Today, we’re happy to welcome a new addition to the Airfoil Speakers family, with the immediate availability of Airfoil Speakers Touch. Using Airfoil Speakers Touch alongside Airfoil for Mac or Airfoil for Windows, you can now send audio from your computer to your iPhone or iPod Touch on the local network. It’s a mobile audio receiver, right in your pocket!

(Via Rogue Amoeba: Under The Microscope.)

Bullfrog Lite is in the App Store.

Race against the clock to defend your swamp against invading bugs. Hop and chomp your way through 3 increasingly challenging levels.

Bullfrog Lite is the free version of our game Bullfrog Touch, which includes 75 levels and 13 unique maps.

Give it a shot, it’s free!

Bullfrog Touch 1.2 is now available in the App Store.

This update introduces a new double point bonus when you successfully chomp more than one bug in a tongue attack. This adds some nice skill-based depth to the game.

Also, I added a new animation for earn a time bonus by chomping a hard to catch bee.

New sound effects have also been added to help enrich the gaming experience.

I also went through the user interface and polished it up a bit — fixed some menu navigation issues and added a sync high scores button. There’s now a new round completed screen with a bit of animation.

But, I didn’t just add new things to the game, but I also was able to fix some performance issues that would cause occasional frame rate loss when more than one mosquito was buzzing your frog.

This update is free to current owners. Bullfrog Touch is available in the iTunes App Store immediately and costs $1.99 (USD).

This is my first attempt at recording an iPhone screen, so please pardon my terrible video recording skills.

If developers could charge a price lower than 99 cents, there’s no doubt that some would, and the price curve would shift even lower.

Update (Dec. 28, 2008):

Daniel Jalkut (Red Sweater Software) ads his take in Touch and Go Pricing.

iPhone applications are too cheap, and changes are needed to encourage the development of premium applications that sell for a fair price.

Brent Simmons (NewsGator) follows up with On the App Store and Free Markets.

Some of the response Paul’s and Daniel’s recent writing about the App Store has gone something like this: It’s a free market — deal with it.

Here’s the thing, though: it’s not a free market.

Recently, I had need to provide a back button similar to the one used in Mobile Safari for a consulting project.

Many of the buttons used in the built-in iPhone applications are made available via the SDK with built in button types and graphics. Unfortunately, the back button is not one of these.

Because I needed to display the toolbar button from inside a static library which can not include images, I had to render the back arrow directly in code.

Since this was a bit time consuming, I thought I would share in hopes that it saves someone else a little bit of time.

- (CGContextRef)createContext
{
   // create the bitmap context
   CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
   CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(nil,27,27,8,0,
                            colorSpace,kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast);
   CFRelease(colorSpace);
   return context;
}

- (CGImageRef)createBackArrowImageRef
{
   CGContextRef context = [self createContext];

   // set the fill color
   CGColorRef fillColor = [[UIColor blackColor] CGColor];
   CGContextSetFillColor(context, CGColorGetComponents(fillColor));

   CGContextBeginPath(context);
   CGContextMoveToPoint(context, 8.0f, 13.0f);
   CGContextAddLineToPoint(context, 24.0f, 4.0f);
   CGContextAddLineToPoint(context, 24.0f, 22.0f);
   CGContextClosePath(context);
   CGContextFillPath(context);

   // convert the context into a CGImageRef
   CGImageRef image = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context);
   CGContextRelease(context);

   return image;
}

- (UIBarButtonItem *)backButton
{
   CGImageRef theCGImage = [self createBackArrowImageRef];
   UIImage *backImage = [[UIImage alloc] initWithCGImage:theCGImage];
   CGImageRelease(theCGImage);

   UIBarButtonItem *backButton = [[UIBarButtonItem alloc] initWithImage:backImage
                                        style:UIBarButtonItemStylePlain
                                        target:self.webView
                                        action:@selector(goBack)];

   [backImage release], backImage = nil;

   return [backButton autorelease];
}

Mike took the icon that Jordan Langille created and produced the Bullfrog Touch logo which you can view here:

Mike also helped design the look and feel of the high scores list by creating some concept art that we then modeled the final interface on. You can see Mike’s original artwork here:

For comparison, here’s how the final high scores screen turned out:

Update (Dec. 20, 2008): Mike posted a more detailed write up on the process: Bullfrog Touch Logo & iPhone UI Design

The top three vote-getters were Bullfrog Touch, Scrabble from Electronic Arts, and MotionX Poker

Thanks to everyone who voted.

You can help decide what makes it into this year’s guide by placing your vote. But hurry, the deadline is December 5.

Bullfrog Touch 1.1 was finally pushed out to the App Store by Apple yesterday (Monday October 13).

We were very excited to finally get this version out. Unfortunately, the game made it all the way through the review process with a corrupt graphics file.

I uploaded a new version to the App Store this morning and all there is to do is sit back and wait until it makes its way through the App Store review process.

In the meantime, I suggest avoiding version 1.1 and wait for 1.1.1 to be available.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update [October 20, 2008]: Bullfrog Touch 1.1.1 has been successfully published to the iTunes App Store. This new version fixes the corrupt graphics file. Things should now be back to normal.