apps

Let's be honest: Your New Year's Eve plans suck.

Ringing in 2011 with your friends and family is just a lame substitution for what you really want to be doing: watching the ball drop live in Times Square while being entertained by the hottest recording artists and celebrities.

Well, this year you are in luck as there is now an official Times Square Ball App for your Apple or Android-powered handheld device!

Avert your eyes from your first glimpses of your 6 month old nephew, block out the stories of your brother-in-law's second tour of duty in Afghanistan with earbuds, and throw the glass of champagne your grandmother served you in her finest crystal to the floor: You'll need all your senses to leave your sad existence in Missoula, Montana behind and travel 2,300 miles in an instant by fully engaging yourself in the hottest NYE party in NYC with the help of cellular technology!

Don't have a smartphone?  With only 4 days left until Christmas, there's never been a better time to ask your parents that you hate to buy you one for the holidays.  Then upon opening and activating your device, download the new Times Square Ball App immediately!

Your life is unimportant but that doesn't mean your New Year's Eve has to be.  Get reasonably close to the actual fun no matter where you are in this sad, dead world… with the Times Square Ball App!

Happy New Years from the only good city in the world… New York City.

Oh, and by the way, you're welcome.  We know this is possibly the greatest thing that has ever happened for you.

[via Mashable]

Mashable reports that the legendary smartphone game Angry Birds has been downloaded over 42 million times.  Forty… two… million.

Even more amazing though is that it earns over a $1 million a month in advertising revenue.  That's good news for all of you Angry Birds fans out there: Every time you play Angry Birds, you're helping the economy.

But we can help the economy more.

WolframAlpha says the current US deficit is $1.3 trillion.  So, if everyone just plays 11,000 times more Angry Birds, Rovio — the company that makes Angry Birds — could raise enough money to erase the deficit in one year!

Now, unfortunately, Rovio is a Finland-based company …which could pose a problem.  Not to mention that there's no reason for a privately-owned company to give 100% of their earnings to the government.  But those are just small kinks that we can surely work out.

For now, just go start playing even more Angry Birds.  For America's sake!

Plus, they've got overpriced apps.

[via Geekologie]

I hate going to the bank…  The lines, the tellers, the fact that I am broke.

So I'm happy to see that earlier this month Chase Bank [not my bank] began offering an iPhone app [not my phone] that allows people to deposit checks simply by snapping a picture of the front and back of their signed checks.

Um, has Chase heard of Adobe Photoshop?  Or as I like to call it "Adobe High-School-Kids-Committing-Check-Fraud."

Plus there are other implications.  Like when you get drunk and try to cash a picture of your ass at four in the morning.  Or when you accidentally forward Chase that picture of your dong you keep on your phone "for the ladies."  Or when you have to serve 18 months probation for committing check fraud.

I have a better idea: Let's just get rid of checks all together.  We live in modern times for heck's sake.

I know it would make your grandmother's trip to the Piggly Wiggly slightly more nerve-racking, but bitch needs to get direct deposit and a check card!

Flojuggler is "an application designed to track the menstrual cycles of multiple women."

Why would you want to do that?  Well, Flojuggler can think of many reasons which I've simplified into these bullet points:

• You're sleazy enough to track women's periods, yet having sex with a woman who is on her period disturbs you for some reason
• You coach a woman's soccer team
• You want to follow the menstrual cycles of your younger sisters

If those reasons aren't reason enough, consider this added bonus: Your new pick up line can be, "Wait?  You're on the rag?  Give me one second while I enter that info into the Flojuggler app on my iPhone so I can track your menstrual cycle."

Oh!  And don't forget the charming follow up questions "How long is your cycle?" and the always popular "How long do you bleed for?"

Not sure if Flojuggler is right for you?  Go watch the "demo video" and you'll immediately realize the only thing worse than the kind of guy who would actually use this app is the kind of guy who created it.

Tap Tap Revenge, a popular Guitar Hero-style game for the iPhone app store, has just released a Nickelback version of the game.

Here's how Mashable reported on the release.  See if you notice anything suspicious about this story:

Tapulous…has just launched Nickelback Revenge, the latest addition to its popular Tap Tap Revenge franchise.

The app…includes eleven of the band?s most popular songs.

[The game] is compatible with iOS 4 so all new iPhone 4 owners who also like Nickelback can rock out with no worries. [...]

Nickelback Revenge is $4.99 and available now.

Did you spot it?  Did you see what's wrong?!

That's right!  $4.99 is way too cheap for a Nickelback iPhone game!  Go grab it now before they realize what they've done and jack up the price!

First of all, if you drag your mouse, the cat heads on Meowmania spin.  That alone is a stroke of genius.

Secondly, Meowmania is available as an app in the iPhone App Store which immediately makes me want to curse my Android to hell.

Thirdly, I've been running all over this god forsaken city kicking cats to make them meow.  Now it's just a mouse click away.  This'll open up a lot of free time for me to work on my other hobbies like apple-bobbing and using LSD.

And finally, it encompasses two of the things the Internet is best known for: wasting time and cats.

Verdict: Awesomeness.

I always figured Apple was up to no good, and here's proof.

"Want sex offenders to be able to find you no matter where you go?  There's an app for that!"

And read that fine print: "This lite version shows details only for the closest offenders."

Oh, so there might be offenders flying in from all over the world to find me?!  Great!  Just great…

Ironically enough however, I was looking for this image on another site and I got this response: "Your search for sex offenders returned no results."

Not as easy as it looks finding those buggers!

[via Certified BS Technician]

Mashable reported today that a company called PointAbout has released a product called AppMakr that allows people to make their own iPhone application and have it ready to submit to the App Store in just 27 seconds.

How is it so easy?  Well, the application pulls content you already have from your website's RSS feeds.  Which begs the question, why do you need your website turned into an app when an iPhone can just go directly to your website?  But I digress.

Yes, an iPhone app can increase your "brand awareness" or "user engagement" or "buzz-a-whozzawhat" or "lame tech asshole," but the idea of creating an app in just 27 seconds is ridiculous.

You didn't spend 27 seconds creating your brand identity!  You didn't spend 27 second developing your website!  Rome wasn't built in 27 seconds!

Or maybe it was.  Maybe you came up with the idea for a blog in the first 27 seconds after you took a giant bong rip and then 27 seconds later your Tumblr account was set up and then the next day you got a book deal and now you live the good life: sitting around sipping Zinfandels in fancy wine cafes!

Not White Zinfandels!  The real kind!

And here I am, jealous as a mule.  (Mules are also very jealous.)

So maybe this is awesome.  How should I know?  I was born in the '70s.

Mashable reports that the Google Mobile App, a cell phone app that can use voice recognition technology to allow users to search Google by speaking their request instead of typing it, now offers voice search in Chinese as well!

It's a big development, um, they think.  They're not quite positive yet.  From Mashable:

"[Mandarin Chinese is] the first language, other than English, that the Google Mobile App can supposedly decipher, though we currently have no way to test how accurate it is."

No way to test how accurate it is?  By some estimations, 1.6 billion people speak Chinese.  That's nearly a quarter of all people on the planet!

Mashable, I realize you don't have the reporting standards of the New York Times, but at least have some truth in your blogging.  Just say, "We are currently too lazy and ethnocentric to run down to Chinatown and check this out.  Plus the smell of raw seafood makes us sick.  Though I am planning on taking the Chinatown bus up to LA next week.  Maybe I can sort all this out then."