Nice write-up of the making of (the marvellous) Trainyard, both in terms of polishing and marketing.

Tom on writing the Noticings Uploader - and making the code open-source.

"Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions is heading to iPhone and iPod Touch on 15th September." Uh-oh. I might end up giving it another crack. (It's clearly a great game, but very hard and even more unforgiving).

"In AR Monster, you use your iPhone's GPS system and camera to discover and battle more than 600 monsters hidden in the real world. By playing the game in different locations and pointing the handset in different directions, you'll be able to find new kinds of monsters." As is increasingly becoming my reaction to all things AR: "so what?"

Ooh. Turned-based multiplayer, from the looks of things, which would be ideal for a nice, long, slow, PBM-style game.

Fantastic. If you're like me, and use One Gmail Account To Rule Them All, but use Mail as your email client, you can only use the main email address to send from. This allows you to pick a from address, making your mailing lists work again, and allowing you to pick the From address on send.

Blimey, ReBirth, entirely ported to iPhone and on the App Store. Looks finickity, but it was loads of fun, and for $7... I might end up with that.

Hard to explain, but a must-watch; lovely spatial music sequencer/toy. (And: I miss Offworld :( )

Stanford's iPhone development course.

Oh boy. Espgaluda on the iPhone; authentic bullet-hell for your fingertips. I have a feeling I might end up with this.

EA Sports Active 2.0: for iPhone, Wii, and PS3 (along with centralized online hub). That's a really, really interesting lineup of products - especially considering that there's going to be peripherals for all of them - and slices through a casual-games/casual-exercise market.

"Today, we wanted to give you a heads-up about a new service now in development that will let players access the Auction House directly through the Armory website or Armory App for iPhone or iPod touch." And bingo, that's the killer out-of-world application for WOW players. (This is something I suggested in my talk at Develop last summer; glad to see Blizzard do the obvious. Which I really ought to put online).

"Trails is the first GPS iPhone app that allows you to record, import and export tracks onto your iPhone." Also, it's not *too* battery intensive, has a really well thought-out UI, and wasn't too expensive. Very nice.

"A game with almost no visual component, but one that turns the tilt, shake, touch, and even GPS location of an iPhone into “knobs” on a radio that can be used to “tune in” to conversations taking place elsewhere in the timestream... literally a radio that listens to the future. As players learn how to navigate a landscape they cannot see but only hear, their powers expand to include the capture and release of key audible moments, which they will use to change the future AND unravel a mystery that spans more than a hundred years." This is the high concept pitch, but I'm excited to see how it turns out. Interactive audio drama seems a great fit for the device.

Really rather good, from what I've read so far, especially for prototyping.

"Briefs is a framework for packaging concept screens & control schemes that run live on the iPhone and iPod Touch. This allows you to experience the feel of your concept without the expense of development." Ooh.

Words With Friends: it's like Scrabulous, but on your iPhone, with push notification. There is little more that needs to be said, other than that it's a very good implementation with some nice UI detail.

"Apple thinks this is good enough. And that’s the scariest part of all." Marco explains why.

"So there seems to have developed a general consensus in the iPhone development community that if you’re planning to develop a sprite-based game, the cocos2d-iphone framework that we mentioned waaaaaay back when and a bit later on is the way to go. So since we’re planning on doing exactly that, here’s a roundup of resources for your cocos2d development!"

"Apple is creating an ecosystem of the kind of customers I don’t want. With the ridiculous approval process leaving bugfixes to take over a week to show up, with prices being driven down to nothing by farting apps… it just feels hostile to me. While I have plenty of great customers who have been raving about the app, all it takes is one little issue and it all comes crashing down." Sad, really.

Jason Rohrer has a new puzzle game out, designed primarily for iPhone but also available for OSX/Windows/Linux as ever. The UI is very thoughtful, for something finger-driven; the game mechanic is complex, but I think I'll get a handl eon it soon. I hope.

This is exactly the kind of thing I was talking about around a year ago - the value of bespoke, beautiful UI to interact with mundane code; people aren't just paying for software here, they're paying for interaction design.

