Is it a publicity stunt? is it a completely new way to make music? or is it just lots of people waving their phones around at gigs and making annoying sounds?

A Techno DJ has crafted a new kind of DJing performance that uses an iPhone app to let the audience interact with the music.

Canadian DJ Richie Hawtin has launched an iPhone app SYNK that you can use at special gigs to chip into the show. Big concept - it could be amazing or just gimmicky. Wish I could review this properly but that would involve going to one of the 12 gigs that he is putting on. The first one is in Germany on the 27th March.

In the meantime: let's just say the
For example at one stage during the gig, viewers can re-organize the word samples using a user interface of 20 touch buttons on their phone's screen. At another stage they can watch a video stream or monitor the percussive beats.

BUT: even if you can't make the gigs. You should download the app. It works while gigs aren't on either - by providing amibent sound and visuals that react when you shake the phone or speak into the microphone.

It's like someone is remixing your speech in echoey bass. More weird and trippy than something you'd keep coming back to - worth a download because it's free.

This is how the describe it?

"In between the performances the SYNK application will be in sleeper mode and function as a Plastikman atmospheric location shifter. By using visualizations inspired by Derivative, combined with the iPhone's built-in microphone and accelerometer, users are immersed in a Plastikman environment."

Um. Will it catch on? Well it will fundamentally change gigs if it does.

SYNK, free on iTunes

Great app for Blackberry - Where's My Phone - has some cunning new ways of helping you find your lost mobile, wherever you may have left it.

The app-makers explain:

"Sending an email to your Blackberry triggers the application and a loud alarm sounds - even when your BlackBerry is on silent!" An alert message then appears on the screen instructing whoever finds it how to return it to you.

A paid for Pro-Edition ($3.99) has a few more features: allowing you to locate your phone by GPS, have it phone you or even check battery level remotely.

Given how traumatic losing a phone can be, this sounds worthwhile to me.

Where's My Phone is available to download free from BlackBerry App World

Some of us download apps like sugar-mad children let loose in a sweet store. iPhone users are particularly guilty - they have the biggest app store of any mobile platform and arguably the iPhone apps are the iPhone's selling point, I mean that 3mg pixel camera wasn't why you bought it was it?

But how many apps is too many? When do you cross the line from being an explorative app user to becoming addicted to these little software packages? What do your apps say about you?

Well let's look at the numbers: iPhones come pre-installed with about 15 apps including Stocks, the Weather, Voice Memo and the Camera. There are 4 docked apps at the bottom as well.

The maximum number of apps you can have on an iPhone is 180 or 11 full pages on the 3.0 Operating system.

15 apps - honey why did you buy this phone in the first place? This is like having a Rolls Royce and only driving to the corner shop in it. Do you know what an app is? Well get your ass down to the "app store" and pick some up for yourself.

16 to 30 apps - Okay, you've made an effort, you know what the app store is, but I hope you haven't just downloaded iPint and Google Earth. They're both lovely in their own way, but you are missing out on treasures.

31 to 60 apps - You know this is probably a good happy medium. Well done. I bet you're a balanced individual who finds the app you want when you need it.

61 to 100 apps - This is pushing app-mania. But if you're a power-user, love your iPhone to pieces, maybe you do know what's on page 6 and maybe you do use those crazy Japanese indie music ones. Then that's okay.

100 to 150 apps - woah tiger. Over a 100 is a lot. This is advanced stage appiphillia and you ought to stop while you still can. Do you even use those tetris spin-off games on page 8? It's not good for your bank balance, your concentration, your self-esteem or your iPhone battery.

151 to 180 apps - Break your bank account's connection to iTunes and ask your mum to take your credit card away.

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Shiny Twitter Friends
The confessions of our friends on Twitter:

@tree183 I have 11 pages. I want to cut down, but can't decide what to delete! :/ btw, 11 is the maximum.

@ShortyMcStompy I have 6 whole pages of apps on my pie phone. Is that too many? *hides ashamed*

@fluffosaur over 70 in iTunes but less than 20 currently installed. Around 8 main ones (tweetie, fb, hipstamatic)

So you can't have a lightsaber in real life because a) they don't exist, b) you might hurt someone - but neither reality nor the police can stop you owning the lightsaber duel app for iPhone.

An exciting update to the previous lightsaber app for iPhone, this one lets you fight your friend in a lightsaber duel. With special effect noises. It uses bluetooth to work out where your "blade" is.

Out on iTunes soon - for the Star Wars nut in your life.

[via MobileEnt.Biz]

When is the next 36 bus? It's the sort of question that drives you crazy when you're waiting for it, and hardly anything can tell you the answer. Especially not the strange man in the corner of the bus shelter kicking the wall.

Well you guessed right - there's now an iPhone app for that. For those bus stops that don't feature helpful time displays, there is now the NextBuses iPhone app, telling you when the next bus is.

