New in the App Catalog for 16 December 2009 30
by Derek Kessler
Thu, 17 Dec 2009 6:48 am EST
Thu, 17 Dec 2009 6:48 am EST 
We like apps, and now we’ve got more than 800 to choose from on the webOS App Catalog. Even better, of the few dozen apps that landed yesterday, not a single one of them was a sports app about a specific team or a recipe book with only a single cuisine. We got some more backgrounds and obscure albums; but we also got some nice stuff - like crosswords and BART schedules. All-in-all, a good day in app land, and it’s all listed after the break.
New Apps:
- Abstract Art Backgrounds, $0.99, by Dijit: Get abstract art wallpapers for your phone.
- Ants Tour Central, $0.99, by antsmarching.org: Have the most complete Dave Matthews Band tour archives at your fingertips.
- Black Box, $0.99, by Invasive Bamboo: The classic “atoms in a box” puzzle game.
- Celebrity Tweets, $3.99, by XIMAD: Keep up on the Twitter posts of top celebrities.
- C U Next Weekend, $0.99, by Dijit: Check out the hot new band from the founders of Danelectric and HBK.
- Cat Years, Free, by Prezy Software: Calculate your cat’s age in people years. Not sure why there’s a dog there.
- Cheers!, $2.99, by TTPSoft: Locate and rate bars, breweries, beer stores, and homebrew supplies.
- Christmas Contacts: Wrap your favorite contacts in holiday goodness.
- Crossword Light, Free, by Stand Alone: Demo version with 30 puzzles to play.
- Crosswords, $9.99, by Stand Alone: Play crosswords from dozens of daily newspapers.
- Delly Ranx, $0.99, by Dijit: Listen to the music of Delly Ranx.
- DMB Live Setlist, Free, by antsmarching.org: Get a fresh setlist for your Dave Matthews Band concert. Congratulations to Homebrew Graduate yetdog!
- Dog Years, Free, by Prezy Software: Calculate your dog’s age in people years.
- Enjoy Sudoku Daily, Free, by Jason Linhart: Play Sudoku with a multi-stage hint system.
- FR Caltrain Schedule, $1.99, by Fabric Robot: Look up the Caltrain schedule for any day of the week.
- Gliss, $1.99, by OpenSourceJason: Move blocks across the grid to clear the board.
- Hot Chicks For The Holidays Backgrounds, $0.99, by Dijit: Does this really need a description?
- Language Translator, Free, by SpeedyMarks: Translate words, phrases, and blocks of text.
- LOL, $0.99, by WizardApps: Check out images from dozens various humor websites.
- Lunar Attack, $1.99, by Mobigamedebot.com: A twist on the classic missile defense game.
- Match This!, Free, by MetaViewSoft: Clear the board of matched tiles.
- Mileage, $0.99, by SpeedyMarks: Calculate your vehicle’s mileage and project your potential range.
- Mirror Mirror!, Free, by Brett Cato: Put a “mirror” (blackness) on your screen.
- Morse Code, $0.99, by SpeedyMarks: Translate text into blinking Morse code.
- pBART, $1.99, by Chelvis Industries: Get real-time data on the Bay area’s BART transit system.
- Post’er, $0.99, by Gabriele Nizzoli: Post to your Wordpress blog from your webOS phone.
- Properties, $1.99, by John Kossik: Get detailed information on the elements of the Periodic Table.
- Santa’s Sexy Helpers, $0.99, by Dijit: Put images of ladies in weather-inappropriate gear on your phone.
- Tap Flick Slide, $1.99, by Innovative Odyssey: Play “bop it” against three other players.
- Texas Lotto Free, Free, by SuperGigaMega: Free demo version of the Texas Lotto app.
- Texas Lotto, $0.99, by SuperGigaMega: Get the latest Texas Lottery numbers and jackpots on your webOS phone.
- The Archies, $0.99, by Dijit: Check out the music of “The Archies” from The Archie Show.
