Here's how it works: you snap a picture of a mouth—yours, your girlfriend's, or just a photo from a magazine—which iLingual then analyzes and converts for animation. Then, you choose a phrase from the app's 400-strong library, hold your iPhone over your mouth and there, you sort speak French, German or a little bit of Arabic, with a disconcertingly segmented, animated pair of lips. Félicitations!

This really shouldn't be more useful than a standard prerecorded phrasebook, but it definitely is. Nobody likes tourists, and the genius of iLingual is that by using it, you're making fun of yourself; you're giving people something—a small amount of your dignity, or if you're lucky, a laugh—in exchange for their help. iLingual is a sponsored app, so it's completely free. [iTunes]

If you hate the gallery format, click here.

All pricing shown is with a new 2-year contract, and some deals may be temporary.

AT&T

iPhone 3GS
The iPhone 3GS is the best overall smartphone you can buy. It's really that simple. Best user interface, best internet, best apps, best media support—the list goes on. Okay, not the best network, but nothing's perfect. $199

BlackBerry Bold 9700
I miss the original BlackBerry Bold's king-sized keyboard, but the Bold 9700 squeezes the best of the BlackBerry for CEOs into an impressively tight form factor—faux leather back included—making it very possibly the best BlackBerry you can buy. $10

Bonus: Nokia e71x
It's free, and an actually good smartphone—my favorite Nokia phone on the planet. Free

Verizon

Droid
It's a terminator. A huge, disgustingly high-res screen, Batman-worthy industrial design, and the full power of Android 2.0 make it the best phone on Verizon—and the fact that it's running on arguably the best network in the US make it the second best smartphone you can buy, period. $150

BlackBerry Tour
Sure, it's notorious for trackball problems and it's missing Wi-Fi, but this is the BlackBerry of choice for email warriors if they're not on AT&T or T-Mobile—and it sure as hell beats anything running Windows Mobile. $50

Bonus: Droid Eris
If you're desperate to save $100 over the Droid, the Droid Eris will run Android 2.0 soon enough, and is smoother, smaller, and friendlier, if a little blander. $100

Sprint

Palm Pre
The Pre offers one of the best user experiences of any smartphone with Palm's webOS, and it's probably the best phone on Sprint, hardware build issues and comparatively dinky App Catalog aside. $80

HTC Hero
The best Android phone not running Android 2.0, HTC's Sense UI makes the sometimes confusing Android interface more digestible and has a few nifty tricks of its own, like integrated social networking. $100

Bonus: There is none. The Pixi's close ($25), but the fact that you can get the Pre for nearly as cheap undercuts a lot of the value, as much as we like the design and form factor.

T-Mobile

Motorola Cliq
Motorola's other Android phone is gussied up with Blur, a custom interface that's bright and friendly, with widgets for keeping track of everything happening on your social network. It's our favorite Android phone on T-Mobile. $100

Unlocked iPhone
No, I'm not kidding. A jailbroken and unlocked iPhone, even without 3G powers, is the second best smartphone you can use on T-Mobile.

Bonus: BlackBerry Bold 9700
The BlackBerry Bold 9700 is the first BlackBerry with 3G on T-Mobile, which is reason enough, really, but it's good the reasons listed above, too. $130

Phil Schiller Talks App Approval, Avoids Saying Much of Anything

There are lots of legitimate concerns about Apple's app approval (app!) policy, and in a recent profile in Business Week, Senior VP Phil Schiller goes out of his way to not respond to any of them. Yes, we understand that there are legitimate reasons for having an extensive approval process, and we even appreciate the complication-free results. But Schiller neglected to respond to any of the real problems with the process, like, say, the Google Voice ban. We're always interested to hear an Apple higher-up discuss the App Store, but we prefer it when something's actually said. [Business Week]

Microsoft Reiterates Smackdown on Pirate Xbox Users

In response to Microsoft's mass banning of Xbox Live users with pirate leanings, said pirates are contemplating hitting them with a class-action lawsuit—but Microsoft doesn't seem even a little bit scared. MS's response:

Piracy is illegal and modifying an Xbox 360 is a violation of the Xbox Live Terms of Use. Microsoft is well within its legal rights to ban these users from Xbox Live.

Translation: Hey, you guys down there, you piratey types? Cute lawsuit and all, but you ain't got a chance in hell of winning this.

