iLounge

By Charles Starrett

Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Tuesday, January 27, 2009
News Category: Mix

The finalists for the Second Annual Independent Game Festival have been released, with iPhone/iPod touch games dominating the Mobile category. Subatomic Studios’ Fieldrunners and Mobigame’s Edge lead the group with three nominations apiece, with other nominees including Igloo Games’ Dizzy Bee, The Iconfactory’s Frenzic, and Sykhronics Entertainment’s Smiles. The awards will be handed out during the Independent Games Festival, to be held March 23-27 in San Francisco. [via TUAW]

Some iPhone application developers have recently discovered that they weren’t getting the full amount of revenue expected from sales of their apps in Japan due to an issue with Japanese taxes. An Ecamm Network employee has written about the problem, revealing that 20% of revenue from its Japanese sales was missing. Upon contacting Apple, the company explained that “There is a 20% withholding tax in Japan until the Japanese tax authorities have accepted your tax exemption forms. This can take 90 days or longer. … They were required at the contract setup time in iTunes Connect. If you haven’t completed these and sent them in, you must or you should not have been paid.” It appears as if the link to the forms is buried in fine print on the tax forms web page, causing some developers to skip over the necessary documents.

Sudobility has released its Air Photo application for the iPhone and iPod touch. Air Photo allows users to print photos directly from the devices to any printer connected to a Windows PC or Mac running the free Air Photo Server software. The software works over a Wi-Fi connection, and features auto-rotation, scaling options, and compatibility with “all printers.” Air Photo is available now from the App Store and sells for $1.

Almerica, developer of the previously-rejected iPhone app Podcaster, has released RSS Player, a new podcast downloading and listening application for the iPhone and iPod touch. Described by the developer as Podcaster’s younger sibling, RSS Player lets users download or stream podcasts directly to their device, including the downloading of podcasts larger than 10MB over 3G networks. The application lacks Podcaster’s built-in search directory, however, and its acceptance provokes questions as to Apple’s original motives in rejecting the app. Podcaster was denied App Store publication by Apple in September, before Apple added the ability to download podcasts to the iPhone and iPod touch versions of the iTunes Store, for “duplicating iTunes functionality.” It is unclear whether RSS Player’s acceptance is due to the name change, its lack of a directory, a change in Apple’s policies regarding such applications, or a combination thereof. RSS Player is available now and sells for $2.