In Soul the game starts with a beating heart on a black screen, with the title Soul etched faintly in glowing blue white. A beating heart in a black setting always conjures the most vivid of horror movies for me, so upon the sound of the flatline and the staticky emergence of the game, itself, I was gripped. The background story is vague, scant on those illustrious details inappropriate for most horror games, the only information given that you’re a dead man whose soul is on its path to heaven. It’s the mystery and unknown that keeps us wanting more, isn’t it?

Your dead character was, apparently, short on the good deeds in life because it seems his soul is stuck somewhere in limbo, stuck at the River Styx before the Elysian Fields, the blackness that pervades in between Heaven and Hell – the no man’s land, if you will. To find your way to Heaven, you must navigate the corridors of your once home, now dank and dark, twisted hellishly into some murky underworld rife with frightening monsters that gnash at you from within the darkness in the walls. It’s always the most unsuspecting moment when they strike, their blood red eyes focused intently on you, and deadly growls emitting from deep within their purple throats. Your soul, in the shape of a bright, white glowing orb, must carefully avoid these hellion creatures, and even the walls and floors. Souls are fragile things, shattered, apparently, by the most mundane of worldly objects.

The game maintains its creepy atmosphere with the usual tricks: flickering lights, dim corridors, the humming of elevators and washing machines from a decrepit building, the echoing of footsteps from an unknown source. What really ups the creep factor, though, are the excellent illustrations. Soul has all the grisly panache of a graphic novel, right down to the carefully sketched cracks in the plastered walls, exposing a section of layered brick beneath. The whole game has a sickly, gray pallor to it, tinged with green. The sound effects and the aesthetics, alone, make this game worth the great deal of frustration it is to actually play the game.

I played on Easy Mode (there is also Normal and Nightmare – I fret thinking about anything more difficult than Easy) and it was enough to make my palms sweat, not only in fear, but in rage. Your soul will shatter into a million splinters of light the moment you touch anything – anything at all. You can hold your finger on the screen to see the entire level, which really helps in figuring out the correct pathway -  choose the wrong way, and you’ll most likely run into a dead end, usually with some horrific beast ready to chomp you to bits. Navigating is just a matter of tilting your iPhone this way and that, but the dim lighting sometimes makes it difficult to play this game during broad daylight. I suppose it’s the developer’s secret desire to make this game easier to play at night; too bad half of my brain is screaming FU** THAT. Every now and then your soul runs through ghouls that bear a very similar appearance to Samara from The Ring, which is probably one of the scariest creature/ghouls/peoples to ever have struck horror on the big screen. In a flash of kitschy, gimmicky horror, the whole screen with flash to black with the briefest of subliminal images showing this black-haired, ghoul with gray pallor. Despite the thriller gimmick nature of it all, it works. I jump every time. The scream that accompanies the image helps. Or, is it just me screaming?

I’ve only made it through four levels, but despite my growing frustration, I want to see more of this game. Maybe I’m just drawn to anything dark and morbid, but there’s something a little fascinating about this game. It’s definitely difficult, and it’s definitely creepy, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe I’m a little stuck in limbo, myself.

Well, Moodagent by Syntonetic , for one, definitely warrants a second look. It’s actually a little unfair to compare it to Pandora because they do two completely different things, albeit in the same manner. Moodagent creates playlists from your stock set of music based on “moods,” defined as sensual, tender, joy, and aggressive, along with a tempo to your liking, to keep your music fresh and continually exciting. What’s particularly great about this is all the music you have on your computer is, obviously, music you love – none of us would keep music on our computers or iPhones that we didn’t at some point actively seek out and purchase. I like to use Pandora for seeking out music I wouldn’t otherwise buy, or to introduce me to new groups and sounds that I probably would never come across. But, it’s true, whenever there’s a song (say, Electric Feel by MGMT – yes, I am a girl) that I just cannot absolutely live without, then I most assuredly will buy it. After that, it pretty much boils down to listening to my own collection of songs, of which I have hundreds, and siphoning them in some interesting way so I won’t listen to a straight down, in-alphabetical order, arrangement of songs that eventually gets stale. I, personally, couldn’t live without the shuffle feature on all my Mac products, but every now and then I’ll even skip a song or two if I’m not in the mood for it. Please, no more Fiona Apple – I only listened to all her albums a dozen times over during my entire High School years, and please, if I want to go dance crazy, I doubt Ryan Adams is going to get me there.