This winds up in Remainders because the lawsuit is still, as of now, speculative—no such suit has actually been filed. Still, that's about as big an ice burn as you're likely to see from the big MS. [Kotaku]

iPhone Magnification Camera Mod Came From the Recycle Bin

Bummed about the iPhone's lack of zoom? Bummed enough to attach the lid from a pickle jar to the back of your iPhone? Here's a tutorial for how to create a multi-zoom add-on with items found in your recycle bin and a few lenses pried off deceased cameras. It's ungainly as hell, and I'm not totally sure the iPhone's camera is good enough to be worth such effort ugliness, but it does seem like it would work and it even has an external flash. And, of course, we've seen much dumber mods before. [Instructables via Engadget]

Another Anonymous Netbook/Sleeping Aid Hits Wireless Carrier

Another day, another netbook. AT&T brings the LG X120 10.1-incher Stateside to be sold, subsidized of course, through Radioshack.com and the obviously so much more hip brick and mortar version, The Shack. It'll be sold for $180 with a 2-year contract, which requires a $60 per month data charge. As far as specs, it's got a 160GB hard drive, 1GB memory, a 1.6GHz Atom and Windows XP, and in case of emergency will function as a sleeping aid so potent you might never wake up. What I'm saying is, it's in Remainders because seriously you guys, snore. [Engadget]

What you're seeing here is really the combination of two apps, standby jailbreak justifier and essential iPhone app Backgrounder, which lets your designate any app to run in the background, and new task switcher interface called Multifl0w. (There are other, more basic task switchers already, the most widespread being Kirikae) The new combo feels like magic: It's a little bit Android, a lotta bit Pre, and more importantly, an obvious improvement, at least on the speedier 3GS.

Granted, anyone who's used background knows that for the sake of your battery, you have to be careful how many apps you open, and how many you leave running. Honestly though? Every other smartphone manufacturer trusts their users to mind their own damn processes, which seems to work out pretty well. So, uh, when will we get this by default? OS 4.0? 5.0? Shut up, blogger?

You can give it a try now in jailbreak app manager Rock, and Cydia's on its way. Sadly, it's only free on a trial basis, after which it'll cost your five dollars. Backgrounder and Kirikae, though? They're still free, in all sense of the word. [MultiFl0w--Thanks, William!]

That the iPhone is a massive source of online traffic isn't a surprise—that's been apparent since the week it launched. What's interesting here is Android's rise, which is dramatically quickening, already accounting for a fifth of mobile traffic in the US, when the real marketing push for the OS, starting with the MyTouch ads and the massive Droid launch, is only recently starting in earnest. What is a surprise, or at the very least a Sad Thing, is how poorly Palm is faring. Their tiny sliver of market share might seem understandable since they really only had one new phone for the duration of the survey, but this phone was supposed to be their savior; in the year since it was introduced, their mobile traffic actually fell.
Google and Apple's stark gain in the stats, collected by mobile advertising firm AdMob, is a little less spectacular worldwide, mainly because Symbian's established, but waning, 40% smartphone market share helps it snatch about 25% of mobile web traffic. Still though, two things are clear: Android and the iPhone are who mobile web developers are going to have to cater to, and WebKit, which Symbian uses in its browser too, is basically it.

Anyway, how about a bonus chart! Ever wondered how common the different Android handsets are, which is most popular, and which don't register? Well hello, extra pie:

The G1 is the predictable star here, but the Droid is exploding. [AdMob via Techcrunch]

[Engadget]

This 2.2-inch clamshell aberration—technically the Apple Q300 Ultra—costs around $70, which is $70 too much. [Shanzai]

It only affects those who have installed SSH and not changed the default password. To fix: go into Cydia install the MobileTerminal app, and use the passwd command to change the default from "alpine", to something a little more secure. [Sophos and BBC]

This worm attacks IP ranges from a larger range of ISPs, including UPC (Netherlands), Optus (Australia), and T-Mobile (Many). When an infected device is hooked up to a WiFi connection, the worm can spread more quickly to more IP addresses than on a typical 3G connection. One symptom noted by security.nl is that battery life is very, very short when the device is connected to WiFi, because the worm is generating so much network activity

To view as a single page, click here

Voices: There are a few voice modulation apps on the shelves of the App Store, but none has captured Jesus' heart like Voices:

Retro tape recorder and microphone, cute icons, simple touch interface, and sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and email, so you can spook everyone with that infernal Reverse Voice effect. For $1, it's impossible to resist.

Zosh: Signing things over email: a thing that is dumb. Zosh: a thing that makes that process much easier.

Zosh is a $3 app that allows you to sign attached documents on your iPhone. Basically, you forward the emailed document to Zosh from the iPhone's mail app, then you open the Zosh app to sign it (plus you can add a date and stuff).

I especially like this one because it's not just a good way to sign documents on the iPhone, it's a good way to sign documents in general. I mean seriously, who wants to scan their signature, or jitter one out in MS paint? One catch: it only supports PDFs for now, so convert or die.

CatPaint: Negative space, as defined in the eminent McFairlyshire Encyclopedia of Artistic Principles (1904): An area, perimeter or measurable expanse that lacks cats. And one of the first thing they teach to you any good art school is to fill it up, with cats. Facts! Enter CatPaint:

Cats can be added to preexisting photos or cat-scarce shots from the iPhone's camera, and either saved to your camera roll or sent via email. Using it takes a while to get used to: Once you've selected a cat from the app's animal palette and set the slider for size, each tap on the photo instantly splashes a new cat at the point of contact, which can't be edited, save for a temperamental shake-to-delete function.

