pick" that allows an expectant mom to place her iPhone (or iPod Touch or iPad) on her belly, and scroll through a list of possible names until the baby "picks" one by kicking. Although the app generates a random list of names, the parent can limit the options or customize the list. Is this a genius idea, or a cringeworthy cop-out? Read more: http://theweek.com/article/index/215858/kick-to-pick-the-app-that-lets-babies-name-themselves

Here's some music apps for the kids :) http://creativemamma.com/5-music-apps-for-kids/

App gives iPad users free navigation USAToday.com - If you subscribe to the old adage "You get what you pay for," you might just be surprised at what you'd find at the App Store. Updated last month, Navfree GPS Live USA is the first free professional GPS navigation software for iPad and iPhone. While not flawless, this free travel companion works very well. Much like a stand-alone GPS navigation unit that might set you back at least $150 or smartphone software that might run $50 to $60 from the likes of the TomTom app, Navfree GPS Live USA gives you 2-D and 3-D maps for the entire country. It includes voice-based turn-by-turn instructions, many points of interest — such as restaurants, hotels, gas stations and tourist sites — as well as live Google or Bing search to help find other nearby places. Navfree uses map data from OpenStreetMap.org — often referred to as the "Wikipedia of map software" — as more than a quarter-million people have contributed to it over the years. Therefore, there's no cost to use the product, and it's continuously updated as you, too, can add to the map or make corrections, right from within the app. The interface is quite clean, too. Simply type in the state, city, address and number, and within a couple of seconds it'll lock in your GPS location and begin to give you directions on how to get there. There are multiple languages to choose from — including English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Swedish — and a few with both male and female options. But the app doesn't say street names, which is something you'd find in most other GPS apps and stand-alone units. For example, instead of "Turn left in 200 feet on Mary Street," the voice will simply say, "Turn left in 200 feet." Keep reading: http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/06/ipad-itunes-navfree-gps/1

What's that tree? Try Smithsonian's new app to see! WASHINGTON — If you've ever wondered what type of tree was nearby but didn't have a guide book, a new smartphone app allows users with no formal training to satisfy their curiosity and contribute to science at the same time. Scientists have developed the first mobile app to identify plants by simply photographing a leaf. The free iPhone and iPad app, called Leafsnap, instantly searches a growing library of leaf images amassed by the Smithsonian Institution. In seconds, it returns a likely species name, high-resolution photographs and information on the tree's flowers, fruit, seeds and bark. Users make the final identification and share their findings with the app's growing database to help map the population of trees one mobile phone at a time. Leafsnap debuted in May, covering all the trees in New York's Central Park and Washington's Rock Creek Park. It has been downloaded more than 150,000 times in the first month, and its creators expect it to continue to grow as it expands to Android phones. By this summer, it will include all the trees of the Northeast and eventually will cover all the trees of North America. Smithsonian research botanist John Kress, who created the app with engineers from Columbia University and the University of Maryland, said it was originally conceived in 2003 as a high-tech aid for scientists to discover new species in unknown habitats. The project evolved, though, with the emergence of smartphones to become a new way for citizens to contribute to research. "This is going to be able to populate a database of every tree in the United States," Kress said. "I mean that's millions and millions and millions of trees, so that would be really neat." Keep reading: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/products/2011-06-10-smithsonian-tree-app_n.htm