Here is where Moodagent comes in. Whatever songs I place on my iPhone are synced to Moodagent once I open the app. The app has a slick feel to it, with five bars along the top in colors, from left to right, of red, orange, yellow, purple and gray, representing, in order, sensual, tender, joy, aggressive, tempo, each of which is able to be slid up and down to different degrees of preference for that specific category. The higher up I slide sensual, say, the more songs Moodagent deems “sensual” will be placed in my playlist. If you want, you can tinker around with different slider settings, with differ play lists popping up – it’s pretty cool, to say the least.

Let’s say I want a playlist with plenty of sensuality and aggressiveness, but with the lowest settings on the other three. The first song that Moodagent picks, “Heartbeats” by The Knife, couldn’t be a more perfect fit. The synthesized, pseudo glam-rock feel to Heartbeats, with its slowly undulating beat and the pouty voice of the female lead singer just oozes sex, mystery, drama, allure, and flushing skin, a quickening heartbeat. It’d be a more sensual song without the funky synthesize beats, but it’s the, I guess you could say “aggressive” quality of this sound that places it at the top of this custom playlist. The next song in the mix is also a perfect match, “Hotel” by Broken Social Scene, with a similar low, sexy hum to its digitized, hipster beats. But, straying from the more synth type music the fourth song Moodagent picked was Dangerous by Kardinall Offishal (featuring Akon), which is definitely a sensual song with a raw, aggressive quality to it. More surprisingly, this song actually has a more upbeat tempo to it, but it maintains a smooth and curvy enough quality to it that it’s not necessarily upbeat. Were I to dance to it (and I do), it would involve a slow, sensual saunter with rocking hips than it would that frenetic hand waving we all do in bars late at night. Or, well, at least I do that. Hah.

“All I Need” by Radiohead also fit perfectly within the aforementioned scheme – are we noticing a trend yet? Let’s switch up the sliders, shall we? Let’s raise the tender to as high as possible, with a mid tempo, and the lowest setting for the rest. I’m suddenly inundated with a list of very moody, haunting songs from the likes of Sigur Ros, Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (from the soundtrack of The Assassination of Jesse James), Sufjan Stevens, and Feist. Yep, that is definitely right on the mark. Let’s up the joy with mid-tenderness and mid-tempo. I now have a playlist of “Off Broadway” by Ryan Adams, “Impossible Germany” by Wilco, “Crazy on You” by Heart, “Alone in Kyoto” by Air, “Bad Dreams” by M. Ward, “Time of the Season” by The Zombies, and “Cross Road Blues” by Robert Johnson. Definitely an eclectic mix, but does it fit the ticket? I certainly wouldn’t consider the majority of these songs joyful, by any definition of the word, but the beats they exhibit, the musical sensation, without a doubt have a joyful, upbeat bent to them. What if I raise all the sliders to the top? Well, the results turn out to be just as impressive. The first song, “Jerusalem” by Mirah is all at once sensual, tender, joyful and aggressive, with a sprightly tempo. Moodagent does have a surefire skill, through its technology, of achieving sensational playlists.

So, what about this technology? Moodagent’s developers say it:

“combines digital signal processing, music science and artificial intelligence to focus on the way music is perceived emotionally… Moodagent can play any song, no matter how obscure, without language barriers. Moodagent technology creates a profile for every song it encounters and stores it in an Amazon EC2 cloud. To create a profile, the song’s digital signal is analyzed, a segment (or segments) of the song is then amplified and run through 34 artificial intelligence expert systems, which are constantly trained by musicologists. Moodagent is able to create a song profile that measures the degree of each of the song’s characteristics, including moods, genres, sub-genres, styles, tempo/beat, vocals, instrumentation and production features.”

Gosh, no wonder the results are so impressive. I’m curious what the “34 artificial intelligence expert systems” are – as of now, it just sounds like something out of a sci-fi paperback. In any case, Moodagent seems to have the proper backing to create custom playlists ; whether you agree with the mood definitions or not. You might argue there should be more variety in the sliders, but considering the vast range of human emotions and moods, it’s best to keep Moodagent’s range winnowed to a small degree that encompasses a fairly wide variety of songs. It’s already impressed me with its ability to interpret songs based on perceptions of emotion, and I’ve enjoyed the 25 song playlists. What’s also great about Moodagent is the music keeps playing if you exit the app, so in that sense, it works just like the iPod function.

