By Glenn Chapman
Agence France-Presse

SAN FRANCISCO — A “Tap Tap Dance” videogame built exclusively for Apple’s hip iPhones was launched Thursday, challenging users to stay in rhythm with songs by tapping the device’s screen in time to the music.

Offering an Internet-age stage for a new generation of musicians, the game is the brainchild of Tapulous, a start-up based in Palo Alto, California.

“We went from a game familiar to people that play ‘Guitar Hero’ or ‘Rock Band’ to something more similar to an interactive music video,” said Tapulous chief executive Bart Decrem. “We are really pushing forward and defining our own experience. We are really proud of that.”

[Read the rest of this entry »]

DUE to pressures from developers, Apple has finally decided to drop the non-disclosure agreements that software developers for the iPhone are required to sign, a report from Agence France-Presse said.

Excerpt:

WASHINGTON — Apple said Wednesday that it was dropping a controversial non-disclosure agreement that software developers who wanted to create applications for the iPhone mobile telephone had been forced to sign.

The non-disclosure agreement, or NDA, prevented software developers seeking to take part in the iPhone Developer Program from discussing their work, even with colleagues.

Apple’s move to drop the NDA came just days after Internet search giant Google jumped into the mobile telephone market with a handset powered by Google’s open-source Android software.

The ability of outside developers to freely write applications for the phone, the T-Mobile G1, which Google developed with telecom carrier T-Mobile, is seen as a major selling point by Google and its partners.

Also from the Apple website:

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don’t steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

However, the NDA has created too much of a burden on developers, authors and others interested in helping further the iPhone’s success, so we are dropping it for released software. Developers will receive a new agreement without an NDA covering released software within a week or so. Please note that unreleased software and features will remain under NDA until they are released.

Thanks to everyone who provided us constructive feedback on this matter.

I’ve seen fast, but this takes the cake.

The guy behind ZiPhone, the turnkey app that simplied iPhone unlocking and put it within the reach of everyone for free (and putting lots of would-be hack-trepreneurs out of business in one fell swoop), claims that his software can already do the same for the new iPhone 3G on his blog ZiPhone Status. We don’t know how he can do that, given that the new iPhone won’t be out until July 11, but we’ve seen stranger things before.

Zibri himself said on the blog on a post dated June 10 that he was still waiting to get his hands on the 2.0 software and a unit, but two days later posts that he’s already patched and unlocked the firmware baseband. He also says all the carriers are supported already (and even adds our own Globe Telecom to his long list).

We’ll see. In the meantime we’ll order a large grain of salt to go, please.

It’s way possible now.

The technology that will eventually allow you to play Warcraft on your new iPhone is called Interactive 3D Streaming, being developed by Comverse and Intel, which takes out the CPU burden from the mobile device and just streams the good stuff to it.

The hurdle is that MMORPGs like WoW and Second Life require lots of horsepower and number crunching from the CPU and the graphics chips to do what they do. The new technology does all the heavy lifting on their backend server, and then just streams it to the gamer via WiMax or 3G via a gateway designed by Comverse. (Aren’t you glad iPhones do 3G now?)

Can’t wait.

More on Comverse 3D Streaming here.

Video-on-Demand from the Apple site here. Quicktime required.

UPDATE: Now available as a free 1.18gb video podcast download from the iTunes Store.