To those of you who were delighted that the homebrew community has fully cracked the iPhone open, here's an interesting development: another group of developers came up with a new program known as NES.app that is similar to iPhoneNES.

It seems like this is somewhat a "follow through" because the first parts of both the programs' changelog are similar. Anyway, NES.app uses the InfoNES emulation core so it reflects the 6502 processor in a Nintendo Entertainment System.

It allows users to play ROM dumps of games designed for the NES. NES.app is currently on v0.41 and the changes since iPhoneNES v.20 are as follows:

• 0.22:[stepwhite] Added diagonal direction hotspots, SHOW_HITSPOT flags
• 0.23:[nervegas] Tweaks to orientation change, DEBUG shows hot spots now
• 0.24:
• [nervegas] Using K6502_rw.h from older core, Metroid and Punchout work!
• [nervegas] Made more improvements to orientation sensitivity
• [nervegas] Implemented slightly faster rendering
• 0.25: [nervegas] Enlarged controls for landscape mode
• 0.26: [nervegas] Change status bar background to black on landscape
• 0.27: [nervegas] Controller fix to allow button, then directional pad hold
• 0.28: [nervegas] Added save SRAM support (to save SRAM for games like Zelda)
• 0.29: [nervegas] Added auto-save state and "Saved Games" selection
• 0.30: [nervegas] Fixed SaveState for many games, +Mapper1 +Mapper5. This fixed Tetris, Bubble Bobble, Super Mario 2, others...

The rest of the changelog and the download link after the jump!

It looks like the NES emulator for the iPhone is making some progress. The developers have released a video demonstrating the iPhone running the classic Super Mario Brothers. It has no sounds yet, which isn't surprising since it's in its development stages.

The speed is a bit slow though, which makes it a little discouraging. Also they seem to have done some liberties with the controls to compensate for it's diminutive scale. When the gamer pressed forward, Mario just kept moving forward even when he released the button. He opened other games but didn't demonstrate the keypads further so we'll have to wait and see how they fare with the developments.

Roomba vacuum cleaner robots have piezo beeper and several noisy motors. While these could be annoying to some people, for Tod Kurt, they served as inspiration to create RoombaMidi, a Mac OS X application that creates a virtual MIDI instrument. If you're running the application, try playing around the MIDI and watch the Roomba bust a move. Play E three octaves below middle C and the robot will spin left. Pressing the key harder will make it spin faster. A low C sharp will cause the LED to flash and hitting the key harder will change its color. The software can control up to 16 Roombas over different MIDI channels.

The demo below is hardly musical, but it's enough for you to think of legions of Roombas playing that infectious Super Mario song while you sleep at night.