First up is the More Cowbell app. Any Saturday Night Live fan knows this reference. Needless to say, Christopher Walken is simultaneously hilarious and terrifying and you have to love him for that. This app consists of a picture of a cowbell. You touch the bell and it makes that distinctive sound, but if you stop, ol' Walken demands, "I gotta have more cowbell!" Good stuff. 

The SimStapler is slightly less amusing, but still funny. It shows a Mac OS 9 desktop (with trashcan and all) and all you do is touch the SimStapler icon. It opens andyou can staple away! Of course the occasional "Splendid!" does spice it up a bit. And yes, I really did press that thing about 70 times. Why? Well, a score of 0 on a game (any game) just looks a little sad, don't you think? 

So what's the verdict? Entirely useless. But fun just the same. 

For starters we have Shazam. This is a nifty little program that lets you "tag" songs that you like or want to know the name of. All you do is hold the phone up to a speaker, TV or wherever the music is coming from and select "Tag Now." The app will listen and then consult its library to identify the tune. When I used this, it worked pretty well, though I used an MP3 recording of Mika's "Grace Kelly." Even so, the results appeared quickly and accurately. 

Midomi Mobile offers more functionality, though at a price. You can hold the phone up to a speaker or TV to identify music with this app as well, but you can also hum or sing a tune. This is especially helpful when you remember just a snippet of a song. You can even say a song name or artist name and it will bring up a list. 

However, when I tried--however badly--to sing a bit of Ah-ha's "Take On Me" I was greeted with a list of songs in Spanish. Hmm. I wouldn't let my singing voice be the best judge here, but the app did crash about three times in the midst of searching. 

I like both apps, and though Midomi does more, I think Shazam does less better. 

Good marketing, as always. Though I don't know if anything can beat the first commercial for the iPhone 3G called "Hallway." The drama, the suspense! I mean, it's Ironman telling us what device could possibly be "the first phone to beat the iPhone." 

To watch the latest ads, you can view them on the Apple website and are called Everyone, Unslow and Work Friendly. 

Enjoy! I swear, half the fun of Apple is their marketing campaigns. That's not to say I don't love their products, but the advertising is nothing short of brilliant.

[via TUAW]

Okay, I've collected myself. So what's the problem? Well, it turns out Aurora Feint has some serious security issues. Nothing malicious, mind you, but a security threat, nonetheless. In order to keep track of other players online, the game uploads your entire contact list to the server. However, this transfer of your data occurs unencrypted--which poses a big risk to your personal information. 

After discovering the security hole, Apple removed the game from their App Store. But now it seems the game is back in the review stage after the developers added HTTPS in order to encrypt data. 

What I want to know has to do with the version of the game that's still on my iPhone. I never opted into the community feature, but how will Apple deal with those that still play the unencrypted version? Will a reinstall take care of it?

[via Just Another iPhone Blog]

For instance, after I install updates to applications through the App Store on my iPhone, the updates are treated like a whole new app and clutter up my screen. Plus, I'll often have to go into iTunes on my computer in order to see what updates are really available then download them and sync them with the iPhone. 

And as if that weren't enough, the App Store crashes. A lot. And I've noticed when browsing the store on my phone that if I click on a title to read about it and then go back to the search results, it defaults back to the top of the list. Minor complaint, I know, but annoying nonetheless. 

Hopefully a few tweaks will come to us soon. Because other than these quirks, I'm in app downloading heaven!

[via MacWorld]