Give Moodagent a go next time you want to try out a new playlist making app for your iPhone – you may just find you’re in the mood for something new.

The EFF, which has already sparred with Apple over it’s stance on “jailbreaking” iPhones, found a loophole through which it could legally obtain and publish the “iPhone Developer Program License Agreement” for the edification of the public. Electronic Frontier Foundation publishes iPhone developer licensing agreement

Everyone knows how popular games on the iPhone are but it’s not until you see stats like the one recently released from Lima Sky, makers of the popular game Doodle Jump, that you really get a full understanding of just what “popular” means. Doodle Jump jumps over 5 million times a day

9to5Mac’s editor and a Computerworld blogger Seth Weintraub reported Wednesday that the fourth beta of the iPhone 3.2 software development kit (SDK) could support a pair of brand new multitouch gestures that might be enabled on mobile devices powered by the next major release of the iPhone software. New gestures for 2010 iPhones: Triple tap and long press

Among 200 Stanford University students questioned about their iPhone habits, 75 percent said they fall asleep with their iPhones snuggled next to them. Stanford undergrads: iPhones are addictive

It’s not that Brizzly’s perfect, or that it does justice to its source material (the unassailably pretty, wonderfully lean Birdfeed) – it’s that it comes close enough, and it’s free. Brizzly: The iPhone’s New, Best, Free, Twitter App

Canpages, Canada’s fastest growing local search firm today announced the launch of its free augmented reality iPhone application for local search called the CanadaEye. Canpages Brings “Augmented Reality” Local Search to the iPhone 3GS

As of today, there are over 150,000 iPhone/iPod Touch applications in Apple’s App Store that will run on the iPad unmodified at launch date. Apple iPad: Open market for content rivals?

Let’s face it, you’re a hazard to yourself and other drivers if you choose to read directions off your phone as your blasting down the Mass Pike at 75 miles per hour. Beep! Put Down That IPhone!

With smartphone use up 18 percent over the previous quarter, topping 42 million users, Google’s Android mobile operating system stands out as the dominant winner for this quarter. Android Dominates, Windows Mobile Plummets, iPhone Stagnant

The suit, filed earlier this month in a U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas, is on behalf of a company called SmartPhone Technologies LLC, based in Frisco, Texas. Apple iPhone targeted in patent lawsuit over sync, Bluetooth

BAANZAAII!!!!

These crazy flies are the real killers of Kill the Fly. The Kamikaze fly is but one of the many winged pests you will encounter in this strangely addicting app by Playsteria, an appropriately titled company name, if I may say so myself. Kill the Fly will definitely drive you to hysteria, if in a playfully frenetic way, with its onslaught on flies, bees, and other winged catastrophes waiting to dive toward the pile of poo which you’ve weirdly been enlisted to defend. In FowlPlay we used poo as a weapon – in this game, it’s something to be protected. Hmm, I’m sensing another themed week! I’m sure my boss would love for me to pitch Poop Week on Appstruck.

Poop Week or no poop week, Kill the Fly means protecting a pile of it, and using your fingers to smash any attempts by the flies to dive toward it, in pleasurable insanity. The game begins oddly, with cheery music of the pop diva variety, one that would belong in a casino lounge alongside men in drag a la the Birdcage – or, just a terrible commercial talking about how such and such pharmaceutical can change your life. I always focus on the musical elements in games, because good music can give extra thrust to

Hordes, upon hordes of flies - oh, and a bumblebee

a game, make it more enjoyable. This music is just so far wayward from the premise of this game, that it actually works. It’s just as kooky as the kooky bug illustrations – which, I might add, resemble cutesy stickers I could buy from Japantown at Kinokinuya Bookstore – and just as kooky as the funny, very human-sounding buzzz and eeerroooo noises the bugs make. The whole look of the game is very cutesy and Asian in some of the motifs, and in some of the sayings by “wise master” Xou Han like, “Water has never been as good as ground to smash flies.” Yes, yes, this is very true, given ground is solid and hard and water is, well, water. Thank you, oh wise one.

