New in the App Catalog for 02 March 2010 26
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 9:44 am EST 
There was certainly plenty of newness in the App Catalog yesterday, but a lot of it had a slight whiff of old to it. That’s not the copious updates I’m referring to, no, I’m pointing my nose straight at the new apps. I’ve got to say, I’m a little concerned and a touch disgusted that fifteen of the eighteen new apps from yesterday are classic public domain (expired copyright) novels and other literary works (Thomas Paine’s Common Sense) that Appible has packaged up for webOS and is charging for. I suppose that’s the general state of app development on every platform - many things are charged for that are available freely just as easily. Enough of the hand-wringing about what is right with regard to repackaged content sales - onward to past the break, where the list awaits.
New apps:
- A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens, $0.99, by Appible: The Christmas classic that has inspired countless movies and parodies.
- A Journey to the Centre of the Earth, $0.99, by Appible: Jules Verne’s classic science fiction adventure story.
- Anthem, $0.99, by Appible: A novella set in a dystopian future where individuality has been quashed.
- Chinese Food Menu, $1.99, by Team 1: Identify what’s in that Chinese dish without having to ask your waiter.
- Common Sense, $0.99, by Appible: Thomas Paine’s influential January 1776 political work.
- Dungeon Hunter, $6.99, by Gameloft: Dispel darkness from your land of Gothicus in this epic 3D fantasy RPG.
- Emoticons Free, Free, by Clear Water: Create a message using any of the emoticons available for webOS.
- Great Expectations, $0.99, by Appible: Follow the coming of age of the orphan Pip in this Charles Dickens novel.
- JavaScript Cheat Sheet, $0.99, by Concentric Sky: Get a quick refresher on everything you need to know about basic JavaScript.
- Jesus the Christ, $0.99, by Appible: James E. Talmage’s doctrinal study on the life and ministry of Jesus.
- Little Women, $0.99, by Appible: Louisa May Alcott’s story of her own family life.
- Minefield Free, Free, by Scott Byrns: Poke away at the field and clear it of mines - it's Minesweeper!
- Oliver Twist, $0.99, by Appible: Charles Dickens’ second novel, the story of parish boy Oliver Twist.
- Pinocchio, $0.99, by Appible: Carlo Collodi’s original puppet-turned-real-boy tale.
- The Call of the Wild, $0.99, by Appible: Jack London’s story of a sled dog.
- The Picture of Dorian Gray, $0.99, by Appible: Oscar Wilde’s only published novel, from 1890.
- The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, $0.99, by Appible: The inspiration for the classic 1939 film.
- Treasure Island, $0.99, by Appible: Robert Louis Stevenson’s story of Jim Hawkins and pirates.
Updated apps:
- Bad Kitty, $2.99
- Brainbuster, Free
- Camera Fun!, $0.99
- Classifieds2Go, Free
- ClearCard Free, Free
- Dealert, $1.99
- Echo for Palm Desktop 6.2.2, Free
- Endless Babes, Free
- Etsy Browser, $0.99
- GeoStrings (Free Trial), Free
- GeoStrings, Free
- GiftJammer, $1.99
- Glyder 2, $2.99
- GolfPinFinder, $9.95
- GuitarTabSearch, $1.25
- Lyric-A Search, $1.25
- Massage It!, $0.99
- Memory Game Free, Free
- MoreStocks Trial, Free
- My GPS, $0.99
- MyBible, Free
- Myles, $1.23
- MyQ For Netflix, $3.00
- Pegged, $0.99
- Phone Favorites, $0.99
- PocketMirror for Microsoft Outlook, Free
- podbay, Free
- PowerNap, $0.99
- Puzzler, $1.99
- Reversi, Free
- Ridiculous Rings, $0.99
- Slide Show, $1.99
- Space Alarm, Free
- Speed Dial Pro, $2.49
- Splash ID, $7.99
- TangramPuzzle Lite, Free
- TangramPuzzle, $0.99
- Time In, $0.99
- ToDo Classic, $0.99
- Vision, $0.99
- Wallpapers Deluxe, $1.99
- Where Im At Now, $0.99
- Word Magic, $1.25
- Word Search, $1.99
- World Series of Poker: Hold’em Legend, $5.99
- World Weather Watch, $1.99
26 Comments
Gameloft is still rocking along nicely though!
WebOS internal used to find new hidden stuff in every new updates, how ever nothing came in 1.4? No seedings for anything new? VOIP? Voice dialing? Better virtual keyboard?
Oooh, good question!