Using information from Traveline's NextBuses service, which already exists in SMS and WAP-based form, it mixes scheduled and real-time (where available) information based on the user's location.

NextBuses covers 370,000 bus stops throughout England, Scotland and Wales. Though if reviews on iTunes are to be believed, the coverage could be a little patchy outside the main cities. One iTunes reviewer complains: "The app by itself is good... if there were any information it could give you. I haven't found one bus stop yet that has any departure info."

Still strong reviews from elsewhere. And at 59p it sounds worth it if you're a regular bus user..

NextBuses £0.59 on iTunes

Apps will outsell CDs by 2012 a report from the world's second biggest app store GetJar said today. Bigger news to consumers may be that Getjar is the second biggest app store in the world. Uh Get-what?

Coming after the Apple app store Getjar have the greatest quantity of apps of any other mobile app store, currently beating Android. They aren't the second biggest by revenue - most of the apps are free and arguably are behind Android in terms of quality - lots of the apps are equivalent to shorcuts to mobile websites. Still, they're one to watch. We met a representative from Getjar back in October and wrote up 5 reasons why they could get really big.

But back to the claims about apps beating CD sales. Based on current trends, their stats stand up. The global mobile apps market is set to be worth $17.5billion by 2012. Where 7billion mobile apps were downloaded in 2009 - almost 50 billion are expected in 2012 - a year on year growth rate of 92%.

That would make the value of apps sold greater than the predicted value of the CD market in 2012 ($13.83bn).

Related: 5 Reasons Getjar could become the biggest app store in the world

If there ever is a day to download Irish apps to your iPhone, it is St Patrick's Day. We've selected five of the best to bring some Irish charm to your smartphone...

CLICK ON THE IMAGE BELOW TO START GALLERY

The Foursquare app for iPhone has just undergone a bit of an update. Its new incarnation is faster, a little better organised and sort of more bubbly around the edges.

It's not a major overhaul but it is a tarting-up, a spring clean of the user interface making things easier to navigate. That means more icons, the use of bold and colour in typefaces to make reading a bit easier and the introduction of bright green for alerts.

One feature I particularly like is the pull-down for refresh feature as seen on Tweetie and other such real-time apps. It means the refresh button doesn't take up space on the header and it becomes more intuitive.

It claims it has faster more efficient checkin and shout flow too, as well as some features making it a bit easier to click through on stuff.

Music service Spotify will come pre-installed on all Sony Ericsson Vivaz phones sold on the Three network.

Three announced today: "Sony Ericsson Vivaz on 3 comes pre-installed with the Spotify for Symbian application which means you can search and play songs from a list of 6 million when you're on the move."

Spotify is service that lets you listen to music in return for either listening to ads or paying a subscription. The app is only available to people who subscribe to Spotify.

Of course anyone could go to the Symbian app store and download the app if they wanted to, but 3 putting it on the home page of this new phone, gives Spotify some serious shelf-space, raises its visibility and cements Spotify's position as a premier music service.

Featuring a blinging 8 megapixel camera, the Vivaz is sold as a camera phone.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz, available in silver from £35 a month with unlimited internet, texts and 750 anytime any network minutes on a 24month contract - see 3.co.uk here for more details

As pointless apps go, this is the sort of pointless app that will appeal to people who like cats, and puns.

Oh that would be me then. Yes.

Witty Kitty is an app that lets you stroke a (virtual) cat while it writhes around and makes cat-based puns every so often. You have to stroke him the right way to get a pun out of him. Though the stroking is a little jerky on the whole it is quite a therapeutic app.

I have to say that the puns are pretty bad: "Are you of the Kitty-Loving Purrsuasion" is one. I know they're meant to be bad, and I've made many bad jokes in my time sure, but more lols please. It is still far from the raw grumpy genius of a good lolcat.

Witty Kitty, £0.50 from iTunes

Phones keyboards are fiddly to use so an app which lets you use your voice to activate controls on the phone could make the whole process smoother and easier.

There have been a few apps that offer this, but one of the bigger ones is Vlingo. By opening the app and talking to it, you can perform a range of different functions without having to type any text.

What it can do
It doesn't do everything, for example you can't open other apps or add stuff to your calendar (yet), but you can:
1. Find stuff on maps by saying "Find xx"
2. Search for stuff on the internet by saying "Search xx"
3. Update social networking sites by saying "Update Facebook xx"

If you pay you can also address, dictate and send emails and texts.

Uses?
Saving time; helping people who find the little keyboards too small to see or to tap.

The catch:
Voice recognition. I love the thought of it, but is it ever good enough? Well I've got a pretty down the line accent and it worked okay for simple stuff.

Find coffee shops in London - came up perfectly.

