Are you a fan of Instagram? I often find myself taking snaps with the app, adding some special effects, and then posting them for close friends and complete strangers to enjoy. Now the folks at Tiny Hearts, the developers of the fun Pocket Zoo app I reviewed last year, have come up with Instamatch -- a US$1.99 universal iOS app (on sale for $0.99 for a limited time) released today that turns those awesome Instagram photos into a fun and challenging matching game.

Instamatch is a variation on the old "Concentration" matching game that has contestants matching similar Instagram photos. There are several ways to play -- you can either select photos from your own Instagram account, in which case you match two identical copies of photos until all photos are matched, or from a selection of photos of Nature, Food, Animals, Cities, or World Wonders. With the latter, you match similar photos of the same subject, like two different photos of the Golden Gate Bridge. There's also a search mode, so you can find and match photos of just about any subject under the sun.

Gallery: Instamatch

To get a high score, you need to match all of the photo pairs as quickly as possible. It's also helpful to be lucky enough to match two photos without looking at them first -- the combos give you extra points that really add up.

On the iPhone, the game can be played with one or two players, and there are three levels of difficulty -- Easy, with 12 photo cards; Normal, with 20 cards; and Hard, with 20 moving cards. For the iPad, up to four players can vie for the high score, and the Normal and Hard difficulty levels jump up to 30 cards. In multiplayer game play, the players take turns in succession so that a sharp-eyed player can watch for clues and then rack up extra points. There's Game Center support built into the app for shouting out your bragging rights for high Instamatch scores.

I find Instamatch to be a fun time-killer. Individual games don't take that long, so it's the perfect game to play while you're waiting in a line and need to waste some time. An internet connection is required in order to grab the Instagram photos, so this isn't a game that you'd be able to play on an airplane unless it's equipped with Wi-Fi. The multiplayer game, especially on the iPad with 30 cards, throws a bit of strategy into play.

The user interface is easy to understand and is beautifully designed, both of which add value to Instamatch. Especially at the 99¢ introductory price, Instamatch is a gotta-buy app for game lovers of any age.

Instamatch turns Instagram into an engaging iOS game originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In September of 2011, Google introduced its Flight Search service. The service provides information on upcoming flights to specific destinations, providing schedule, price, and airline information. Now Flight Search has become iOS-friendly, perfect for those who want to check on flight availability and pricing on the go.

What Google did is to make Flight Search fit the Safari browser on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch. The features of Flight Search include searching, discover by location, filtering results by price, flight time, airline, and calendar view.

One little trick I found is that you can use Siri to call up Flight Search. Just tell Siri to "Google flights between Denver and Las Vegas" (or whatever two points you're interested in flying between), and one of the top results that Siri will produce is a Flight Search listing. It's a fast way to get a first pass at flight schedules and pricing while keeping up your personal relationship with Siri.

Google makes Flight Search iOS (and Siri) friendly originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

In the aftermath of the passing of Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, there have been a number of posts in the blogosphere pointing out specific videos that were captured at various points in his life. Now Chill's Scott Hurff has created a huge collection of just about every Steve Jobs video available.

The collection of 81 videos (by my count) covers interviews with Jobs from 1980 through 2011, was curated by Hurff, who is the Director of User Experience for Chill. Some of the highlights include a series of videos showing Jobs during his tenure at NeXT, a compendium of new product announcements by Jobs, the classic 2005 Standford commencement address, and the famous Jobs - Gates interview with Walt Mossberg.

If you're looking for a single source for Steve Jobs memories, this Chill collection is a great place to look.

Fantastic collection of Steve Jobs videos originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

For baseball fans, there's no happier day than Super Bowl Sunday, since we know that means that in a few weeks catchers and pitchers will be reporting for early Spring Training. Well, the pitchers and catchers are warming up and now another sign of spring has appeared -- news about pricing of Major League Baseball's MLB At Bat 12 app for iPad and iPhone for MLB TV subscribers.

If you subscribed to MLB TV in the past or plan on subscribing to a year full of baseball games, you're in luck -- MLB At Bat '12 will be available for free. That's a nice little bonus, since the MLB TV subscription plan costs US$124.99 for the 2,430 game baseball season ($119.99 if you subscribed last year). In the past, subscribers had to pay for the iPad and iPhone apps separately, which could add about $30 to the tab for baseball fans.

The apps will be available on February 29, 2012 so that you're able to start watching streaming video of games on your iPad or iPhone as the Spring Training season begins. There's no word, however, on what content (if any) the free apps will provide for baseball fans who don't want to pay the MLB TV subscription fee.

MLB simplifies iPhone, iPad app pricing for MLB TV subscribers originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mike Daisey is making headlines with The Agony and The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, a stirring monologue about his love of Apple and disappointment with working conditions in Apple's supplier factories. Daisey's monologue details his trip to China and his time with workers from Foxconn's Shenzhen plant. If you want to read the monologue yourself, you can now do so at Mike Daisey's website.