It is the best thing, this app. A dollar.

Knocking: Live Pic Sharing: Uses server-side galleries to let you view photos in sync with other people, which you can send or flip through by "knocking." Ideal scenario: You're talking to your friend over the phone, you want to show him a gallery of pictures, you tell him to jump onto Knocking, and suddenly you're in control of his viewing experience. It pretty much works like that. Free.

Blower: Real Air: Can you guess what this one does? Really, no? Then you're probably a good candidate for spending money on it. For what it's worth—something?—Blower explores the iPhone's absurd novelty potential in a completely new way. From the reviews, a perfect description: "It feels like an ant blowing on you."

Call of Duty: The control scheme isn't perfect, and the price ($10) is high, but it's tough to argue with a Nazi Zombie shoot 'em up with the Call of Duty name. Protip: switch to the tilt controls, because the overlaid joystick is not good. (They never are!)

Magellan: It's a late entrant into a crowded field, and without extensive testing it's hard to recommend plunking down for Magellan RoadMate's $80 introductory price. That said, for Magellan devotees, which probably exist somewhere, RoadMate is great news.

FunMail: MMSes are a bit of a conundrum. Like, it's great that you can send pictures and sounds and all, but phones—even the iPhone—aren't exactly the best tools for creating media, so you usually end up sending some pretty basic stuff: pictures of puppies, brief voice recordings, hot nudez, etc. FunMail takes whatever you type and converts it into an MMS-able image, generally with some kind of punny adornment. Call someone an ass, and there's a picture of a donkey. Say you want to get coffee, and your recipient gets your message overlaid on a picture of a mug. It's earnestly cheesy and a lot of the images look like clipart, but this isn't always a bad thing. FunMail works over MMS, email or Facebook, and it's free.

Fit or Fugly: Rounding out our cr-appier selections for the week, an app that purports to measure your beauty according to some kind of mathematical equation. It's not a good way to actually tell if someone is attractive, nor is it a particularly well-executed app. It is, however, a good excuse to tell your friends that their faces are asymmetrical, which evokes surprisingly intense responses. Try it! (The face thing, not necessarily the app.)

Google Earth 2.0: You can create and store your own customized maps in the desktop version of Google Maps, and save them to your account—this is great for keeping running routes, sharing driving directions and the like. You can view them in the new version of Google Earth for the iPhone now, which is useful, and also sort of hilarious, since you can't even access them in the official Google Maps app. Sound silly? Welcome to the iPhone, y'all!

Konami Apps: Whooooole bunch good stuff discounted to $1 for a few weeks, including: Field Prowlers, Frogger, Metal Gear Solid Touch, Silent Hill: The Escape, Silent Scope, Krazy Kart Racing, DanceDanceRevolution S, DanceDanceRevolution S+ -Power Pros Touch. Decent stuff to take a look at, with a few gems—especially MGS:T.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Is it just what they're showing us? A Flo TV app, that requires some kind of accessory to tune into broadcasts? That's possible, but given how well the iPhone can stream video over 3G, it'd be a hard sell, even with Flo TV's cable-like channel selection. It would also help if said accessory wasn't larger than the actual iPhone.

Or is it to foster excitement over the idea of native Flo TV hardware support in the iPhone, like in the HTC Imagio? Because that will never, ever happen. So again, why? [Electric Pig]

It's not Voice Candy, but Voices looks as good, if not better: Retro tape recorder and microphone, cute icons, simple touch interface, and sharing via Twitter, Facebook, and eMail, so you can spook everyone with that infernal Reverse Voice effect. For $1, it's impossible to resist.

[iTunes App Store—Thanks Juanlu and Lisa Bettany, who stars in the Voices' promo video]

Now that I think about it, most of the apps I pasted in this graphic are now in the iPhone in one form or another.

Are you still missing a favorite?

Stud/Dud and Single? are pretty much public record search engines repackaged in a neat app format. There's not much to making a search with either aside from entering a name (and any details that help narrow down the query) and you'll get partial results on the iPhone and the rest emailed. But if you want, you can see video guides of the search procedures here and here.

Stud or Dud

The idea behind Stud/Dud is that it parses public records and checks for stable address history, real estate ownership, business records, professional licenses, bankruptcies, criminal records and evictions in order to determine whether you've got a "stud" or a "dud" on your hands. I've unfortunately had more than my fair share of "duds" based on this app, but they were still lovely people. Except the guy who ran off with some knee high stockings of mine. I never did figure out what happened there.

Are They Really Single?

