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3 U.K. To Offer Unlimited Internet Access→

3 U.K. To Offer Unlimited Internet Access

The New York Times:

3 U.K., a unit of Hutchison Whampoa, based in Hong Kong, is the fourth-largest mobile operator in Britain and is known for offering the lowest-cost plans. The company’s unlimited data offer is limited to the British market, according to documents describing the new pricing plan obtained by the International Herald Tribune.

In Europe, 3 also has networks in Italy, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland and Austria.

Perhaps this new strategy won’t force the bigger European guys (Vodafone, Telecom, O2) to change their tiered plans. But think of this unlimited plan as a way to promote a certain smartphone from Apple coming out next year.

Update: Or, as Brad McCarty over at TNW puts it – “you can now walk into a 3 retailer, purchase an iPhone 4 at £69, then pay £35 per month for 2,000 minutes, 5,000 texts plus “all-you-can-eat” data. That’s compelling, no matter how you look at it.”

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First Infinity Blade Update To Drop Next Week→

First Infinity Blade Update To Drop Next Week

Work started on new content the day after the game’s five-month development ended, so Chair already has some goodies on deck. Next week’s addition, as well as another planned for January, will include more “booster packs,” as Mustard describes them – some additional content to keep things fresh and help entertain us sad sacks who’ve mastered all the gear.

Next week’s pack includes five new weapons, five new shields, five new helmets and a new armor set; enough equipment to increase the level cap to 45.

Also: new areas to explore (dungeons), more details about the God King, new enemies for experienced users. Multiplayer mode won’t be available in next week’s update, and the developers didn’t provide a release date. I think January would be perfect.

Don’t expect free-roaming to come anytime soon.

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Unreal Development Kit For iOS Coming This Week→

Unreal Development Kit For iOS Coming This Week

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the UDK for iOS will be released for free on Thursday:

Epic Games is planning to release an updated version of its game-development tools, known as the Unreal Development Kit, to the public Thursday. The kit, which is free to download, will include new tools to create high-quality graphics and animations on iOS, effectively simplifying and speeding up the development processes for games. Epic doesn’t charge license fees to tinker with the kit nor to make free games. But, if developers want to sell their apps, they have to pay a $99 licensing fee and 25% royalties after the first $5,000 in sales.

“Apple’s App Store is the most vibrant market for mobile gaming,” said Epic co-founder Mark Rein. “If you’re going to make a game for a mobile device, and you want to make the most money, you’re nuts not to make it for iOS.

Rein also expressed his concerns about the Android platform, which doesn’t allow for apps larger than 50MB to be sold in the Marketplace and it’s too “fragmented” for game developers.

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A Beautiful Instagram Facelift→

A Beautiful Instagram Facelift

Instagram is one of the hottest photo sharing apps on the App Store right now but there’s one problem: it doesn’t look that great. At Tapmates, we take pride in our icons and user interfaces, so we decided to mock-up what it would look like if we made it.

The mockup surely sports some pretty pixels. Still, it breaks many of Apple’s interface guidelines, such as the camera button in the tab bar. Looks great nonetheless.

What do you think?

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MobileMe Goes Down For Maintenance Tonight→

MobileMe Goes Down For Maintenance Tonight

Apple has announced that MobileMe’s account page and sync services will be down for maintenance later today. MobileMe account will be down from 10 PM until 11 PM Pacific Time. MobileMe sync will be unavailable from 10 PM until midnight Pacific Time.

Due to scheduled maintenance, MobileMe members will be unable to access me.com/account.

Due to scheduled maintenance, some MobileMe members may be unable to sync between their computers, iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch or view their contacts and calendars at me.com.

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More On Cydia For Mac→

More On Cydia For Mac

Ok, so Cydia is coming to the Mac. But what will it bring to the OS X platform, which starting January 2011 will have not one, but two ways of installing software? Just as I assumed last week, it’ll bring easy installation of mods and tweaks without having to do those things manually, through the Terminal, and keep them updated after that. The unification of desktop hacks.

Chris Foresman over at Ars Technica reports:

Freeman created a new version of MobileSubstrate which has calls simply “CydiaSubstrate.” This new version can run on both iOS as well as Mac OS X on the desktop. “Just like you can make all these modifications on the iPhone, you can make these same modifications on the desktop,” Freeman said. “Until now, there has never been a way to easily install modifications to the system or third-party applications, as well as keep them updated.

True. Installing themes have been a complete mess (remember Magnifique?), not to mention those neat hacks and mods (to the Finder, for example) that magically disappear on every OS update. But there’s more:

CydiaSubstrate-based modifications can also target a particular application for modification, as well. “For instance, users that have jailbroken iPhones would like to have a modified version of iTunes that does not ask to update iOS when the device is plugged in, since the update might overwrite jailbreak modifications,” Freeman said. “Or perhaps you want to change the frequency that TimeMachine performs backups to something other than the stock settings. CydiaSubstrate makes this possible in an easy way that average users could install and update them.

This is exactly what tinkerers on OS X wanted, and needed. Cydia for Mac will simply be the iOS version brought to the desktop.

Back to the Mac.

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First (Public) Mac App Store Rejection?→

First Mac App Store Rejection?

LittleIpsum is a neat utility for Mac OS X we covered a few months ago here. By sitting in the menubar, it allows you to quickly copy Loren Ipsum text to the clipboard. The developers tried to submit the app to Apple for Mac App Store approval, and it got rejected. Why?

LittleIpsum v1.1.1 has been officially denied at the Mac App store due to not meeting the following guideline:

2.8   Apps that are not very useful or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected.

I’m sure many applications have been rejected so far, but this is the first public post from a developer I’ve seen talking about it. Seems like it’s going to be a very different store than we first thought. [via]

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Notational Velocity Alt→

Notational Velocity Alt

nvALT is a fork of the original Notational Velocity with some additional features and some interface modifications. It is a work in progress.

This fork by Brett Terpstra comes with widescreen layout, a shortcut to collapse the notes panel, Markdown, Textile and MultiMarkdown support, HTML source code tab in the Preview window. It’s really a highly customized version of the original NV, possibly inspired by Elastic Threads’ mod. The Preview window is amazingly useful.

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Infinity Blade: $1.6 Million In 5 Days→

Infinity Blade: $1.6 Million In 5 Days

Great results for the first game based on the Unreal Engine for iOS:

The first Unreal Engine-powered game for iOS, Infinity Blade, has sold at least 274,000 copies in its first five days on sale, according to recent player counts on Game Center. At $6 a copy that’s a $1.64 net for the publisher, and a new record, according to Gamesindustry.biz.

Take away Apple’s revenue and it’s over 1 million for the developers. Not a bad start, right? Now we’re waiting for multiplayer to be activated in a next update, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for “free roaming” to find its way in Infinity Blade. At least not in this first version.

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