Why is it that squishing bugs in games is so much more satisfying than in life? Well, for one, squishing real flies involves a slight shriek from most people, followed by a slow peeling back of the swatter, or, god forbid, your thumb, accompanied by a stretched out “eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwwwwww.” Besides, when swatting a fly in life there is no splat, no squish, no sound of any kind other than the moan that escapes your lips. In this game, the squash sounds slightly curdled, rippling with blood and entrails (though there are none, only a blood splatter), along with a low, barely detectable crunch to round out a proper effect. It’s all so squishy and awesome, darting your fingers across the screen, tapping and squishing to your heart’s content. The housefly is of no concern, really – they buzz around in weird configurations, like those gnats that forever remain on the square trail they zip over your chair, and they usually never head toward the poo. They just know it’s there, somewhere. Their real purpose is to distract you in hordes while other, more impetuous insects make their appearance. The Kamikaze fly and the Fast fly are the two you really have to watch out for. Both make a straight beeline to the poo, with no other objective than to land, eat, and take away points from you. The Kamikaze yells BANZAI! and explodes like a bomb when you squish him; that is, if you can squish him, he’s a fast bugger, that one. The Fast fly is notable for his blue color and his varying sounds of eeeerrooooo, thhpptpppttt, nnnneeeeeeeeeerrrrr, and so forth. It’s pretty amusing, and he’s pretty easy to squish if you’re paying attention. The other two insects you see are the big, cumbersome large fly and bumblebee. Both sort of saunter around, just getting in the way with their large, thwap thwap sounds, and taking four or more hits until they finally perish beneath your thumb. They’re mostly annoying, though kind of pretty, physically.

Oh Xou Han, you never fail to disappoint.

You start the game in Paolo’s garden, and make your way through four rounds of that before gaining access to other levels. In Save the Crap mode, you protect the poo in one of three difficulty settings – Easy, Normal, Nightmare – whereas in Massacre Mode you just try to kill as many bugs as possible, dragging them this way and that, making sure combos and blood are an everlasting staple of the playing field. I prefer Save the Crap Mode, because mindless killing, while fun, doesn’t quite hold a candle to the poop game. In the poop game, the farther along in levels you get, the more obstacles and saving graces appear to add dimension to the game. Cacti, broken nails and glass, for example, wreak havoc on your thumbs when squishing plants, leaving blood fingerprints with your every tap and negatively impacting your score. Other obstacles appear in the form of water, sewer holes, and other purported “soft surfaces” that prevent you from squishing a bug in that setting. Tools of the bug-killing trade take the form of a large fly swatter, bug spray and more whenever things get too fly-ridden. In Nightmare mode, you’ll be using these a lot, because the ever-present swarm on screen will be driving you to hysteria in no time.

In the end, there’s really only one sentence I can recommend in advice. As wise master Xou Han says, with the gravest of sageness, “KILL THEM ALL.”

It’s been a confusing few weeks for developers of software for Apple’siPhone. Apple continues App Store pruning as developer agreement emerges

200 students surveyed in a Stanford study were found to be “addicted” to their iPhones. PANIC! Study finds that students are addicted to their iPhones!!

WBGO Jazz 88.3FM has just launched aniPhone application that will allow jazz fans to enjoy WBGO’s classic jazz, blues and R&B 24-hours a day, where ever they may roam. WBGO Launches iPhone Application

The annual Game Developers Conference has its games fans, sure, but this is a closed-door affair meant for the people who design, distribute, and market video games. The game developers conference: Michael Jackson, free Droids, and iPhones in Ghana

When the iPhone was first released in China last year in partnership with China Unicom, it confusingly shipped with 3G but without WiFi. WiFi is finally coming to Chinese iPhones

At one point in the very near past, if you wanted to track your speed and distance over a bike ride or run, calculate your calories burned, listen to music, share exercise data with friends, and view your route afterward, you’d need a cyclometer, a calculator, an iPod, an e-mail program, and, of course, a map. Runmeter and Cyclemeter for iPhone

It has been 6 months and 19 days since Apple claimed it had not “rejected” Google Voice but was “studying” it. During the course of Apple’s “study” the company moved to purge all existing Google Voice apps from the App Store. Black Swan brings Google Voice back to the iPhone without the App Store

Case-Mate this week started shipping its Hug cordless charging solution for the iPhone 3G and 3GS. Case-Mate ships Hug cordless charging solution for iPhones.

