Security! for iPhone 4

The Security! app allows you to protect your iPhone 4 by creating a fake lock screen that, when tapped, takes a photo of the user and stores it to your iPhoto Library or sends it as an email. By using iOS 4 background tasks, it’s been possible to make the app catch an unauthorised user even if they quit the app by pressing the iPhone “home” button.

For more information about the app, go to securityapp.co.uk

Social Beacon

Create status updates for Facebook and Twitter without having to type! Social Beacon is a unique and innovative social networking tool which enables you to create super quick status updates for the leading social networks.

Using the innovative 3-wheel interface, you can update both Twitter and Facebook with just five touches of the screen on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Better still, Social Beacon integrates “Fingerless Functionality” allowing you to tilt your device left or right to select each segment of the wheel – tilt up and down to go forwards and backwards through the menus, and finally blow into the microphone to send your message to the world!

This application was built exclusively for Channel Five’s “The Gadget Show” and has been in the top 5 free apps on the App Store – find out more about the development.

Metal Detector

With the power of the iPhone 3GS internal compass, it is possible to determine the magnetic flux of objects and thus determine if something is metallic. It works by making the iPhone detect the magnetic flux on 3 axis and then converts it (thanks to some mathematics provided by my trusty assistant Phillip Parr) into a single scale. A series of tones and lights is then assigned to this scale to give a working metal detector.

You can see it in action at on YouTube – this was the first metal detector app available in the App Store.

Gowalla Tools

I built this web app to be a useful utility for the popular Gowalla game by Alamofire. The basis of the game is that you visit various locations around the world and collect and swap virtual items which you can then vault. This web app will show you all of the items you have yet to collect along with the locations that they appear in. It also uses the iPhone 3.0 location services feature of Safari to show you suitable locations closest to you. The information provided is not available on the Gowalla website or in its own application!

You can try it out by visiting gowallatools.com with Safari on an iPhone or iPod Touch with the 3.0 update (or greater) installed.