Network World on Applications

World Wiki Plus for iPhone

2008-11-29T00:00:00Z

Apple's App Store lately bears a curious resemblance to the American book trade of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. At the time, Congress hadn't gotten around yet to settling copyright law. Often, printers would poach each other's works. Royalties existed in theory rather than practice. Writers, as always, were routinely cheated of their earnings. Noah Webster, the dictionary man, fought for years against publishers who made a fortune on his Blue Back Spellers while he struggled to eke out a living.

WriteRoom for iPhone

2008-11-28T00:00:00Z

I’m sure you’ve been in a store and had the idea of a lifetime. You frantically search around you for a slip of paper to jot it down, but you can’t find anything. You turn to your iPhone, but you just can’t bring yourself to use the included Notes app because of its lack of customizability and syncing. Sighing heavily, you resign yet another world-changing idea to the possibility of remaining trapped within the echoing corridors of your mind.

MindNode Pro 1.0.3

2008-11-28T00:00:00Z

The use of mind mapping software is becoming increasingly common in corporate America, but who wants to fork out hundreds of dollars just to create these tangled bubble diagrams at home? Thankfully, you don't have to. At less than $20, Markus Müller's MindNode Pro 1.0.3, is a fun, colorful, and simple-to-use application with a learning curve so shallow even your boss could figure it out.

WriteRoom 2.3

2008-11-28T00:00:00Z

WriteRoom is what TV chef Alton Brown would call a "unitasker": It's a tool designed for only one function. But while Brown frowns on such tools in the kitchen, even the toughest critics would be hard pressed to find fault with WriteRoom. When it comes to helping you write without distractions, no program does better than this one-job wonder.

Sharp to team with Italy's Enel on solar power

Martyn Williams — 2008-11-27T00:00:00Z

Sharp and Italian electricity utility Enel plan to set up a number of solar-power plants in the coming years and are also discussing joing production of solar cells, Sharp said Thursday.

The Portlet Packet: A quickstart guide to Portlet 2.0

2008-11-26T00:00:00Z

A 3-for-1 introduction to portlets-based development, starting with this beginner's guide to portlets and portal development with Portlet 2.0. Also see: Inter-portlet communication with Dojo and Inter-portlet communication with Portlet 2.0.

Beta Watch: Juice, EveryScape, Shoeboxed

2008-11-26T00:00:00Z

Juice: Research Assistance in Firefox

Google admits to violating iPhone development terms

2008-11-26T00:00:00Z

Google's voice search function on the latest version of its Google Mobile search app is pretty slickly implemented: it knows when you put it up to your ear, prompts you to speak, and then searches when you move it away from your ear. No other application has leveraged that same functionality yet, and--as it turns out--for good reason: the part of the iPhone's code that controls that capability is undocumented by Apple.

rRootage for iPhone

2008-11-26T00:00:00Z

Japanese developer Kenta Cho has developed a reputation for distillation. Not of the alcohol kind, but rather, for taking the essence of the shmup--the shoot 'em up--and distilling it to purity by replacing all of the eye candy in the average shooter with abstract geometric shapes and objects. It also helps that Cho's games are free. His work is a favorite of "old school" gamers and others who love unusual-looking games. And his work--originating on Windows--has been translated to other platforms, including Mac OS X. So it shouldn't be any surprise that it's ended up on the iPhone and iPod touch, in the form of rRootage thanks to the efforts of Lazrhog Games.

SAP user group CEO leaves organization

2008-11-26T00:00:00Z

Steve Strout, CEO of the Americas SAP Users Group (ASUG), is no longer with the organization, a spokeswoman said Wednesday.