February 24th, 2010 by admin

What - we wondered - are the most expensive iPhone Apps?

We spend our time finding great free iPhone Downloads for our readers. But we wondered just what we  can get for big bucks on the iTunes store? Here is a quick run  down on what we found:

Business and Health were the biggest provider of expensive apps Lextech Labs, for example provide the most expensive business apps - the iRa Pro for  $899.99 and iRa Direct for $499.99 (no prizes for guessing what these apps do!);

Next most expensive apps are listed under the Finance category (but still “business” for us lesser mortals) The most expensive apps in this group MATG - SAP BusinessOne and, MATG - Dynamics GP  - are by MyAccountsToGo and cost $499.99.

The next big price ticket apps are in Health and Fitness - Lexi-Comp Medical have released numerous apps for both health professionals and individuals priced from $75.00 to $299.99. There are other apps, of course but the Lexi apps had the biggest price tags.

Now there are some other big ticket items in the app store - for example, the most expensive education app is Proloquo2Go at $189.99, a  high tech app for people who have difficulty speaking. And the most expensive Music app is TuneLab - a piano tuning app that costs $299.99.

Well, you get the message - there are some pretty high-end apps on offer. Very specialist, very handy. But would you ever be willing to pay that much for an app no matter what it does? Let us know in the comments section, below!

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February 16th, 2010 by admin

The iPhonegizmo team have been great fans of the “win a free iPad/iPhone” contests and have done several posts directing you to some pretty fun contests.

Now, of course, the time is ripe for a “win an iPad contest” and with the Twittershere proving to be such a popular medium for running contests its now often a simple matter of “follow and twit” to get a chance to win something. So we went looking and found - yep, there are several “follow and tweet” contests already up and running, with an iPad as the prize. Here is five to get you all started:

1) Follow Geeksugar on Twitter

Then tweet at geeksugar with the message: “To win an iPad, I’d _________. RT @geeksugar http://ow.ly/13czw #geekipad”. Tell them what you are willing to do to get an iPad (they are looking for funny/entertaining)

But hurry as this one ends today!

2) Follow @Shutterstock on Twitter and send out send out their required tweet:

“Congratulations @Shutterstock on your 10,000,000th image! Pick me for the iPad giveaway! http://bit.ly/ssipad”

3) This one requires a bit more input - but is more fun. To help get the news out about their new Groundhog Day video (view below) mail2web.com is running an online contest with an iPad as the major prize.

This is a trivia game run through Twitter - so have fun and good luck!

4) Mediarecruiter have an iPad up for grabs - to win you just have to be a friend or follower on facebook or twitter.

5) Logos Bible software also have an iPad up for grabs. To enter for a chance to win, simply follow Logos on Twitter and Tweet this:

(Remember to read contest rules before you do anything else).

Haven’t yet got yourself set up with a great Twitter app? Check out the iPhonegizmo recommended Twitter apps.

And, just for fun, you can also check out who’s Tweeting near you using Twitter maps by Bing. In fact, we can eaves drop on the chatter in any city we want. Checking out the Olympics chatter at Vancouver, for example, has been quite entertaining!

NB: Unfortunately, Twitter Maps is not available as an app for iPhones and uses flash - so you will have to use your computer to play with this app.

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February 9th, 2010 by admin

We focus all our attention on finding great free iPhone downloads for our readers. But this post is about how we can use our iPhones to send free donations to our favorite causes. And it also does not cost us a cent!!

Social Media has made it so much easier to raise funds quickly in times of sudden disasters. It has allowed money to flow quickly from the masses to organizations - like the Red Cross - that are geared to react to emergencies and to help people to recover. The Haiti disaster is the most recent example and we wrote about that a while back.

So the iPhonegizmo team decided to take a look at the 140,000 Apps that Apple boasted about at their recent iPad Event and see just what is on offer there to help us make donations. And much to our surprise we found the cupboard was almost bare!

There are a few (very few) apps for donations or volunteer work, but they have been largely ignored by the iPhone world with mostly fewer than a half dozen people rating the apps - and with most indicating they are not at all happy with any of these type of apps.

