On Thursday several rumor sites posted an article about Plex, a Mac-based media center solution, with some hype about an update on September 1st.

Whether they knew it or not, they inadvertently built up some additional rumors about some kind of collaboration with Apple, since their big annual media event is also due September 1st.

Well, it turns out that isn’t the case – Apple didn’t buy Plex, Plex didn’t buy Apple and Apple TV isn’t becoming Plex TV.

It’s still exciting though – Plex Nine is the new version, rewritten for Mac and with a $4.99 version for iPhone and iPad.

Plex sums up the new version with the amusing infographic above.

As some will recall, Plex started life as an open source fork of the XBMC Media Center, although this latest incarnation is a complete rewrite.

For many users, the closed iTunes world is simply not good enough, and Plex just might be the must-have app for them.

Plex allows you to stream media from your Mac or iPad to your TV or other device, and with some tweaking even stream content over 3G.

Tags:Mac,iphone,ipad,plex,plex apps

In the last couple days I have tackled the subjects of the best free game apps for both iPad and Android. Now, for iPhone users, I want to reveal some of the best free game apps for iPhone!

There are many amazing games available for your iPhone, but which ones are the best?

Here are my top picks for the best free game apps for iPhone.

Words With Friends

This app is just like scrabble except you can play with your friends and (unlike the actual scrabble app) it is free!

Word Scramble

This is another fun word game you can play with your friends.  Connect the letters to make words and get points.

PegJump

Try to leave just one peg standing at the end of the game and you are the winner!

Hearts Free

Avoid the hearts and queen of spades at all costs; otherwise, you may get to 100 points first and lose!

Minesweeper Classic

Find all the mines in order to win!  But be careful because if you click on one, you lose!

Golf Putt Pro

If you are a golfer, you will love this app.  Get the ball in the hole in as few putts as possible!

Dots Free

Connect the dots to make boxes.  Win the game by making more boxes than your opponent!

Angry Birds Lite

Why this game is so fun is beyond me, but be careful, you may get addicted to it!

FarmVille by Zynga

FarmVille fans rejoice, you can now download an app onto your iPhone and play FarmVille any place, any time!  Your crops will never die again!

PapiJump

Try to get the bouncy ball as high as you can without letting it fall!  The higher you get, the more points you get!

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Drakfyre’s Software has released its new 720tube application for the iPhone 4. 720tube allows users to bypass Apple’s mobile YouTube upload resolution restrictions to allow for uploading of full 720p videos, including both standard recordings and those edited and exported to the Camera Roll using iMovie. Drakfyre’s Software’s 720tube app for the iPhone 4 is available now as a free download from the App Store.

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Web video database Clicker.com has launched its iOS app for the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. An iPad-specific version is also coming sometime soon.

The app allows users to search, watch and discuss 1,800 web shows (there are about 200,000 episodes in all), and download and watch 12,000 additional shows from iTunes (iTunes) — though you could obviously do that last part on your iPhone already.

Clicker (Clicker) also claims that it will soon support both Hulu Plus and Netflix on the iPhone, although you’ll need the Hulu Plus and Netflix apps to actually watch those videos, a Clicker rep told us. The Netflix app isn’t even available in the app store yet, but Clicker plans to add Hulu Plus to the iPhone-specific index “sometime later this quarter,” though that last bit depends on Hulu Plus graduating from its testing phase.

Clicker previously maintained a web-based list of videos formatted in HTML5 for the iPhone and iPad, but a native app should prove much easier to use.

It’s not just about browsing and watching the videos, either. The Clicker app allows you to check in to shows Philo or Foursquare (Foursquare)-style, see your friends’ activity in a news feed, check out what shows are trending, and see who (friends or others) is currently watching various shows.

A Clicker rep said that the “goal is to augment the Clicker.com experience,” so you can also browse content that’s not playable on your mobile device, as well as manage your Clicker playlist remotely. If a friend recommends a show but it’s not available on mobile, you can still make a note of it in the app and watch it when you get to a laptop or a desktop computer.

