Yes, we've been over the App Store approval thing a hundred times already, but never quite like this.

Apple's got a pretty strong policy when it comes to nudity, right? Right?

So Beauty Meter - an application that allows, hypothetically, a fifteen year old girl to share a nude pic to be rated would be totally out of the question right?

You'd at least expect there to be a nudity warning if you installed an app like this. I mean, it could be a non-nude hot-or-not app, there's certainly a precedent for that. In the case of Beauty Meter, however, you'll just get a warning that it might contain mature content and it's not for use by anyone under the age of 17.

Heck, in some countries 17 isn't even old enough to look at naughty things.

Now, clearly neither Apple nor the devs behind Beauty Meter can totally control who uploads what (the app even says as much when you launch it), but it makes me wonder: if an app like this can be approved, why not Drivetrain?

It's remote control for Transmission. It doesn't actually do any torrent downloading. There's no way anything it does is remotely illegal. It's pretty similar to a single-app MochaVNC, which has been in the store for ages, and I can certainly use to control Transmission from my iPod. But I digress.

Three things for certain: Beauty Meter will soon suffer the same fate as Hottest Girls, the approval process needs an overhaul, and the screenshot at Krapps is going to live in Internet infamy for a long time.

[via Krapps - thanks, @thmonline!]

The developers at Skype must be working overtime this week. Yesterday saw the launch of Skype 3.0 for Windows Phones. Today Skype pushed out version 4.1 for Windows and Skype 1.1 for iPhone and iPod Touch.

Skype 4.1 for Windows includes support for screen sharing, birthday reminders, and improved audio and video quality. The latest version also fixes a few bugs found in Skype 4.1 beta, so if you're running the beta you'll probably want to update.

Skype 1.1 for the iPhone and iPod Touch now lets you listen to your voicemail on your mobile phone and send SMS. The update also adds support for additional languages.

Over the past year, there's been something of a gold-rush for Twitter clients on the iPhone. From Twitterrific to Twitterfon, Tweetie to the recently-launched TweetDeck, there's a bucketload of apps to let you use Twitter on the go. Today sees the launch of another challenger for space on your homescreen: Birdfeed [iTunes Link]: "A very nice Twitter client for your iPhone".

In trying Birdfeed this evening, it's clear that a huge amount of time has been spent on the application from the exceptional icons (similar in style to those in another Download Squad favourite-app, Things) to some smart touches. Here's just some that caught my eye:

• a small dot in the 'Compose Tweet' button to show the presence of a draft
• a super-handy 'home' button that takes you back to your original list of tweets when you're drilling-down in the options
• the auto-loading of more tweets once you reach the bottom of the list
• integration with services like Favrd.

It's worth noting that Birdfeed doesn't do absolutely everything you may see in other clients. However that's of little concern to me quite frankly, as it features all the options I need on the go. Birdfeed is extremely well designed, super-snappy and well worth the $4.99 price. I know, we're fickle here at Download Squad when it comes to Twitter clients. However if you're wanting a slick new Twitter client, Birdfeed gets our thumbs up.

I wrote the other day about the iPhone version of AIM, and how it takes advantage of push notifications in iPhone 3.0., but since then I've been testing a different chat client that really takes things to the next level: BeejiveIM. You might be put off by the $10 purchase price, but if you're an avid IM fanatic, it will be worth every penny. BeejiveIM supports AIM, Google Chat, MSN, Yahoo!, Facebook and MySpace in a smart layout that makes it the most usable chat app I've tried on the iPhone yet.

The key features that make BeejiveIM a killer app are its support for push notifications, its horizontal keyboard, and the elegant way it organizes open chats. Rather than forcing you to dig through submenus on your buddy list, BeejiveIM puts the buddy list on one screen, and a list of your open chats on another. If someone IMs you while you have a chat open, you can tap once on the number of unread messages to switch between chats. This is right in so many ways, and avoids the clunky feeling of having to go back to your buddy list to switch to another conversation.

Sure, $10 is on the high end of the App Store price range, but there's nothing going that beats BeejiveIM at what it does. It's replaced both the AIM app and the Meebo web app on my home screen.

