Evernote for iPhone [Free, iTunes Link] has received a major update to version 3.2.0, which went live late this evening in the App Store and should be arriving in App Store updates soon. According to our contacts at Evernote, the new app is much faster, with speed improvements in launching, searching, syncing, creating new notes, and browsing.
As TUAW heard during a November interview with Phil Libin, CEO of Evernote, the updated app provides local caching and searching. Any note that is created or viewed on the iPhone is cached locally for viewing and searching, even when offline. Premium users can choose to have any or all of the notebooks they’ve created fully downloaded to their devices, once again enabling offline usability. Rich text notes can be converted to plain text for editing, and a copy of the original note is moved into the trash for future recovery.
HBO has released their very own app for the iPhone, and it’s surprisingly deep for an app released by a premium cable channel. There’s the obvious stuff — you can view schedules and watch clips and previews of HBO shows as well as behind-the-scenes and other content. But there’s even some cool iPhone-specific stuff, like creating SMS reminders when your shows come on, some hidden object games to play, and even the option to buy some shows with hooks straight into iTunes. The app is designed pretty well, too, and for an app that’s basically promoware, there’s a lot of content and features included.
It’s very well done — if you don’t have HBO, you probably won’t need the app, but if you are a subscriber with an iPhone or iPod touch, it’s well worth the free download.
Vienna, Austria-based tunesBag is opening up the public beta version of its social music service today, after allowing access by invitation only for the past year or so.
The launch has been a long time coming, considering the fact that the startup has already produced a fully functional web client, and Adobe-AIR powered desktop client and applications for iPhone, Facebook and Boxee since its founding in late 2008.
Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, has rolled out an iPhone app to help declutter your email on your mobile device. Cc:Betty’s app is a group based email application that breaks email conversations into collated, threaded discussions.
An account can be created right from the app, and new group discussions can be created, using the iPhone address book to access your contacts. Photos can be easily attached as well and new contacts can be added to discussions via your address book. Any discussions, or other content such as attachments a person has in their Cc:Betty.com account are automatically synced to their iPhone. When one of your discussions is updated, you’ll get a push-notification to your iPhone so you can access important information on the go.
Cc:Betty, a free service that helps organize group email threads, has rolled out an iPhone app to help declutter your email on your mobile device. Cc:Betty’s app is a group based email application that breaks email conversations into collated, threaded discussions.
An account can be created right from the app, and new group discussions can be created, using the iPhone address book to access your contacts. Photos can be easily attached as well and new contacts can be added to discussions via your address book. Any discussions, or other content such as attachments a person has in their Cc:Betty.com account are automatically synced to their iPhone. When one of your discussions is updated, you’ll get a push-notification to your iPhone so you can access important information on the go.
Much of the web is based around clickstreams. The latest version of Whrrl, a location-based application by Pelago, wants to take that concept into the real world, with “footstreams.”
Up until this point, since the launch of version 2 of its iPhone app earlier this year, Whrrl’s focus has been on storytelling. That is, allowing users to tag places they’re at with stories and pictures. But the latest version shifts the focus towards creating a digital record of all the places you go in the real world, Pelago CEO Jeff Holden tells us. “It’s about places, not location,” he says.
Zynga’s massively successful moneymaking machine is about to get another way to reach its millions of avid users. Today, the company is starting to test SMS notifications, allowing a small number of users to receive updates directly to their mobile phones. The first 50 TechCrunch readers to sign up here will be able to try it out for themselves, though it’s limited to Mafia Wars only for now. It’s a feature that’s going to be good news to the game’s millions of addicts and also represents a very important strategic move for the company. Because it’s one more thing that Zynga won’t have to rely on Facebook for.
Zynga’s ties with Facebook run deep. They now share some of the same investors, including Russian firm Digital Sky Technologies which has poured as much as $400 million into Facebook and just led a $180 million round in Zynga. Zynga is rumored to be Facebook’s largest advertiser. And Facebook’s viral features have played a huge role in helping Zynga rise to prominence. But despite all of this, it’s in Zynga’s best interest to keep as much control over its own games as possible.
Our friends at LateNiteSoft sent word that they’ve updated Sketches, one of the first iPhone apps I ever picked up, to version 2.0. The app has been released [iTunes link] as an entirely new download, so even upgraders from version 1 will have to pay the current price of $1.99. LateNiteSoft tells us that upgrade price is temporary — they plan to keep the original app on the store as “Sketches Classic” for 99 cents, and eventually the price of the new version will go up a few more bucks. If you want to upgrade, go grab Sketches 2 as soon as you can.
Tthe new app offers a number of improvements, including a completely revamped UI designed to quickly run through large collections. The new UI also keeps tools handy, but out of the way, as you use them. As you can see in the screen shots above, all the tools are stashed at the bottom of the screen instead of covering up your picture while you’re working on it. Sketches 2 now lets you paint using brushes, which makes for some nice choices in terms of marking pictures, canvas, maps, or whatever else you choose as a background in the app. The zoom functionality has been updated, with new gestures and a smoother shape adjustment interface. As with the original Sketches app, you can share and export your work however you like. You can use the app to create a masterpiece and then tweet about it, or just mark some notes on a map and send it off to a friend.
Whoa. A judge for the The U.S. Court of Appeals has just upheld an earlier verdict forbidding Microsoft from selling both Office and Word after January 11th, 2010. This suit, which was filed by i4i, a creator of a XML plugin for Microsoft Office, alleged that Microsoft’s Open XML format, which uses the DOCX and XLSX extensions that have been a part of Office on the Mac since Office 2008, violated i4i’s patented XML handling algorithms. The court ruled in favor of i4i back in May, and Microsoft today lost their appeal, with the judge telling them that they don’t have the right to sell the software as-is.
Microsoft now either has to attempt to appeal the ruling again, or settle with i4i (read as: “Ballmer has to write a big honking check”), and is currently considering further legal options. The company is also working to remove these features from Microsoft Office (possibly in time to release new versions of the old software on January 11th), and this ruling doesn’t affect the upcoming Office 2010 for Windows. We’ll keep you posted if anything further develops.
Whoa. A judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals has just upheld an earlier verdict forbidding Microsoft from selling both Office and Word after January 11th, 2010. This suit, which was filed by i4i, a creator of a XML plugin for Microsoft Office, alleged that Microsoft’s Open XML format, which uses the DOCX and XLSX extensions that have been a part of Office on the Mac since Office 2008, violated i4i’s patented XML handling algorithms. The court ruled in favor of i4i back in May, and Microsoft today lost their appeal, with the judge telling them that they don’t have the right to sell the software as-is.
Microsoft now either has to attempt to appeal the ruling again, or settle with i4i (read as: “Ballmer has to write a big honking check”), and is currently considering further legal options. The company is also working to remove these features from Microsoft Office (possibly in time to release new versions of the old software on January 11th), and this ruling doesn’t affect the upcoming Office 2010 for Windows. We’ll keep you posted if anything further develops.