CBS Sports Mobile, in partnership with CBSSports.com, is again providing a lifeline to March Madness fans and their iPhones with two apps: CBS Sports NCAA March Madness on Demand Lite or the paid CBS Sports NCAA March Madness on Demand. Basketball Fans, Get Ready for NCAA March Madness on Your iPhone and iPod Touch

Earlier today, Apple released another update to the iPhone SDK for the iPad, bringing the current version of that SDK to 3.2, beta 4. The update follows one released several weeks ago. Apple releases iPhone OS SDK 3.2 beta 4 for iPad

The opening page illustrations are at odds with the graphical aesthetics of the game, itself. The opening page has a bizarre anime sketch quality to it, or less praiseworthy, a tipped hat in ode to the illustrator of Ed, Edd, and Eddy. Regardless, the game is much nicer to look at: your pigeon is nicely designed against a 3-d playing field of grassy knolls, jutting trees, and the strange, block-headed citizens of this strange, green world, that seem to spend their entire day strolling about the golf course-like forest. The characters are of seemingly three kinds – one with red hair, one with short black hair, and one with long black hair, this last one boasting the largest cranium of the three – and each goes about his business, unaware of the peril that beckons above. Little do these funny, block-headed people know that a lone pigeon is flying overhead, with the precision of an eagle and the depraved eye of a vulture, scouring the landscape for victims in his next illegal tagging. Oh, that’s right, you know what I’m talking about. Poop.

So, not only is this foulplay conducted by fowl, the foulplay is just plain foul. Your mission as depraved, mischievous pigeon, is to poop on as many heads as possible – preferably in the inordinant spree of combos. Tilt your iPhone to each side to steer your pigeon toward the next, unsuspecting head, keeping in mind your pigeon’s shadow as an aiming marker, and then tap the screen, squirting out a nice dollop of white to land with a nice, spreading plop on your victim’s head. Like anyone hit with the forceful blow of poo, the people hit take a step back, their head taking a dramatic whiplash, their eyes squeezed shut in horror. I remember the one time I was the shocked and awed, the collateral damage of a seagull dumping spree, when I was 15 years old in High School. That blue sweater was never the same.

BOMBS AWAY!

As you go along in the game, a few bonus items turn up to assist you in your poo brigade. Glowing football helmets let you topple over trees rather than fly through them and damage yourself, to your eventual death (Death by Branches). Another item tinges your poo with fire, letting you send flaming missiles of turd – to add insult to injury, of course. Also, the farther along in the game you get, the faster your pigeon decides to fly. Pooing at one speed gets pretty dull for your pigeon, so he has to up the ante to make things exciting again. Seems this fowl is all about the adrenaline rush.

The one major beef I had about FowlPlay – other than the monotonous landscape, the monotony slew of those same, three characters – is that it’s fairly impossible to strike everyone. Okay, this is a given in any game, but the way the controls are set up, tilting left and right, at the speed your pigeon flies, if you choose to fly left toward one guy and not right toward another, there’s no turning back. You cannot poo on one and make it back to the other in time. I’ve wasted plenty of white dollops figuring out a strategy – not that there really is one. I also had a few thoughts about how the pigeon should have upgrades, maybe, like after a certain amount of levels you can swindle your vulture friend, your duck and goose friend, to come along and join the force. You could have a collective fowl, a murder of crows, a gaggle of geese, just the whole nine yards with birds. There’s no reason the developers should limit themselves to the pigeon – or to just flaming turds.

In the end, though, this game really just has one goal: to have fun. Honestly, did you expect anything else from a game about birdsh**?

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*When using the promotion code to download for free, it’s on a first-come, first-served basis. Out of courtesy, please leave a comment below mentioning you’ve used the promotion code.

Recently we saw the first iPad ad, but in it we didn’t see some of the default apps found on the iPhone. Why Isn’t The iPad Getting Some Of The iPhone’s Default Apps?

South Australian mobile tech company 2moro mobile has launched aniPhone app that lets WOMADelaide 2010 festival-goers find out who’s performing on stage by just pointing their iPhones. New mobile app designed for music festival hits iPhone store

Apple must have put some major pressure on AT&T when they launched the iPhone and were able to roll it out with no AT&T crapware installed or even anything related to AT&T appearing on the phone. AT&T looks to be detracting from the Android experience with the Backflip

A new Stanford University survey confirms what many iPhone users may have long suspected: Apple’s smartphone can be addicting. iPhone can be addicting, says new survey

In addition to “business card” applications that offer little or no functionality beyond a simple web page, there are lite editions, demo editions, full editions, and even in the case of Tweetie 2, completely new applications providing upgraded functionality. App Store clutter remains an ongoing issue.

