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Calendar applications are great, but sometimes you need to track how many days until an upcoming event. Or in some cases, you might want to track how many consecutive days you’ve been doing something; handy for monitoring health and other activities. D-Day, found in the iTunes app store, is a free iOS program that manages both scenarios, making it a must-have app on my iPhone.

The software is pretty simple; you just enter a date on one of the three tabs to track days left, days past, or days until someone’s birthday. You can easily customize the title of what you’re tracking and the events can be added to your native calendar app or be set to repeat.

My main purpose for finding and using D-Day is my running streak, which I began on January 1, 2011. Today, for example, is my 400th consecutive day of running at least a mile. I need the daily counter that D-Day provides me for my running log. For additional fun, I keep track of my age in days. The app tells me that today I woke up for the 15,524th day. My kids swear I don’t look a day over 15,000, so the running must be helping.

Although my primary purpose for D-Day is my running streak, I’ve found it can be useful for so much more. People who stopped smoking and want to keep track of how long since that last light-up can use D-Day. Maybe you want to track how long it’s been since a quiet date with your significant other. (Trust me mobile younglings, this becomes important as date-night frequency drops off once you’ve been alive for that first 10,000 days!) Or perhaps you have a goal to lose 10 pounds in 100 days; D-Day can be your iOS countdown buddy for that or an upcoming project.

The free version of D-Day is ad-supported and there’s an in-app purchase option to go Pro for $0.99. The lite version is working just fine for me as I’ve used it daily for the last 400 days.

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In Apple’s iconic “1984″ commercial, it wasn’t a stretch to realize that the big brother figure was meant to represent IBM. That makes it very ironic that IBM now has more Macs, iPads, and iPhones deployed than any company except Apple.

The extent to which Apple devices are being used at IBM became clear during a presentation at MacWorld|iWorld last week by Chris Peppin that detailed the initiatives of Big Blue related to Apple. Those initiatives are pretty shocking considering the fact that IBM was once Apple’s number one adversary in the business technology market.

Obviously things have changed over nearly three decades. IBM not longer directly competes in the desktop computing space, having long ago sold its PC business to Lenovo. The company now focuses on software, business processes, and outsourcing core technology needs like enterprise help desks and custom software development.

More importantly, IBM has become one of the biggest supporters of employee choice and BYOD (bring your own device). The company not only allows employees to choose Apple solutions, their programs extent to explicitly creating iPhone and iPad versions of employees systems including messaging and unified communications as well as wikis and other collaborative tools. Some of these are solutions that IBM offers as products to outside companies and clients, but others are internal-only solutions.

This makes IBM a case study in meeting the demands of the consumerization of IT, a topic that I’ll be taking an in-depth look at over the coming weeks and months. Beyond that, it shows that the world’s largest companies can successfully integrate Apple OSes and devices.

Perhaps most importantly, IBM isn’t alone in this egalitarian perspective. It may be the biggest concentration of Apple tech in the workplace but it’s joined by other high profile companies like Lowes, Korea Telecom, SAP, Genetech, and others.

That means that the important message for business leaders and CIOs today is this: if Big Blue and other enterprises can make a success story with Apple’s iOS devices and Macs, why can’t we?

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Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome enough to keep you busy until Monday, at least.

Mini Motor Racing and Mini Motor Racing HD ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) are excellent top-down racing games from The Binary Mill.  A good racing game requires three main features to come together: vehicle control, a variety of challenging courses and a heart-thumping soundtrack. Mini Motor Racing excels at all three. But the real kicker is the game’s head-to-head multiplayer action.

Mini Motor Racing supports four styles of steering and an optional auto acceleration feature to accommodate your prefered style of gameplay. “Wheel” mode uses a virtual steering wheel on the left side of the screen very similar to the iconic d-pad. “Toggle” provides a left and right button on the left side of the screen, whereas “Tank” places the left and right on separately on either side. “Slider” allows the user to control the car by moving a slide bar to the left and right.

Each style of play will cater to different drivers. Some prefer the Wheel, but I found Tank mode to be the easiest to control.  The final control in all modes is a button that gives the car a boost of nitro during the race.  Thanks to the way that the car navigates the track, as well as careful camera placement, you will never find the controls getting in the way of the game regardless of your control scheme of choice.

