This 17h of March we’re shaking things up with a throwback to throw back.

iShots – St. Paddy’s is coming back off the shelf with 400% more pixels (by volume) and a new twist for the social drinker.

Entertain your Twitter followers and embarrass your Facebook friends by sharing your favorite iShots straight up or paired with the photos you won’t remember you took.

Enjoy new toasts, more mixing directions and crisp Retina graphics with 2x the resolution, 3x the file size and 4x the likelihood someone will mistakingly set their drink on your phone.

Get the app, drink responsibly and have yourself a St. Patricks Day worth sharing.

Share your St Patrick's day

Michael DeSouza and Justin Velgos of Tap Tapas to teach a course at Maine College of Art – Designing Mobile Experiences.

The objective of this course is to conceptualize and design a touch-screen mobile application. Students will work in teams to research, explore and present their ideas for critique. The most viable concept will be chosen and submitted to Kickstarter.com. If the kickstarter project receives funding, their app will be built and submitted to the App Store by Tap Tapas.
 Each student will get a share of any profit it generates.

Follow the progress on the MC 335 blog or on the student blog.

iTunes App Store on Facebook:

App Store really doesn’t want another parking ticket.

Parking Mate can help you avoid tickets, towing, and other parking restrictions. And it’s free.

Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, Parking Mate allows you to set a meter timer, add locations and street rules, see which of your locations are safe for parking, and reminds you to move your car.

Bob Tedeschi, The New York Times:

Before explaining, a little warning: for people who have no idea how coastal buoy data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration relates to a favorite surf spot, this app will mean a slight learning curve.

But if, like many avid surfers, you know which buoys are bellwethers for your spot, prepare to inhale the catnip.

Check out the full article at nytimes.com

I know you’ve all recently been thinking “Hey… where’s that awesome iPhone app I used back in 2009 to create my NFL mock draft, check out player stats and follow the live results?”
Well, never mind how I know that, the important thing is that Mock Draft 2010 is in the App Store!

In addition to all your favorite features from Mock Draft 2009, the 2010 edition also allows for multiple mocks, drag and drop reordering, push notifications for live picks and trades and a featured Mock carefully crafted by DraftBreakdown.com

What are you still doing here? Go check it out!

When we were interviewed for our cover story in Maine Biz we were asked to put together some tips for those interested in an iPhone app for their own company.

• Consider a free app. Some of the most successful apps are free for users and, rather than generating revenue directly, become an incentive to use your existing services. A great example of this is the ZipCar app, which allows customers to find and reserve nearby cars and even honk the horn to find the car and unlock the doors. These types of apps are far more than just brand exposure — they’re transformative for the company’s services and often can become the primary method by which customers interact with their services.

• Extend, rather than mirror, existing services. iPhone apps that do so garner greater usage and advocacy from your existing customer base and in turn are more apt to promote referrals, media attention and higher visibility in the App Store. Consider the features unique to the device that are unavailable to a website or other methods of interacting with customers. Along with always being on hand, iPhones have always-on Internet access, a camera, a microphone, GPS (or cell tower triangulation) and motion sensors. Taking advantage of even one of these features can provide a far richer and more useful experience for customers than a website.

• Think beyond the customer. iPhone apps can also serve as tools for your own business, staff and vendors. Enterprise apps can be distributed outside of the iTunes App Store and be tailored to streamline your workflow or enable mobile interaction that previously would have required a full laptop and Internet access.

Check out the rest of the article at mainebiz.biz

This morning at 8:30am eastern standard time, Talk Watch was released into the wild and unforgiving landscape of the iTunes App Store. Supplied only with a few packs of food, an emergency transmitter, a first aid kit and a hatchet, our little app shed a single tear and head out on it’s search for a pocket to call home.

Check it out in the iTunes App Store

Kat Dawes, surf girl magazine:

From the neat little clicks and James Bond-esque sounds down to the thorough help screens and the seamless, uncluttered interface, it’s quality.

Just pick your buoy’s anywhere in the world and you can then view past data including tides, with your top three buoys displayed dashboard-style for at-a-glance checks. But the beauty is the forecasting and alerts. Enter the ideal conditions for surf nearby, and when your criteria are met, it’ll tell you via an alarm or alert between times you specify. Never miss a surf again!

Check out the full article at surf girl magazine