Boy, I wish I were a proper journalist like Jason D. O’Grady (picture here, although I’m not sure which one he is. I think we’ll opt for beardy. Seems the safest bet). If I were, I could just print a random list under a link-bait headline with no explanation or supporting link and get paid for it. (Yeah, it’s probably this last bit which I’m most envious of.) To spare you the extra click, I’ve reproduced the entirety of O’Grady’s post below.

• 10. Flash
• 9. Zune Skins for iPhone
• 8. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the iLounge Lizards
• 7. Backlit LCD Monitor Buyers Guide
• 6. ThankGodCopyPaste!
• 5. iBong
• 4. Chess (Free Version)
• 3. AT&T iPhone Contract for Dummies
• 2. Battery Monitor Pro
• 1. Steve Jobs Health Timer

Bewildering. Totally bewildering. I mean, ‘Flash’ is always a good, Enderle-class opening move for these kind of things, but then… Really? Still, it’s filed under ‘humour’, so I guess it could be a joke. And I thought some of our wind-ups were a little on the obscure side.

UPDATE: Dizzle has added a few comments of her own over at I Drank the Kool-Aid.

• The Apple Core

The French Competition Regulator today ruled that Apple must allow other mobile phone operators besides Orange — their current network partner — to sell the iPhone in France. The Regulator announced that the current exclusive deal — which has been in place since the phone’s November 2007 debut — poses a “serious and immediate threat”. However, the move is only the first stage in an action brought by Orange’s rival Bouygues Telecom, and was described by the Regulator as a “protective move” while it continues to investigate the complaint. If Orange is successful in convincing the Regulator of the deal’s legitimacy then the decision will likely be reversed. French competition laws have previously lead Orange to offer unlocked iPhones, albeit as a premium. In December of last year, a German court ruled in favour of an identical arrangement between Apple and their chosen partner T-Mobile, in a similar case brought by rival operator Vodafone.

• Yahoo! News
• via Pocket Lint

Kotaku — a site about video games — has announced that a company called Konami is bringing an application called Metal Gear Solid Touch — which is the imaginatively-titled next instalment of the Metal Gear Solid sequence of games, which I’m told is incredible popular with the type of people who play video games — to the iPhone early next year. This is apparently a good thing, although you’d be hard-pressed to tell from the comments accompanying the linked post. Video game fans seem to whine even more than BlackBerry fanboys. Anyone would think that the iPhone and iPod Touch weren’t held in high esteem by the serious button-mashers. The price has yet to be confirmed, but it’s bound to be high enough to make Chockenberry smile.

• Kotaku

There’s a very good chance that this is exactly what the iPhone was invented for. iLava gives you a lava lamp — and an interactive lava lamp at that — on your iPhone. Watch the demo above, then pop over to the App Store. It costs a Chockenberry-infuriating 59p.

• iLava in the App Store
• Mac Blog

I think I can safely say that at least some of the ideas from my ‘Teh App Store Sux’ piece yesterday were on the right track, since they agree with the points made far more eloquently — as long as you skip the kindergarten economics — by Jesse Farmer at 20bit.com. Relying on the App Store as a means of marketing your iPhone app — rather than simply as the distribution method — is a mistake. It’s not even a mistake which the notoriously inept music and movie industries make. Developer should look outside iTunes for customers. To that end, I’ll put forward another couple of possible solutions.

• Jesse Farmer

There is a rapidly expanding roster of 3rd party sites dedicated to iPhone applications. They fall broadly into two categories: the review sites, and the list sites. This latter group plays a role roughly equivalent to that of Versions Tracker and MacUpdate for desktop apps (although it should be pointed out that both now boast their own iPhone catagories). Several weeks ago we featured the Fresh Apps website, which uses user feedback to rank applications. Other sites such as AppSafari do something similar. These sites — and the many others like them — could provide an addendum to the App Store’s own (broken) rankings, if only their profiles could be raised to the point where they permeate into the public’s consciousness. This isn’t going to happen without the support of both the media and developers, but I’d suggest that doing so would be more productive than waiting for Apple to fix the problem on their own. After all, if you think you know a better way of ranking App Store apps, who do you think is more likely to listen to you, Apple or one of these sites? (Yes, I know that a lot of the necessary information, such as number of downloads, is only available to Apple, but I think we’ve already agreed that this alone is a poor method of ranking these apps.)

• Fresh Apps
• AppSafari

Okay, now let me make with the crazy. One of the problems which is continuously returned to is the lack of ‘try before you buy’. On the one hand, the developer can do something about this themselves by providing a limited demo version of their app. This has the dual advantages that the user gets to see whether it’s right for them before paying actual money, and as a side effect, since these demos are likely to be free, potentially gives the developer exposure in the Top Free Apps chart. There are, of course, down sides to this approach. There’s a fine line between restricting the demo to the point where users can’t really tell if it does what they want, and providing something so full-featured that they have no incentive to upgrade to the full paid version. Having the app expire after a limited trial period is one option popular on the desktop, but it’s currently unclear how this would go down with iPhone users, or whether Apple would even allow it. The FairPlay DRM used on apps — which is the same as is used on rental movies — does allow for expiration after a certain amount of time, but Apple has not (yet) made this type of control available to developers. Again, it’s uncertain how users would respond to it.