The opening sequence and smooth 3-D transitions when navigating the game’s menu system attest to the development team’s attention to detail.  There are over twenty different courses to choose from, and variations in weather and time of day keep replay value high. All fourteen cars on offer are  customizable: You can select the color and style, as well as upgrade each as you collect money and customizations along the various tracks.  If you want to upgrade in a hurry, you can use in-app purchases ranging in price from $0.99 up to $14.99.

Even without multiplayer support, the game is worth buying. Being able to play with up to four racers over Wi-Fi or two over Bluetooth, the multiplayer mode just adds to the bargain.

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A few months ago, Days of Wonder released the $2 iPhone version of their overwhelmingly popular, award-winning board game, Ticket to Ride. Ticket to Ride Pocket amazed everyone by including all the elements of the iPad version in a smaller, tighter, but just as engrossing package — only with one huge hole: While you could play real people around you via a Bluetooth connection, there wasn’t any way to play against people who weren’t in the same room with you. All that changed yesterday, making TTR pocket one of the best board game on the iPhone, right up there with chess and Words with Friends.

Unlike the iPad version, Days of Wonder didn’t set up servers for playing opponents cross-platform (for instance, many games I’ve played on the iPad have been against players using the web-based version of the game). Instead, players on TTR Pocket will only be able to play other TTR Pocket players, and only through Apple’s Game Center. With 130,000 TTR Pocket players (Days of Wonder says) though, finding another player to quench your track-building thirst shouldn’t be an issue.

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The original iPhone, 2007.

Here’s a good primer on how Apple’s initial product design and conception works.

Apple Insider has a great account of former iPhone marketing manager Bob Borchers talking to students at an unnamed California school recently. He explains how his former boss, Steve Jobs, originally approached the iPhone team with the challenge of building a device that to date has sold 183 million units in less than five years.

“His [charge] was simple. He wanted to create the first phone that people would fall in love with. That’s what he told us.”

“Now if you’re an engineer, like I am by training, you’re like ‘what the heck does that mean?’,” he said. “But he was right. The idea was, he wanted to create something that was so instrumental and integrated in peoples’ lives that you’d rather leave your wallet at home than your iPhone.” Borchers noted that Apple’s success largely stemmed from focusing on only a handful of fundamental concepts: break the rules but do so in an exceptionally well manner, pay attention to detail and make people “think differently” about the relationship they have with their device, especially given that smartphones already existed in the market.

Notice the lack of numbers or spec goals right from the start. Later in the talk, Borchers says the overall goals Jobs laid out for the nascent device were to “be a revolutionary mobile phone, the best iPod to date, and also let users carry ‘the internet in their pocket.’” He also didn’t mention downloadable apps, GPS, video or photos. Instead, when breaking into a market in which the company had no prior presence, Jobs started with the concept of an emotional connection with the product and an attitude not to imitate or mimic, but to think beyond, what any other company was presently making.

This is useful for thinking about how Apple will approach future markets too.

You can watch the videos, which have much more about Apple’s unconventional relationship with AT&T, obsession with product packaging and more, here.

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Real Racing 2

Following the introduction of AirPlay mirroring to Apple’s iOS operating system, game developers have been slowly adapting their games to support gameplay on the big screen. The App Store is now home to a number of terrific titles for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, that allow us to hook our devices up to our televisions and enjoy games as if they were being played on a traditional console.

In this App Guide, we’ve rounded up the best the best games with AirPlay support currently available. There’s something for everyone here — whether you’re into first-person shooters, soccer simulators, or adrenaline-pumping racers.

It’s worth noting that some games require you to use an iPad 2 or iPhone 4S for AirPlay mirroring — so be sure your device is supported before you make your purchase.

Real Racing 2 — $4.99 / $6.99 (HD)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALKm0Leuc7c

Real Racing 2 was one of the first titles to adopt support for AirPlay, and it absolutely nailed it, which is why it remains one of the best AirPlay-compatible games available. With the title on your iOS device, you can connect to your TV wirelessly over your home network — or using Apple’s AV adapter — and enjoy each race in high-definition on the big screen.

While you play your game on your television, in high-definition with visuals that rival console racers, your iOS device will provide you with a map of the track and a timer that allows you to monitor your lap times. You can also race against friends with a split-screen multiplayer mode.

Real Racing 2 features 30 licensed cars and 15 excellent tracks, plus over ten hours of gameplay in the cup, head-to-head, championship, and time trial game modes.