The Daily Telegraph reports that a new Apple patent has surfaced which could potentially allow the iPhone, or another Apple portable, to act as a sort of electronic key. Apple patent: use your iPhone as an electronic “iKey”

On Friday, Silicon Alley Insider published the results of its two-year investigation into the controversial founding of Facebook. Starting Up While an Employee

More than a year after Appcelerator first released an open source platform for developing desktop and smartphone applications, the Mountain View, Calif. startup is finally unveiling Titanium 1.0, the first version that’s ready for general availability. Appcelerator revs up its Titanium platform for app development

Austin-based social networking developer Gowalla Inc. released today an Android-optimized version of its mobile site. Gowalla goes Android

CBS is launching a new March Madness iPhone app that will stream live college basketball games. March Madness for iPhone

The app store by Apple (AAPL) has been immensely successful since its launch on July 10, 2008 and has been the subject of countless media articles like this Dec 2009 New York Times article gushing about how it has helped certain developers become millionaires overnight. One billion apps were downloaded from the app store by April 23, 2009 and it was just 5 months later that Apple announced on September 28, 2009 that downloads had topped more than 2 billion. It took the app store just over 3 months to hit 3 billion downloads by January 5, 2010.

Everyone from mom and pop development shops to current SINLetter portfolio holding Activision Blizzard (ATVI) want in on this gold rush. Just like the California Gold Rush in the mid nineteenth century, it is often the people selling the tools that may end up becoming rich after the easy gold had been mined by early arrivals. This article is about those developers and companies that have tried to capture some of the app store magic only to find their apps disappear in a vast ocean of more than 160,000 apps.

One of the first iPhone games we reviewed on our sister site AppStruck shortly after its launch in May 2009 was a game with stunning graphics called Glyder published by a company called Glu Mobile (GLUU) that is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange. There are just a handful of public game companies and when I found Glu, I decided to kick its tires to see if it was an investment worth considering especially given its focus on building games for the iPhone and the iPod touch. But before we get into the specifics of Glu, I figured it might be a good idea to get a reading on the market size.

Size of the App Store Ecosystem:

One of the first things a venture capitalist wants to know when you enter a room with your business plan is the size of the market and what portion of that market you expect to capture. The perception of the sheer size of the App Store ecosystem is one of the reasons start-ups like ngmoco have managed to raise $40 million from venture capital funds over the last two years. In stark contrast, Glu, which targets the exact same market, has a market cap of just $25.7 million.

The size of the App Store ecosystem has been a subject of lot of discussion and probably even Apple does not have the answer to it because the ecosystem not only includes the sales of apps through the App Store but also in app purchases of virtual goods and advertising revenue. Mining through the database of apps we built on AppStruck, I found that over 24% of the nearly 160,000 apps in the app store were free and 42% of them were priced at $0.99. Given below is the price distribution for 95% of the apps in the app store.

While having lunch in San Francisco with Jeff Scott, the founder of the leading iPhone app review site 148Apps.com and the Best App Ever Awards, we started discussing the size of the app store and he told me that roughly 70% of the people who land on his website are looking for free apps. GIGaom pegs the number of free downloads to 75% of all downloads based on data obtained by mobile analytics firm Flurry. Using the more conservative 75% number and assuming that downloads for the year 2010 are likely to hit 6 billion, it means that 1.5 billion downloads are for paid apps.

Based on the price distribution from the AppStruck app database, the weighted average price works out to $2.41 per app. The number should probably be lower because more 99 cent apps are likely to be downloaded than apps priced at $99.99. Taking a conservative approach, I am going to put the average price at $2. This means that the Apple app store is likely to generate $3 billion in revenue in 2010 on the low end and $3.61 billion on the high end of the range. Since developers get paid 70% of revenue, we have a potential market size of $2.1 to $2.53 billion available for developers.

AdMob, a mobile advertising company acquired by Google last November for $750 million, was approaching $100 million in gross revenue from advertising. Once you add revenue generated from virtual goods and advertising, the app store ecosystem could begin to approach $3 billion.

Part 2  of this blog entry will cover some of the challenges and opportunities that Glu Mobile faces in this rapidly evolving app store ecosystem.

