Microsoft’s OnLive app for the iPad has arrived on the Apple App Store. OnLive Desktop offers iPad users access to full-featured versions of Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. The applications are running on OnLive’s servers and streamed to your iPad. Here’s details from Microsoft:
OnLive has just re-imagined what’s possible on iPad with the OnLive Desktop app, available soon in the iTunes App Store. Launching a brand-new chapter for OnLive (and everyone), OnLive Desktop gives users instant access to a seamless Windows desktop experience, with full-featured Microsoft Office applications and 2 GB of free cloud storage for secure file access anywhere. Need to edit a Word doc with redlines and comments? No problem. Need to give some oomph to that PowerPoint deck for your meeting? Go for it: present animations and slide transitions, edit diagrams and embed videos. Desperate for a pivot table in Excel? Pivot away … Anything you can do on your office desktop, you will be able to do on your iPad—at home, in your hotel, anywhere.
Released in May 2011, it was based on an existing short film by Louisiana firm Moonbot Studios, claiming to take inspiration from Hurricane Katrina, Buster Keaton and The Wizard of Oz among other influences. It marked Moonbot out as a developer to watch, as did the company’s interactive music video app for US band Polyphonic Spree later that year.
Now the company has released its third app, Numberlys. It returns the focus to storytelling – the origins of the alphabet – with an equally diverse palette of influences: King Kong, Metropolis, Flash Gordon, the Marx Brothers and the 1939 New York World’s Fair.
Moonbot was founded by two people with a background in animation and filmmaking – Brandon Oldenburg and Lampton Enochs – together with author and illustrator William Joyce.
“We were halfway through production on a short film when the iPad was announced, and we were fascinated,” says Oldenburg. “It was a way to deliver these mediums in one place in such an approachable way, we knew we had to be part of it out of the gate. This feels like the invention of radio, television or the movie cinema. A new thing with the grand potential that those had.”
Thus was born the Morris Lessmore app, which became a critical and commercial hit on the App Store. Oldenburg and Enochs remain awestruck by the way it spread globally, which is unsurprising given their previous experience in industries where worldwide distribution involved considerably more friction and middlemen.
“For a long time, it has only been the privileged few who had access to the distribution means or the right gear, but now it’s all around us and in the palms of our hands,” says Oldenburg.
“It really comes down to the creative now. We all grew up among really talented people in small towns, who all had something they should definitely share with the rest of the world, but there was a wall due to technology or publishing and distribution. That’s changed now.”
The success of the Morris Lessmore app put a certain degree of pressure on Moonbot’s team – creative rather than commercial – to come up with something even better next time round. Several months later, Numberlys is out.
Those influences are interesting, at a time when it can be easy for app developers to get sucked into the mindset of just being influenced by other apps. Enochs says that a visit to see the latest restored version of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis film was a key touchpoint.
“The entire company went to see it, and after watching it we knew there was something about it that was so beautiful, we wanted to tap into that vine,” he says.
“We had a rough sketch of an idea that Bill [Joyce] had done about a group of little creatures that create the alphabet. So we threw a bunch of other themes that we loved into the pot and hoped it would make for a palatable broth.”
Numberlys is aimed at children, although not exclusively so. What’s heartening is that Moonbot didn’t try to dumb down its creative influences because of its young audience.
“It’s Fritz Lang for kids!” laughs Oldenburg, before Enochs talks about the company’s determination not to patronise its audience. “Bill never condescends to children,” he says.
“It’s an adult approach that treats kids with respect. You can look at Numberlys as an alphabet book, but it’s so much more than that. We’re not going with simple words like ‘D is for dog’. We’re using larger sophisticated words throughout the experience of this story, which match our sense of whimsy.”
Numberlys is also one of a number of book-apps – others include ustwo’s Papercut, Faber’s The Waste Land, 955 Dreams’ Woodstock and jazz timeline apps and the entire catalogue of Touch Press – that are going beyond the idea of virtual pages that have to be turned.
“It feels a little more like a film with interactivity,” says Enochs, describing Numberlys’ navigation system. “We’ve thrown page-turning completely out of the window. You navigate between chapters with a series of gears.”
Oldenburg talks about the way every new medium initially copies what went before it, most notably early TV broadcasts with a person reading out a radio-style news bulletin, or films with one fixed camera shooting actors on a stage.
“Then they realised that they could edit, cut, do close ups and move the camera,” he says. “We’re at that moment right now with app creation. We don’t have to approach this like a book at all.”
With Numberlys out, what next? Moonbot is fielding plenty of offers of work-for-hire app projects, but the company is keen to continue creating new stories with its own characters too. Oldenburg also stresses that Moonbot is not just about one medium: apps.
