They Might Be Giants, or TMBG for those who are lazily inclined, released an app about a week ago. It has fairly standard stuff, essentially it holds five of the most recent/popular tracks from TMBG and connects you to their social media fan base. For any TMBG fans, it definitely deserves a place on your home screen, and it’s free. Also, what’s pretty cool, is the artwork in the app was developed and hand-stitched by Hine Mizushima.

In other news, you may have heard that the App Store got a little to pornoriffic recently with the 500px photo sharing app and then Apple subsequently removed it. Now, this app has returned into the fold after being cleansed of all boobs. But the real question is what has actually changed? Apparently they added a “Report” button to each image so people could flag any potential problem, and what’s more, Apple raised the rating of the app to 17+. Co-founder of 500px, Evgeny Tchebotarev, drew a correlation between their app and the Vine, who also has had issues of porn popping up when it shouldn’t. The Vine, however, still enjoys a 12+ rating on the app store. Lest we forget, Apple can pretty much do whatever it likes on it’s own app store, fair or not.

Source: The Verge

Regardless of what you man think of Mr. Ashton Kutcher, it is a rather interesting direction they are taking, and he’s still a dead ringer for Jobs as a young dude. With that said, Woz claims that this scene never really happened, citing that the relationship and motivations among the two of them were quite different. But he also added that “I’m embarrassed but if the movie is fun and entertaining, all the better.”

I knew virtually nothing about Wave Trip until a few minutes ago… now I really want to see how the ratings on this pan out… it’s currently $1.99 on the App Store. Observe:

Now children as old as 4 years old can experience the joys of weaponry with the new NRA: Practice Shooting app, now available for all. This app includes gun safety tips, different state gun laws, and various “educational materials.” The app itself is free with an option to “upgrade” your various weapon for $0.99. And really, the only part of this that makes this a game is just a point-and-shoot gun range. This really isn’t a political statement of any sort but age 4… 4?!

In fairness, most media outlets are focusing on the fact that the age range for the app is quite low, and not much else. I’ve heard the argument be made that this was not an intentional choice made by the NRA to have that age on the app store, but rather a function of the content in the game itself when submitting to the store. It isn’t a “violent” app in the sense that you are not shooting live targets, and there is no horror content or bad language. Which, if that is the case, then (at least) it exposes a flaw in the submission process to Apple. Many stories have risen stating a lot of folks learned to shoot quite young, usually depending on which state you were born in. And while I would think gun safety education would be of the utmost importance if you had firearms in the house, children or not, this app probably isn’t the way to do it.

Starship Troopers