Cody Fink

1547 posts on MacStories since January 2010

Former MacStories contributor.

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The First iPhone 4 Game?

The iPhone 4 has a retina display that’s perfect for showing off lots of gorgeous pixels. Low and behold, games are going to look gorgeous, and ngmoco’s Eliminate:GunRage for the iPhone 4 has you selecting a variety of weapons to blast those beautiful pixels into pieces. We didn’t figure the first game would be a gun game, but what the hell – bullet holes never looked so gorgeous on a mobile phone. Click past the break for juicy screens.

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Bing for iPhone Updated with Visual Search and Social Feed

Microsoft is putting out some decent iPhone applications lately, and now they’ve decided to revamp Bing for the iPhone. Bing was pretty great on its own as a Google competitor, but now it adds “Google Goggles” like features for visually search. Microsoft calls this Visual Scanning, which can check out CDs, books, and video games using your iPhone’s camera.

If you connect your Facebook and Twitter account to Microsoft’s Bing, you can also get a nifty list featuring status updates from your bestest friends and Twitter adversaries. It’s pretty slick, and you can download it here via iTunes.

[via TechCrunch]


Gourmet Magazine for iPad Gets it Right

Looking for the best magazine experience for the iPad? Sure we have flashy titles like Times and Wired, but Gourmet Live for the iPad helps you reveal your inner cook by providing users with an incredibly clean format.

When it came to Wired’s debut, one of the biggest complaints was about the column layout. Gourmet does away with such silly jitter and flashy animations. In fact, there’s nothing completely broken or confusing about Gourmet - it captures the essence of the iPad by being linear, simple, and elegant. I’m not a cook, nor am I interested in learning how to make a great Pumpkin Pie, but Gourmet Live may at least encourage me to try.

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Sonos iPad Controller Shows Remotes How it’s Done

While I wish Apple would update their Remote application for the iPad (Am I the only one that uses AirTunes?) – even though it would ruin their “remote” metaphor – Sonos is set to release an iPad native controller that’s incredibly well done. Though you’ll have to wait a bit before you can get your hands on it. All Engadget has obtained is a demo, and reportedly we won’t see this bad boy until August. But hey, that gives you some time to save up enough money so you can actually buy a Sonos wireless speaker system, right?

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VLC 1.1 Released, Still no Hardware Acceleration for Mac

VLC 1.1 is getting lots of love today as it rolls out on Windows, Mac, and Linux. But Mac users seem to be left behind, as Nvidia-based hardware acceleration only works on Windows and Linux systems. Though don’t let that stop you from from the open-source goodness, lots of additions and updates have been applied to the client that should improve playback and performance all around.

You know what to do - download VLC 1.1 here (direct download).

[VideoLAN via Lifehacker]


BarMax Profiting at $1000 an App

How do you sell a $1000 dollar application on the iTunes App Store? You sell it to law students of course.

Law students who are taking the bar exam in California can currently purchase BarMax CA from the iTunes app store for the measly price of $999.99. But this actually isn’t bad, considering the leading competitor BarBri charges up to $4000 for their study guides.

Earlier this year, TechCrunch made aware the purpose of such an application.

“So what do you get for your $1,000 BarMax CA app? A lot, actually. The app is over 1 gigabyte in size, which is the largest application I’ve ever seen. It includes thousands of pages of materials as well as hundreds of hours of audio lectures. It’s all the information you could ever want for the two-month course. And again, it can be done all on your iPhone.”

Now, they’re following up to see how well it’s done in the App Store. Spoiler: it’s a success.

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