We’ve all been there. It’s 3 in the morning and you’re chatting up a beautiful university student who has had way too many shots. She grabs your arm and looks deep into your eyes, channeling a Freudian lust for the love that her father never gave her growing up. She asks to go home with you. Now, you can’t say yes since you’re married and have two beautiful children, but the allure of being balls deep inside a woman half your age is too resisting to pass. You may never have this opportunity again, your wife stopped performing fellatio last decade, and besides, you need the confidence boost by convincing yourself that doing this will make you a man again. Morally grounded men might pull out their iPhone and call the a taxi for this sweet young lady. Some will use the large, multitouch screen to zoom in on their children’s faces as a reminder of what’s waiting for them back home. You’re not one of those men. You’re going to use your iPhone to find the nearest Hilton Hotel, navigate to it, place it on the night stand, and then reach for it once again once when she is in the reverse cowgirl position so you can snap a quick video so you’ll never forget that one night you kicked ass.

[Via: Textually, USA Today, Official Press Release]

The good news: Shazam, the popular music service that allows you to identify a song by holding your device up to a speaker for a few seconds, has released a premium version of their iPhone application called “Shazam Encore” [iTunes link]. For 5 USD (or 4 EUR or 3 GBP) you get: faster song recognition, the ability to see where you where when you identified a song, music recommendations based on the songs you looked up, find out which songs are being identified the most, and a car mode that helps you identify what’s playing on the radio.

“Since our launch on the App Store, Shazam has achieved a huge following with iPhone and iPod touch users and is now one of the most popular music apps in the world,” said Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam. “We have listened to our iPhone and iPod touch users and have created a new app which answers their requests to take them on an enhanced music journey that will change the way music lovers experience and learn about music.”

The bad news: New users of Shazam deciding to use the free verison will be limited to only 5 uses of the Shazam service per month.

[Via: Shazam Press Release]

Mobile payment solutions provider CHARGE Anywhere is “going Android” with a dedicated application which it argues is the first PCI PA-DSS validated Payment Application for the platform. All major card processors support CHARGE Anywhere’s mobile payment software and payment gateway solutions, hence seamless integration with virtually every merchant account provider is guaranteed.

To put this mumbo-jumbo into plain words, CHARGE Anywhere for Android enables merchants to easily and securely accept credit and debit card transactions at the point-of-sale or point-of-service.

The software also supports optional hardware such as a Bluetooth printer with integrated card reader, enabling for printing of receipts on the spot… Additional details are available from CHARGE Anywhere’s website.

On the heels of its recent iPhone app update, Remember The Milk updated its Android application adding some cool new features to the mix. Here’s what’s changed in the version 1.1.0 (codename “Bender”):

• Widget customization – you can now choose between two different sizes (2×2 and 3×3) and customize what the widget shows: tasks due today, all tasks, or tasks from a specific list (Smart Lists, included).
• Start screen customization – allows for customization of the screen that the app starts up on from the “Settings” menu. Choose between screens like “Today,” “Tags,” and “Nearby,” or select a specific list (or Smart List) to start on.
• Quick Search Box – available in Android 1.6 and later.
• HTC Tattoo and Motorola (NYSE: MOT) Droid support – meaning that QVGA and WVGA screen resolutions are now supported!

In a nutshell, great update hence it’s a must grab for all RTM fans who are at the same time Android device owners. Look for the RTM app in the Android Market.

[Via: RTM blog]

Want to load up a completely useless app on your iPhone? What if I told you that you’d have to pay for it? Still interested? Enter FirePlace from ToughTurtle. The app is a virtual fireplace with the added benefit of not actually being a fireplace. There’s no need to start up an actual fire, to tend to it, or even clean up after it. Bonus. You can use it in both portrait and landscape, and the app features lovely audio crackling noises as if you were in front of the real thing. You can even set it to play background music from your iPod library.

The cost? $0.99. Pick it up in the App Store (iTunes link).