I thought that the things I found out through Stud/Dud were going to be as depressing as it gets, but Single? proved me wrong. The app checks for marriage, divorce, spousal and other domestic relationships and then determines the likelihood of the person still being in that relationship. I didn't really care about any former lovers being in relationships, but I still tossed a few names into the search to try it out. And found out that my high school sweetheart is married to his grandmother. Awkward shock aside, the app did say that it's "unlikely" right below the "wife" designation, but geez, that's quite an error to make. At least I really hope it's an error.

After that final mortifying search, I gave up. I didn't even want to enter the last ex-boyfriend's name since at the rate I was going he'd have four wives in three states and one would be his sister. But if you're braver than I and in the mood for some horror, the apps are $.99 each through the App Store and there are various charges if you want a detailed background history (addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc), but honestly I think this is a fun app that shouldn't be used for such creepy things. In other words: Please don't stalk anyone. [Stud/Dud and Single?]

Zosh is a $3 app that allows you to sign attached documents on your iPhone. Basically, you forward the emailed document to Zosh from the iPhone's mail app, then you open the Zosh app to sign it (plus you can add a date and stuff).

Testing the app, the signing process actually work pretty well. Maybe the neatest component of the interface is that the signature line auto tracks your finger, meaning that if your signature goes larger than the iPhone's screen, it'll just pan over.

However, there's one MASSIVE catch. You can only sign PDFs at the moment, not text files like .docs. For me, that's a dealbreaker (ladies), and hopefully one that will be remedied (through simple auto-conversion or something) in later versions. [Zosh]

Sometimes the best apps are the simplest, and CatPaint is nothing if not simple. Cats can be added to preexisting photos or cat-scarce shots from the iPhone's camera, and either saved to your camera roll or sent via email. Using it takes a while to get used to: Once you've selected a cat from the app's animal palette and set the slider for size, each tap on the photo instantly splashes a new cat at the point of contact, which can't be edited, save for a temperamental shake-to-delete function. But seriously, not the point:

See?!? A dollar. [iTunes via Macworld]

Only a concept now, but this charger-that's-also-a-iPhone-stand is easy enough that some Chinese company could quickly put out a solution in a few months. [Petit Invention via Into Mobile]

The HypnosEye throws up a few red flags right out of the gates: Instead of connecting to your iPod or iPhone's dock connector of video-out, it simply magnifies your screen, like your math teacher's old overhead projector. This means it'll project almost anything portable with a screen, which is fantastic! This also means that, since the only light source is the backlight on your device's screen—this thing isn't even powered—the image quality shown above is probably pretty close to accurate. Charming incapability: in!

The HypnosEye can be imported for about $80, which isn't a terrible deal, assuming you'll be doing most of your projecting in perfect blackness. Stuck inside a white-satin-lined coffin, buried unusually deep, at night? Get the HypnosEye! Happen to be on the dark side of the moon during at the beginning of its cycle, in a tent, with a projector screen handy? Get the HypnosEye! Etc. [Technabob]

The developers say that you can use it to "blow out candles, herbs, and refresh your skin during hot summer nights." I wonder how many birthdays you can go through before your speaker breaks from all the vibration. [iTunes App Store via Krapps]

You'll need to attack your old stethoscope with a pair of scissors to make it fit the $30 iStetho Adapter, but they'll provide full instructions. Once connected, the iStethoscope Pro app (iTunes link) "amplifies the signal and eliminates audio outside of what is important for diagnosis." Kinda crazy. [RidRx via The Undercover Scientist, MedGadget and CNET]

AT&T's 3G Network Sees 2,000% Increase Since iPhone 3G Release

In the wake of a big $65 million upgrade to its network here in the San Francisco Bay Area, AT&T revealed that the improvement was due to 3G usage being up 2,000% after the release of the iPhone 3G last year. That sounds like a crazy number for which the iPhone deserves all kinds of high fives, but it's really not surprising—how many AT&T 3G phones were there before the iPhone 3G, even? And of course 3G use across the board is up in crazy numbers, since smartphones have really started taking off in the last year or so—so to be honest, the number doesn't really mean all that much. Hence its ending up here in the sad pit of Remainders. [All Things D]

Droid Camera Fixed, Without Explanation?

The Motorola Droid camera is a serious problem. I can't compete with Matt's angry poetry on the subject, so here it is, clipped from his review:

The camera is complete garbage. It takes 10 years to start up, 2 to focus, and another 4 to actually take the goddamn picture. And there's no distinct visual feedback to let you know a photo's been snapped. And the photos suck. That pumpkin shot, in decent lighting, is as good as it gets. Like I said in the Android 2.0 review, I don't know if it's the hardware or the software, but it's inexcusably bad.

