MacRumors

One DaringFireball.net reader speculates that the reason that Apple is maintaining the Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) for the iPhone SDK is due to patent reasons.

We know Apples been building up a patent strategy around multi-touch; maybe their lawyers believe there are patentable inventions described in the iPhone SDK and they are telling Apple to keep everything under NDA until they know provisional patents can be filed within a reasonable amount of time

By keeping it under NDA, the information is supposedly still considered non-published.

Macenstein notes that the popular and free PhoneSaber iPhone application has been pulled from the App Store at the request of Lucasfilm. The developers note:

As of now, PhoneSaber will no longer be available, Ive had a chat with a guy from THQ Wireless (who own the rights for Star Wars apps on mobiles) and apparently the guys from Lucas dont want it up there anymore. They didnt want to go down the attacking cease and desist route, so were being dealt with very amicably.

They want to do some sort of official, Star Wars branded version of PhoneSaber, and will be working with us on that one. I dont know any information beyond that, whether they plan to charge for it, advertise with it or what, but well keep you updated on as much as were allowed to tell you.

PhoneSaber allows your iPhone to act (mostly) like a light saber, complete with sound effects.

- Wi-Fi and EDGE/3G support: access and administer your servers from anywhere
- Control over font size and color
- Landscape mode support
- The ability to scroll over terminal output
- Saved connection parameters and passwords (if desired)
- A cross-session command history for quickly re-executing or editing previously entered commands
- No terminal emulation

Power users may want to wait until TouchTerm Pro is released which promises "a powerful, easy-to-use remote administration tool over SSH."

Terminal emulation, however, appears to be lacking in the current version of TouchTerm which makes it only useful for the simplest of tasks. Anything requiring any screen formatting (top, vi, emacs, pico) will fail. While the developer promises Terminal emulation to be available in a future free update, it's hard to recommend this app without it.

If you are willing to wait a little longer, Zinger-Soft is planning on releasing a more full featured SSH client for $4.99 called iSSH:

That being said, zinger-soft's app is complete and is simply awaiting government approval. It includes VT100, VT102, VT220, ANSI, xterm, and xterm-color emulation. It supports dynamically resizable terminals, fonts, and portrait and landscape mode (and, depending on the font, anywhere from 40x21 to 80x40). All the exotic key combinations (Ctrl-Shift-Up, for instance) are there. It has support for multiple simultaneous connections and maintains a list of open connections (as well as a default connection configuration list) that one will be able to reference and reconnect to on reopening the application. There is a scroll back buffer implemented in the standard iPhone scroll view interface, along with gesture arrow keys. Finally, it contains an X Server so one can switch between graphical and console input as necessary (and possible). Of course, for all the open sessions, the X Server is the same, so multiple machines will send their X clients to the same X Server.

Update: I Am Rich has been removed from the App Store.

FlipBook [$9.99, App Store] by Josh Anon provides what appears to be a relatively sophisticated set of tools to create animations right on your iPhone.

FlipBook has everything you need to get started animating, from an eraser to onion skinning to layered drawing. Load images from your photo library, including images taken with your iPhone's camera, and draw on top of them. If you make a mistake, just touch Undo or double-tap for Redo. Touch Play when you're ready to see how your movie looks.

Unique to Flipbook is the ability to export movies onto the Flipbook.tv. Those movies can later be downloaded and reuploaded to Youtube. Forum member, TimothyB, has posted a couple of his early creations: chase scene, Fox.

FlipBook provides multiple tour videos to walk you through the application.

Flickbook [$4.99, App Store] by Geoff Pado offers a simpler flipbook interface that allows you to quickly create animations. Features listed include:

- Faint reminder of your previous frame making it easier to draw the next.
- Unlimited undo
- Smooth playback
- "Painless shading"

A video demo is offered at the developer's site: Flickbookapp.com. There is no way to export Flickbook's videos at this time, but the developer is said to be working on it for a later update.

At TouchArcade.com, we recently looked at the two crossword puzzle games found in the App Store and have also provided gameplay videos of each app.

The two crossword puzzle apps include Eliza Block's 2 Across [$5.99, App Store] and Stand Alone, Inc.'s Crosswords [$9.99, App Store]. Readers may remember Eliza Block as the part-time developer who was surprised to find out exactly how well she had been doing with her application sales.

In the end both applications are remarkably similar in execution and functionality, and you are unlikely to make a bad choice with either app. Both applications offer an almost limitless pool of downloadable crossword puzzles as well as access to subscription NYTimes puzzles. At the risk of oversimplifying, if you are a frequent crossword puzzler, Crosswords' landscape view may be worth the additional money if you dont plan on using the hints as often. 2 Across, however, is also a very capable version, and does offer a few additional features for amateurs, such as letter-level hints and Pen/Pencil modes.

HRL Technologies has released VoiceThis Dialer [App Store] to the iTunes App Store. The $9.99 application tries to bring voice dialing to the iPhone. This is not the first application to try, but does take a different approach than existing solutions.

SpeechCloud's VoiceDialer [Free, App Store] was the first iPhone application to try to offer speech dialing on the iPhone. VoiceDialer takes advantage of the iPhone's always-on internet connection to record your voice and send it to SpeechCloud's servers to perform the actual recognition. Once recognized, the application pulls up the contact's name and allows you to select which number to dial. Some of the criticism of the application is that it requires too much manual interaction (tapping on buttons) to actually dial a number, and slow response time due to the transferring of data across wireless networks.

Next up was Makayama's VoiceDial [$14.99, App Store], which has drawn a fair amount of App Store commenter criticism for it's high price. VoiceDial takes a different approach by avoiding actual speech recognition and instead performing audio comparison. VoiceDial requires you to actually record your own voice for each contact which can then later be used to match your voice command. A video demo of the product is offered by its publisher. If you are willing to pay the $15 and willing to record yourself saying your contacts, MercuryNews claims the product "works as advertised" and "had no problems recognizing the contact I wanted to call, even when it was similar to other names I'd recorded."

Now comes HRL Technologies' VoiceThis Dialer [App Store], a $9.99 application that actually tries to perform speech recognition within the iPhone itself. No wireless connection required. Instead, the application runs within the iPhone. VoiceThis Dialer promises to offer completely hands free activity with the ability to dial contacts and even quit the application with your voice.

Unfortunately, during my brief testing, the application performed poorly with voice recognition. In fact, I had to cut testing short due to it persistently dialing the wrong number. There is a confirmation mode that can be turned on, also by a voice command, but ironically, I couldn't get it to recognize it. With no audio or voice prompts at all, I found myself looking at the phone continuously to see if the audio level was reading or if the proper number had been chosen. This visual attention negated any benefit from the addition of a voice dialer to my phone.

iLounge provides an extensive roundup of all of the iPhone voice recorders presently available in the App store. These apps are, of course, only compatible with the iPhone and not the iPod touch due to a lack of built-in microphone for the iPod touch. A summary of their ratings are provided here (prices link to App Store):

While iLounge's top picks include SpeakEasy Voice Recorder [App Store] and Note2Self [App Store], it's clear the best choice will depend on your usage. While Note2Self seems well designed for recording personal reminders, it would be less useful for recording lectures. If recording lectures is your goal, it would seem Audio Recorder [App Store] or QuickVoice Recorder [App Store] might be more useful with the ability to get recordings out of your iPhone and onto your Mac.

iLounge provides a much more in-depth look at each application in their review.