Find DIY stores in Dulwich came up with:
d i wife with in dutch
da wife with into which
da wife to be in touch
d i y strawberries in dutch

This is exactly the problem that negative reviews on the iTunes store point up: "it's only 50% accurate"; I tried the word 'fully' five times before giving up" etc. Other reviews are quite positive and claim that it learns to adapt to your voice and that as long as you speak close to the mic, it works.

Conclusion:
You'll have to train both yourself and the phone for this to work reliably, but it's free and does save time on internet searches.

New app Tweetsii, from Dutch social networking platform Gypsii (which has been very successful in China) promises a richer Twitter experience. Tweetsii has a lot of competition in more established Twitter apps: Tweetie, Twitterific, TwitterBerry. Does it provide a better experience?

If you're internally groaning at the thought of yet another Twitter app, let's cut to the chase. This does all the basic stuff you'd expect of any Twitter app - shows you your stream, lets you post text, add pictures, search and geotag.

Okay so what's new then? why another app with a silly name.
Well. The *different* feature on this app is that it's all a bit more location focussed. There's a "nearby" tweet stream for example: somewhat like gay male hook-up app Grindr, it ranks tweets according to how many metres away from you they are. That's quite interesting. You can gauge what's big in your area, see if any of your friends are nearby and maybe meet new people locally.

Anything else?
Yes - click on the Places button and see venues nearby: restaurants, cinemas and so on. Tap it to find the location, phone number or to share it on Twitter. There's also a Gypsii offer section - for deals in restaurants etc. You can create a list of personal places too.

What's this Explore function?
The explore function fuses nearby Twitter stream with the nearby places stream. Search for "coffee" for example and you'll find a list of coffee shops and tweets about coffee all ranked for proximity to you.

Conclusion - so it's like Twitter mushed into Foursquare then?
Yes, yes it is.

Tweetsii, free on iTunes

Creme Egg fans, there is a iPhone creme egg app. No you can't eat it, but you can replicate the moment when you crush the chocolate shell of the creme egg and all the goo oozes out.

The Scramble the Egg game on the Creme Egg iPhone app presents you with an egg on your screen, shake your phone and the egg gets knocked around and breaks up into goo.

As Cadbury's put it: "Scramble the Egg invites users of Apple's 3G iPhone to shake a virtual Creme Egg around the screen until the Egg becomes so excited it bursts its goo all over the screen. For even more goo interaction, users can then slide and spread the goo around the screen with their fingers."

Does anyone anyone else think that sounds really rude?

UPDATE: just tried it, it yells "goo" at you as you shake it around and its wrapper peels off.

More creme egg related webfun on www.cremeegg.com

Creme Egg, free on iTunes

Okay so it doesn't exactly sound like rock and roll, but a new cable system GuitarBud that lets you plug your electric guitar into your iPhone is bound to please geeky guitar-players.

Made by Paul Reed Smith Guitars, GuitarBud lets you link your instrument up with lots of different apps. Hook up to simple Voice Memos to record a quick riff or use one of several apps for guitar player on the iPhone:

PRS have released their own free app to go with the cable - JamAmp app - a guitar amp simulator, tuner and training tool all in one. It also allows the user to change the pitch and speed of playalong tracks independently enabling tracks to be matched to the pitch of the guitar. Some of the other apps suited to use with the Guitarbud include StompVox, Riff Raters, GigDaddy, iStrobosoft, Rectools Pro and Guitar FX Deluxe.

Yes go forth and create geek musicians. Just don't go thrashing your guitar around - you might damage your iPhone...

Guitarbud, £29.95 from PRSguitars

How you could you resist an app that promises to keep you up to date with the Japanese indie scene, lets you watch Japanese grrl rock stars smashing guitars and simulates you smashing a guitar by buzzing your iPhone and making painful screechy noises. I certainly couldn't - but, though fun it is too good to be true.. Review below.

The concept:
It's a collaboration between Japanese music distributor "monstar.fm" and guitar-makers K's Japan. Instead of just playing you music, it sets the to films of Japan's top female indie acts smashing guitars up. It's a push to get you to buy music though with each song cutting out about 30 seconds in.

The design:
Flip through 12 artists with a song each, click Info to learn more about the artist, go to their website, purchase their music on iTunes, or find out what they like and err, what blood type they are.

Click play to get a 30 second clip of one of 12 songs. Shake you phone during the song and the artist stops and starts smashing her guitar in, shake your phone while she's smashing and you get the noise too. The song cuts out when you get them to smash though, which is a pity.

The wow-factor:
love the idea - it makes a library of 12 songs you've never heard before into something really fun but getting prompted to buy stuff every minute is annoying and I really hate it when songs cut out. On the other hand music videos shot specifically for iPHone look quite good.

Conclusion: great idea but it's a bit of a tease - can someone do one that's more generous with the music please?