Well, there was a donation App launched just three days ago. But, although it has been developed by a fairly well known company, they do not bother to mention the App on their site (even though this is the site they record on iTunes for the app) and the support site is also the home site for the company and so also does not mention the app?!!

Nor will we! We have written to ask them to let us know if they think the app is worth promoting on their own site and to let us know if they intend to do so. It could be a good app. It sounds good. We just maintain (and we have said this before) if a company is not prepared to promote its own app on its own site - that says”don’t trust it” louder than anything else we can think of!

So - that leaves us with just one app we can tell you about. ONE app - out of 140K apps!

And its a strange one - though popular - and has received a 3.5 star rating from over 6,000 users.

The way it works is this - if you are happy to report your shopping patterns to CauseWorld, then they will reward you with “karmas”, each time you walk into a store. The karmas will be turned into donation $$ by sponsors such as Kraft and Citi, that go the the charity of your choice.

Or, to be a bit more detailed, CauseWorld have:

lined up some great sponsors that have pledged to back each karma a user earns in the application. You earn karmas by walking into a store or restaurant and checking in. No purchase is required to earn karmas. When you earn enough points you can donate them for charitable actions, from planting a tree to caring for an injured animal. Donations are carried out by our partner charities.

If this sounds like something you are happy to do - after all there is little effort, no cost and hey presto, help flows out from your iPhone…then give the CauseWorld app a go.

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February 4th, 2010 by admin

OK - many may wonder what the heck an iPhone could offer a baby? But it is truly amazing to see the Apps that have been developed for those too young to actually own an iPhone. While we were researching for two recent posts on apps for kids (free iPhone children’s stories and more free iPhone kids stories, we took a look at the App store.

We found a fantastic selection of top rated free Apps for parents with little ones up to pre-school age. We also found a LOT of very low rated apps! In fact it is clear that parents are quite selective about the quality of kiddie Apps they are prepared to let their little ones play with.

But first up, there were six great free pre-school apps, most with 3.5 star ratings or better (there were a lot more apps for babies and pre-schoolers but they were just canned by raters - often scoring 2 stars or less:

We just have to put the Peekaboo Barn Lite up first because it has been downloaded by over 8000 people and still has a 3.5 star rating!But wait - there’s more … great baby apps with this high rating. Baby Animals Lite provides facts about 90 baby animals using over 400 high quality photos for name and photo quizzes for toddlers. Look Baby! provides a stack of delightful images to calm babies and distract babies - and judging by its high ratings - it works! The last one of the freebies with a 3.5 star rating is the creative Baby Piano Lite:

The Piano app gets some pretty good comments as well:

 My baby loves it!! 

and

  I have toddlers, a three year old and a set of twins. My kids love this application.

 Just the graphics for these kiddie apps are impressive.

Two other apps we though worth a mention - as they are free and still get a 3-star rating: baby rattle bab bab lite and Baby Flash Cards.

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December 8th, 2009 by admin

We found out while researching a previous post that iPhone App theft has become so prevalent that significant % of iPhone Apps are lost through theft. This is what Pinch Media have found in their research:

Just over 60% of paid apps using Pinch have been pirated.  This estimate is also low, since application pirates occasionally disable our tracking.  When an application is pirated, an average of 34% of all installs are cracked — in other words, about half of legitimate paid downloads. 

This surprised us as most iPhone Apps are so cheap it does not seem worth the bother to steal them.  And, of course, an iPhone has to be unlocked or jailbroken for stolen iPhone Apps to be downloaded to them.

The team here at iPhonegizmo were curious to know what iPhone Apps were considered worth stealing, so we went on the hunt to find out! Here are our results:

1) Its not a case of which Apps - because pirates steal them in mass. So typically, a collection of Apps are offered in one download. For example, one iPhone download package is called “iPhoneteam megapack” and contains a whopping 967 stolen Apps!! The package contains a wide variety of Apps - probably most are not of any use to any one user, and they are not the current version on offer in iTunes.  They have a range of price at iTunes, but most are low. Selecting at random from the list, we found:

A Blackjack Card Counter (3.99), FIGHTER PILOT - Guns of War (3.99), 7 Chords ($1.99), Absolute Fitness (9.99)

2) The megapack was not the most popular download of stolen Apps. The Tom Tom Apps were! And this also surprised us, because these are big-price Apps. TomTom US & Canada, for example, sells for $99.99. The comment by one co-thief:

Thanks for saving me a hundred bucks!