“Story comes first. We’re storytellers, and while the app thing is going great at the moment, in a few years it may be something else,” he says. “Our focus on storytelling will never go away.”
A parody of the classic children’s bedtime story Goodnight Moon, dragging the simple tale into the modern age by replacing moons, kittens, mittens and bears with iPads, e-readers and a “huge LCD Wifi HDTV”, is taking off in America this Christmas.
Goodnight iPad by Ann Droyd, a pseudonym for children’s author David Milgrim, travels through a home packed with modern technology, bursting with screens, beeps and flashes. “In the bright buzzing room there was an iPad and a kid playing Doom / And a screensaver of a bird launching over the moon, / And there were three little Nooks with ten thousand books,” writes Milgrim.
Where Margaret Wise Brown’s 1947 story ends with the peaceful wish, “Goodnight stars, Goodnight air, Goodnight noises everywhere”, Milgrim’s, published in the US by Penguin, instead bids goodnight to a host of modern technological appliances. “Goodnight remotes and Netflix streams, Androids, apps and glowing screens,” he writes, ending, “Goodnight MacBook Air, goodnight gadgets everywhere.”
Penguin USA called it “a reminder for the child in all of us to power down at the end of the day”, which “not only pokes loving fun at the bygone quiet of the original classic, but also at our modern plugged-in lives”.
Milgrim told the New York Times that he was inspired by “how much things have changed since the world depicted” in Goodnight Moon. “Our homes are really nothing like that anymore. The contrast between that quiet book and our noisy, buzzing lives seemed ripe for exploration and humour,” he said.
A child-friendly version of that title, Seriously, Just Go To Sleep, is now being planned for next April, “inviting the children themselves in on the joke”, said US publisher Akashic Books, with “new child-appropriate narrative”.
“We were getting a lot of feedback from parents, saying that their kids loved the book – read in an altered form – because they recognised themselves in the character of the mischievous kid who’s winning the bedtime battle, and thought it was hilarious,” said the author of both books, Adam Mansbach. “So we figured we’d do a companion volume that lets kids in on the fun.”
Strictly speaking, this is an e-book rather than an app, but Yellow Submarine is one of the titles that is blurring the boundaries between the two categories. Nabbed by Apple as an iBooks exclusive, the free book tells the story of The Beatles’ cartoon film, with video clips, music and interactive animations alongside the text. iPhone / iPad
ATLAS (Assisted Tactical Assault System) isn’t a standalone app: it’s a new premium feature for Microsoft’s Halo Waypoint apps on Windows Phone, iOS and Android. It includes content from Brady Games to help players of Halo: Reach improve their performance, but also functions as a live map while playing the console game, showing locations of vehicles, team members and weapons. Windows Phone / Android / iPhone / iPad
BSkyB has taken its live football scores app to Android, offering scores, commentary, league tables, match stats, radio and a feature to find pubs showing games in 3D. Android
Barnstorming virtual world for kids Moshi Monsters has a new iOS game, courtesy of Penguin Books. Based on the book of the same name, Buster’s Lost Moshlings involves exploring Monstro City, with a tracker mode to help younger kids play. iPhone / iPad
Developer Brothers and Sisters Creative has launched an interactive graphic novel for iOS based on Charles Dickens’ habit of roaming the streets of London at night, looking for inspiration for his writing. Illustrations from David Foldvari and voice narration from actor Mark Strong complement a map of the capital that will form the base for the planned series of monthly releases in this series. iPhone / iPad
Budget flights firm Easyjet has launched an iPhone and Android app to help people search, book and manage flights on their smartphone. The link above is for the Android version, so click here for the iPhone one. iPhone / Android
Sesame Street’s latest iPhone app lets kids receive video calls, audio calls and voicemail from its Elmo character, with parents able to schedule incoming calls for situations including going to the doctor, birthdays and potty training. In-app purchases are included for specific “call packs” including ABCs, holidays and singing. iPhone
Cartoonist Eddie Campbell made waves with his In The Days of the Ace Rock’n'Roll Club comic in the 1980s, and now the editions have been collected and digitised for an iPad app. The storyline concerns a group of Southend teddy boys in the 1970s, with extra content including interviews and an unpublished strip. iPad
Microsoft’s enterprise service Lync is going mobile, although the Windows Phone app requires an existing Lync server or Office365 / Lync Online account to work. It includes presence features, instant messaging, audio conferencing and phone calls. Windows Phone
