CubeCheater is one of the most innovative iPhone applications that I’ve seen so far.  CubeCheater teaches you how to beat the Rubik’s cube puzzle by inputting your current cube’s state.  You can either tap the Rubik’s cube colors into the iPhone or take a picture of the cube.

After taking a picture of the cube, the application will use computer-vision to match the colors automatically.  CubeCheater uses the Kociemba algorithm to provide the solution of the Rubik’s cube, thus making the puzzle solvable within 20 moves.

CubeCheater’s most updated version of the software has different styles of cubes including the blue-white cubes sold in Japan and cube configurations can be customized if you have a non-standard cube.

CubeCheater currently has about 49 reviews with an average rating of about 3.5 stars. The application was made by Eric Faller

Midway Games Inc. (NYSE:MWY) is planning to launch five new games for the iPhone and iPod Touch this month.  Each game will cost 99 cents U.S. or all five can be purchased for $3.99 as a bundle.  The games include:

1. Spellwinder - Word search game where adjacent letters are used to create words.
2. Dice King - Dice swapping puzzle game where two adjacent dice form matching combinations of three or more.
3. Prismatrix - Color sequence matching game with hexagonal gems.
4. Combo 11 - Card elimination game.
5. Carpet - Similar to Solitaire, but all the aces have already been dealt.

[via Macworld]

David Carnoy wrote a novel called Knife Music.  It is about a 16 year old high school sophomore girl that was injured in a car accident.  Dr. Ted Cogan attempted to save the girl’s life, but she had died.  The police believed that the girl was raped by the doctor and that drove her to commit suicide instead.  The 43 year old surgeon struggles to clear his name.

Carnoy released the book as a free download on the iTunes App Store, but it was rejected for “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory” language.  Carnoy decided to resubmit the book into the iTunes App Store after cleaning up the language in the book.  He replaced the S word to “damn” or “crap” and replaced the F word with just the letter F in the novel.  Carnoy hopes one day that the book will be able to be added to the App Store without censorship.

Some of the other applications have already been accepted for having mature content in a NSFW type of option, but not yet books.  To read the novel, click here [iTunes link]

[via Gizmodo]

The kittens are freezing!  The game is very similar to Tetris.  Each piece may have a cat, a cat stuck in ice, or just ice.  The more blocks you set, the more kittens are saved.  Figuring out the game is a bit tricky at first because you are trying not to reach the top like in Tetris, but you also want to stack cats on top of each other.  The game comes in 10 levels and each time you rescue a cat, it meows out of relief.

“As a cat lover, I’m excited to play a game that captures the cuteness of kittens,” stated Anne McElvain, GiantCrayon Games’s VP. “It’s my way of bringing the charm of kittens with me wherever I go.”  To buy the game, it costs $2.99 and it can be found here [iTunes link].  Below is a video demo of the game:

For more information, go to the ShiveringKittens website.

In the past 24 hours, Apple has started allowing third party application browsers to enter the Apple App Store.  Four browsers that have recently been added include the Edge Browser (Free), Incognito ($1.99), Webmate ($0.99), and Shaking Web ($1.99).  Web browsing applications have not been approved before as they were known for duplicating functionality.

Edge Free is a browser that makes the website full-screen.  Incognito enables people to browse the web without a leaving a history of links behind.  WebMate adds links that you tap on the iPhone on a queue until you are ready to look at them.   And Shaking Hand replaces scrolling with previous page and next page buttons.

A couple of months ago it was believed that Opera submitted an application to the App Store, but it was rejected.  Perhaps now they will have better luck.

Vela Design Group has created VelaClock 1.4 for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  VelaClock is a world clock application with a configurable user interface.  The application displays the sunrise, sunset, dawn, and dusk times.  The application also displays twilight (civil, nautical, astronomical), moon phase, and tilt information.  VelaClock divides screens into two panes.  The upper pane contains a list of cities and the lower pain has details about the twilight.  About 50 cities can be added from a selection of 500 built-in cities.  Each row of each city displays the country flag, citiy name, local time, day of the week, and daylight bar.

Below is a description of each panel:

1. First panel:
* Countdown to the next sunrise or sunset and next moonrise or moonset.
* Time of the next sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset.
* Name of the current moon phase.
* An image of the moon as seen in the sky above the currently selected city. This image accurately depicts the moon’s phase, and the angle at which the moon’s crescent appears to be rotated from the vertical. Because this angle can change rapidly, it is updated once a minute.
* Time until the next moon phase (new, quarter, full).

2. Second panel, for current day:
* Time of sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and three kinds of twilight (civil, nautical, astronomical) for both dawn and dusk.
* Azimuth of sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset. Azimuth (compass direction) is specified in degrees, 0 to 360, clockwise from North.
* Daylight duration in hour and minutes. Change in minutes of daylight from the previous day.

3. Third panel:
* Dates, times and images of the next four moon phases.

The application is $3.99.  Click here [iTunes link] to check it out.

B3 United Inc. has created an addictive game for ages 4+ made for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  The objective of the game is to balance cats of various sizes towered on top of each other.  You have to use the accelerometer of the iPhone and iPod Touch to keep the cats balanced. The game currently retails on iTunes for $1.99.

Move your finger to pull a cat from the passing hot air balloon and place it on top of the tower. Currently the game has about 9 reviews and 3.5 stars.  The 3.5 stars seem to be not enough.

One reviewer by the name of Nagikokiyohara wrote “Best game EVER!” but only rated the game one star.  One reviewer stated that the game needs an accelerometer fix or some sort of visual feedback.  To download the game, click here [iTunes link]

Slacker Radio is an online radio station where users can listen to all sorts of genres and create playlists.  To choose the next station, it is easy to do without interfering with the current song playing.  The favorite stations and custom stations are found by vertically scrolling.  To start playing music, registration is required.

Music streaming on Slacker is good with the 3G connection, but even better when on WiFi.  On iTunes, there are currently about 65 reviews and an average of 4 stars.

Slacker Radio is available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.  There are about 100 programmed radio stations.  The download is about 0.7MB and the application is available for free.

To donwload the app, click here [iTunes link].

One of the coolest iPhone Apps on the market today is called Ocarina. Smule put the application together and ran a competition. The top 10 videos would receive $1,000 each. Runner ups would receive a t-shirt. Those who want to participate would have to submit it to The “This Contest Blows” Contest on YouTube.

While Smule has their own algorithm for determining the winners, here is my personal top 10 favorite Ocarina players. I based it on creativity and what just sounds best to me.

10. X-Files Theme by imychelle

9. Amazing Grace by ericasavaaree

8. Tetris Theme by hellomoto3485

7. Will.i.am’s It’s A New Day by songbirdocarinas

6. Song of the Storms from Super Smash Brothers Brawl by Bwana from Bwana.tv

5. Zelda Theme by Kizzale

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