John Carmack writes about porting Wolfenstein 3D to the iPhone - there's a lot in here that's very interesting, and some smart notes on design and interface choices; there's also some Carmack Being Carmack. Still, he's an impressive developer, and it's nie to see someone being so open at development, especially for the iPhone

"One of board gaming's most prolific and revered designers, Reiner Knizia, is actively searching for iPhone devs to help bring his games to the iPhone, says industry site boardgamenews." Oooooooooh. That is all.

Gosh, that looks lovely - and bonus points for a preview video that films the iPhone, showing the way fingers work on its surface, rather than just showing the results of interactions.

"I'm sorry to say that Demiforce is canceling plans for Onyx." This is a real shame, because I was somewhat excited that Demiforce wasn't just ramping up for "another game", and was instead building something that might benefit the platform. As it is: oh well. Those Apple T&Cs are killer, it seems.

"The game's hook is quite simple: upper-case Helvetica words fall slowly from the top of the screen, and you drag a missing letter from each to its properly kerned spot. The closer you are and the faster you manually drop the word, the better you do. Miss your goal by an inch and you lose a life... errr, ligature, which you can gain back by being right on the spot." Hah! Must try that.

Pinball Dreams is out on the Phone/Touch? Oh wow.

"If 2009 is going to see the emergence of high-quality browser-based games, then 2009 is going to be the year of Unity. It has: lots of powerful features; iPhone support; Wii publishing; a developing community; quality developers using it; and an upcoming upcoming PC version. In short, it is about to make a major splash. I feel compelled to jump in with it — the indie license is cheaper than the Flash IDE."

"I’m a web developer at heart, and a scripting language user by preference. Coding for the iPhone doesn’t feel as fluid in text handling or HTTP access as the environments I’m used to. Fortunately I’ve been able to find some fantastic open-source libraries and wrappers that make up the difference. Here are my favourites so far:" A useful - and interesting - set of links from Matt B.

"Drop7 combines the easy fun of casual drop-and-break games with the smart, brain-stretching enjoyment of simple number puzzles." Chain Factor as-was hits the iPhone. It's very, very good. It's also $0.99 or 59p right now, so you should buy it.

"Teams from around the globe have analyzed figures and come up with a secret formula for App Store success. I share these findings today, ABSOLUTELY FREE. Success is made up of: a FLASHLIGHT.... and DIRTY WET FART SOUNDS!!! Tweetie is the only app that bundles together these two incredible features FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME." Amazing. I must get this!

"Over the past few months we’ve had to create a few iPhone mock ups for presentations... Since we know we’ll be doing more of this, we created our own Photoshop file that has a fairly comprehensive library of assets – all fully editable." Could be useful.

Nothing out of the ordinary, but the take-on-release tip is a good one, and I'll be checking out Pano.

This appears to be some kind of 3D-tinged mind-mapping software; Flatblack were behind the rotoscoped look of Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly; this is clearly an interesting digression for them.

Yes, it's an app about weight loss. But: the UI is superb in its touchability and suitability for task at hand, and the reporting functionality is solid (and looks like it'll get much better).

Very beautiful, and, so far, very sensible implementation of touch interactions. Looking forward to playing much more of this over the holidays.

Lovely - and, amazingly, free - shmup for the iPhone. Move the ship up/down with the direction of your finger; drag over enemies to lock; release to fire. Pretty, fast, and not crippled despite your finger being in the way.

"...it's another little example of the way the ipod/iphone is such an attention-demanding device. It doesn't orient to you, it orients to itself." Yes. This is a problem.

"A favorite on college Unix systems in the early to mid-1980s, Rogue popularized the dungeon crawling computer game dating back from 1980 (and spawned entire class of derivatives known collectively as "roguelikes"). gandreas software now presents the classic for the iPhone/iPod Touch." Oh god, Rogue for the iPhone. Unusual gestural interface, but it's a perfect port, and brings back memories of being 7 all over again. Needless to say, I installed it immediately.

"Demeter quit his bank job two months ago and has launched a company, Demiforce, to develop more electronic games. Now he has a salaried staff, five games in development and two coming out by Christmas, including a spinoff to "Trism" called "Trismology."" I hope his success continues; scaling up always seems scary, but Trism was - and is - superb.