O2 UK and its developer partner MIG have launched the My O2 app for Android smartphones, enabling customers to check their account information and manage their bolt-ons. It follows the iPhone version which came out in late 2009, and has so far been downloaded nearly 2m times. Android
News aggregation app Zite – now owned by CNN – has been available on the iPad for some time. Now it’s been squeezed down for an iPhone version, released the same week that Flipboard made the same transition. iPhone
Berlin is the latest city to get an iPad app based on Dorling Kindersley’s Eyewitness series. Expect cutaways of notable buildings, as well as offline maps and all manner of tourist hotspots highlighted. iPad
Magazine publisher Hearst has launched a new iPad spin-off from its Popular Mechanics magazine. It’s a game that sees players getting inside an engine to keep its pistons pumping. iPad
Even a big brand often isn’t enough to prevent an app from sinking without trace amid the hundreds of thousands of other apps nowadays. Logostream is the work of discovery service Appsfire, and helps people to browse Apple’s App Store by brands. iPhone / iPad
Mattel has taken its Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robots toy brand to Android, with a boxing game that pits a Red Rocker against a Blue Bomber. Android (spotted by Android Police)
Freemium games publisher TeamLava has launched the latest social iOS game in its “Story” series: Pet Shop Story. The aim is to build a thriving pet shop business while cross-breeding animals to create labradoodles, toygers and, er, chugs. A pug plus a chihuahua, if you’re wondering. iPhone / iPad
The UK’s Salvation Army has an official iPhone app, offering news and tweets, and inviting people to donate online, by telephone or text message. There is also a map of the organisation’s churches and centres. iPhone
Puzzle publisher Puzzler has launched a new mobile game offering crosswords, wordsearches, sudoku and other puzzles. Developed by Ideas Pad, it uses in-app purchases to sell different game packs. The link above is for Android, so click here for the iPhone version. iPhone / Android
There are many, many social/photo/fashion apps available for iPhone, with most of them having come out in 2011. StyleTag is the latest, promising “on-the-go fashion trend spotting” and “hottest fashions from fashionistas like you”. iPhone
Commodore 64 classic Bruce Lee hits the App Store, as Elite Systems releases a (licensed) emulation of the platform game. As in 1984, it involves running and jumping through a succession of chambers kicking seven bells out of a green sumo wrestler and a black ninja. iPhone / iPad
Another C64 re-release from Elite Systems is the game that at one point ran Microprose Soccer close as the best (in this journalist’s eyes) 8-bit football title. Originally released in 1988, it uses Elite’s “iDaptive” virtual joystick controls. iPhone / iPad
Social media and entertainment news site Mashable has launched an official BlackBerry app, including the ability to comment on stories from the device. BlackBerry
The latest games company to turn its hand to book-apps is RocketPop Games, with iPad title Noah and the Ark. It takes the Biblical story of Noah and presents it with interactive 3D visuals. iPad
Apple has released it’s list of the best apps for 2011 – and two photography related apps are coming out on top.
The iPhone App of the Year was awarded to Instagram. Instagram allows iPhone users to apply stylized filters to their photos. 20 million users have made it a mainstream hit.
The iPad App of the Year goes to Snapseed by Nik Software – another image editing app. Snapseed has 2 million users.
iPad App of the Year runner-ups include Tiny Wings – a $.99 jumping game, and Touchgrind BMX – a a $4.99 action game.
iPhone App of the Year runner-ups are VidRhythm, which allows you to create mashup music videos for $1.99, as well as Band of the Day – a free app that provides a guide to new music.
iPad Game of the Year goes to Dead Space, a $4.99 app that lets the user fight for survival in space, with runner up honors going to Contre Jour HD, a $2.99 physics puzzler, and Superbrothers.
The iPhone Game of the Year is the free tower-building app, Tiny Tower. Runner ups include Tiny Wings, a 99-cent jumping game, and Touchgrind BMX, a $4.99 action game.
There is no shortage of startups providing apps for children in 2011: Toca Boca, Mindshapes, Nosy Crow, Callaway Digital… and now Fingerprint Digital.
The San Francisco-based company has launched its first five iOS apps, and is counting on a feature called Mom-Comm to help it stand out from the herd. In short, it’s like a Game Center for kids and parents, providing rewards and app recommendations for the former, and an update on their progress for the latter.
Fingerprint was founded by Nancy MacIntyre, who previously worked at electronic learning company LeapFrog Enterprises as executive vice president of product innovation and marketing. Her new company raised $1.4m (£0.9m) in September 2011 to fuel her ambitions of finding an audience among 3-8 year-olds and their parents.
“There are tens of thousands of kids’ apps out there, and for parents just discovering what apps are good and knowing how to find them in the App Store is problematic,” she says.