The one consolation for the Tom Tom crowd might be the enthusiasm expressed by the people who steal the App - they say its great!

By far the best app out there!!! (nova71)

Awesome App !!!! ( pete0726)

Tom Tom Western Europe ($139.99) was a close second stolen iPhone App downloads. Navigon Europe ($94.99) was also a very popular App to steal, though the unhappy comments posted by downloaders for this App suggest that the stolen version does not work very well!

The message for Apple is very clear. A lot of people want a good navigation apps for their iPhones.

Our conclusion? - we think it would be a smart move for Apple to do a deal with TOM TOM and have a navigation App included as part of the standard package in any future versions of the iPhone.

(And BTW, we have not given links to any of the stolen Apps because we do not want to encourage anyone to jailbreak their iPhone. Also, we know that most developers struggle to just break even on the Apps they develop and we also reckon that anyone who can affords an iPhone can shell out the measly few $$ that most Apps cost!)

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November 30th, 2009 by admin

I have just bought my lucky brother the latest 32GB iPod Touch for Christmas. He is about to go to Moscow, Fribourg in Switzerland and Chamonix in France and then, after spending the winter season there is on to Australia after that. So an iPhone is a bit moot at this point.

I was going to get him a GPS locator - but when the needed Russian, Swiss, French and Aussie map DVD’s are added in, it becomes cost prohibitive.

Now, unfortunately, even the latest iPod Touch that I have bought does not have a GPS. And whilst there have been several “work arounds” put on the market in the last few weeks ( the Tom Tom and the Magellan, for example) these have the disadvantage of requiring hardware to attach to the iPod - plus also push the price out of my budget.

Apple does promote the “find yourself” feature of the iPod”

iPod touch finds your location using known Wi-Fi hotspots. It also finds points of interest by keyword: Search for “coffee” and iPod touch shows you cafes nearby.

All well and good. But this feature does have mixed reception from users as it does rely on available WiFi hotspots. And I wonder: “what are WiFi hotspots like in Moscow, Fribourgh and Chaminex??

OK readers - your chance to have a say. If you live in any of these places, or have recently visited there - please share! Let us all know - what are the free WiFi hotspots like there?

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November 25th, 2009 by admin

Unwittingly, the young geek that developed a bug that targets unlocked iPhones, may have just been doing Apple a big favor! After all, Apple have been trying everything in their considerable arsenal to stop people from jailbreaking their iPhones - including trying to make it illegal to jailbreak an iPhone.

Unfortunately for iPhone owners that have unlocked their iPhones,  the computer geek from Down Under released the code for his bug into cyber space. And now - mere weeks later -  another virus  has been developed, also attacking  iPhones that have been jailbroken.

The virus was identified by software security firm Sophos, which has named it “Duh” after a title identified in the software’s own source code. The company has warned jailbroken iPhone users to secure their devices. While the virus has apparently not yet been activated, infected phones are at risk of being used by hackers in order to gain private information, such as bank details, and use the phone’s broadband - possibly sending some user’s charges sky high.

It is not entirely clear how many  iPhones have been jailbroken.   Pinch Media stats (see below) suggest somewhere between 15 and 22% of iPhones have been jailbroken.

Now Pinch Media provide a lot of statistics for App developers - so that they (the developers) can keep tabs on downloads of their Apps from iTunes.  As a result, they  have been able to show that many Apps are being pirated (see our next post for more on this). But they are also able to show how many iPhones that are downloading Apps, have been unlocked.

Clearly, the number of iPhones that have been jailbroken are a significant thorn is the side of Apple - as they represent potentially lost customers from their iTunes store.

So, as we said at the start, these new bugs may be a problem for people with jailbroken iphones, but they may well be throwing parties over at Apple!

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