I just saw a commercial with the creator of Foursquare yesterday. Crazy! Do you use this app? ____________________________________________________ Foursquare check-in service hits big but faces challenges NEW YORK — If you don't believe Dennis Crowley is tech's latest celebrity, you merely needed to soak in the red-carpet line at Gracie Mansion, the putative home of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, during an awards ceremony here this month. Minutes before Matt Damon took his turn in front of the paparazzi, the shaggy-haired Crowley and his Foursquare co-founder, Naveen Selvadurai, posed for the blinding cameras. They picked up a new-media award. "Just another event," the affable Crowley said, with an impish grin. Two years ago, he and Selvadurai founded the location-based service (LBS) that lets users win virtual badges and other rewards by checking in, via smartphone, to the places they visit. The more places visited, the higher the rank achieved on a league table of friends. Check in to one place often enough, and you become its "mayor." That might sound like the epitome of navel-gazing and borderline creepy to some, but young geeks are lapping it up. This week, the number of Foursquare users topped 10 million, up 100% from December. It handles about 3 million check-ins daily. And while it has yet to make a profit and is dogged by privacy concerns about tracking users' movements, privately held Foursquare has raised $20 million in funding, and at latest check was valued at more than $100 million by some analysts. With other social-media companies priming for IPOs, including Groupon and Facebook, location-based services are the "next frontier" for initial public stock offerings and merger activity, says Ray Wang, principal analyst and CEO at Constellation Research. Check-in use among U.S. residents tripled last year, according to market researcher SNL Kagan. Most users are young men, 44% of whom are 18 to 29 years old. Only 22% of users are female. Six in 10 Internet users were aware of check-in services, and more than half had used them, according to a Microsoft survey in December conducted by Cross-Tab Marketing Services in North America, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom. And Foursquare maintains an edge, despite the formidable presence of Facebook Places, because of its ease of use and pioneer status in the fledgling market, Wang says. (Facebook will not say how many of its nearly 700 million members use Facebook Places and declined to comment for this story.) Keep reading: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-06-21-foursquare-ipo-buzz_n.htm

Four addictive new iPad games USAToday.com - Everyone is looking for the next Angry Birds. Since the avian menaces invaded Apple's iPhone in December 2009, the game and its spinoffs have been downloaded more than 250 million times. Since the iPad debuted last April, Angry Birds HD has been at or near the top of its Top Paid Apps chart. The characters have moved on to T-shirts, plush toys and board games, and there's even been talk of a movie or TV show. There's no way to duplicate such success, although there are enough critter-flinging rip-offs in the App Store to populate a good-sized zoo. But if any company has a shot, it would be Chillingo, the U.K.-based publisher that picked up "Angry Birds" from Finnish developer Rovio Mobile. •Feed Me Oil ($1.99 for iPad, 99 cents for iPhone) is Chillingo's latest brain-bender. Like Angry Birds, it's a "physics puzzler" — to solve each level, you have to work around the somewhat unrealistic physics of the game's universe. In this case, you have a monster that is thirsty for the oil spewing from an inconveniently placed spout. You're given a limited assortment of simple tools, like rotating platforms, fans and magnets, to direct the oil flow into the monster's mouth. Your score depends on how many tools you have to use, and since there's never just one correct solution, you'll be tempted to retry levels to find more elegant solutions. Easy to grasp yet increasingly devious, Feed Me Oil is slick stuff. Three stars out of four. Find out the other three: http://www.usatoday.com/tech/gaming/2011-07-16-angry-birds-tiny-tower-feed-me-oil-ipad-game-reviews_n.htm

New wave of location-based apps mark a 'paradigm shift' (CNN) -- As location-based apps go, Foursquare or Gowalla will work just fine if you're looking for the spot where all your buddies are having a beer. But what if they discovered an awesome, out-of-the-way spot six months ago? Or, better yet, what if you didn't even know you were looking for a watering hole until your phone told you there's one around the corner you shouldn't miss? As the novelty of the simple check-in fades, and the abilities of GPS-based location technology expand, some new mobile apps -- call them "discovery apps" -- are looking to parlay mobile "noise" into useful, place-based tips. "It feels like the paradigm shift in the late '90s when Google came along," said Babak Pahlavan, CEO of Cleversense, which released the app Alfred this month. "There's an information overload -- to find something useful for you is a very daunting task. It's time for a new shift; it's time to make sense of it and make it useful for you." Alfred has been called "Pandora for the real world." Users feed it information about their favorite places (mainly restaurants, bars and coffee shops). Then, theoretically, Alfred -- a mustachioed robot butler -- can suggest similar spots that are nearby, no matter where you are. The free app, currently on Apple's iOS system, with Android and Windows Phone versions in the works, was rolled out this month and took top honors in the "Startup Idol" contest at the Fortune Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen, Colorado. The app, which was two years in the making, uses a Web-crawling algorithm to pull the information together and, according to Pahlavan, recognized the difference between positive and negative chatter about a place. Continue: http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/07/29/discovery.apps/index.html?hpt=hp_bn7