iPhone Users Love Apps—Then Forget Them

Evidence of systemwide effort to rid App Store of explicit material

(NEWSER) - Apple appears to be cracking down on sexually explicit applications for sale in its App Store as one and then another racy app becomes unavailable. TechCrunch has what a developer says is an email describing the decision to pull his program. “We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.” The company says it has received complaints and “changed our guidelines appropriately.” More»

Add more cowbell or find nearby restaurants

(NEWSER) - Impressed with Apple's spread of iPhone apps, Wall Street Journal tech gurus Walt Mossberg and Katherine Boehret list their favorites.

• AOL Radio: The best Internet radio player for the iPhone
• Evernote: A good port of the elegant note-taking program
• Instapaper: Instantly download Web pages for offline reading.
• Travelocity TravelTools: Allows you to check flight schedules, gate assignments, and security wait times.

PC Magazine gives you the scoop on the new slate of titles for Apple juggernaut

(NEWSER) - The best part about the iPhone 3G's debut, writes PC Magazine, is the new abundance of software for the handset. Most of the apps work on the original iPhone, too. The cream of the crop:

• AIM: Should need no introduction, although it was a major omission from the original iPhone's slate.
• Bejeweled 2: A popular time-waster gets a suitably beautiful iPhone port.

Apple loophole makes photos vulnerable

(NEWSER) - It's not only contacts that can be snatched from your cellphone by apps—photos, too, can be yanked, thanks to an Apple loophole. Once a user allows an application on an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to have access to location information—to launch a mapping function, for example— the app can copy the user’s entire photo library, unbeknownst to the user, reports the New York Times . But the Times notes that it's not clear if any App Store apps are actually uploading users' images. More»

Twitter, Path blamed in privacy controversy

(NEWSER) - Leading smartphone apps are taking a lot more of our information than we realize. If you use Twitter's "Find Friends" feature, the company receives every phone number and email address in your address book—a fact that Twitter hadn't clarified, the Los Angeles Times reports. The company now says it will fix the problem. But it's just one of many companies storing user information with a view toward ultimately using it for advertising. More»