The money transfer company made infamous by eBay has revamped their app to allow money transfers to happen easier than ever, by adding the "bump" technology feature according to InformationWeek . The feature in Version 2.0 of the Send Money app allows users to move funds quickly between PayPal accounts just by putting the two phones together.  The app also includes a split feature that lets users divide and reimburse each other for the cost of a meal, including tax and tip for up to 20 people. Then there is also a third feature named Collect Money, which lets a person request money from multiple people for collective purchases, like gifts from a group.  Additionally, gifts of money can also be sent immediately. PayPal mobile transactions jumped dramatically in 2009, up to $141 million in 2009 from $25 million in 2008, according to PayPal.  ABI Research predicted that $119 billion will be spent by consumers via their mobile phones through 2015. "PayPal Send Money lets consumers access their wallets through their phones," said Osama Bedier, PayPal VP of platform and emerging technology.  "Because with PayPal, the wallet lives in the cloud — the mobile phone is just one device customers can use to access it." Some other various features of the app include the capability to set up reminders for recurring payments and the ability to manage PayPal accounts.  For international exchanges, the app also includes a global currency calendar as well as 15 languages. The app does require a PayPal membership as well as a PIN or password for every transaction in an effort to prevent unauthorized usage.  The app is free through the App Store. With that, MaclLife readers, have you used PayPal’s app prior to this new update for all your transaction needs?  If not, will you now?  Feel free to leave comments below! Image courtesy of maldonjewellery.com  

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Section: iPhone / iPod touch / iPad , iPhone , iDevice Apps Today, Navigon announced another App Store first with MyRegion, a guidance app with in-app map purchases in the U.S. MyRegions has all of the great features from the North American version of MobileNavigator that made it the best navigation app on the App Store. But what makes MyRegion different is that you can buy the maps that you need, when you need them, from inside of the app. Navigon’s MyRegion splits North America into 4 regions: Eastern, Central and Western U.S. and Canada. If you’re planning on doing most of your driving in one or two of these regions, then the MyRegion app is a great choice. If instead you are on the border of two of these regions, or if you drive very long distances, then you are better off sticking with Navigon’s MobileNavigator for North America. Both are great choices with tons of features. MyRegion actually gets one of the Mobile Navigator 1.5 features early: MyRoutes. This feature offers more flexibility in navigation by presenting you with more than one route when you enter a destination. MobileNavigator users will have to wait a little longer for this update to hit the app store later this spring. Navigon currently has introductory pricing on all of this goodness. The app and first region are $5 off at $24.99, and each additional region is $2 off at $12.99. Plus, you can get Traffic Live (real time traffic data) for just $19.99 ($5 off). I have to hand it to Navigon once again; they’re ahead of the pack as usual, showing other guidance app companies what they need to do next

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Earlier this month, Apple had already come clean that many of the iPad’s accessories would not actually be available for purchase simultaneous with the April 3rd release of the tablet itself. At that time, the ship date for accessories like the iPad keyboard dock and spare iPad power adapter was placed in mid-April. Now they’ve

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=suCe4-SWsHo There’s more than one company to experiment with iPhone payment schemes lately, and while the likes of Square looks pretty good, I think there’s something beautifully simple about the way PayPal’s iPhone app handles transactions: you just open the app, type in the amount of money and bump your iPhone against the iPhone of the

