iSmashPhone

The Not-So-Sweet Smell of Success: iPhone Fart Apps A Financial "Wind"-fall

Turns out those that "cut the cheese" are getting a HUGE cut of App Store profits.

Looks like the success of the "Pull My Finger" fart-sound app has triggered a veritable Gold Rush (well, maybe not "gold" -- "Brown Rush," anyone?) of rude sound programs.  A recent App Store search on the keyword "fart" pulled up more than fifty such programs, many in the US$0.99 "magical price point" range.

The surprising (scary?) thing is, these little bombers are often selling like hotcakes:

Developer InfoMedia (Joel Comm), which makes iFart Mobile [iTunes link], has been releasing download statistics for the app each day since it launched. The $0.99 app has been in the top 100 paid apps every day since its launch, and has seen great growth. In fact, yesterday it hit the number one overall position with over 13,000 downloads. MacRumors ran the numbers, factoring out the 30 percent cut Apple takes from each sale, and determined that, yesterday alone, iFart Mobile made its developers $9,198.

That's not counting this past Christmas Day, when downloads hit a jaw-dropping 40,000 -- which translates to a US$30K holiday bonus!

[Via VentureBeat]

iControlPad Will Add "Traditional" Gaming Handset Capabilities

So the iPhone/iPod Touch, with their innovative touch screens and accelerometers, have brought a new style of control to hand-held gaming.  You'd think that would be enough for some people, right?

Wrong.

iControlPad is in the process of wrapping iPhones with a Nintendo-style joystick 'n' button gaming controller.  Here's an artist's rendition of the final product:

As you might guess, this is in no way an official product of the House of Jobs, so once again we have, a la Craigslist,  "Outlaw Hardware In Search Of Outlaw Software For Good Times."  One such source of jailbroken apps is ZodTTD, who recently received a prototype of the controller:

(Click picture to see HUGE HUGE HUGE! version...)