TV@SG Lite (iTunes Link) was made available at the App Store recently, giving you a handy TV guide on your iPhone/iPod Touch. The app is developed by Joseph Wee who also did Carpark@SG (iTunes Link), TrafficCam SG (iTunes Link) and Locacity SG (iTunes Link).

At the moment, this Lite version enables you to view programs shown today on channels from MediaCorp TV, Starhub Cable TV and Singtel mio TV. When the full version is available (probably paid), you get a full week’s programme schedule and also the ability to do a search and view what’s currently showing on TV.

Definitely a handy app to have if you are a TV addict. Get it now for FREE at the iTunes App Store for your iPhone/iPod Touch. Note that this requires an active internet connection for the app to work.

iTunes Plus upgrade with choices now

Kirk McElhearn’s rant on iTunes Plus upgrade policy written for Macworld probably reached the eyes of those in Cupertino. There has been a change, for the better.

As of January 28, 2009, Apple has changed their policy, and you can now upgrade individual albums or songs (if you purchased the songs on their own). I would like to think that my Macworld article had something to do with this change…

Enabling two finger zooming on maps in iPhoto ’09

From a twitter tip by @Stroughtonsmith, you can enable zooming on maps in iPhoto ’09 with the scroll wheels or using two-finger scrolling to zoom by typing this in Terminal:

defaults write com.apple.iphoto MapScrollWheel -bool YES

(via TUAW)

iPhoto ’09 Faces works with your pussy…cat

I love the Faces feature in iPhoto ’09 that I spent hours just trying to match photos of friends and family. And according to Jason Kaneshiro, Faces also recognises his cats and were able to identify the two cats he has. Think the pattern recognition works as long as there are clearly defined features on the subjects’ faces. So are you going to id your dogs too?

HD video Web service shoot-out

CNet did a comparison with a few of the more popular Web services that provide HD video hosting and with the availability of more affordable HD cams like Flip HD and Creative Vado HD, and applications like iMovie ’09 that comes with stabilization feature, having a good HD Web service site to host your movies will be a bonus.

Not surprisingly Youtube is named the best, not just for its low cost of FREE, but also for its good HD encoding and additional tools like adding subtitles and annotations.

Junda Ong who makes the popular SG-series of iPhone apps has added a new one to the mix – possibly one that will rake him a nice income – SG Girls (iTunes Link) is available for US$3.99.

SG Girls display public photos on the Internet with the theme “Singapore Girls”. This is an application to appreciating oriental beauties.

Just what any hot-blooded guy needs on their iPhone…It features streaming of photographs, zooming, ratings and the ability to save the photos.

Like most developers, Junda had faced problems getting approval for the app to be approved by Apple. But after two over months, the app finally shows up today.

For those who aren’t fluent in hokkien, mai tu liao literally meant let’s not wait… maybe, just maybe the Gods in Cupertino heard my plea.

Story behind SG Girls

The app came about after some prompting from Junda’s friend to make him an app that he would use daily. Somehow, the idea of seeing the daily top pictures from a popular local photo site came to mind. With two weeks of coding, he came up with a system backed by a distributed Mac system that will source a selected few photo sharing sites for photos that matches the “SG Girl” criteria and stream them via the app.

One of the criteria is that no sleazy photos will be distributed so as not to contravene Apple’s strict restrictions over the apps that appear in the App Store. Junda also wants to make the app as a “clean, premium photography app”.

First look at the SG Girls

The app works as advertise. Upon loading, it automatically streams photos of girls from various photo sites like Flickr, PhotoBucket and Picassa, to name a few. Occasionally, you will see the Flickr’s “The Photo is current unavailable” placeholder.

One thing to note is the app is a bandwidth sucker, with each photo averaging between 50-100 KBs, those with limited data plan should try to use this app only when WIFI is available.

The controls are minimal (click on image), and only appear when you tap once on the screen. You get to scroll back and forth, rate the photos and also the option to save to your Photo app. There is also an option to “flag” the photo and another button that gives the instruction and description of the app.

A suggestion is to expand the options available when one “flag” the photo. Besides inappropriate content, owners or the subject in the photographs should also be allowed to indicate that they want the image removed. The issue of image usage is tricky in this context as there are sites that are not strict in protecting the usage rights of the content owner.

I guess one would like to know how are the qualities of the photos shown. To each his own, but there are photos that are street candids which I feel, are photos which won’t meet the app’s objective of showcasing “oriental beauties”.

As Junda said himself, the app is very raw after just two weeks of development. There is a market for such an app and when he fine tunes SG Girls, don’t be surprised to see similar apps showcasing beauties from the region.

At least for my iPod Touch. When you save any image that has a dimension which is bigger than the screen size, will appear pixelated when viewed in Photos. However, when you download it to your Desktop, it looks perfectly.

Here are the screen shots to illustrate the problem, with a little help from Golden Globe winner Kate Winslet. The first screen shows how the image appear in an email. After saving it, the second screen shows the thumbnails in the Camera Row and the third shows how pixelated the image looks when viewed full screen in Photos.

For comparison, here is Kate Winslet in full glory after downloading the saved image from my iPod Touch.

Does it occur on the iPhone? Do let me know. Thanks.

Apple just released the iPhone 2.2.1 Software security and maintenance update for both the iPhone and the iPod Touch. Available immediately via iTunes for all versions of iPhone and iPod Touch, the update fixes the following issues:

• Improves the general stability of Safari.
• Fixes an issue where some images saved from Mail do not display correctly in the Camera Roll. (discovered when iPhone 2.2 was released)
• for iPod Touch, the update also corrects an issue that caused some Apple Lossless (ALAC) to skip during playback

Do note that jailbroken phones are not encouraged to update the software yet.

update Image saved from Email or Safari still suffer from pixelation after 2.2.1 on my iPod Touch. Same problem still on the iPhone?