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Filed under: Gaming , Software , Apple , Developer When I was reminded of its name at GDC, I couldn’t recall hearing much about Engineous Games. It’s the development studio founded by Nitzan Wilnai, a former software developer at EA and Yahoo who’s gone to work making iPhone games for himself. But I did recall Engenious’ first title, Tatomic, which I wrote about a while ago — it was a great puzzler that put a new spin on Tetris’ falling block gameplay. Unfortunately, despite my purchase, Tatomic didn’t sell as well as Wilnai would have liked, so he’s decided to “create a game that would sell itself.” It’s called Sketch Nation Shooter, and he sat down to show it to me last week in San Francisco. He started off the demo by promising that he would make a game for me in two minutes, and sure enough, 98 seconds later, he had a custom spaceship shooter game up and running, as you can see in the photo above. Continue reading GDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter GDC 2010: Hands-on with Sketch Nation Shooter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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In this round of iPhone games and applications you have one that wants you to replicate a natural disaster, one calm title that allows you to raise a binary fish, and one that simply insults your sexual intelligence. Fingerzilla The strange destructive impulse in many arcade videogames has been captured very directly by the new free iPhone game Fingerzilla.  In Fingerzilla, which is a part of the popular Open Feint iPhone gaming network, you are asked to essentially take the “Godzilla” role and begin destroying a metropolitan snapshot.  Instead of actually seeing visual representation of the Godzilla character you will instead simply tap the screen to engage in the destruction.  This is done really by just tapping buildings until they are engulfed in flames and eventually demolished entirely.  A timer is set as you begin and you begin ‘going to town,’ so to speak.  There are a number of different building types, as well as cars driving away and minute individuals running in distress.  It is up to you to rack up the amount of money and death, and the dollar amount is declared with each destructive act.  This works as a point system of sorts, which actually keeps Fingerzilla in line with a very conventional puzzle formula.  Once you have finished with the level you will get a newspaper piece listing the destruction and mayhem you have inspired in your brief period of attack.  There are a few different levels you can engage with an the Open Feint network gives you a fairly in depth level of communication and interaction, though this plays out mostly in the form of score bragging rather than gameplay.  Fingerzilla is fun in a fairly casual way, but since there is not much diversity here or much linear progress it loses interest after a little while.  As a free iPhone game there is really no reason not to try Fingerzilla out, but do not feel like you really need to keep it on your desktop past its use.   Tap Fish One emerging iPhone game genre hails back to the mid-1990s fad of virtual pets.  This makes sense on a mobile platform that stays with you at almost all times, but does mean that you have to be even more dialed in to your iPhone.  Tap Fish is essentially a fish raising incarnation of this virtual pet format where you are given a small aquarium and all the necessary equipment to purchase and care for fish.  There are actually quite a bit of required intervention in Tap Fish starting with feeding of the fish and cleaning of the tank all the way to a leveling system based on how much interaction you have.  Each episode with the fish in Tap Fish will be a few minutes at the most, but as you acquire more fish and get more involved you are going to have to start returning several times a day.  This is fine as this is in line with the basic necessity of such a game, and really for a free iPhone game it stands up against competitors.  The financial system in Tap Fish involves much of how you will upgrade your gaming situation by going to the pet store to purchase things like new fish and food.  You have the option to visit your ‘Neighbor,’ which really just means looking at another fish tank.  All of these things will give you points toward leveling and you will constantly have options to get more money to continually move forward.  Tap Fish does stand out as a pet simulator in that it justifies the time it takes for you to be successful.  This may not be for many of the older iPhone users, but you may just find out that you have a little kid hidden deep down. 69 Positions Anyone that checks the iTunes’ App Store on a regular basis knows that the new free iPhone application phenomenon are applications that give you various sexual positions.  This is part of the way that iPhone developers have gotten around the puritanical restrictions set up by Apple and still tap into the market of ‘lurid curiosity.’  Currently one of the most popular is 69 Positions, which plays on the constant middle school laughter around the number 69.  Inside you get visual representations of this many sexual positions, each with their own little text snippet.  Each position in 69 Positions is described with humanoid figures almost devoid of any gender signifiers.  The information along with it is vague and usually including awkward puns to try and ’spice’ it up.  It is hard to judge an application like 69 Positions in general.  It is a fairly stupid concept right from its inception, but it seems by its popularity that there is somewhat of a general interest in it.  Even compared with other sexual iPhone applications 69 Positions is fairly useless in that it does not provide anything anatomically inventive, has almost no information, and there is really little reason to check it out in the first place.  There is both a free iPhone application version of 69 Positions and a paid one, and the paid one has so little extra content that it really feels like a slap in the face.

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Looks like the House of Jobs’ hype machine worked. According to estimates by Investor Village’s AAPL Sanity board , Day One pre-sales totals for the iPad topped out at just under 120,000.  In the first two hours alone, 50,000 units were bought.  (Note: these numbers do not include iPads reserved but not actually purchased.) The graph shows some interesting facts: sales were evenly spread among the 16, 32, and 64 GB models, while Wi-Fi sales were more than double that of the 3G version.  (Remember: the Wi-Fi is definitely coming out on April 3, while the 3G is still sporting a “later in April” release date.) Victor Castroll, an analyst with Valcent Financial Group, summed it up best: “Apple has been able to generate over $75 million in revenue in one day on a product that 99.9% of purchasers haven’t touched or for that matter, even seen in person.  And, we’re still three weeks away. That is amazing.” [Via Fortune Brainstorm Tech ]

