App Store

College student Noah Witherspoon recently announced some unfortunate news. His free Tetris-esque game Tris is currently the top most popular free app in the App Store, but it seems it's popularity drew the attention of the Tetris® Company, and they are claiming a "copyright" claim on the game and are forcing him to take it down by Wednesday, August 27th.

Looking to boost your karma for the day? A new site just launched today with the mission of showcasing apps, and they've started off with six apps they think stand out from the rest, and as a promotional stunt they've convinced all six developers to donate all of their proceedings from opening day (today) to charity.

In keeping with the spirit of full disclosure started by TapTapTap frontman John Casasanta, Genger Studios has published the download statistics for their free app Brain Tuner. Soon after it's release, the app managed to shoot up to the #2 most downloaded app last week for a few days, and remains in the top 10.

While you were sleeping Apple pushed 13 updates to the AppStore. Crack open iTunes or the AppStore on your iPhone/Touch to find that Lists, Stock Command, Lumina, De Blob, Blanks, aSleep, Molecules, Rain Stick, KickScreen, AirMe, Glasgow Coma Scale, iHourglass, and ABC Letters are all updated. Read more after the break to find out what's new in each app.

Simplify Media has released its remote iTunes music streaming app, Simplify Media Mobile, to the App Store. The application first made its debut as an app for jailbreakers only. Since then, Simplify has improved the app substantially and now offers users the ability to carry around a seemingly infinite amount of music.

Apple has released sales figures for the first month of the App Store's operation to app developers earlier this week. While they had begun offering daily statistics to developers on how their app was doing, the first few weeks had yet to be revealed. Developer Tap Tap Tap published their numbers for July 11th to August 2 for their apps Where To? ad Tipulator.

Cyrus Najmabadi's BoxOffice application has returned to the App Store. The application was recently removed from the App Store by Apple with no reason given to the developer.

The application provides movie times, information, ratings, and trailers for movies currently in theaters.

Thanks Craig!

MobileChat, a chat application created by Twenty08, has been released and is now available for $2.99 in the App Store. The app represents one of the most highly anticipated chat applications for the iPhone because of its long list of features and loyal fan base. Besides AIM support, MobileChat supports multiple instances of ICQ, .Mac/MobileMe, Windows Live/MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, and Jabber accounts.

Illusion Labs's popular free application Labyrinth Lite [iTunes link] has been enjoying a great deal of success in the App Store. The developer was recently profiled by BusinessWeek, during which they talked about their app's popularity. Labyrinth Lite recently hit the #1 most downloaded free app in the App Store, and has since landed in the #5 spot. Illusion Labs revealed that this translates into about 80,000 downloads a day, suggesting that 80k per day is on the high end for a free app.

The Wall Street Journal got a chance to sit down with Steve Jobs at the Apple HQ in California recently, where they discussed the App Store's success so far and it's importance to the iPhone and iPod touch. They also touched on that kill switch found by Jonathan Zdziarski in the iPhone's code.