But I promised you crazy, so here goes. How about giving users the option to try applications, not on their phones but on their desktops. The iPhone SDK currently ships with a simulator which uses the similarity between the Mac and iPhone versions of Cocoa to test apps without needing to upload them to a device. It’s far from perfect, mostly because many of the iPhone-specific functions are missing, but it gives a vague idea of how an app works. Wishing for Apple to integrate the simulator into iTunes is pointless, but if someone where to produce a similar application — maybe designed to better emulate some of the features missing from Apple’s version — for which developers could provide special non-iPhone ‘preview’ applications… If this parallel ecosystem was supported by some of the 3rd party app rating sites mentioned above, it may at the very least spur Apple into addressing the bigger problem.

Finally, on the subject of App Store dross, I really wouldn’t like to be Ethan of Ethan Productions, who the EdibleApple guys rip a new one. The post just goes to highlight how the application approval process has nothing to do with quality.

• EdibleApple

A couple of weeks ago we reported that the developers of festive iPhone app Santa Live was buying himself some 5-star reviews via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. You’d think things couldn’t get any worse, but you’d be wrong. The app, which serves up a different Santa-themed video each day over Advent, yesterday treated children to a rendition of the classic Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer. (No, me neither. Must be an American thing.) As you can probably guess, tears and humourless e-mails followed, with the result that Santa Live has left the App Store.

Search as we might, we couldn’t find a video of the offending ditty anywhere on t’ net, so you’ll have to settle for the alternative version below. I think that you’ll agree the added hint of IP theft is totally in keeping.

Random philosophical pondering: Is Grandma getting run over by reindeers better or worse than catching Mommy kissing Santa Claus? Please feel free to discuss this in the comments.

• iPhone Saviour

Yep, this is basically just an excuse to embed this classic Armstrong and Miller sketch. The trick to teaching your iPhone to stop cleaning up your swears is to correct it three times, at which point it will finally get the message. So let the profanity flow.

• Wired

O2 and Apple have announced the immediate availability of the pay-as-you-go — sorry, ‘Pay & Go’ — versions of the iPhone in the UK. The device comes in both current capacities — costing £342.50 (£342.54) for the 8GB version and £391.45 (£391.47) for the 16GB, from the on-line Apple Store (with O2 strangely charging a few pence more — can we say ’rounding error’ boys and girls?) — with the 16Gb version available in black or white.

Also included in the purchase price is a year’s unlimited WiFi connectivity through The Cloud and BT Openzone hotspots, and, more importantly, a year’s unlimited 3G data — excessive usage policy, the exact details of which I cannot seem to find, notwithstanding. These extras are set to cost you £10 per month after the initial year is up. O2 Pay & Go call rates depend on the package chosen, but generally work out as 20p per minute for voice and 12p per text message. Now, would somebody like to do the maths and tell me whether, if I’m not going to be making many phone calls or sending text messages, this is a better or worse deal than the £99, £30 per month contract version. (I’m thinking ‘yes.’)

• Apple UK On-Line Store
• PAYG iPhone at O2
• via Electric Pig

A couple of random Amazon stories for you here. Firstly, it looks like their MP3 Music Download service has been silently launched in the UK today. Tracks start at 59p each, with albums going from £3. And there’s a special app available to handle the downloading and iTunes insertion on the desktop. I’m about to give it a try so I’ll let you know how I get on. Hit the link below and we might get a small kick-back from your purchases — we haven’t been able to confirm or deny whether downloads are included in the Affiliate scheme.

Next we have the Amazon Mobile iPhone app. You’ll remember last week we mentioned Mazo, a similar app which was nixed by Amazon. Well I guess we now know why. Amazon Mobile is currently US only — it connects to Amazon.com and the App Store link below won’t open in the UK — and seems to do some of the things Mazo promised, while having a few extra tricks up its sleeve. For a while now, people have been requesting the ability to capture a barcode using the iPhone’s camera and have an app find the product on-line. Amazon Mobile doesn’t quite do this — the main sticking point appears to be the lack of a macro function on the iPhone — but it comes pretty close. Take a snapshot of an object and it will upload it to Amazon, where it will be examined and if a match is found in their catalogue, you’ll be e-mailed a link to it. Yep, it looks like this is powered by Amazon’s Mechanical Turk Third World infinite monkey brain farm. Low tech, but still kinda clever. If it works. We’ll be keeping our eyes and ears open for funny/horror stories.

• Amazon.co.uk MP3 Downloads
• Amazon Mobile in the App Store
• via iPhone Central

You may remember us telling you a while ago about an iPhone game called Drug Lord — see the video above — which was a location-based drug dealing simulator and which stood absolutely no chance of appearing in the App Stores because, well, it was a drug dealing simulator. It seems the makers have taken this possible draw-back on board, and before recently submitting the finished game to Apple for approval, have changed its name to Underworld.

OK, two points. Firstly, when I hear ‘Underworld’ I instantly think of Kate Beckinsale in a tight leather cat suit. So if I download this game based on its name alone, I’m going to be more than a little disappointed. And secondly, you forgot to remove the drug dealing elements of the game. Seriously, guys, my own game concept, Vivisection — which is like classic battery-powered tweeze-’em-up Operation, only featuring photo-realistic graphics of kittens and puppies — stands a greater chance of getting accepted.

Which is a shame, because I was looking forward to seeing whether Drug Lord Underworld featured any kind of Camden-based ’skunk’ Easter eggs.

• Pocket Gamer
• via Game Politics