Screenshots

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The flood of endless iPhone to Verizon speculation has certainly been annoying for iPhone users irked with AT&T’s network, but the latest rumor that Verizon will launch a CDMA-based iPhone in January seem to actually be more substantive (which isn’t saying much). On the heels of rumors that Apple recently ordered a flood of CDMA chips from Qualcomm and Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg will give the CES keynote in January — the Boy Genius Report notes that there’s some hints in iOS 4 code that suggest either a CDMA iPhone and/or CDMA iPad are being currently tested.

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It took them a while, but the iPhone Dev-Team’s carrier unlock tool Ultrasn0w is here, and ready for downloading to jailbroken iPhone 4s. It goes without saying to proceed with caution.

via:Iphone4

WHILE iPhone fever hits Singapore on the July 30, there are still some alternatives available for those who don’t find the iPhone enticing.

The newest entrant into the mobile phone operating system market, Google’s Android recently passed the two year mark and is starting to pick up momentum in the lucrative mobile phone market…

Android phones are made by various manufacturers such as HTC, Sony Ericsson and Samsung. Some Android phones such as the Samsung Galaxy Beam also pack in unique features such as a built in projector.

Razor TV checks out the best Android handsets and see how they stack up against the iPhone4.

via:iphone

A group of iPhone apps that had received top rankings on the iTunes Store have disappeared from the top 50 book applications following complaints from developers. The developers said they noticed dozens of applications by the same author surge into the top rankings, although the applications frequently had few or no user reviews and appeared to be roughly coded.

The incident coincided with reports that iTunes Store users were charged for applications they say they did not purchase, suggesting that their accounts may have been compromised…..

Romanian developer Alexandru Brie wrote on his blog that his “Self Help Classics” application had been bumped from the top 50 paid book applications in the U.S. The application had been in the top 20 for the last 18 months, Brie wrote.

Of the top 50 book applications, about 41 were roughly coded applications that appeared to be Vietnamese but were not localized, Brie wrote. Many of the applications were similar and had no user reviews despite being listed as top paid ones, he said.

Brie’s application sold at a slower pace as a result of being pushed out of the top 50, he said.

“I had hoped things would get back to normal thinking that, eventually, these weird apps would just go out of fashion,” Brie said in an interview. “There was a drop in sales, not only for me but for all the developers whose apps had been shifted by the 41 apps in question.”

Brie wrote that he was contacted by another iPhone app creator who had noticed the apparent anomaly, QuickReader developer Patrick Thomson.

“It looks like the Books category has been hijacked by an app publisher named mycompany/Thuat Nguyen,” Thomson wrote in an e-mail to Brie. “His apps now occupy 40 of the top 50 ranks in the Books category on the app store. These are apps that typically wouldn’t rank in the Books category and most of them don’t have any ratings or reviews.”

The issue may have been a problem for Apple for more than two weeks. As far back as June 14, several applications from mycompany were listed as top-grossing ones in the U.S. at App Annie, a company that tracks iPhone applications.

At least one of the 40 or so similar applications had comments from reviewers saying their account had been hacked and used to purchase the application, Thomson wrote.

“It would appear that this publisher is hacking accounts and buying his own apps in order to drive up his rankings in the Books category,” Thomson wrote. “This is having a negative impact on our apps, which are being pushed down in the rankings and losing visibility, plus it makes for a bad user experience.”

As of Monday, Brie said his application had returned to the top 10 paid ones for books in the U.S. The mystery applications — captured in a screen shot on Brie’s blog — also have been removed.

Brie said in an interview, however, that there are a couple of other similar-looking suspicious applications in the top 200. “I noticed these ones haven’t been removed as of yet,” Brie said. “Perhaps Apple is investigating them in more detail, as they are not as obvious as the first ones.