The price: £0.59 on iTunes

Ah dating, love it or hate it, it's got to be done unless you are lucky enough to be a)in a relationship b)have a great cat and don't give a damn.

Anyway, it makes it all a bit easier when it's on your iPhone: saving you time, money and sparing you those awkward moments when you don't know what to say (just pretend you're off-line).

We have trawled the app store for the best iPhone dating apps and come up with ten.

Click on the image below to start the gallery.

Talk of the town location-based gaming app Foursquare has just disappeared from the iPhone app store.

Foursquare's new iPhone app version (1.6) went live on the 5th March, but the app is not currently available in iTunes according to NextWeb. Foursquare's Android app and its Blackberry beta remain available the iPhone glitch is serious for Foursquare as this is by far the most popular Foursquare platform.

We assume it's a blip due to software problems in a rushed-out app, still it could be costly for Foursquare coming at a time when it is increasing its audience at a fast rate.

[via NextWeb]

Yesterday we reviewed new make-your-own mobile social network site Shoutem. It's just come out of beta, today, we talked to their CEO Crotian entrepreneur Victor Marohnic who told us about why

SS: What gave you the idea to make Shoutem?

VM: We built two or three social networks in Croatia, but there the total population is 4.5 million so a good network will get at most 100,000 users, it's not enough to make a profit from advertising. Small networks with say a couple of 1000s of users won't be able to pay for the developers they need to set up.

Ning already makes social networks, so we worked out what will come after Ning, and it realised it will probably be something mobile so Shoutem is like a mobile Ning, a white label social network.

SS: How long did it take to build it?

VM: We started on this two years ago with just 2 or 3 of us full-time, then we got money from seed funds after a lot of buzz from press releases, so then we had a team of 5 or 6 working on it. We've achieved a lot in a short time.

SS: How do you make money out of it? What's the business model?

VM: Yes, it's a freemium model taking the same form as Ning or Wordpress. We're not currently charging for any services on it but we will bring that in, in the next month or two. Otherwise we're looking at branded applications - we could help our more successful social networks develop branded apps [instead of hitching on the Shoutem one] maybe sharing the profits 50/50 with the network owners in a similar way to meetup.com's model.

SS: What sort of people use it? Any interesting or surprising uses of Shoutem so far?

VM: Well we expected a lot of niche networks and that's what we've got: blackberry users, football fans, people in one city or town, or even different language groups. We might have expected to have more small language groups, but currently 90% of our users are from America and nearly everyone is using English. We expect to see more networks based around location and perhaps even very small networks like a family.

SS: What are the plans for the future?

VM: We're working on the Android app and integration with other social networks - Foursquare, Gowalla, Facebook fan pages and Ning. A lot of Ning users are using us to handle the mobile side of their social networks, then they plug us back into the Ning web interface.

We also want to make a plugin for Wordpress, a tool that Wordpress site owners could link to a community network on their site. We've noticed that people like to integrate social networks with other complete packages: offering news, video and then a social network behind it.

Like the Ranch&Rodeo radio station on our site for example, which is a social network based around content. We want to make it something really simple, something any Wordpress blogger could set up.

A Shoutem social network page:

See also: All You Need to Know about Shoutem

Do you just have sex with so many people that it gets a bit hard to manage your text messages? Ever worry that your permanent boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse will flick through your phone one day and find an incriminating text or a that a former hook-up will sell an embarrasing sext to the papers? Don't worry, Tiger Woods had the same problem.. so the whole shagging around thing didn't work so well for him, but that's because he wasn't using the cunningly named TigerMail app.

Yes like that.

Coming to the app store soon, TigerMail allows users to send text messages that "dissolve" from the receiver's phone screen within 30 seconds of receipt and viewing. You can choose how quickly it vanishes and the message will leave no trace in your sent box. Great for spies, loverats and people who love the ephemeral.

Not available yet but will be running a lite and pro versions on iTunes
TigerMail.com

Location-based game Foursquare got a boost yesterday when Vodafone announced they would be including the app prominently in their store front.

The service will be placed 'on-deck', according to TechCrunch Europe, meaning that the mobile carrier is giving Foursquare a push through its own portal/app store - Vodafone MyWeb, available on phones carried by Vodafone.

It doesn't change the status or the working of the app at all, but it does give the app more prominent position making it more visible and thus more likely to get downloads and users.

It squeezes competitors in the social location-based game market, apps like MyTown, Gowalla, even Qype I suppose.

Interesting that certain app stores are hitching their wagon to particular apps, I can only imagine the partnerships will pay off for both of them. I mean, I was only hazily aware Vodafone had an app store in the first place. So this gives them both some publicity. It's worth Vodafone are banking that Foursquare will take off and become dominant in this space.

Related: Does Foursquare make you sad? and Why PleaseRobMe.com isn't going to cause a spate of FourSquare robberies and FourSquare iPhone app hits London - but what is it good for?