Visual Poet is pretty much Magnetic Poetry for your iPad. Instead of tiny refrigerator magnets, you get an app that allows you to tweak word strips made to resemble the magnets of your liking, then bring in any photos that you wish.

The idea is cute, and the app itself look gorgeous. Unfortunately, the usability has suffered. To create poetry, you pull in an image from Flickr, Google, Tumblr or your iPad's photo library. However, you can only log into your Tumblr account. The closest for Flickr is searching for your photostream.

Once you've found your photos, you have to scroll through a long list of images on a narrow filmstrip. If a photo is selected from the bottom of the list, it immediately snaps back to the top. It's a waste of time, and I gave up on it and tried pulling from my iPad photo library. The app immediately crashed. I finally got it to work, but only after the iPad froze several times. You then zoom in on the area of the image you want to use by using your fingers to create a red box over the area.

For text, tap on the smaller image above the one you just imported. It's not obvious, however, as there is no integrated tool tip telling you that this is the text area, and it took a bit of guesswork to realize that it wasn't just showing you the photo crop. With the comparisons to Magnetic Poetry, I expected a small list of words to drag onto the image, which would actually be a bit more fun.

Once your masterpiece is complete, you can email your work to share it. You can also auto-generate photo credits to properly credit your sources or write them in.

The app is not that bad for US$2.99, but I wasn't expecting it to be quite so buggy. It also does not work in landscape mode, which is a definite turnoff for some. I think if the bugs were ironed out and the ability to log into your Flickr account and album support within those services was added, this would be a cute app for all those pet and/or kid photos lurking on your hard drive.

Last November, I wrote a post about the Pomodoro Technique of getting things done. The technique involves using a tomato-shaped kitchen timer to get you to concentrate on work for a set period of time before taking a mandatory break, and it's very useful for those of us who tend to get easily distracted.

Well, I'm also a fan of steampunk, so when an email from ThinkOrange introduced me to The Amazing Mechanical Pomodoro, I just had to bite. The US$1.99 app is probably the best looking Pomodoro timer I've ever seen, with a nice Victorian-looking set of instructions about the Pomodoro Technique, a lovely brass, wood, and ivory timer, and even a history of your completed Pomodoros.

However, there is a tiny bug about the size of an adult rhinoceros beetle in this app that currently makes it a bit worthless, other than being extremely nice looking. When the iPhone goes to sleep, the counter stops counting down. Since I don't wish to keep my iPhone's screen active during most of my work, that's a huge problem that needs to be fixed as soon as possible. The timer also gets reset to zero if you tap on the "How It Works" or "History" buttons at the bottom of the screen.

It's nice enough to make me want to put on a rough wool suit and hat to do my work, but only if I can also give my 27" iMac a bit of that Victorian flair before I start. Huzzah for the gentlemen and ladies at ThinkOrange for creating this beautiful mechanical wonder! Now if they can just make it work properly... Check out the gallery below for more screenshots.

Chinese news agency Xinhua reports that Foxconn subsidiary Futaihua Precision Electronics will build a new facility in central China's Henan provice that will primarily produce the iPhone.

Xinhua says that more than 500 employees are already working a temporary site rented from the Zhengzhou city government. Factory construction will start on August 20 and is expected to be operational in a year. Xinhua says the site will reportedly produce $13 billion (U.S.) worth of products for export, make about 200,000 phones per day and will employ nearly 200,000 workers, most of whom are expected to be from the Henan province.

We reported about Foxconn's earlier raises to its workers after reports of sucides among its workers. At the time, Foxconn said that it planned to distribute Apple production among new facilities in other areas of China.

[Via Electronista]

We've heard a lot of interesting things from big companies on the App Store -- some of them have released games and apps with not a lot of success compared to more high-profile indie groups, while some seem to have nailed down a little bit of profit from Apple's platform. Capcom is apparently finding itself in that first group -- the company's latest financial reports state that it is fairly disappointed in the performance of its App Store titles. Resident Evil 4 sales have "increased gradually," while even more anticipated apps like Street Fighter IV and Phoenix Wright have only "achieved their projected sales." Which may be good news, but it's not exactly a glowing result for Capcom's App Store efforts.

Meanwhile, EA's partner Bioware is licking its wounds from its first iPhone effort. Greg Zeschuk says that Mass Effect on the iPhone "wasn't even a mistake as much as we took a guess, our guess was wrong, and we learned something in the process -- that the fundamental tactile gameplay is actually the key thing on the platform." He sounds really disappointed with sales -- he says that the company originally believed a strong story could keep players interested even through fairly generic gameplay, but it turns out that iPhone gamers are more interested in the experience than the text that backs it up (not hard to see -- look at Doodle Jump, Angry Birds, or any other huge iPhone games with barely any backstory at all).

It's interesting to see big companies dealing with the App Store platform, and struggling to figure out how to implement iPhone apps. I think we'll see even more experimenting on this front from even major software studios.