The burgeoning success of the Apple iPhone in Korea is contributing to a major change in the local mobile phone market. iPhone’s Success Prompts Rise of Smartphones in Korea

The latest iPhones offer up to 64 gigabytes of storage space, which is ample room for a large music collection and a healthy library of applications. Free up your iPhone memory and stream

Apple’s lawyers have been getting very hot under their (turtleneck?) collars of late and I put the reason down to one thing – Android. Apple’s court battle for the iPhone’s future

The editors of NeonPunch.com, a gadget site in Hong Kong, posed several questions for the editor of iPhonAsia (yours truly). iPhonAsia.com interview with Hong Kong’s NeonPunch.com

With Apple’s iPad slated for pre-orders next week and availability on April 3, we’re entering a new phase of iPad poker –are you in or are you folding? 3 Reasons Apple’s iPad Won’t See a Price Drop

Several weeks back, we noted that Google had acquired reMail, and had placed founder Gabor Cselle and others from the reMail team on other Google projects. reMail may be reIncarnated as it goes open source

Documents To Go ($10) lets you view, create and edit Word and Excel documents. The professional version ($15) adds PowerPoint support. Turn iPhone into mobile office center

Sources have told the Wall Street Journal that Sony is planning on making a challenger to Apple’s iPad that will have all the capabilities of a netbook, a Sony Reader and a PSP, the company’s handheld gaming device. Sony to Launch Challengers to iPad, iPhone

It just keeps getting better and better for mobile Office documents on the iPhone and as I have mentioned several times Quickoffice and DataViz keep going back and forth as my top iPhone Office application. DataViz adds Google Docs support for the iPhone, retakes Office app lead

To celebrate the launch of Citroen DS3 – one of the most customisable cars on the road today – Citroen has released an exciting new application for the iPhone® & iPod® Touch. The Citroen DS3 iPhone and iPod Touch Application

The app contains all the elements within the first game – alphabet flashcards with image and pronunciation tabs – but in addition, the developers tacked on two more game-oriented abilities that add a great deal more dimension that allows children to interact more. The See It, Say It section is a game where the user matches one of the three letters on top to the image pictured below. If a kite is shown, for example, and the letters K, J, Q, appear above, it’s up to the kid to figure out which letter works with the image, and then drag that letter onto the image. The letters are all drawn in a toy cube fashion, and

L for lion!

differentiate from each other with the use of different colors. The user may tap each block to hear the letter pronounced, and then tap the image to hear kite read aloud. The objective is for the user to logically reason which sounds mostly closely mirror each other, and therefore, which letter belongs to that word. Otherwise, if the user chooses incorrectly, the letter will simply disappear. Then it becomes a process of elimination – there are now only two letters left to choose, so obviously, it must be one of them, right? Eventually, your child will get the solution, right, and in the process, understand that J and Q have nothing to do with kite.When the correct letter is dragged onto the image, the image animates for a few seconds, as a reward for the user’s efforts.

The other new play option is Hear It, Hit It. In this section, an image appears below, as is customary, and three dots appear above, in the colors of blue, yellow and red. Each dot, when tapped, gives an audio clip of someone pronouncing a letter, such as “wuh” for W or “juh” for J. Once again, the user has to figure out which sound is appropriate for the image, and then drag that corresponding dot onto the image. If the selection is correct, the user is rewarded with a brief animation, sometimes children cheering and clapping. This section could definitely prove to be challenging for the young mind, and is definitely effective at encourage a memorization of sounds and their corresponding letters, and objects/animals that begin with that particular letter.

ABC Shakedown is what kids apps are meant to be – fun, interactive, and most of all, educational. For any child still learning his A,B,Cs and general language skills, this app is excellent for nurturing that beginning ability, and has a long shelf life due to the time it takes to acquire this ability. The animations could be livelier (how about a lion roaring instead of licking his lips?) to further engage the user, and some of the pronunciations are a little hard to interpret – the “f” sounds more like “shhh” and could just be a technical obstacles given microphones and recording equipment. Also, despite being very interactive, the app lacks any intuitiveness. You must read the directions to figure out how to use it – an older child or adult could obviously figure it out after some tinkering, but a young child definitely needs some direction. After initial instructions – a rubric how to use – it’s easy for a child to navigate. But, these are but a few flaws in an otherwise spectacular app.

fffff for fish!