Yow. But users have spontaneously been reporting that the camera, all of a sudden, has stopped sucking—what's the deal? Apparently there was some kind of bug wherein a particular state of the clock (meaning, time of day) screws with the Droid's autofocusing, which sounds insane to me, but what do I know? Apparently it should work okay now, and while it's temporary, the incoming Dec. 11th bug fix should take care of things. [Electronista]

Genius Bar App Won't Help if Your iPhone Is Broken

Rumor has it that Apple is planning to add a Genius Bar app to the App Store (appappappapp) that will let you make appointments, track your place in line, and curse the world when you realize you can't use the app because your iPhone is broken, which is the whole reason you need to make the appointment in the first place. Catch 22 apps are the very best kind of apps. [TUAW]

Samsung Beats out Vizio for Top LCD Seller

I bet you've been waiting by your computer, eager to see who managed to eke out the top spot in the LCD sales wars this fiscal quarter. Will it be Vizio, the low-priced upstart who took the LCD world by storm? Or Samsung, the crafty veteran with the quality sets and sleek design? Looks like this quarter, Samsung took the prize—and it's in Remainders because honestly who cares, at all. [CrunchGear]

Dubbed Phonebooks, these neat little books combine with your iPhone to create a fun experience at every page turn. And while I rail against using iPhone apps for parenting purposes, this is an extraordinarily cute and age-appropriate way for your lil' one to play around with an iPhone. [Japan Trends via Dvice]

Looks nice in the screenshots, but remember that the $5 Star Wars Trench Run is one of those games that has special graphics features if you run it on the iPhone 3GS. You know, because everybody knows the Force is stronger in that one. [iTunes App Store]

Designed by giant human baby Ed Nash, above, Fit or Fugly (Fit: Brit., informal: SEXXXY) judges your attractiveness based on the proportions of your face, processed from a photo and a little user input—to peg exactly where your nose, ears, eyes and mouth are. Does it work? As a tool for determining objective beauty, possibly. As a tool for planting tiny, fertile seeds of doubt about your attractiveness in your subconscious (and others'!), yeah, sure. A dollar, and you look beautiful today. [iTunes via Cult of Mac]

The hole was conveniently cut directly above the crates of iPhones.

An unknown amount of burglars managed to walk away with roughly 2 million euros worth of iPhones. And while they're almost sure to make a decent buck off the black market sale, carrier Mobsistar has revealed that they have a list of all serial numbers from the caper and will be deactivating the phones accordingly.

In other words, don't buy an iPhone in a back alley of Belgium. [De Standaard via AppleInsider]

Luckily, manufacturer Rihanna is working on this $100 kitchen scale due out next year, complete with an iPod dock and 2W speaker (the speaker is hidden under the glass platform). Your iPod shows you the song while a black and white LCD displays the weights. I mean, does life get any better than this? [ADE via gizmag via UberGizmo]

Call of Duty World at War: Zombies replicates the best part of Treyarch's otherwise inferior Call of Duty game—Nazi Zombies—to the iPhone. It looks great. It sounds great. And parts of it, like the multiplayer over Wi-Fi, work great.

It doesn't feel great though. The controls suck. We're all used to the inherently mediocre virtual joystick, a pale translation of a three-dimensional control implement into a flat two-dimensional space, which here moves you backward and forward, and strafes left and right. Turning and looking up and down is both finicky and imprecise, accomplished by sliding your thumb in the direction you want to turn or look—a longer slide makes you turn faster and further. What's tricky, and tensely uncomfortable, is trying to turn while moving with the virtual joystick. It winds up being jerky and spinny, like your soldier had one two many peppermint schnappes before fighting the undead.

Even with the computer helping your sorry ass aim—a little too much, actually—it just doesn't work. Often, you'll try to turn by swiping your thumb and accidentally tap the button to aim down your sites, or fire, sending your bullets past the zombie, who proceeds to om-nom-nom on your brains. Knifing is still awesome though.

Update: There are two alternate control schemes—a dual joystick mode that confines the turning area to a second joystick, making it slightly more precise than the general corner area controls of the default layout (though it's still tricky), and an accelerometer mode, that's unwieldy, but more fun since you have to swing your whole phone around to aim. Still, it's hard to feel totally in control here.

But in the end, the lack of tight controls crushes the whole experience, which is otherwise a pitch-perfect translation, down to Activision planning to charge for add-on maps on top of the $10 you already paid for the game.

[iTunes]

Along with the custom maps, the update brings more languages and better performance. Anyone managed to get the update yet? [Google Lat Long Blog]

Debuting at $80 (and presumably climbing to $100 later), RoadMate recreates as much of the Magellan dedicated PND experience as possible, which means the interface is a full conversion—there's very little in the way of iPhone-ness here, even down to a replacement keyboard. In addition, it falls on the conservative side of the map storage debate, holding its data locally—great for when you might be in a bad service area, but not so great if you don't want to set aside 1.3GB of space for an app.

