As promised, WriteRoom, received an update today.

While other apps add features and, in the process, increase complexity, WriteRoom remains committed to simplicity.

As the developer notes,

WriteRoom is not a rich text editor.

As a result, it is my favorite "notes" replacement,

The update…

iBlogger appeared in the App Store yesterday. At $9.99 it is a bit pricey but if it works well it just might be worth the price.

The app works with a lot of blog engines including WordPress, TypePad, Movable Type and Drupal.

It looks like a powerful little blogging app but we’ll know more after using it a bit. And what better way to test it than to post about it using… iBlogger.

It even used the iPhone’s location feature to identify the location from which the post was made.
 

Mobile Blogging from here.

Jim is a HUGE fan of X-Plane 9.

The app just received an update tonight. The quick summary, in the words of the developer is that

…this version is faster, smoother, more flexible, and a bit easier to use… have at it! You really should get this update to further tune your flying experience!

Included in the update are…

It has more than a bit of irony to it-

On the day when the first Android phone and the Android Market (for the open distribution of apps) were revealed in all their glory, Apple took more steps to lock down, shut out and shut up many of the rumblings coming from developers who are unhappy with their approach.

On a micro-level…

TUAW posted today that Alex Sokirynsky, the developer behind Podcaster, has been shut down. Apparently Apple “rescinded his authority to provision new ad-hoc licenses for his software”. That means he can no longer sell his AMAZINGLY AWESOME FANTASTIC over-the-air podcasting program (to people like me) via the ad-hoc system. While it isn’t a surprise, it is a bit sad that an app as good as Podcaster is kept out of people’s hands. (Fortunately, according to the TUAW post, at least 1299 other iPhone-users got their hands on it too.)

Moving from the micro to the macro-level…

Alex’s blog post about Apple’s latest move was pulled shortly after it was posted.

HMMMMM, could this have anything to do with the fact that…

While NetNewsWire continues to be my RSS reader app of choice, I have been toying with the idea of switching to Byline. The reason?

Once I add a post to "clippings" in NetNewsWire there is currently no way to access it from the iPhone app. That kind of defeats the "read it later" aspect of adding something to clippings.

This morning I realized that one work-around is to take screeen caps of the post in questions. While this awkward process often requires multiple screen caps for posts longer than one "screen’s worth", it is effective and does work. The better option, of course, would be NetNewsWire adding this functionality to the app.

Of more interest was a post on the NetNewsWire blog. It listed some current user stats. According to the post…

I knew the iPhone/iPod Touch was a good gaming device. I didn’t know HOW good until last night, though.

Out of curiousity I downloaded demos of Pangea’s Billy Frontier and Cro-Mag Rally. I didn’t try the iPhone versions mind you, but rather, I downloaded the Mac versions to my iMac and was amazed at the similaritites. The Mac and iPhone versions look, feel and play THE SAME! (In fact, the image above looks like it comes from the iPhone game but it is actually a picture of my Mac!)

Then I bought Enigmo for the iPhone and loaded a copy of it the desktop version that I got with an application bundle. All I can say is "WOW!" Wow as in, "I am absolutely blown away, I can’t believe they were able to get this onto an iPhone, this is stunning- WOW!". Both the graphics and the physics of the iPhone version are remarkable!

Since all but Enigmo were demo versions I don’t know if there are as many levels in the iPhone versions or not but I do know this- if there were any doubt that the iPhone/Touch runs a real version of Mac OS X before, there aren’t now. If there were any doubt that the iPhone/Touch renders graphics beautifully, there aren’t now either.

It was kind of mindblowing to realize that the iPhone version is the same as the Mac version… on a smaller screen.

Now two bits of good news come from Pangea…