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Some iPhone applications use the built in features on the iPhone, update and offer promotions for existing iPhone games, or spoil the plots for your upcoming season finale. Gym Finder Gym Finder is as strait forward as you can get with a free iPhone application.  With Gym Finder you can, well, find a gym.  When you open it up you are given a list of popular gym chains like 24 Hour Fitness, Athletic Club, Bally Total Fitness, Curves, Gold’s Gym, and others.  You can select one of these gyms and then it will locate those that are relatively near to your location.  You can select a specific location and it will give you directions utilizing the iPhone Maps feature along with basic contact information.  It is also possible to do this in reverse by searching just by location to find what is near by.  Gym Finder does what it promises adequately, but it does make you wonder why you need a program that is so specific to finding one type of business.  Why not just use a Yellow Pages application?  Why not use the Maps function on its own?  Gym Finder is perfectly reasonable for the purpose it promises, but this is still part of the trend at the iTunes’ App Store that stresses quantity over quality.   iMobsters 28 Favor Points The most important quality that is universal between all text based iPhone MMO RPGs is the constant need for updates and promotions.  iMobsters, which is one of the most popular mafia themed text based iPhone MMO RPGs from the Storm8 tradition, has now released its most recent update.  iMobsters 28 Favor Points is actually more of just a free Favor Points offer than a true iMobsters update.  The reality of iMobsters 28 Favor Points is that it is used to simply to perpetuate interest in the free iPhone game.  Since Favor Points are really the only way that Storm8 can make money off of the iMobsters franchise this is really just to spark interest in what will supposedly just be a later series of purchases.  Inside iMobsters 28 Favor Points you are not going to see much quantitatively different to the base iMobsters software except for the most minor of update changes.  Fundamentally iMobsters remains the same, which puts iMobsters 28 Favor Points into a weird place.  Any free Favor Points package is going to be of interest, and possible necessity, to iMobsters players.  On the other hand, free Favor Points are not going to be really attractive to those who do not already have an interest in iMobsters.  There is nothing about iMobsters 28 Favor Points that is going to attract new players.  If you already play iMobsters then iMobsters 28 Favor Points is going to be one of the first free iPhone downloads on your list, but if not you can forget it entirely. Spoilers For the TV addict in the room online spoilers can be the main source of water cooler gossip.  The ‘there’s an app for that’ logic has infected almost every possible online institution, and this one was a late arrival.  Spoilers is a basic free iPhone application that gives you the available episode information for some of the most popular  on the air.  These are presented mainly in a large list of alphabetical options like Burn Notice, Entourage, Desperate Housewives, Dexter, and others.  These are presented in the largest list in the Shows tab where you can select the shows you want.  You can then find the ones you want and then add them to your Favorites, which will then list them under that specific tabs.  This is really where Spoilers becomes useful, especially once you have established a clear list for your Favorites.  You can also look according to Upcoming Episodes, but it is much more relevant to just get information from the episode specific lists.  All of this is find if Spoilers was more than simply adequate in what it provides.  Spoilers is not extremely detailed in the information it offers about each program, and more often than not you are not going to have access to the entire list of shows you will want.  Program information is limited at any given time, and Spoilers usually has issues bringing up all of what you are requesting.  This does not make Spoilers incredibly useful even in the marginally interesting feature it has.  With the time it takes to sift through the occasional info from the application you can easily use more reliable and complete online sources.

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Filed under: Apple , iPad Considering AppleCare for your iPad? I know that I am. For $99, AppleCare extends your iPad warranty coverage to two years from the date of purchase. Although AppleCare tends to be expensive, for certain purchases it can really save you, especially for devices which run a higher risk of component failure over a lifetime of hard use — such as laptops and other mobile tech. Many Apple aficionados tend to avoid buying AppleCare for robust devices like the Mac mini series. Those units tend either to die right away or last forever. They are highly self-serviceable for anyone who has a reasonable degree of comfort with a screwdriver. The iPad and the iPhone, on the other hand, can feel like accidents waiting to happen. Without a simple avenue for owner-repair, they are more of a black box purchase. And their components can and do die much more unexpectedly. In my history of purchasing iPhones and iPod touches, I have personally encountered video driver death and massive touchscreen failure. To be fair, both of these incidents happened within a month or so of purchase, so keep that in mind as well.

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Mac gaming fans have one less reason to be envious of their PC-using brothers & sisters, now that Telltale Games has made the official announcement that the episodic Sam & Max is coming with a third season entitled The Devil’s Playhouse — and it will be available on the PC, Playstation 3 and yes, even the Mac. Sam’s a six-foot tall canine shamus with a hunger for justice. Max is a hyperkinetic rabbity-thing with an oversized Luger and a taste for violence. Together they’re Sam & Max, freelance police, ridding the streets of bottom-feeding sludge, one dastardly miscreant at a time.   The popular episodic game comes courtesy of publisher Telltale Games, who made the announcement today at GDC. On the heels of the first two popular seasons of Sam & Max comes the good news that the third season, entitled The Devil’s Playhouse , will also be coming to the Mac at long last, and the game is virtually identical across all three platforms. In The Devil’s Playhouse , Sam and Max face a mysterious otherworldly power for controlling matter and space that calls to the strongest and strangest who might wield it — intergalactic warlords and eldritch gods, under-dwellers and scholars of the arcane. It’s Sam’s and Max’s biggest case yet! For those of you new to episodic gaming, Telltale’s niche is having the games play out over a series of interconnected episodes, each one building on the next.

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