Filed under: Gaming , Software , Developer , iPhone , App Store , SDK Steph Tirion is an excellent game designer who I’ve had the good fortune to meet a few times. He first released a great game called Eliss on the App Store and he’s now announced the second game he’s been working on, called Faraway . Eliss was a terrific little arcade game that made great use of the iPhone’s touchscreen, and Tirion says that while his first game dealt with “planets and space management in sectors, Faraway will be about constellations and infinite space travel.” Sounds exciting

Filed under: Gaming , Software , iPad We’ve heard from Secret Exit (creators of Zen Bound) a few times about the new version of their game coming soon , but Touch Arcade has some brand new pics and insight about the game itself. Kotaku also has a few preview pics , and the game looks terrific — not only is it due out in the App Store soon, but we know for sure that it’ll be before April 3rd , because they’re aiming to have a day one iPad version ready to go as well. As you can tell from the pics, it’s going to be just gorgeous — high resolution, a crisp UI with lots of room to breathe, and the same physics-based rope-twisting gameplay as the first game.

Filed under: Apple , Developer , iPhone , iPod touch , iPad Universal apps. They’re the solution for delivering your iPhone OS application to both the iPhone and the iPad and having it run natively on each without silly make-do’s like pixel doubling.

Filed under: Software , iPhone , iPad When I was young, my mother spent Sunday mornings with grocery store flyers, a pen, and a pad of paper. Once she had identified the best weekly deals, she’d send my dad to buy some items from Grocery Store A, some from Store B and so on.

Filed under: Macworld , Gaming , Software , iPhone , App Store , iPod touch We met many developers and tried many apps while at Macworld Expo last week. Among the more entertaining was Hangman RSS from Fingerarts.

Filed under: Gaming , Software , Odds and ends , Apple , Developer , iPhone , App Store , Music Keita Takahashi is a strange guy. He’s most known for delivering the brilliant Katamari Damacy to us on the Playstation 2, a game in which you rolled around a ball that stuck to everything in the world, growing bigger and bigger as more and more stuff collected on it. But after that early success, he’s gotten weirder , at one point saying that he didn’t want to make games at all, and then releasing Noby Noby Boy for the PS3, an “experience” in which you stretch a tubelike creature named BOY, which in turn stretches another creature named GIRL, out into the solar system with all of other players in the world

Filed under: Macworld , Software , App Store , iPad Brainstorm Tech is reporting something incredible today. Even though the iPad hasn’t officially launched, it’s already produced an unprecedented spike in app development, compared to Android. Flurry is a data and research firm that uses apps running their Flurry Analytics to track usage.

Filed under: Gaming , Software , iPhone , App Store Activision is probably the biggest gaming company going these days, and in their conference call earlier this week , CEO Bobby Kotick briefly mentioned its foray into the world of the iPhone. We’ve talked a lot in the past about indie developers and how they find their way on to the App Store , but it’s the larger companies that sometimes have a tougher time of it, making larger games that don’t always make back their accordingly large development costs, much less make any money. Kotick says that Activision is still a bit leery, but that they will continue “selectively expanding our brands” onto platforms like the iPhone (he basically says that Guitar Hero is coming to Apple’s handheld soon), and that the company is looking into Apple’s platform more as a brand extension rather than a potential source of financial revenue.

Filed under: Software , iPhone , App Store If the iPhone has a leading app genre, aside from gaming, I’d say the current surge of “check-in” apps is probably it. Sure, back when the App Store first opened up, Twitter apps were everywhere (and they’re still being made daily, it seems), but in terms of a genre that can only exist on a location-aware device like the iPhone, “check-in” apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, and so on, are making their mark right now. Here’s news on two such apps continuing to grow on the App Store skyline.

Filed under: Gaming , iPhone , iPod touch Just announced at Square Enix’s Facebook page : Final Fantasy I and II are coming to an App Store near you. The nearly 20-year-old games have been remastered and re-released a number of times, with versions appearing for just about every platform invented thus far, so it was only a matter of time before they made their way to the iPhone and iPod touch

Filed under: Software , iPhone , App Store Adobe’s Acrobat.com website is not only an online collaboration center, but also provides a way to convert files to PDF, meet live over the web, or store and share files. Now some of that Acrobat.com goodness has found its way into your iPhone. Adobe has released Acrobat.com Mobile by scanR [Free, iTunes Link ], which works with an existing Acrobat.com account to give users a way to share and view documents

Filed under: iTS , Apple , iPhone Recently, the people of the island republic of Mauritius have been able to purchase the iPhone 3G and 3GS through mobile phone provider Orange, but there’s one major problem — there’s no access to an iTunes Store. This brings back memories of the original iPhone, when there was no iTunes Store to tempt iPhone owners with its wares.

Filed under: App Store <a href=”http://www.coveritlive.com/mobile.php?option=com_mobile&task=viewaltcast&altcast_code=66fd693d0a” >App Store Promotion Clinic</a> Welcome to our informal App Store promotion clinic! Today, we’ll be chatting with Brian Akaka of Appular and our own Steve Sande about marketing and promoting apps. Brian Akaka’s Appular focuses on providing Marketing and PR strategy and execution to iPhone App developers, helping them to gain visibility for their Apps in a quickly growing and maturing market. TUAW blogger Steve Sande has worked with iPhone developers to improve the marketing of their apps