Well as much as the iPhone faithful would like it, the roll out of Apple’s new iPhone operating system, iOS 4 didn’t go as smoothly as expected with many receiving error messages  when they tired to download from iTunes.

According to an article over on the Boy Genius Report, by Michael Bettiol, they have been seeing several bug complaints to do with iOS 4 come in varying from trivial to quite serious.

They say quite a few of the iOS 4 bugs problems have been remedied however there are still some that apparently have no workaround and have listed the most “pervasive complaints” as…

MMS fails to work, Push notifications fail as well, the update deletes all contacts and backups don’t restore them, Photos synced with iPhoto extremely blurry, Gmail ActiveSync fails, Auto-lock is set to 1 minute while option to change is greyed out, and last but not least the update fails and the device endlessly reboots.

So how did iOS 4 update go for our readers? Did it go fine or have you also experienced these issues or perhaps a different issue, feel free to voice your opinion in our comments area below.

Apple kicked off an action-packed week today with the full release of iOS 4, its newest operating system for iPhone and iPod Touch devices. Though we’ve been playing with the developer’s version on an iPhone 3GS since April, we wanted to wait for the real deal before offering our official take. And from what we can tell so far, our original positive impressions hold true. That’s not say that everything is perfect, but iOS marks a significant and welcome jump in the iPhone’s evolution.

In fact, we’ll go so far as to say that iOS 4 is just as significant a development as Thursday’s release of the iPhone 4. Naturally, new hardware tends to get the biggest spotlight, but iOS 4 brings a handful of crucial features, like multitasking and a unified e-mail in-box, that Apple’s products have lacked for far too long. Indeed, it’s always nice when we can check off a box on our “iPhone wish list,” particularly when those additions are commonplace on competing smartphones. We also welcome the smaller changes–iOS 4 is set to offer up to 100 new features–even if they’re not particularly glamorous. We’ll continue to root around for those tiny things in the coming days and will list additional revisions here as we find them.

Multitasking
Though you’ve always been able to multitask with native iPhone features like the music player, the option is now available for third-party apps. Your primary access point is a multitasking menu that’s accessible by double tapping the Home button. Once there, you’ll see a list of currently running applications along the bottom of the display that you can scroll through using a sideways finger swipe. The pop-up menu shows only four apps at a time, and we’re still investigating whether you’re limited as to how many apps you can open at once.

Managing the multitasking menu couldn’t be easier. To open a running app, scroll though the menu and tap its icon once. When you’re ready to end an app, first use a long press on the related icon and then click the tiny delete icon in the top left corner. Switching among apps is a simple process as well: as you move back and forth, you’ll return to the exact point you left.

But is it real multitasking?
As you’d expect, Apple’s multitasking works a little differently than on other smartphones. Instead of having all device resources available to every running app, iOS 4 lets only seven app services run in the background. These include audio (you’ll be able to play Pandora radio, for example), VoIP services like Skype, GPS/location for apps like TomTom, push notifications, local notifications (those that don’t to have to go through a server), task completion (users get an alert when a process is finished), and fast app switching (apps essentially hibernate not to use the CPU). According to Apple, this arrangement will have less of a drain on resources like battery life and memory than if it gave developers free reign. Also, pausing most background apps will free the system from having to juggle resources and kill stalled applications.

Though some have complained that the built-in limitations mean that iOS 4 doesn’t have “real” multitasking, we think “incomplete” is a better description. Granted, you can’t run everything in the background, but iOS 4 does allow you to run certain features from multiple apps simultaneously. If that isn’t multitasking, then we don’t know what is. What’s more, it wouldn’t be the first time Apple limited features or took longer with development in order to produce a desired customer experience. You may not agree with such a philosophy, but Apple has always been honest about pursuing it. Like with so many other things in technology, it comes down to what works best for you.