"Images don't automatically attach to emails. I hope you and your husband can work things out though." Oh dear.

Course notes from Stanford's Cocoa programming course.

"The touch screen method of controlling the ship brings this fact out into startling clarity and suddenly your perspective shifts like you've been staring at a poster of messy green and red ducks in a row and suddenly you can see the fricking sailboat for the love of god, YES! FINALLY!" Simon explains why rRootage on the iPhone makes sense. (It does: your finger both controls the ship and obscures it, so your finger _becomes_ the ship, and now you're just guiding your finger through the bullets).

Five different apps that share data between your Mac and your iPhone in a variety of potentially useful ways.

Some interesting user research, especially when it comes to understandings of the device, and perceptions of the App Store. It's amazing how people's attitude to price changes when you've got a small screen, a market saturated with cheap goods, and a product that isn't in a box.

"Developing this site was very different from any other project I’ve worked on; there seems to be a new set of frontend rules for developing high-end mobile sites. A lot of the current best practices get thrown out the window in the quest for minimum page weight and fastest load times over slow celluar connections. Here are a few of the lessons we learned (sometimes painfully) while developing this site." Really excellent article from code.flickr on building their new mobile/iPhone site.

"Developed by Peter Chilvers, in collaboration with Eno, the app is described as, “Part instrument, part composition and part artwork…” The idea is that anybody can play with Bloom and coax gentle melodies and ambient soundscapes out of their iPhone."

"Cosmovox is a unique and innovative musical instrument for the iPhone and iPod touch." Nearly a theremin. Nearly.

Now the NDA is gone, this looks like a good starting point. Honest.

Cultured Code do a large behind-the-scenes look at how they designed their Things iPhone UI. Lots of detail, lots of working shown. Even if you don't agree with the choices they made, it's excellent to see somebody sharing at this level of detail.

"Apple’s current practice of rejecting certain applications at the final hurdle - submission to the App Store - is disastrous for investor confidence. Developers are investing time and resources in the App Store marketplace and, if developers aren’t confident, they won’t invest in it." Fraser Speirs hits the nail on the head over the problems with the current App Store model.

Fingerboarding game for the iPod; really delightful, and clearly a fun thing to do with your fingers. Also: it makes sense to play this with the device on a flat surface, which is unusual for the iPod games released to date.

"The mouse is a continuous pointing device; the finger is discontinuous. That’s a profound difference that I wish I were able to clearly understand and explain." PPK on how MobileSafari responds to Javascript's mouse actions.

"The application works by assuming a constant viewing angle (35-45 degrees), typical for when the device is placed on a tabletop. The 3d scene’s perspective is warped using anamorphosis..." Awesome.

"iPhon.fr posts (via Gizmodo) screenshots of what claim to be the upcoming Nike+ running application for iPhone." Pretty, and with a greater emphasis on The Graph. Want.

A Z-Code interpreter for the iPhone. Fantastic. If you have an iPhone: get this, and get Spider And Web. My work here is done.

"The red icon on your iPhone or iPod touch always reminds you (and others when you show it to them) that you were able to afford this. It’s a work of art with no hidden function at all."

A good article, until the last sentence which made me VERY ANGRY.

Stripped-down - not a fully-featured feedreader, more a window on your feeds for when you're out. I like "window" metaphors for mobile tools.

"I don't think iPhone brings anything new to the table. It has a great user experience, but that's all." This is the problem with corporate IT condensed into a single quotation.

"Trism uses the touchscreen to manipulate the triangles on the screen, but in a really smart twist, the blocks will fall down in a different way, depending on which direction you're tilting the phone". Wonderful. Watch the video, and try not to grin.

'"The list of problems seemed endless. At the end of the demo, Jobs fixed the dozen or so people in the room with a level stare and said, "We don't have a product yet."'

'The technology is called "tactile response," and it allows you to do things like dial a phone number without staring at your screen like a shit-chucking ape.' This is funny. It may also be true.

"That’s what it comes down to, again, after all this time: Regular phone buyers are Windows users, trying to get value for their buck..." true - but regular phone buyers also tend to be iPod buyers.