The rest of the feature list is appropriate to the price: spoken street names, simulated lane guidance, 3D landmarks, in-app music controls and address book integration are all there, as are a few newbies like a "Find Your Car" GPS function and a pedestrian mode, and a "OneTouch" menu, which is basically a panel of search shortcuts for stuff like pizza and nearby gas stations.

I can't pass judgment on this app without running it through its paces (which yes, we will do eventually) but it comes at an awkward time. While cheap apps have been nipping at the heels of more expensive, prestige brand apps for a few months now, Google's telegraphed their intention to nuke the hell out of everyone, someday, which can't be the best way to lead into a new product launch. RoadMate is available in the App Store now. [Magellan]

Word is that Apple has added a new layer to the approval process, called a static analysis tool. This particular static analysis tool is intended to scan for the use of private APIs in submitted apps, and flag them if it finds any. For quite a few people, evidently, this means that apps that were kosher a while ago are, with their next updates, very suddenly not. Time for a FORENSIC RECAP! From Craig Hockenberry, developer of Twitterrific, and Guy Who Noticed This Early:

To which John Gruber (Daring Fireball) knowingly responded:
So yeah, what the hell does any of this mean?

Apple gives developers a bunch of public application programming interface (APIs) which are essentially documented, permitted tools or calls that they can invoke in their apps. For example, Apple has an API for recording microphone input, which developers can use, and which Apple, by publishing them, has basically promised to keep intact and working. Private APIs are calls and features that only Apple uses, and which they don't really tell developers about. There could be a few reasons for this: either they specifically don't want developers to use them, for security or consistency reasons, or they're not finished and subject to change, which means that for devs to use them would be risky—their apps could just break with the next system update, since these private APIs are, in effect, volatile. Remember all those early jailbreak apps, before the App Store was open? Those were built using entirely private APIs, many of which became public later. Anyway!

There's always been an official ban on the use of private APIs, but Apple hadn't really been enforcing it to date, partly because it's just hard to tell sometimes—unless the private API is used in a terribly obvious way, finding them is a matter of taking to apps with a fine-toothed code-comb, which the current crew obviously can't do, and which machines—as in, software—would be good at. With these new static analysis tools, Apple has created a machine filter for apps that breach this rule.

Given that actually App Store policy hasn't changed, this shouldn't amount to anything more than better rule enforcement for app devs. Shouldn't. Introducing something automated like this, even if it's a "serious tool, not simplistic" as Gruber claims, is bound to end in tears. Congratulations, developers! Your next appeal against app rejection will be to a piece of software, which has no capacity to feel your pain. Devs: Let us know if you've run up against this thing in the comments, and if it was fair. [Twitt-ah]

Not only is it back and fully compliant with the SDK agreement, C64 is also up to 30% better than previous versions in terms of performance (battery life and smoother game play). The addition of International Soccer, International Basketball and International Tennis brings the total number of playable games up to 8, with Bruce Lee and others arriving in the 1.2 update set to arrive in mid December. C4 is available now in the app store for $5. [iTunes]

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Point Inside: Fact: stepping foot in a suburban mall can drain your vitality in a matter of seconds. And though I don't think a deep disdain for the concept of indoor shopping complexes and what they've done to the very fabric of the American town was the driving inspiration behind Point Inside, they're definitely onto something: With hundreds of mall maps that look a lot like those big directory signs, this app gets you in and out of your local mall as quickly as possible, all for free. Could use a few hundred more maps—some of my old tweenage haunts weren't there—but if yours is listed, PI is great.

Agile Messenger: I've always been a little leery of Agile Messenger, since it's usually priced at around $10, up there with the likes of Beejive, and it's a little ugly—though the multi-account and push features are more than adequate. For a few weeks, though, it's just two dollars. And they've just added a new feature called "Walk and Type," which overlays your text over a live camera view, so you never have to take your eyes off you AIM conversations as you walk down the street. In theory. In practice, you will still die. Ranked for feature-bloat audacity, and shitty late night joke/newspaper cartoon potential.

Full Browser: As with every alternative browser in the App Store, Full Browser isn't really its own browser, since it's still using Mobile Safari's WebKit renderer. That said, FB's added features are worthwhile: the tabbing system, which is more traditional and desktop-like than Safari's, makes up for its rough looks with efficiency, in-app email makes life ever-so-slightly faster if you spend most of your time browsing, the favorite sites speed dial is a mite faster than using Safari's favorites, and inline text search is just, well, useful. A dollar.

WhatsApp: First, let's try this: WhatsApp is like BlackBerry Messenger for the iPhone. Cool, right? If that doesn't mean anything to you, it's like an instant messaging app, tied to your number—not a screen name or PIN or anything—that integrates with your contacts. If you have the app, your friend has the app, and you're both in each others' phonebooks, you're ready to go. Push notifications make this even more like BBM, in that you don't have to keep the app open. Free for now, so GO GO GO.