Now that version 3.0 of the iPhone operating system allows third-party apps to take advantage of push notifications, we're starting to see some of the first major push apps popping up. AIM for iPhone, available as a free ad-supported app or a $2.99 ad-free version, now offers push notifications. Now AIM doesn't have to be open for you to see when you've got a new IM coming in.

New push notifications pop up just like SMS messages, but you can also set AIM to badge its icon with the number of new messages you have, or play a sound when a new one comes in. Since third-party apps aren't allowed to run in the background on the iPhone, push makes AIM a lot more practical than it was when you had to have it open and active to see your new messages.

[via Lifehacker]

I have a confession to make: though I am an unabashed iPhone lover, nothing will ever top the infatuation I had with the Commodore 64. The C64 was my family's first computer, and it was soon to become my computer.

Harry McCracken over at the Technologizer blog latches onto a recent story about a Commodore 64 emulator (reputedly a very good one) that was rejected for entry into Apple's iPhone App Store due to the fact that code interpreters and emulators are expressly forbidden. Unfortunately, this appears to be a a blanket application of this rule, which seems to have been intended to block things like Adobe Flash, but the point is that it was blocked.

That story lead Harry to come up with a magnificent grid comparing the venerable C64 to the iPhone 3GS, a comparison which seems apt considering the fervent popularity of each platform.

A couple statistics from Harry's form really jumped out at me. For example, the iPhone already boasts over 50,000 software titles in the App Store. Compare that to only 10,000 titles total that were released for the Commodore 64 over the course of its life. Also, did you know that the iPhone's resolution is higher than the C64's was? The iPhone's display is 320 x 480, while the C64 sported a 320 x 200 pixel display.

The comparison grid isn't serious business; it's clearly intended to have some fun with a couple iconic computing devices, and for me at least it hits home.

Artist Jorge Colombo drew the cover of the June issue of The New Yorker. That's not so unusual, considering that he's a very accomplished illustrator, designer and video artist who was first published in the New Yorker more than 10 years ago. What's unique about it is that this particular drawing was created with a $5 fingerpainting app for the iPhone, called Brushes.

Colombo spent an hour standing near the scene depicted on the cover, using Brushes to draw what he saw. Why draw on an iPhone instead of with a traditional sketchpad or canvas? For one thing, it's less conspicuous. Colombo said nobody noticed what he was doing or asked him about it. He also touted the iPhone's ability to provide a drawing space where paper can't: in the dark.

[via SmarterWare]

Eucalyptus, a gorgeous eBook reader for the iPhone, was initially rejected from Apple's application store for the most absurd of reasons. See, Eucalyptus' extensive library of great literature comes from Project Gutenberg, an open source book project, and one of the books in Gutenberg's library is The Kama Sutra. Apple apparently objected to this during the review process, despite the fact that other approved readers like Stanza and Amazon's Kindle can also access the book. So can Apple's Safari browser, because Project Gutenberg's books are all available through its website.

Fortunately, this mistake didn't stop Eucalyptus from eventually making it into the app store, where it's now available for $9.99. Buying the app gets you an extremely slick UI, great page-turning animations, and an organization scheme for books that works a lot like iTunes does for music. I actually totally buy into the Eucalyptus marketing pitch, which is that, for the price of one book, you can have 20,000 books in a great-looking reader.

There are a few different iPhone-based options to remotely control your Mac, but Rowmote might be the most complete. Instead of just controlling your media via Front Row, it can actually switch applications on your Mac. The list of apps you can use from Rowmote is impressive, including everything from PowerPoint to VLC to PandoraJam, and it also works with AppleTV. For 99 cents, that's not too shabby.

Rowmote also has some features that greatly improve the user experience. You can set it to keep your Mac's display from sleeping, which is handy when you're watching a movie, and you can also choose between light and dark interfaces, so you don't hurt your eyes if you're using it in the dark. All in all, it might be the best iPhone-to-Mac remote solution I've run across.

I haven't been shy about expressing how much I love Amazon's Kindle iPhone app, and I love it just a little bit more now that it's update to Version 1.1. The addition of an iPhone-optimized Kindle Store made the iPhone experience a bit more like a real Kindle, but the updates in version 1.1 make the app feel more iPhone native. You can now rotate to landscape mode, like you'd expect in an iPhone reader, and there's also a new color scheme available.