- Tri-Match, $2.99, by Xybyresoft: Match three or more adjacent jewels to clear the board (i.e. Bejeweled).
- WOG Glowstick, $0.99, by WebOS Group: Show a bright and colorful glowstick on your screen to like the way.
Updated Apps:
- 20Q Mind Reader
- Advanced BAC Calculator
- CL USB Sync
- WHERE
30 Comments
Anyone tried tri-match?
Not Yet. But there's a link including Gameplay Video :
http://xybyresoft.com/webos/
Yay, first one complaining about the crap apps. although there are at lease a few apps that don't appear to be total garbage.
Am I the only one that finds it annoying that albums are in the app store? If I want music, I'll get it from amazon, not an app store! Looks like Dijit is trying to give brighthouse a run for its money.
Also, would it be such a horrible thing to have cat years and dog years in the same app?
I get annoyed at these worthless apps, but then I think of the poor Precentral writers who have to document these for us. I know if I as sitting up at like 5 am writing up this garbage I would be extremely irritated. Thanks guys :)
Why is it annoying for you to see things in the App Catalog that you don't want? Seriously, why is it "annoying"? Nobody is making you download them or even view the details of the app! Are you Palm's App Catalog manager? If you were, then I could understand why you would be annoyed at your employees. But you are a consumer. Do you get annoyed when you see groceries at Walmart?
lol, I am sure he walks by the femine hygiene isle every time and shouts:
"Damn it Walmart, stop selling this #$%* - I hate glancing at tampons and douches as I walk to my Game Boy section"
And then everyone around him looks at him and thinks that he is a douche.
Haha, hilarious.
I'll bite.
Because the app store doesn't make it easy for you to avoid these apps. There is no tagging/categorization that I can find, beyond "recent", "explore", and "popular" from a navigation perspective.
I did find that you can search on keywords like "games".
At least at wal-mart the aisles are clearly labeled with what is in them., so I never walk down the "feminine hygiene" aisle (in reference to the other poster).
Now, if there is a better way to interact witht he App Store, then I'm all ears (I am open that I may not be seeing it properly).
But I don't think this guy had an unreasonable gripe.
If you click on explore it breaks the apps down into I believe 19 different categories, this might help you avoid some of the apps you don't want to see.
+1, I find Dijit's crap extremely annoying, and I have serious questions about the legality of posting artist's albums to a 99 cent app!!!
Yes Tri-match looks great...
Developers have been kicking things into high gear with more games and useful apps slowly, but surely heading in our direction.
Crosswords was a great find yesterday and Paratrooper also looks promising:
http://www.185vfx.com/webos/paratrooper/
January is going to ROCK with news of more hardware/software support.
Great, now we have more apps than winmo... Next in online Blackberry with over 3000 apps
Looks like the WinMo Marketplace has kept pace with Palm:
http://pocketnow.com/tech-news/marketplace-for-mobile-now-at-800-apps-to...
And this isn't counting the 10's of thousands of apps available for download and sideload through other stores and sites.
I really don't get some of these apps. A dog year calculator? Doesn't the Pre have a calculator? Is multiplying by 7 so hard? At least this one is free, which is more than I can say for mileage. Is the built-in calc so bad it can't do division?
$4 to read tweets? Can't I use twitter to do that for free? $1 to listen to a band? Won't Pandora do that for free?
Most of these types of apps would have been free on the Palm platform, I think.
Match this is pretty neat - complex game of memory that pits you vs your Palm Pre/Pixi.
Wabbit Hunt Lite is by far the most fu game I have played on my Pre so far. (yeah haven't played the paid option - I like free stuff)
Crosswords lite looks pretty promising.
Mirror Mirror is pretty dumb. Black screen with a border and a "secret" when you keep touching the screen. Deleted immediatly
Just a few of the newer ones I downloaded. More and more apps almost daily, but not enough memory to support. I know I know supposedly 1.3.5 fixes this, but let's have it already. Getting tired of picking and choosing what apps I want to keep and who knows the ones i delete may become paid apps while they are deleted from my device. I got Infopedia and SplashId when they were free and they still update, but now they are both paid apps. Fix the memory issue Palm.
