John Gruber of Daring Fireball has an interesting story about the absence of certain iPhone apps – Stocks, Calculator, Clock, Weather, Voice Memos – on the iPad.

It seems that these apps, when scaled up to iPad’s bigger screen, simply didn’t look good enough to Steve Jobs, so he decided to scrap them. Writes Gruber:

“Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated. So they were scrapped by you-know-who. Perhaps they’ll appear on the iPad in some re-imagined form this summer with OS 4.0, but when the iPad ships next month, there won’t be versions of these apps.”

If true, it would be a pity, because these are quite basic, no brainer apps that everyone uses, especially Clock, Calculator, and the Weather. On the other hand, if these simple apps don’t look good enough scaled up, how will all those thousands of third party apps look? As far as apps go, the iPad experience (at least in the beginning) might turn out to be something that Apple otherwise struggles to avoid: good enough, but far from perfect.

Tags: apple, ipad, iphone

Foursquare is battling for your SXSW check-ins with a musical scavenger hunt. Rival Gowalla is going to go after them with free gadgets – specifically free Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus devices as part of a promotion the location-based social networking service is unveiling in conjunction with their just-launched app for webOS.

The app should hit the Palm App Catalog on Tuesday, and like the company’s applications for other platforms (including its recently launched Android app) it detects your location to show you nearby venues, lets you know where your friends are located, and has a gaming element called “stamps” that can be accrued as you check-in to various places.

The SXSW connection is part of a push by Gowalla into virtual goods. Users will be able to discover virtual Palm Pre and Pixi devices as they use the application (essentially, the more you use it, the better your chances – it’s random), and then be able to redeem those at specific parties at the festival to get the actual device. Another partner – Lomography – has inserted virtual cameras into Gowalla, that once found can also be redeemed for free gear.

This is one way Gowalla hopes to differentiate itself from the competition, and, truth be told, it’s not a bad one. No one wants to leave an event like SXSW empty handed, and by teaming up with brands to offer free gadgets to users at an event that will be loaded with tech enthusiasts could encourage some splitting (or at least doubling up) of the check-ins across services.

Now that Gowalla’s starting to catch up in terms of platform support, much of the battle might come down to marketing – where Foursquare has also recently invested heavily by forming partnerships with a host of media companies.

In any event, here’s a look at some of the features of the webOS app:

Which service will you be using to check-in at SXSW? Let us know in the comments!

Tags: gowalla, palm, webOS

It’s here: the biggest action movie for gadget geeks, Iron Man, returns with a sequel, and you can see just how high-tech it’ll all be in the Iron Man 2 trailer, now available on YouTube.

Besides a long-haired, electric whip-wielding Mickey Rourke, the movie features more iron man suits than you could ever desire, and you get to see most of them ripped apart to shreds. Yes, this thing is destined for success. Check out the trailer below.

Tags: Iron Man 2, video, youtube