A filter for quotes and other similar "applications" are quite welcome. I'd prefer the app count increasing with quality and useful content rather than attempting to collect ~140.000 apps where the majority has to be rubbish.
Appible : The new Brighthouse =p
Yeah, pretty much. How about this: Someone release a $0.99 app that can search, download and display *any* book from Project Gutenberg, instead of this crap about releasing one out-of-copyright book at a time and polluting the app catalog.
For that matter, Appible should do that, and withdraw their current "apps". I'd actually be willing to pay for that, and I'd bet that a lot of other people would, too.
yeah but at this point the app would be so buried under a sea of appible "apps" that it would be hard for anybody to find.
On a completely unrelated note, nope, no relation: are you allowed to give an app a poor rating that you haven't purchased/downloaded solely for the purpose of expressing displeasure that it exists?
A single-title, public domain ebook should not be counted as an "app".
Yeah, paying 99 cents for public domain books. Awesome idea. NOT!
Whatever happened to the $50 per submission criteria that was supposed to stop all the spam?
I agree with Tyndall. I wish there were some sort of gatekeeper for this, but I suppose it is caveat emptor. :/
Doesn't apply if you're an Open Source dev.
I've submitted 3 apps and I have not paid $150.
don't forget dijt or whatever that crap app maker is called
I guess it is time for a (optional) filter in this list to filter out app spammers like Appible or Brighthouse.
Yes! Can we get the "hide app vendors" patch working on precentral?
I wonder if the app catalog could be categorized into multiple, uh, categories? You know, Apps, Docs, and maybe Craps...would that be games?
That way, each day the article could say "Today we have X new apps, Y new ebooks/docs (with the emphasis on "Y, Y, Y are these 'developers wasting our time"), and X^4+Y^3 dijt contributions.
Did that sound cynical? I think it sounded cynical...which is NOT what I was going for...I was hoping for snide. I'll have to channel Severus Snape next time.
Endless babes is unbelievably bad
Derek, the price of GeoStrings is $2.99. Only the trial version is free.
Check "Vision" new version 0.6.0 for Palm webOS video review on youtube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s5KNQfb3aE
The *really* annoying thing to me about the Appible app spam is that for the low, low price of FREE, you can get a copy of pReader from the App Catalog, and get all those books in a readable format from manybooks.net.
So, let me get this straight: you want people to work for free? Sure, the content may be free, but the work to format it for proper reading isn't. I know some people do work on projects like this for free, such as project Gutenberg, but that doesn't mean everyone has to.
If you were to walk into Barnes & Noble or Borders all of those books would be on the shelf and guess what: they wouldn't be free. Sure, printing has hard costs, but those publishers are most definitely making a profit on those public domain books.
Should Hollywood not be allowed to charge for their films based on free content? At least these guys are only charging $.99 and not $29.99 for a bluray.
It doesnt change the fact that the apps they are putting out are CRAP, and they are turning the App Catalog into a complete JOKE. And it's depressing because it makes developer's less and less motivated to make more quality apps due to how many webOS users who are turning away from the App Catalog out of dissatisfaction with the lack of quality apps and the clutter of useless ones!
i don't want them to work for free. I want the makers of these crappy quote apps, public domain book apps, digit, brighthouse, etc to stop working.
I have Free Books. It came out on Pre a while back on Preware (though I don't know about it now). It's great, because it's a free ereader that accesses all these public domain works no problem. I just finished reading The Adventures and The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes and I'm about to start on A Tale of Two Cities
The fact that this dude is charging 99 cents to create single title public domain ebooks is pretty weak sauce. I hope no one is buying them (but of course they are).
A lot of these are also available through Kobo book reader for free. I really like them because I can read the book either on my computer when I am near one or on my pre when I am away from a computer and the bookmark is saved in each.
hey everyone, relax a little. Sure you can track some of these "apps" for free on your own, but if you don't like it, then DON'T BUY IT!
What's so hard about that? It's only a dollar, and for some people, that may be worth the convenience. Just move on to the next app.
Yes we should all want more quality apps, but unfortunately mass media and average joe cell phone shopper see the numbers, 10 k android, 140k iphone, 1k webOS. The average Pre-Central fan knows this doesn't matter, but when your friend/sister/co-worker goes to get the Pre or Pixi you talk about so much its some pimple-faced sales reps that talks them out of it and steers them towards some android device or other platform.
Let's relax and let go of some anger. Now everyone gather in for a group hug...
:-)
Great, so now in addition to stupid quote and recipe and sport team "applications", we are going to have an "application" for each public domain book too? Seriously?
The least Palm should do is force them into some type of particular group and add filters.