Most (probably all) of you who are or will soon be slapping a case on your iPhone 4 won't have a case that protects the screen from scratches. Well, except those of you with flip-top cases that cover the entire unit. When I received my iPhone 4, I wanted to immediately protect the screen, but the only thing available at the time was sticky films that are either permanently affixed to your screen with adhesive, or require a lot of post-clean-up when you decide to remove or replace it.

The screen protector I really wanted was one I'd used with much success on my iPhone 3G: Crystal Film from Power Support. The most appealing thing about these is that they adhere to your iPhone's screen with static, not sticky goop, and they stay put. When you want to replace or remove the film (which you won't have to do often), it's painless.

The Crystal Film for iPhone 4 was taking pre-orders for weeks after the iPhone 4's release, but shipments have finally started going out in the past week or so. If you've been looking for a sticky-free way to protect your iPhone 4 investment, look no further.

Were you one of the millions of American kids who grew up playing MECC's classic educational video game The Oregon Trail? Several TUAW bloggers remember spending hours in front of an Apple II coaxing their pioneers ever Westward, only to have them die of snakebite, dysentery, or cholera.

Well, the witty folks at Half Day Today! Films created a trailer for a "film adaptation" of The Oregon Trail, which takes a potshot at many of the quirks of the game. If you grew up with this game and want a good laugh, check out the video above. Just don't go into the brush; you may get bitten by a snake!

Thanks to Al for the tip

I'm going to guess that if you had any interest in StarCraft 2 at all, you probably spent the better part of last week playing it, as Blizzard Entertainment finally released their sequel to one of the most popular real-time strategy games of all time, and according to the critics, it's just as good as it was a decade ago. Just like all of Blizzard's games, StarCraft 2's Mac version actually comes shipped on the same DVD that the PC version comes on, which means that day, date and version are all available for us Mac gamers. Even in the days of Steam on the Mac, that's going above and beyond the call for those of us who like to do our gaming on the Mac.

But Blizzard's got another little bonus for us Mac fans -- the game contains the parody ad above, presenting the iPistol, complete with a dancing Space Marine showing off the personal weapon unit. Funny.

Of course the reference is a little dated -- we haven't seen those dancing ads on TV in years. But this game's been in development for a while, and seeing that Marine break it down is pretty funny, so we'll give them an iBreak on this one.

[via Engadget]

Who would have thought that headline would ever appear? Well it has, and if you count the iPad Apple has just passed Asus, Toshiba, Dell and Lenovo and is now the number three producer of portables.

That's the word from Fortune this morning, quoting Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Whitmore. Using the June quarter numbers from the banking company, Apple has moved from the seventh spot in the global portable market, trailing only HP and Acer.

Not fair you say? Well Deutsche Bank says iPad sales are cannibalizing demand for other notebooks, and the report also notes that sales of Apple laptops are also climbing.

[Via Fortune]

I spent about the last two weeks working my way through the levels of Angry Birds HD, a wacky and addictive game for iPad in which you slingshot birds at pigs to kill them. Yeah, I know it sounds weird, but if you have played the game, you know that it's a great way to kill a few hours days worth of spare time. When I was approached about previewing a new, similar game called Cannon Cadets, my first inclination was that it wasn't going to be as fun.

I'm glad to say I was wrong. Based on a pre-release version of the game I tested, Cannon Cadets from XMG Studio is a blast (no pun intended). As you can see in the video above, the back story consists of an evil monkey who has created an army of robots to kill all of the fun in the universe. Rather than using a slingshot to fire suicidal birds, you use a small cannon to fire small characters at the robots. There are a number of different planets on which you can play, each with a variety of increasingly difficult levels. As with Angry Birds, sometimes a straight shot at a target is not the answer, while blasting away at structures causes them to topple and knock off a bunch of robots.

There are flying targets that, when destroyed, provide access to hidden levels. Other targets launch your characters when destroyed, so a direct hit can take out a string of robots. If you're unsuccessful in killing off the robots in a level, you can either try again or move to another level to try your luck.

The graphics in Cannon Cadets appear to be optimized for the iPhone 4's Retina Display, since they really pop on the device. The game is expected to be in the App Store soon; stay tuned to TUAW and we'll let you know when you can start killing robots. Cannon Cadets will be released for iPhone and iPod touch first, followed by a version for iPad.

Website WhiteiPhone4Now, which happens to sell DIY white iPhone case kits, has posted pictures supposedly showing the front of a white iPhone.

The focus of the change depicted in their photos seems to be what they're calling a "rough & bent" condition resulting from the manufacturing process. It appears that the top case is rendered less-than-perfect in manufacturing, and as a result doesn't sit completely flush when the phone is assembled. They also claim, according to their "OEM sources," that the process has been adjusted to successfully remove this imperfection.

Apple intended to sell a white iPhone at the initial launch, only to announce that it would be delayed by a few weeks and eventually several months. Since then, sites like WhiteiPhone4Now have offered patience-deprived customers a way to bring a little #ffffff to their iPhones without delay.

In the meantime, Apple's workers are obviously fixing the solution. Good luck to all of them.