Just ran across a good AppStore blog at Quimondo

Eddit iPhone UI Icon Set: a nice for-pay complement to the free Glyphish iPhone icons

Interesting read on iPhone application icon design at pixelresort.com

SoundCurtain: It’s like living full-time in Blade Runner

Remember the rain scenes in Blade Runner, where there was this constant flow of rain but always a sense of something going on in the background as well - someone talking or music playing or something going on, with a certain touch of melancholy?

I’ve mentioned SoundCurtain for the iPhone previously, but just recently have been using it a lot more in order to mask sounds while working in the open space office.  It’s amazingly effective at creating an isolation bubble while working.

Lately I’ve settled into using the “Rain Masker” mode for extended periods of time: it provides a baseline of rain sounds, as well as periodic thunderclaps, but the most intriguing part is the low background harmonics.  It sounds as if you’re walking down the street and a couple of blocks over there’s someone playing a trippy keyboard synthesizer in a lazy eight harmonic tune.  It’s like living in Blade Runner, but with a MacBook Pro in front of me instead of a pile of replicants.

Simply an amazing background for trying to get some serious work done.  I’ve mentioned SoundCurtain before, and have to give them kudos again.

iPhone Sudoku Grab: How does it all work? … I’ve always wanted a quick, breezy read on how this type of thing works

A great little iPhone flashlight - but let me explain

Most nights the rest of the family makes it into bed long before I do. When I finally do unglue myself from the laptop and wander up to bed, I don’t want to turn on all the lights along the way, so I use my iPhone to light up the path.

I don’t need much light - just enough to keep from walking into dog toys and the odd half-closed door. I could download one of the thousands of iPhone flashlights, but I’d feel like a complete idiot searching for an app when it’s 1:17 am and I could just figure out how to walk around my own damn house without needing a technological crutch.

So instead, I end up just hitting the power button and using the lock screen to light up my way. Sure, it’s about as bright as a 1-Watt lightbulb, but it works as long as the lock screen isn’t a picture of a darkened room or something. And then it hit me: make the lock screen as bright as possible, without having to slide-to-unlock the iPhone, and without having to write some Jailbreak app that hacks the brightness.

So here it is: the world’s simplest, and most useful, lock screen. Right-click on it, save it to your iPhone, and use it as your lock screen. And avoid those midnight stepping-on-Lego-with-bare-feet incidents that usually end up with loud swearing and awakening the children.

What’s the iPhone’s ticket to success? 320x480

Despite recent events highlighting that much of the iPhone App Store is indeed just so much spam, there is still a massive, massive influx of apps written for the platform. Why the disparity between the number of apps for the iPhone and, say, Windows Mobile?

Theory: It’s all about 320x480.

A lot of designers and engineers work best under a fixed set of constraints: give them a well-defined problem, and they’ll crank out a solution in no time.

It’s the same with mobile application development. Remember the Palm Pilot, with it’s 160x160 display and fixed button layout? Hoo, boy, they wrote 32,363 apps for that puppy. But then along came the Palm Zire with its wonky key layout, and the Sony Clié PEG-NX70V (PS: Dude, I had one of these!) with its 320x480 pixel display (yes, same as the iPhone, and eight years prior), and suddenly the platform was no longer neatly constrained. And that marked the beginning of the end.

This theory also explains what’s going on with Windows Mobile. You’ve got several dozen hardware and display form factors, some touchable and some not, and a handful of OS versions as well. Nice and neatly constrained platform? Nuh-uh.

But then along comes the iPhone, with several bazillion sold (less, of course, than the several gobzillion Blackberry phones), and an App Store full of really, really novel stuff (and a bunch of crap). What’s driving the interest among developers, especially the low-budget indies?

I’m voting for the constraints: 320x480.

Absolutely priceless Apple Claims New iPhone Only Visible To Most Loyal Of Customers | The Onion - America’s Finest News Source