“Once playing, they have no idea what their kids are doing with them. We set out to create a network of high-quality kids content where it’s easy for the parent to know what games are appropriate for their children, and get an insight into what the child is playing.”
This communication goes a bit further than just telling parents what their children have been doing. Parents can send voice or text messages of encouragement to their children within the apps, while the kids can send pre-scripted messages to their parents to tell them about achievements.
Fingerprint’s first batch of iOS titles includes three in its Big Kid Life franchise, focusing on firefighters, vets and fairy princesses, with a mixture of educational puzzles and more standard gameplay.
Fingerprint Play Maker is an avatar-based app designed to teach maths and spelling skills, while DoReMi 1-2-3 is a musical app introducing pitch and melody through the medium of cute animals. This last app is the work of an external developer, Creativity Mobile.
“Our apps were created to showcase how the platform works, and train people in how to use it and engage with it,” says MacIntyre. “We’ve created an SDK that third party developers can use to plug into our system, and we’ll have several more third-party apps coming out soon.”
Children will create their own character when they first use a Fingerprint game, and will then take that avatar from app to app, and device to device. They will also be able to collect and play with virtual pets, with one unlockable in every app – through play, it should be noted, not through an in-app purchase.
MacIntyre says that in Fingerprint’s tests, the messaging features have received the strongest response from parents and children. “We see it as transforming the solo app play of one child playing an app to making it a social experience between the child and their parent or caregiver,” she says.
“A child can send a message to mom, mom can send one back, and suddenly the parent is engaged in the learning. Kids have gotten really excited about that. We want to bring parents into the apps in a way that we think is interesting and clever.”
MacIntyre is under no illusions about the competitive nature of the kid-apps market, but she also warns that no developer in this space can afford to focus solely on their direct competition.
“Kids have so many choices,” she says. “The battle ground isn’t only about your apps versus Sesame Street. It’s about your apps versus Angry Birds. You need really compelling, fun content. We hope that our shared reward system gives children a reason to go from app to app, while bringing parents into the equation.”
The competitive kid-apps market could work in Fingerprint’s favour as it tries to get more third-party developers to use its SDK in their games and apps. MacIntyre says that the company’s pitch is its ability to deliver an audience for developers’ apps, while also providing them with analytics on how they’re being used.
“It gets them out of the mode of being one of tens of thousands of apps in the App Store, and into being one of a group of highly-curated very high-quality kids apps,” she says. “It’s not about being an app developer building one app at a time. It’s about the network.”
Fingerprint’s launch games are based on its own characters, but during the interview MacIntyre alludes to conversations she’s been having with children’s brands. Licensing looks set to play a part in the company’s future, although no deals have been announced yet.
“As a small company starting out, we need to attract as many customers as possible, and some anchor licensed brands is helpful in that regard,” she says. “However, the apps market has proven its ability to create new IP, and most of the biggest app brands are new IP. We’re really optimistic about Big Kid Life.”
Much of the competition for Fingerprint – but also many of its potential licensors – come from the toys industry that is very familiar to MacIntyre, given her background.
She thinks that most big toy companies still treat apps “as a marketing element” – something to bolster the brands of their physical toys, rather than a way to create new brands and become an important new revenue stream.
“I’m quite sure all of the major toy players are really thinking about the app business,” she says, though, expressing optimism about the idea of linking real-world toys with apps – something done already by Disney with its AppMates line.
What about companies like LeapFrog and Fisher Price making their own tablets for children, and so become a rival platform for kid-app developers to consider?
“Is it possible to have a good experience with a kid-oriented tablet? The answer is yes, but it’s still a toy,” says MacIntyre. “With the price of full tablets coming down, it will be very difficult for anybody to make a meaningful business out of making proprietary devices [for kids]. Every parent with an iPhone or iPad is actually a competitor for LeapFrog or Fisher Price.”
She cites a recent survey showing iOS devices at the top of children’s Christmas wishlists in the US as a sign that Apple’s devices in particular have “done an amazing job of becoming aspirational to children”.
Can Big Kid Life and Mom-Comm become similarly attractive to children, parents and other developers? 2012 should provide the answer.
Before stepping down as Apple CEO, Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive, Senior Vice President of Industrial Design at Apple, focused on the form and function of an 7-inch tablet. According to our sources, the device was dubbed the “iPad Mini,” and it is expected to be released in early 2012.
While Jobs was dismissive of the iPad Lite concept, calling them “scaled-up smartphones” in Apple’s earnings conference call a year ago, Apple is readying the new device to go head-to-head with Kindle Fire, Amazon’s $200 color 7-inch slate.