PicTranslator: Translates text from photos, from whatever language you want. I love it because it fits nicely with my vision of what smartphones should be doing for us in the next few years, and it seems to work pretty well most of the time. I don't love it because results are much, much better on the 3GS—you're basically limited to signage with the 3G and 2G, because they can't focus on small text—and because your $2 only gets you one language. Still though, extremely neat stuff, as long as you're aware of the limitations. And now you are, so!

PocketBlu/FoxPop: From Universal and Fox, respectively, these are the new Blu-ray companion apps. PocketBlu, available now but not really compatible with much yet, is like an enhanced remote control for compatible titles, making navigating various BD Live features a bit more intuitive. It'll also stream bonus content to your handset over Wi-Fi, which is pretty cool. FoxPop, which isn't quite out yet, does things a little differently: It's like a Popup Video feed that plays back trivia, photos, video, and other content to supplement the film. Bonus cool feature: it figures out where you are in the DVD or Blu-ray by listening to the soundtrack, and matching it to a timeline. Both should be coming soon to select releases.

Navigon Traffic: $90 for a navigation app is feeling more and more expensive by the day, and $20 for the new traffic function doesn't feel like a steal either. That said, there are no monthly fees after that initial charge, the traffic data is crowdsourced and rich, and Navigon is one of the best nav options out there. Worth your consideration, if not your dollars.

Priceline Negotiator: Priceline's main gimmick/selling point has always been its instant bid feature, and it's well-suited to the iPhone. Give it a location, make your hotel room bid, and you know if you've got it or not pretty much that second.

ARGH: I somehow missed this one in yesterday's augmented reality app roundup, so here goes. ARGH cheesily superimposes ghosts over your 3GS's camera view, as if there were actually there. Upon seeing ARGH, most of your friends will groan and tell you you've wasted your money. But! Your senile grandmother will be legitimately spooked, your pet dog will be mildly confused, and your little cousin will probably chuckle a little. Two dollars.

iVIP: This thing is basically I Am Rich, except it offers (some?) services, in the form of memberships to various clubs and societies. It sounds a bit like a scam (A Cineworld membership? Really?) and the concept is inherently deplorable, but in separating a special, horrible kind of rich person from their dollars, iVIP is doing the world a service. $1000, or $450 for the "Blue" version, which is blue.

This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Well, for one, Nokia, whose smartphones have failed to penetrate at all in the US, despite massive popularity overseas, and whose Symbian OS is starting to look downright old. Manufacturers like LG and Motorola, who for the last year were depending mostly on the waning Windows Mobile 6.1, have had a rough time of it, while Palm, presumably included in the "Other" category, consolidated its line to one phone for the duration of 2009, which has done wonders for its image, but unfortunately not for its sales.

Interestingly enough, Apple and RIM are doing spectacularly well for similar reasons: both have appealed to mainstream consumers with new products—the marked-down iPhone 3G and cheap-but-decent BlackBerry Curve line, respectively—while pushing app stores as a selling point. And honestly, look around. Smartphones are decidedly a thing right now.

I'll be interested to see what happens next year, when Android's had a little time to spread its wings. It looks like Google helped buoy HTC a little bit this year, but Android phones are still a rare sight. [Ars]

Called iTunes Preview, you can now access any iTunes music page through your browser by selecting "Copy Link" and pasting it Firefox, Safari, IE, whatever you use.

At the moment, Apple isn't doing very much with iTunes Preview. Sure, you can view music (videos and other media not yet online), but to buy or preview anything, you're redirected into iTunes software. In that way, iTunes Preview really lives up (or down) to its humble name—it's a non-interactive preview of iTunes content for people who haven't loaded the software (as well as bloggers who'd just like to link a webpage rather than an app). But is it so crazy to imagine a day when Apple allows us to buy music free from the confines of their software?

Yes, yes it is. [iTunes Preview via AppleInsider]

YouTube's Going 1080p So That You Can Watch Silly Videos In High-Def

Unsatisfied with simple 720p, YouTube is going to a full HD experience with 1080p. They're about halfway through the process of re-encoding the current content, so it shouldn't be long before you can watch Rupe Murdoch rant in high-def. [CNET]

Yet Another "Virus" Attacks Unsecured Jailbroken Phones

The number of ridiculous iPhone viruses, worms and hacks is gradually growing as the number of idiots who refuse to change the default root passwords when running SSH on their jailbroken iPhones remains the same. Secure your iPhones already. Please.[BGR]

USB AM/FM Tuner Made By Company Who Hasn't Heard Of Internet Radio

This USB AM/FM tuner is useless without a computer, but if you've got a computer in front of you odds are good that you also have an Internet connection through which you can access most radio stations. And while it's lovely that it allows you to record broadcast content, it would be a bit more handy if the gadget also had some flash memory on board. [OhGizmo!]