The rotation feature is definitely handy, especially since you can turn it off when it would be inconvenient -- when reading in bed, for example. As far as appearance, the old black-on-white layout is still available, but a less bright option has been added in the form of a dark brown-on-sepia theme. It's a bit easier on the eyes in low light. No revolutionary changes here, just small fixes that make an already-usable app that much more pleasing.

[via Daring Fireball]

Email n' Walk is one of the most innovative uses of the iPhone's camera I've seen in quite a while. It lets you compose a normal email, but the text fields are overlaid on top of the view from your iPhone's camera. Finally, a solution to embarrassing accidents where you walk into a signpost while typing on your phone -- not that I would know about that from experience, or anything.

Email n' Walk can also be used to spy on suspicious characters while looking like you're nondescriptly writing a message. Fortunately, though, it's really meant for your safety, not for stalking. You can't take or save photos from it. Email n' Walk also doesn't replace the built-in Mail app on the iPhone. When you save your message, it pops open Mail so you can address and send it.

You can pick up Email n' Walk for 99 cents in the App Store.

[via Lifehacker]

If you've got a ton of email that you need to dig through very efficiently, the iPhone's built-in Mail app might not be adequate to the task. That's where reMail comes in.

It's a dedicated email search app that connects to your IMAP account to find the message you're looking for. ReMail's featureset is impressive, with an offline mode, autocompletion for your contacts' names, and a very sensible natural language approach to search queries.

Although reMail doesn't support Exchange, it does support any IMAP account -- multiple IMAP accounts, in fact -- which means it works well with Gmail. The only hangup is that reMail provides a lot of its features by indexing your email on its own servers, which means you have to trust them. you didn't expect your iPhone to hold your whole Gmail archive, right?

The reMail privacy policy seems straightforward enough, though, so there's no reason to think they're not on the level. The app is free, and the service is free during beta, but will go up to $3.99 a month after launch.

We've been waiting for Sling Media to release an iPhone version of the SlingPlayer for a while now, and it looks like the wait is just about over. Engadget reports that the application will be available in the App Store early tomorrow morning for about $30.

For the unitiated, the SlingPlayer is an application that lets you watch live and pre-recorded TV on a computer or mobile device. The catch is that you'll need to have a Slingbox hooked up to your home entertainment system to stream that TV over the internet to your computer or phone. The good news is that while Sling Media had originally indicated that the iPhone version of the SlingPlayer would only work with the latest Slingboxes, it looks like most versions of the Slingbox should work.

What won't work is streaming TV over 3G connections. SlingPlayer for the iPhone will only work when you're connected to a WiFi network.

Amazon's Kindle app for iPhone is a great alternative to purchasing a pricey Kindle device when you've already invested in an iPhone, but it's still not quite as streamlined and easy-to-use.

Amazon seems to be changing that as quickly as it can, though, with the launch of an iPhone-optimized Kindle store. The new store still isn't part of Kindle itself, but it can be launched with the app's "get books" icon.

This seems like a small thing, but it's a big win for iPhone Kindle users, and possibly for Kindle book sales. As nice as it is to have your purchases delivered by WhisperNet to your iPod or iPhone, sometimes you're not at a computer, and trying to buy books from an iPhone in Safari was an aggravating experience until now.

Business Insider points out that Apple is planning new eCommerce features that iPhone developers will eventually have access to. Amazon might be able to use that to handle sales from within the app, making it even closer to the real Kindle experience.

There's a boatload of Twitter clients out there for the iPhone (it seems to be that everyone's wanting to write them nowadays) however the Iconfactory's Twitterrific was one of the very first to appear on the iDevices and now has hit version 2.0.

The original version of Twitterrific, which debuted at the launch of the App Store last summer, was a very slick app that let you read and update Twitter on the go. But since then many other clients such as Tweetie, Twitterfon and the likes have brought plenty more features to the table, and Twitterrific developer Craig Hockenberry has talked on his own blog about why the original Twitterrific didn't include them.

However that's all changed in this all-new version and Twitterrific 2.0 brings you pretty much every feature you've been using in the likes of Tweetie (a favourite amongst us here at Download Squad HQ). Read on for the low-down on some of the all-new features in Twitterrific 2.0 along with our gallery!