Today I saw Metaio’s press release stating, “The Black Eyed Peas debut in the world’s first 360-degree mobile music video.”

Information on the app from iTunes:

With BEP360 you can be dropped into the party with the worlds first 360 mobile music video. Hold up your iPhone4 or latest iPod Touch and watch as the BEP perform their hit single “The Time (Dirty Bit)” with you literally at the center of the party. Physically look around to change the view as you experience the song in innovative 360 degree video.

The app also features a cutting edge Augmented Reality experience. Just point your device at the album cover and see one of the Baby Peas popup and move to the beat. A chat bubble on top of their head reveals their latest tweet.

Augmented reality component of BEP app

Snap a pic of one of the Peas in your world and upload it to BEP EARTH where you can see people from all over the world sharing and celebrating their love for the BEP and their music.
Step into the Photo session and conduct a virtual Photo Shoot with the

Pea of your choice with the first ever virtual camera experience.
The Pea’s twitter streams are visualized for you and at the tap of an icon.
Finally a really cool puzzle game will keep you in the app for hours of fun.

From what I saw in the video of the app working at the Will.i.apps site, it seems to use the accelerometer and compass of the iDevices to provide a ‘virtual camera’ type effect for navigating the UI, looking at content, and watching the music video. A very clever technique for interaction.

Although iTunes lists the developer of the app as Talent Media LLC, the press release states the app is a collaborative project between Will.i.apps, Metaio (for the AR), and 3D360 (for the 360 video).  The BEP360 app is available for $2.99 from the App Store on iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, or at:www.bit.ly/bep360app.

The QR code on the poster still doesn’t do anything, but I am glad to see the BEP get such a cool app.

You’ll thank me later…. Or not depending on how much time you are waiting on this app.

BTW, I’ve been looking around for other cheats, no luck.. Only to these two seem to work..

• i am weak = Construction costs set to $0
• pay tribute to your king = All extra rewards

Yes, I played with it and the graphics are nice, the menus make sense. Side note though, when you pan or zoom, the polys are hidden, so you only get the property outline. No biggie.  The buttons are good sized to make it easy to use.  I like that when you build something, like a road, you can ‘place it’.  Something the version on my treo 650 did not have. The game is mostly built from the ground up, but the core engine is from simcity3000, so we can expect a pretty rich feedback loop.  Is there a cheat code?  Yup. … I’m I going to tell you?  No. …  well, ok, to GET to the cheat code textbox, you shake the device.  I do not have any codes right off, but if I get them, I will share…

{Update:  cheat codes!
i am weak = Construction costs set to $0
pay tribute to your king = All extra rewards

} // I tested a few others.. No luck.

They do not have a solid release date, but target to be sometime in the next 7 days.. Xmas download anyone?  Its also target priced at $9.99.  Normal first release price.

So I will buy it as soon as it comes out and write a follow up.  Hopes are high!

xWave also has a new release of xGPS software tagged 1.0.1-4.  Although its rough and takes a few steps, its the light at the end of the tunnel.  More here…

It’s still early as far as other applications getting on board, but at least you can get maps working with xGPS (story here).  I have been emailing the nice folks at xWave and hopefully after they have caught up with the main mapping application they are working on, we can get something going for us bikers, runners and hikers.  I sent them an example GPX file a bit ago, so if they can at least write that local to the phone with a start/stop, I said I would polish up my PHP script that takes GPS and spits out sleep, elevation change, a graph and a csv file.

As always, keep ye’all posted.