Nice, but not miles ahead
On the whole, we were quite pleased with the multitasking experience. As it has a talent for doing, Apple has presented the feature in a slick, easy-to-use manner. It performed beautifully without ever crashing or freezing the phone; it didn’t appear to negatively affect our iPhone 3G’s battery (we’ll follow up with more-thorough testing in that regard once we get an iPhone 4); and it accomplishes what it sets out do. But even with strong points, we wouldn’t agree that it’s the “the best” way to multitask (a common Apple claim). It may save you a few clicks, but other approaches–such as the “deck of cards” interface on WebOS–continue to impress. Similarly, though limited multitasking may result in more-efficient power management, we’ll have to run comparison testing with other smartphones before we can agree.

We also don’t share CEO Steve Jobs’ view that Apple’s solution isn’t a task manager. When he unveiled iOS 4 in April, Jobs took a dig at Android and other operating systems that require you to close background applications that might be slowing down the phone. “In multitasking, if you see a task manager…they blew it,” he said. “Users shouldn’t ever have to think about it.” Fair enough, but we think it’s a matter of semantics. As with most task managers, the iOS 4 multitasking menu allows you to scan through running applications and close any that you’re no longer using. Granted, you may not have to kill frozen applications as often as you would on, say, a Windows Mobile phone, but you still have that option. We also found usability quirks that are common with task manager apps. Pressing the Home button once, for example, simply sends an app to the background; it does not end it completely. To do so, you’ll need to open the multitasking menu, find the related icon, and end it there.

Home screen folders
Though we love apps as much as the next person, we’ve become tired of scrolling through several pages of iPhone home screens. Thankfully, that has changed with the addition of home screen folders. This is another common feature that competing devices have long offered, so it’s nice to see Apple stepping up.

To get started, use a long press on the home screen so the icons “jiggle.” When your icons are dancing (they’ll also have a tiny delete icon in the corner) you can take an app and drop it on top of another to create a folder. The folder will then appear as a square with tiny icons of the included app inside. Tap the folder to access the included apps and get an expanded view of the folder’s contents.

Thankfully, you’re awarded a lot of flexibility for folder organization. You can add as many folders as you like, change the default folder name, and add both related and unrelated apps. And if you want to remove an app, just drag it back to the home screen. The process is easy, though we wouldn’t say it offers a huge change from the equivalent experience on Android. But, hey, after waiting three years we’re not going to complain.

E-mail changes
Though the iPhone always has been a functional e-mail machine, we never enjoyed switching back and forth among multiple accounts to read new messages. Fortunately, iOS 4 has a new unified in-box that is accessible under the “Mail” option on your home screen. Listed above your individual in-boxes is a new option for “All inboxes,” which contains messages from multiple accounts. You can’t access individual folders from the universal in-box, but you can delete and move messages. Here again, it works well, but it’s not vastly superior to how competing OSes handle the same process.

Other e-mail changes include the capability to add multiple Exchange accounts, organize e-mails by thread, jump directly to individual in-boxes, and open attachments with a preferred app. All are nice, but we’ll delve into a couple of our favorites for more detail. E-mails in a thread will now be designated by a small number on the left side of the message header. Clicking the number will take you to a separate screen that lists all relevant messages. It’s a nice touch, and we like that you can move or delete messages in the thread. We also like the new option to delete e-mails directly from search results.

Home screen customization
Unlike the previous three features, this change was low on our wish list, but Apple’s done a decent job rolling it out. Sure, you always could change the standard black background using a third-party app, but iOS 4 adds the native capability to the iPhone and iPod Touch. First, find the “wallpaper” option in the Settings menu and choose either a provided wallpaper or a photo in your camera roll. After making your selection, you’ll have the option to set it as the wallpaper for your home screen, the lock screen, or both.

