Yep the hype machine is in full swing with Droid – everyone is talking about it, and I’d bet an increasing number of people are wanting it!

Well Moto have pinged me an email to say that Developers should be excited by Droid too, and Moto are there to help them – they are suggesting in fact to get your App ready for Droid! How? Well, hit up the link below and start your eyeballs off with a page of specs…

Click here to see the Motodev pages on Droid.

For those of you that don’t know him (and there might be a lot, since he’s a UK chef) Jamie Oliver is a celebrity chef, in the same sort of mould as the likes of Gordon Ramsay – and by that, I mean he’s an export that has filmed his TV shows in the US, and a number of other countries I’m sure!

Anyhoo, the point of this quick hands-on is to find out if his new cooking App is any good (hint/spoiler: yes)!

Read more after the jump….

Read the full article »

….. or are certain apps on the iPhone just not very good at connecting to the network? Let me tell you my story…

The other day there was a particular track that I fancied listening to, but I was out and about – normally I use iTunes via the Mac, but on this occasion it wasn’t an option – so for once, I fired up the ITunes app on the iPhone.

I enjoyed the user experience (well done AGAIN Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)!) – finding stuff, previewing it, and buying is SIMPLE – the only criticism I could possibly level is that perhaps the fonts and graphical bordering are a bit big – it would be nice to get more results/text on-screen in once go.

However I then purchase the track I wanted (Britney, obviously…!), and waited for a sluggish download – but I was shocked – the rate of download was incredible – seemingly only 20 seconds after I hit download, 7MB had shot down to the phone!

But how could this be? When I use Safari and Mail, the rate at which the network connection is made, and then rendering/email download occurs is slow – in some cases almost intolerably slow – and I know I’m not the only person that thinks this, it’s widely reported.

For some reason though, iTunes download traffic seems to be prioritised on O2s network – and to test this theory, I had a go at downloading a 15-track album – oh my god – it absolutely flew!

So this tells me one of two things:

1)     Either iTunes data traffic is prioritised on the O2 (NYSE: TEF) network – via IP, APN, or even at HTTP request level – something is going on….

Or

2)     Mail and Safari are really really bad at implementing their calls to network access / protocols for download

The disparity is quite amazing – I’d suggest you give it a go if you don’t believe it. Go to a 3G area (let’s at least give the network a chance to shine), and then try out collecting say 20 emails (or whatever is in your inbox to download), and then trying downloading a track. Now bear in mind a single iTunes track will probably be orders of magnitude larger than ALL the emails you download – what gives?!

Answers on a postcard, or better yet, in the comments to this post….!

A new App from Electric Pocket is promising to tag up your emails with personalised sounds – it’s name? – MailTones!

Users can set a different email alert for each friend, family member or colleague in their Address Book. MailTones helps to distinguish high priority emails your boss or partner from lower priority emails from friends or group email lists. MailTones can be set for a specific contact or one for all incoming emails from a particular domain – making it easy to recognise incoming emails from work colleagues or customers. It can also filter and provide custom tones for messages which include specific words in the Subject line.

The app comes with a collection of 25 tones ranging from discrete bells to more audacious (read: louder!) horns and buzzers. So for example you could set your default mail tone to silent, or ignore, and use MailTones to identify high priority people and subjects. MailTones can also optionally pop up on the screen and display the sender and subject of an incoming email for users to know instantly whether or not they need to launch the Mail app to read the whole message.

In case you are wondering how it works, it requires your email service to support ‘forward a copy’ – the copies are sent to the MailTones server, which then uses push notifications to send the instructions for the sounds.

It is available in the App Store, with a launch price of £1.79. There’s also some more information on the MailTones website at mailtones.com.

I’ve given this a quick go, and I have to say it’s really not too shabby at all! More to come in a longer review about how the App works, but for now I’d say that you could certainly do worse than giving this a go

Just by tapping on the screen, you create a drum rhythm; add some bass, strings, guitar or any of the included 16 instruments. TuneMaker is a streamlined digital audio workstation, synthesizer, drum computer and music sequencer, which can record and play back 16 tracks of sampled instruments. It’s like having Garageband in your pocket. An easy to use music composition tool that let’s anyone create music, even if you’ve never made music before, because it uses only five notes (instead of the twelve notes of a full piano keyboard) and by using a special scale they always sound good. There are 40 demo rhythms and songs pre-installed to get you started quickly.

I-play has launched Bubble Town 2 for iPhone and iPod touch.  In case you’re not familiar, it is based on the online arcade game that has garnered a good few million players through Facebook, MySpace, PC download and mobile.

In Bubble Town 2, players travel through land, sea and space in 45 bubble-filled levels. Each dynamic environment has its own unique characteristics and borb-busting challenges as players carefully aim, lob and shoot colorful borbs to pop three or more of the same kind. Adding a new dimension of gameplay to the franchise, Bubble Town 2 offers the brand-new lob shot, where players toss borbs into place with a flick of the wrist using the iPhone’s accelerometer. In addition, Bubble Town 2 introduces a brand-new Invasion Mode, and 12 varied power-ups that bring all-new hijinx to this beloved franchise.  The game’s integrated Facebook Connect feature allows players to share their bubble-popping successes by posting high scores on Facebook and sharing with friends and family.

Check out the video trailer also:

Bubble Town 2 is now available in the Apple® App Store for $2.99/£1.79, and sounds like a lot of cutesy fun

‘Word Spin’ for iPhone has hit the App store recently. ‘Word Spin’ for iPhone is the mobile version of the award-winning classic word game that has you spinning lettered wheels in order to spell as many words as possible.

This is a highly polished app based on one of the world’s favorite word games. It’s a great mental exercise and its quite fun to challenge your friends and see who has the better mind for words.

Bizarre, I can’t remember playing this at all as a kid – yet it does seem to have been popular – at least from the googling I’ve done. Anyone else play this when they were younger – well if so you can now take it mobile!

Originally a Zoo Games’ title for the Nintendo Wii, Groovin’ Blocks is now available on the iPhone and iPod Touch for only $1.99/£1.19, and is appropriate for all ages.

The game starts with addicting match-three gameplay and pours on the funk, challenging players to drop to the beat to maximize their combos.  With stylish graphics, high energy music and over 50 exciting levels, Groovin’ Blocks will provide hours of on-the-go fun.

This title looks like a cross between Tetris and Guitar Hero to me, but since I’ve not had chance to confirm it – if I do play it, I’ll let you know!