However, Jobs was not pleased with the experience of the iPad Mini and thought it diluted Apple’s product-line, said our insider. Positioned between the iPod Touch and the iPad 2, the iPad Mini does complicate Apple’s simple lineup. Apple’s management team, in their first move of establishing independence, decided to proceed with the smaller iPad.
With the Kindle Fire priced at $199, a mini version of the iPad could fill a market gap for people still uncomfortable with the iPad’s $499 price-tag. The Kindle Fire was afire on Black Friday, where it was the bestselling tablet at Target and Best Buy stores. By producing a less expensive, smaller and more portable tablet, Apple will certainly maintain market dominance.
Additionally, Taiwanese Economic Daily News has reported that Korean LG Display and Taiwanese AU Optronics, two potential suppliers, have recently sent samples of their iPad Mini displays to Apple. Their sources state that Apple has already set the specifications for the smaller tablet, which is scheduled to ship Q1 2012, with the iPad 3 shipping in Q3, which is said to carry a Retina display with 2048×1536 resolution.
Imagine combining your favorite arcade experience with the technology of the iPad – that’s what you get with the iCade Arcade Cabinet. Quickly and securely integrate your iPad with this arcade cabinet, and you can access your iPad games and apps wirelessly through arcade-designed buttons and joystick!
This is a blast from the past – only much better, because you can play your iPhone games and iPad games in arcade-type style. With the iCade Arcade Cabinet, you iPad stays secure, even during intense game play. Play Asteroids, Atari titles and other new and existing game apps.
The first in Next Restaurant’s series of books is now available, exclusively on Apple’s iBookstore. ‘Paris: 1906′ features every dish and recipe from their inaugural menu, over 200 pictures, videos and commentary from the chefs. If you missed out on this amazing Paris culinary adventure from Grant Achatz and Nick Kokonas, you can experience it by downloading the $4.99 ‘Paris: 1906′ ebook at: www.iTunes.com/NextRestaurant
And the ebook is a hit! Via the Next Facebook page, they added: “Thanks for making Paris: 1906 iBook # 3 on the Paid iBookstore overall and # 1 in Cooking, Food, and Wine. Pretty amazing to see old French food sitting above John Grisham, Stephen King, Sue Grafton, and those vampires… even if just for a day. One spot higher and we would be next to Mr. Jobs…. what an honor.”
Message in an iPad? Sting — there’s an app for that! Singer and songwriter Sting, the former front man of the Police, is releasing an iPad app on Monday. The free iPad app “Sting 25″ is an interactive archive of Sting’s solo work. An interactive timeline will be available, featuring music, videos and photographs from important moments in Sting’s career, such as the Live Aid concert, which took place in 1985. It will also offer recent performances, including Sting’s show at New York’s Beacon Theatre last month which featured duets with Stevie Wonder and Lady Gaga. Most importantly, to Sting, “Sting 25″ is a retrospective of his entire solo career:
“This is a very convenient way of archiving yourself,” Sting told WSJ….
“Sting 25″ the iPad app will be available for download from Apple’s iTunes Store on Monday.
Also, here’s news on Sting’s new music collection. Official press release below:
Cherrytree/A&M Records/Universal Music Group is pleased to announce Sting: 25 Years, the definitive box set collection slated for release on September 27, 2011. Featuring three CDs comprised of 45 remastered tracks personally curated by Sting, a previously unreleased live concert DVD and a comprehensive hardcover book, this retrospective captures for the first time both the highlights and rarities of Sting’s enduring solo career.
his consummate collection contains selections spanning his entire solo catalog, from his 1985 debut album, The Dream Of The Blue Turtles, to his latest release, Live in Berlin. Highlights include all of Sting’s top 40 hits as well as Grammy® winners “Brand New Day,” “The Soul Cages,” “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You,” and “Whenever I Say Your Name” featuring Mary J. Blige (full track listing included below).
Sting: 25 Years was produced by Rob Mathes and Executive Produced by Sting’s longtime manager, Kathryn Schenker. The box set also contains nine songs remixed by Robert Orton and Steve Fitzmaurice exclusively for this collection.
Rough, Raw & Unreleased: Live At Irving Plaza, the previously unreleased live concert DVD, features 10 tracks culled from newly unearthed raw performance footage filmed in New York City on the final night of Sting’s U.S. “Broken Music” tour in 2005.
The discs are housed in a beautiful, lavish hardcover book containing intimate and rare photos from world renowned photographers, complete lyrics, personal commentary and a newly written introduction by Sting.
Richly diverse in musical content and visually captivating, Sting: 25 Years is a compelling tribute to the restless spirit of an artist who continues to evolve and explore new musical territory.
