Avoid getting eaten by a grue! Win a promo code to Elly The Wanderer's Mapmaker for MUDs.

"You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike."

If you are a fan of MUDs, MOOs and MUCKs, we have something that might interest you.

Joash Chee, intrepid developer, music school principal, all-round entrepreneur and new father has a new app that will be up your alley, especially if you are the sort of person who gets lost in alleys.

Elly The Wanderer's Mapmaker for MUDs is an iPad app that will help you draw maps when you are wondering around lost in your MUD or MOO.

Joash made this app in Game Salad in just 24-hours. The app retails for US$0.99 but we have 10 promo codes to give away.

To win a promo code, all you have to do is email us at editor at imerlion dot com and tell us what title you are currently playing.

Alternatively, tell us the significance of the quotation at the start of this post.

Good luck!

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IMerlion going on Bloomberg TV

Catch me on Bloomberg TV! I'll be on at 12.20pm today to discuss Apple's latest announcements.
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ITunes 10 now available for download

You can now download the new and improved iTunes 10 here.

Comes with Ping and AirPlay, though you'll have to wait a while to use AirPlay.

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New iOS 4.1, 4.2 coming up, new iPod touch gets A4 and Retina Display

Apple made a raft of announcements early this morning, some of it relevant to us in Singapore and Asia, the others, not so. Here's a look at what is directly relevant to iOS users here:

New iOS 4.1 This is coming September 8 and will have a bunch of bug fixes. It will fix bugs with the proximity sensor, Bluetooth and the sluggish performance on the iPhone 3G. Will also have Game Center. This update is not available for the iPad.

Upcoming iOS 4.2. Due in November. This will bring multi-tasking and folders to the iPad. Finally. (Update: Also, wireless printing.)

iTunes 10. Has a music-centred social media network called Ping. You can follow artists and friends. Great way to discover new music. Also has AirPlay, that will allow you to stream your music wirelessly to compatible speakers.

New iPod touch. As expected, Apple unveiled a new iPod touch. It is supermodel-thin and has the A4 processor, Retina Display, front- and rear-facing cameras, 3-axis gyroscope and will handle FaceTime.

Other announcements:

New AppleTV. Smaller and cheaper than before. A quarter of the size of the previous model and just US$99 compared to US$229 before. Thanks to AirPlay, you can have music and movies playing on your iPhone/iPod touch or iPad and you can transfer it wirelessly to your HD TV via AppleTV.

The new AppleTV also does Netflix movies, cheaper HD TV shows (US$1 vs $3) and first run HD movies for $5. Unfortunately, it only works in the US iTunes store, which means you need a US iTunes account.

New iPod shuffle. Apple turned away from the tie-clip look and went back to the old square clip. Some changes under the hood. Good for workouts. Just US$49 so it won't be so painful if it flies off while you're jogging and gets run over by a truck.

New iPod nano. Small, square touchscreen that comes with a clip. Will not play movies anymore though.

Macworld has a nice overview of the event.


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Choosing your SingTel APN: e-ideas vs internet

If you've had to switch APNs from 'e-ideas' to 'internet' because of a problem with SingTel's 3G network you might want to consider going back.

While the 'internet' APN will get you 3G access in a pinch, it appears to have slower upload speeds and suffers from a higher latency than the 'e-ideas' APN.

In addition, Internet tethering is disabled when you use 'internet'. On the bright side, the 'internet' APN apparently allows you to use the VPN, which 'e-ideas' does not (or so we're told by someone commenting on the original iMerlion post).


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New and updated apps: SG Buses V3, Muslim Pro, GlobalDial 121 and iLionDance

SG Buses V3 (free). This update fixes bus arrival times and supports the iPhone 4's Retina Display.

MUSLIM PRO (free). Get prayer time notifications, Qibla compass and an Islamic calendar.

GlobalDial 121 (free). This app allows you to use SingTel's Global Dial 121 service when you are abroad.

iLionDance (US$0.99). Practice your drumming, cymbals and gong with this app.

IKEA Catalogue (free). Use this app to download the Ikea catalogue for Singapore.

TravelJoy (free). An app by Tenet Insurance Company that allows you to buy your travel insurance through your iPhone.