Note: OK, perhaps I was a little harsh here. I could see this coming in handy during that geeky/romantic date, or perhaps as a sideshow feature at those family holiday gatherings. Heck, even if you live in a small apartment or condo, with this app you can turn on the fire and enjoy the vibe. Yeah, maybe I was a little harsh. Still, I don’t think I’d spend $1 on it. That’s just me though

Software-as-a-Service company Medallia is proving once again that iPhone is a decent business device, not just a multimedia toy. They’ve released a dedicated application in the AppStore simply called Medallia for iPhone, bringing customer experience and enterprise feedback management to the palm (NSDQ: PALM) of a hand. As a result, Medallia customers can access, monitor, and respond to real-time customer feedback while on the go. The application is free to all subscribers of Medallia’s Enterprise Feedback Management Platform and it works with all iPhone models.

Commenting on the announcement, Medallia’s President Amy Pressman said: “Our clients care about the rapid delivery of actionable customer feedback that is easily accessible at all times. Organizations that focused on customer satisfaction before the recession have outperformed their peer groups and delivered higher rates of customer retention in this challenging economic environment. To maintain a competitive edge, these organizations rely on real-time feedback, not information captured weeks or months ago. We developed Medallia for iPhone so our customers, who oversee divisions across all industries, can hasten the cycle of feedback and response to improve customer satisfaction and retention.”

Finally the AppStore link is here, but if you’re a Medallia customer you’ve probably already grabbed the app.

Promptu Systems announced that it will bring its ShoutOUT voice-to-text mobile application, powered by PayPal X, to the Android platform (it was the iPhone thing only, until recently). The release date is scheduled for Q1 2010, when interested users will be able to manage such tasks as send text messages and updates to Facebook and Twitter without typing a word.

As for the PayPal’s role, their new Adaptive Payments APIs sits at the backend, enabling purchasing of ShoutOUT voice credits…

And that’s about all we have at this stage. iPhone version is also in works — when I searched for it in the AppStore I found some other ShoutOUT app, so I’m guessing it will hit iTunes in no time as Promptu’s website talks about it like it’s ready.

A must have for any Arsenal fan, the Arsenal Football Club App for iPhone and iPod Touch keeps you up-to-date with the latest goings on in ‘Gunner’ land. Read news, fixtures, player bios, watch highlights, check out injury news, and much more. You can even pull up image galleries from past games.

The app itself pulls content from the official website, so this app serves as a ‘bridge’ of sorts, connecting you to the site when you’re away from your computer’s web browser. However, you may like this app so much, it may be all you use to stay on top of all news and info on the Gunners.

Unfortunately the app isn’t free… You’ll need to throw down $4.99 in the App Store (iTunes link). Gotta pay those player salaries somehow, right?

Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Maps just keeps getting better. Google recently rolled out the “Layer” feature for Google Maps on BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM), Windows Mobile and Symbian S60, allowing users to overlay different types data on top of Google Maps – stuff like Wikipedia entries and your friends’ Google Latitude locations. Today, Google is launching a new NYC subway map layer that should help anyone in The Big Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) navigate the city’s maze of subways.

In addition to the step-by-step public transit directions that Google Maps has been serving up for a while, the new Google Maps NYC subway layer “will help you quickly navigate the New York City subway system.” You’ll need to update your Google Maps for Mobile app to the latest Layer-supported version before you can use the NYC subway layer. Once you’ve done that, “just click the Layers menu and then turn on the Transit Lines layer.”

We’d whine about not having a San Francisco public transit layer available for Google Maps, but public transportation in the SF Bay Area sucks compared to NYC, so it makes sense that NYC gets first dibs. Which is why we drive everywhere.

Google Maps NYC subway layer

[Via: PhoneScoop]

The post-apocalyptic massively multiplayer online role-playing game, Fallen Earth, has just announced an in-depth iPhone app that lets you take care of quite a bit of in-game business from your mobile. For those not familiar with the genre, MMOs are generally subscription-based computer games that take place wholly online with other players (either cooperatively or competitively, as the case may be). Players control characters in the shared game world to embark on missions, gather equipment, craft items, and a bunch of other stuff. If you’ve heard of World of Warcraft, then you know what an MMO is.

Anyway, Fallen Earth is working on an app that allows players to do a few things in-game without having to be at your computer, which is actually really handy since things keep happening in the game even when you’re not playing. Folks will be able to view character information similar to WoW’s Armory app for iPhone, but the real kicker will be talking to clan members, managing auction house sales, and crafting queues remotely; that’s changing the mobile app from an MMO companion reference to an actual part of the game, which I really like. To stay updated on the app’s progress and learn more about the game, hit up Fallen Earth.

[via Icarus]