Pirates Decorate Their MacBooks With Crossbones

MacBook decals appear to be turning into a trend as even pirates are getting into the game. Arrr, yo-ho-ho matey, or something like that. [Crunchgear]

True to their title, augmented reality apps add something to what you see, using a combination of camera, GPS, and sometimes, in the case of the iPhone 3GS, a compass. The result is something like a real-life heads-up display on your phone, and it's spectacular.

It's been a few months since Apple enabled AR apps in the iPhone's firmware, and as you might expect, there's been an explosion of new takes on the concept. Here are ten of the best:

Note: Most of these apps will work best with the iPhone 3GS, and some explicitly require it. It's worth checking into exactly what you lose without the compass before downloading. Also, here's the article in one page.

Layar: Layar was one of the first augmented reality mobile apps to hit any platform, so by the time it made the jump from Android to the iPhone it'd had some time to mature. Layar is an augmented reality framework, not a single purpose app—it's fed by a growing library of "layers," which range from Wikipedia to Flickr to apartment listings in your local town. Plus it's free, so it's a great way to see how the hell this augmented reality thing works in the first place.

Wikitude: Another straightforward overlay app, this one hovers little text bubbles over the locations of geotagged Wikipedia articles. What differentiates this from something like Layar is that through the app's website, Wikitude.me, you can add your own points of interest. Most of the data sets used by AR apps are broad and not that useful outside of large cities, so this is a good way to build your own hyperlocal augmented reality.

Robotvision: A location-based point-of-interest app like Layar or Wikitude, for contrarians. Why? Because it uses Bing local search, like a badass* OK? It's a nice change of pace if you're getting tired of browsing through local historical sites with Wikipedia, or watching local Twitterfiends broadcast their locations every eight minutes. A dollar.

*Person who prefers not to use Google. (You can use Google if you want, too.)

Nearest Subway: Overlays your camera's view with floating, labeled avatars of your nearest subway stations. This one's local to NY, though there are similar apps for other cities (Nearest Tube for London, Bionic Eye for Tokyo, etc). But it doesn't matter, because the experience of actually using this thing borders on sexual, especially if you're used to compass-less Google Maps. Two dollars.

Assassin FPS: Remember that old Kids in the Hall skit, where Mark sits back and pretends to crush everyone's heads with his fingers? This is that, except more modern, less funny and ever-so-slightly sinister. It's essentially an FPS HUD, gun included, superimposed onto real life. You know, so you can shoot your boss in the face because he's got coffee breath, or rocket-blast your wife's silly porcelain dog figurine collection, because you hate her so so so much and wish she would just die, that harpy. Healthy coping, for a dollar!

Pocket Universe: Pocket Universe is a mixed bag. It's not a camera overlay app, so in a way it's the least pure augmented reality app of the bunch. The effect, though, is the same: A compass-equipped iPhone 3GS can use Pocket Universe to display a labeled map of the cosmos matched to wherever it's pointed. It's a heavy-duty astronomy news and reference app in addition to the AR feature, which helps justify the $3 price.

cAR Locator: This concept has been around in one form or another since the advent of GPS in phones, probably because it's extremely simple to execute. Also: useful! Tag your car's location when you get out of it, then later, just point your camera at the parking lot to see your spot. Two dollars, which to be honest. is probably too much.

Yelp: Yelp is my go-to service for new local recommendations in the first place, but the addition of augmented reality adds a layer of whimsy to your typical "where can can a guy get a decent wax job and/or hamburger around here?" adventures. This one's secret—you've got to shake your phone to activate it. Free.

Urbanspoon: Like Yelp, except with an explicit, specific food focus. The augmented reality implementation is much slicker here too: tilt your iPhone down to switch to 2D map mode, and tilt it back up to switch to THE FUTURE. Free.

Junaio: Augmented reality on phones is still a fairly new concept, and most other apps fit a fairly simple template. Junaio is more ambitious, letting users construct 3D scenes in their cameras' viewfinders, place them on a map and share them with others as pictures or as part of explorable layers. The current implementation is kind of rough and the aesthetic is cartoonish, but Junaio captures the spirit of AR better than most. Free.

This week, Gizmodo is exploring the enhanced human future in a segment we call This Cyborg Life. It's about what happens when we treat our body less as a sacred object and more as what it is: Nature's ultimate machine.

While the concept is not new, this prototype is fully working and operational. Created by Jing Li and a team of researches at NASA's Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, the sensor is a multiple-channel silicon-based sensing chip integrated in micro-board with 64 nanosensors.

The low-cost, low-power system can detect minimal concentrations of ammonia, chlorine gas, and methane, showing the values in an iPhone application. It can automatically communicate the results with other cellphones or the Enterprise's computer using Wi-Fi or 3G, and order massive teleportation evacuations if needed. OK, not true. No teleportation yet, but we are getting there. [NASA]