Been wondering when 1.3.5 will be out myself. It needed to come out yesterday, come on Palm, please release it today.
How about Palm or some devs figuring out how to give us the ability to place restrictions on photos in the photo app. Such as, being able to restrict all or certain folders within the stock photo app. "Dumb Phones" like my wife and daughters Samsung Rant has the featues, standard. And almost every other phone I have ever owned, Samsung, LG and Sanyo has had this feature standard. So it shouldnt be too hard for Palm (or Devs) to add.
Or should this be added to the list of options still not available to the Pre (WebOs deices).
And no I shouldnt have to tweak my phone to be able to have that feature.
Keep in mind...it is not Palm that is writing these apps. They are just allowing them into the app catalog. If they were rejecting them, there would be people bitching about that.
To say that WebOS now has more apps than WinMo...really? I don't think so. there are thousands and thousands of apps for WinMo. I am not a fan of WinMo...I am just saying...
To those that keep saying that certain types of apps would be free on Palm OS...times have changed. The market allows these little apps to be paid apps, at least for wa while. If people don't buy them, the developer will either reduce the price or make it free. Remember, Palm is not setting the price of these apps, just providing a place for the devs to market them.
Like I said recently - The quantity of quality mentality has brought this to us. Society as a whole has a little bit of ADHD and cannot sit idle for a few minutes and become bored with something after 5 minutes...thus all of the little crapplets that we see on these devices.
I agree regarding WinMO.
the WebOS app catalog may have more apps than the WinMO marketplace, but overall, WinMo has tens of thousands more applications, but they are really really really hard to find. (meaning you gotta Google "Windows Mobile Programs" to find them.)
EDIT: Just found this link: WinMo and Palm seem to tie. Whee.
http://pocketnow.com/tech-news/marketplace-for-mobile-now-at-800-apps-total
I wish they would upgrade there phone app. The phone is great for everything but making calls. the phone app sucks. I actually bought it for everything else.
It would be great if they could improve that.
Ha. I thought I was the only one who thought that.
zues0990
Why does the phone app suck. If you want improvements, you have to say what you want.
My problems:
Significant lag switching between dialer and history views. (sometimes I just want to redial a number, and the phone app hangs. I have to close it then come back in to try to redial)
Lag while dialing with both the number pad and the hardware buttons.
Can't search names with the dialpad (I'd prefer this to be able to dial without taking time to open the slider). If i remember correctly, my old Treo would start to pull up names when I dialed. loved that.
The phone app closes when I hang up on some calls (when someone calls me, the app closes after the call disconnects.) This is annoying if the call was dropped by accident or by network failure as the time to redial can be long. I had a client angry because he thought I "hung up and didn't call him back". Also, after one call I usually have to make more. This little function puts a hamper on that.
I also don't like the fact that the lock screen doesn't give me a way to slide to ignore (I know the power button can do that, but I find that to be temperamental).
I agree with most of those. I uses a Samsung Omnia prior to the Pre and one of the things that I loved about it was that it would ignore a call if I flipped it over when it rang. It was great when in meetings. I would love to see that as an option on the Pre!
I think the crosswords app is one of the better made apps so far, though I suck at crosswords, ha.
I just got my pre two days ago...absolutely love it! Thanks for the updates Derek.
Anyone else see the type-O in this article LOL! The type-o is the review over the glow stick app to "like the way"...
type-O? Is there blood involved. Or did you mean typo? How ironic. (;-)}
We finally passed the 100 apps barrier in our Spanish Pres!!!!
Cheers
JD
advanced bac calculator is not an update but a new app !
super super super psyched about crossword!! downloading the light version now to test.
Lunar Attack is a great game!! For the price everybody should try it.