Tip of the hat to iMerlion readers loongshifu and Lim Siong Huat!

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Apple streaming iPod event live

Apple has broken with tradition and will now be live streaming the iPod event as it happens.

The event will take place at 1am Thursday morning (Singapore time of course). To watch it, go to www. apple.com.

If you want to catch it live, you will need Safari running on Snow Leopard or an iOS device running iOS 3.0 and above.

The Wall Street Journal says Apple will announce TV show rentals for US$0.99. People are also expecting a touchscreen nano, a new iPod touch with Retina Display and front and back cameras, like the iPhone 4. Ars Technica has a nice roundup of rumours.


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Reminder: Students get free iPod touch with new Mac purchase

If you didn't win the iPod touch we gave away last week, fear not, you can still get your grubby little hands on one of these babies for free. All you have to do is buy a Mac using Apple's education discount and an 8GB iPod touch is yours.

This offer is open to the following people:

1) Current and incoming students at university, the polytechnic, junior college or the Institute of Technical Education;

2) Faculty and staff at all education levels; and

3) Parents buying for your kids at university, poly, JC or ITE.

If you want to take advantage of this offer, you need to hurry; the offer is only good until September 7.

For more details about Apple's Back to School program, click here.

Singtel 3G not working for you? Here's the fix.

Reports are coming in of people being unable to get onto Singtel's 3G network this morning.

The fix is change the APN. You need to go to Settings / General / Network / Cellular Data Network. In APN, replace "e-ideas" with "Internet". Leave the username and password fields alone.

Thanks to @honcheng for this remedy. He learned this the hard way, via a dogged determination to get an answer from SingTel's Customer Service people. He fully deserves an award for perseverance.
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Congrats to our winner!

So yes, we are a week late announcing the iPod touch winner. We thought it would be easy but we received so many entries and many were good so it actually took us time to go through each entry to pick the best one.

Eventually we narrowed it down to 10, then to five and finally, after much debate, to one.

So congratulations Lee Ken Ming, you are our winner! We will be emailing you shortly to tell you how you can pick up your prize.

In the meantime, thanks to everyone else for taking part. It was really good to get all your suggestions.  Watch out, we'll have more to give away soon.


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Foound gets funding from National Research Foundation

Local startup Foound, which makes it easy for friends to plan meet-ups, has just received funding from Signapore's National Research Foundation.

According to the newspaper Today, Foound is one of seven startups to be backed under the Technology Incubation Scheme. The size of the investment was not mentioned.

Foound is one of the more promising startups in the local scene doing iPhone development. They were featured on TechCrunch and VentureBeat earlier this year and Mugunth Kumar, who developed iCash SG and StationAlarm, recently joined them as their head of mobile.

They have just released their free iPhone app, also called foound.

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MeRadio updated. Now supports background audio

Fans of MeRadio, which is an Internet radio app for radio stations under the Mediacorp Radio umbrella, will be pleased to learn that the app has been updated recently.

The new update supports background audio properly which means that you can now listen to your favourite station while doing other stuff. Previously, MeRadio used a workaround that played audio in the background by hijacking the browser. That meant that Safari was out of commission while Me Radio ran.

With the latest update, this is no longer an issue and you can use Safari while listening to music.

Some people have reported problems with the app. One solution is to delete MeRadio and reinstall it from scratch instead of merely updating it.

MeRadio is free and can be downloaded here.

(Tip of the hat to iMerlion reader @witzer! for this!)

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Update to SG Buses, NextBus will fix arrival times

Bus arrival times have stopped working on SG Buses and SG NextBus but their developer, Muh Hon Cheng, has already submitted updates to Apple to fix the problem.

Hon Cheng believes that the bus times stopped working because he was grabbing the data from a URL which was discontinued without warning.

"I have just send out three updates to fix this for SG Next Bus, SG Buses (old, and V3)," said Hon Cheng. "I think it may take Apple around eight to 10 days for approval."

He has pulled these apps from the App Store until Apple approves the update.

Update: The change has also affected gothere's app as well as bus@sg. Currently, tranSGuide's bus arrival time is still working.

(Thanks to sh2sg for the tip-off!)

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