It’s all straightforward, but there are a few troublesome trade-offs. First off, we can’t fathom why the iPhone 3G didn’t get this option. Also, keep in mind that once you ditch the standard black background, there’s no way to get it back. You can take a photo of a black wall, the night sky, or a dark room, but that’s hardly the same thing. And don’t be surprised to find that some of your native wallpapers have been replaced by new options. Apple giveth, and Apple hath taken away.

Camera zoom
You’ll have to wait for the iPhone 4 to get a 5-megapixel shooter, but iOS 4 adds a 5x zoom for the still camera. When taking a photo, just tap the screen to see the zoom bar. Use your finger to pan in and out, but remember that since this is digital zoom, picture quality will degrade as you zoom in.

Spell check
The iPhone has long had an autocorrect feature that changes words as you type, but we’ve never considered it to be completely useful. That’s why we’re already big fans of the new spell check feature that notifies you of unrecognized or misspelled words with a red underline. It works when you’re composing both e-mails and text messages, and you get a short list of suggested corrections. We’d like more suggestions, but that’s a small point.

Tap-to-focus video
On the iPhone 3GS you can use the tap-to-focus feature in the still and video cameras. We’ve never found that this feature makes that much of a difference, but it certainly doesn’t hurt to have it.

Search text messages
You’ll now find a search bar for your text messages. It works just like the search option for e-mails.

Photo gallery
You can organize all images from an event or those that feature a specific friend. For both, however, you’ll need to have already used the face recognition options in iPhoto or Aperture and sync with iTunes. One expected change appears to have vanished, however: when we played with the initial beta version of iOS 4 we saw an option in the gallery for rotating photos, but we can’t find it again in the final version.

Geolocation
The addition of Geolocations lets you view where you took your latest shots on a map and sort your images by location. This is quite a cool feature, particularly for frequent travelers who like to mark their journeys around the world. But if this isn’t your thing, you can turn off location services in the Settings menu.

Safari search
When typing a URL in the Safari browser, you’ll see not only the URL title of sites you’ve visited recently, but also the full Web address. That’s a nice touch.

Universal search Web and Wikipedia results will now show up in the Universal Search. It takes a couple of clicks to get them going, but it’s convenient.

Playlist
In the iPod player, Apple added an option for creating playlists on the go. We created one in a few steps and added a selection of tunes. What’s more, we’re always happy when we can do something without going through iTunes.

Bluetooth keyboards
We haven’t tested this option yet, but it should be useful for messaging addicts or aspiring novelists.

Birthday calendar
You can keep track of upcoming birthdays with a designated calendar. It’s accessible directly from the main calendar option.

Other minor changes
You’ll also see a host of other usability and interface tweaks. We haven’t located them all yet, but here’s what we’ve found so far.

• Now that a double tap of the Home button opens the multitasking menu, you can no longer use the control as a shortcut for a designated feature. As such, the option is gone from the Setting menu. A small price to pay for a new feature, we suppose.
• The calculator icon has been resigned. The feature is the same, however.
• You can send apps as gifts.
• Swiping to the far left of the multitasking menu will reveal music player controls and a shortcut for locking the display rotation.
• The location icon in the Google Maps application has changed from a bull’s eye to an arrow.

What remains
We have not tested the remaining major iOS 4 features. Once we get an iPhone 4 later in the week, we will use the new applications and expand this section.

Enterprise
Worker bees will get options like enhanced data protection, mobile device management, wireless app distribution, support for Exchange 2010, and SSL VPN from Juniper and Cisco.

iBooks Apple’s e-book reader joins Amazon’s Kindle app as an option for bookworms. You will be able to access Apple’s iBookstore to purchase new content, and if you have an iPhone and an iPad, you can read your book on both devices (with just one purchase) and sync your current page. It looked nifty when Jobs offered a demo of iBooks during his WWDC keynote, but we’ll be sure to test it ourselves.

Game Center Coming “later this year,” Game Center will include features like a social gaming network, the ability to invite friends to games, leaderboards and achievements, and the opportunity for “matchmaking” (setting up two people to play).