The well-known storyteller released the text of his performance under an open license which lets you not only download the piece, but perform the work yourself. Daisey writes that his work "may be performed by anyone, anywhere, royalty free."

The text is moving, but it doesn't compare to a live show which infuses energy and emotion into the words. Our own Mike Rose attended one of Daisey's performances, and you can read about his impressions in an earlier post. Now that the text is available to the public, I look forward to derivative works which capture a different aspect of this stirring account.

[Via The Verge]

Mike Daisey's "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" available under an open license originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple will open an Apple Store in Amsterdam on March 3, bringing the number of countries with an Apple Store up to 12. It will occupy two levels of the historic and beautiful Hirsch Building in Amsterdam city center. Rumors of the store's construction started in November of 2010.

The store's windows have been covered with orange (orange is the national Dutch color) barricades for the past few weeks, with three stacked apples inspired by the Amsterdam coat of arms.

If you attend the opening, please send us your photos and stories, we'd love to check them out.

Amsterdam Apple Store to open March 3 originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple started selling albums from The Beatles last year and now the company has released a set of ringtones taken from the band's most popular albums. The selections span a wide range of titles including early titles like A Hard Day's Night and later tracks like the 1970 chart-topper Let It Be.

You can buy the ringtones from the iTunes app using your iPad, iPhone, or iPod touch. Each ringtone is US$1.29 or you can grab the 1 collection for $12.99 which has 27 ringtones from the band's twelve studio albums and 22 singles.

[Via ipodnn]

iTunes offers first Beatles ringtones originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

No doubt you watched Nightline's special edition about Shenzhen's Foxconn factory where workers assemble iPhones, iPads and Macs. If you missed it, you can watch it online at ABC's website (US only). As we noted last night, the documentary showed a rather clean Foxconn factory filled with young, Chinese workers.

Missing from the show, says Debby Sze Wan Chan of Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (SACOM), were the underage workers who Foxconn hid during the Fair Labor Association (FLA) inspection.

Speaking to AppleInsider, Chan said "All underage workers, between 16-17 years old, were not assigned any overtime work and some of them were even sent to other departments." She claims two workers in the Zhenghou plant told her Foxconn was "prepared for the inspection."

A similar sentiment was expressed by FLA president Auret van Heerden who said he expects Foxconn to put on a show. Despite Foxconn's careful presentation, van Heerden asserts the FLA's bottom-up interviews could uncover any issues in the factory. It's worthy to note that Apple is a member of the FLA, paid US$250,000 to join the group and funded this latest round of inspections.

Though Apple works with the FLA, Chan claims she has received a cold shoulder from the company. No one within Apple has responded to her requests; supposedly the company even refused to receive reports, documentaries and petition cards from her when she traveled to Apple's California headquarters. A security guard who escorted her out of the building at One Infinite Loop took the paperwork and promised to deliver the items to someone in charge, but she has not heard back from Apple.

Speaking at a recent Goldman Sachs technology conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook told the audience that Apple is working to address underage labor, safety issues, and excessive overtime at its contract factories. Chan, though, doubts Apple has "any commitments to do so."

Factory workers claim Foxconn hid underage employees prior to inspection originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

MobileMe is scheduled to be shut down in June 2012, and Apple has begun encouraging users to transition to iCloud. Email messages are going out this week that promote iCloud's services and provide a big 'ol blue button for customers to click and begin the migration process.

iCloud offers most of the services MobileMe customers are used to (keychain sync and iDisk are absent, for example) and, according to CEO Tim Cook, is the foundation for the company's future.

It's only February, so stragglers have some time, but not much. It's definitely time to start thinking about making the move.

Apple encourages MobileMe customers to transition to iCloud originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Ziggurat is a fascinating little iPhone game. It's technically a shooter, but the controls are unlike any shooter I've ever seen. The idea is that the human race is almost over, and one lone figher stands atop a pyramid, under attack from robots on all sides. Playing as this solitary fighter, you must destory the incoming robots.

The game offers two methods of firing the weapon: "Precision Mode" and "Slingshot Mode." Precision Mode has you drag a finger across the bottom of the screen to calculate the firing angle, and then tap to charge and fire. In Slingshot Mode, which is easier but less interesting, you simply drag off of the middle of the screen to both aim and charge, as if using an imaginary slingshot on top of the ziggurat.

The enemies vary in size and movement styles, keeping things interesting. Given that every game eventually ends in failure, there's a surprising amount of variety here. The graphics are in a well-done pixel style, and the chiptune music sets a post-apocalyptic mood (with a frightening 8-bit scream when the last human gives up the ghost).

Ziggurat's an interesting bite of a game on the App Store. It's worth the 99 cents just to see how it all works. I don't know that these weird controls would work on any other game for as long, but all of the polish and extra style go a long way in this case.

Daily iPad App: Ziggurat adds new controls to the shooter tradition originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 22 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.