FIFA 12 — $4.99 / $9.99 (HD)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1g7-tf0pDs

For any soccer fan, FIFA 12 is a must-have. No other soccer simulator beats it (in my opinion), especially when it comes to AirPlay mirroring. It features over 22 officially licensed leagues, 500 licensed teams, 32 authentic stadiums, and more than 15,000 players. It boasts the same game modes you’ve enjoyed in previous FIFA titles, in addition to an all-new manager mode that allows you to take control over your team by trading players, upgrading your staff, scouting for talent, and leading your team to glory.

But its best feature is its AirPlay mirroring. If you have FIFA 12 on iPad, you can stream the gameplay to your TV, then use the free EA Gamepad app to control the game on your iPhone via Bluetooth. It supports two iPhones at once, so you can also go head-to-head against a friend.

Modern Combat 3: Fallen Nation — $6.99 (Universal)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdF0EvDwH-Y

I’ve said it before — numerous times — and I’ll keep saying: Modern Combat 3 is the best first-person shooter on iOS. If you’re a fan of Call of Duty or Battlefield on consoles, this is the best substitute you’ll get on-the-go. But when you’re not on the go, play it through your TV and use your device as a controller.

It features an enthralling 13-mission campaign that takes you from Los Angeles to Pakistan, with stunning visuals and sound effects. But my favorite thing about this app is its 12-man online multiplayer, which offers six exclusive maps, and seven different game modes.

Touchgrind BMX — $4.99 (Universal)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UtA12sfkxNY

If you were a fan of the original Touchgrind, which featured a unique way to skate around on a skateboard, you’ll Touchgring BMX. It’s just like its sibling, only — as its name suggests — you control a BMX instead. It offers features Touchgrind players will already familiar with, such as terrific 3D visuals, true physics-based gameplay, and an innovative control system. But it also introduces the ability to ride your bike on your TV while you control it from your iOS device.

Chopper 2 — $2.99 (Universal)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ev_ws15cKQ

Chopper 2, as you may have guessed, is the sequel to the hugely popular Chopper, a side-scrolling helicopter game in which you must complete a variety of missions that will have you escorting vehicles across deserts, or rescuing stranded civilians while your allies take on rival armies.

It features over 36 different missions over 12 locations, and a completely rewritten 3D game engine with all new enemies, weapons, and more. Chopper 2 has to be one of the most addictive games in our list, and yes, like the other it has AirPlay support, allowing you to play the game on your HDTV while you use your device as a controller.

What’s Your Favorite?

So that’s our roundup of the best iOS games currently available with AirPlay support, but there are plenty out there that didn’t make it into our list. What are your favorites? Let us know in the comments below.

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Matthew Waldman’s Nooka watches are far from your standard time-keeping devices, with various dial designs that often use digital squares and circles turning on and off to mark the passing of hours, minutes and seconds. With a new app launched Thursday (via Om), Nooka brings its off-the-beaten path watch design to the iPhone.

The major benefits of the iPhone app are that you get to experience a variety of different dial designs in one place, and that it only costs $0.99 (or free for a more limited version), as opposed to the hundreds you’ll spend on an actual Nooka watch.

The Nooka app provides a basic local time clock, with three different faces to choose from, as well as a world clock, stopwatch and timer. For all of the above, you can choose the color of the clock’s background and time indicator elements using a simple color picker. The app works in both portrait and landscape orientation, which makes it a great candidate for a desk or bedside clock, although the presence of an alarm function would really help that, as would an interface tweak to hide the status bar when the clock is active.

Even though I’d like to see those features added in an update, the Nooka app is definitely cool as-is, and fans of good design and visually intuitive time-telling will not regret the $0.99 purchase price.

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You know that so-called “permanent injunction” Motorola got against Apple that resulted in Apple pulling all iPhones and iPads short of the iPhone 4S off their online store earlier today? Already overruled, and Germans can once again get their iPhone and iPad on.

Slashgear reports:

Apple has been granted a suspension of the German injunction against 3G-enabled iOS devices, with the iPad WiFi + 3G, iPhone 4 and other gadgets back on sale through the company’s online store. ”All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly” the company told us in a statement. “Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

So that didn’t last long: Germans went without being able to buy an iPhone or iPad online for a little under 12 hours. Just goes to show how ridiculously insignificant and short-sighted a lot of this patent maneuvering really is for the average consumer: what’s really at stake here are higher patent licensing fees, not products going off the market.

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Update: 8PM ET: Apple has updated the store and all 3G devices are again available.

Just this morning Apple was dealt a patent blow by a German court that ruled Apple’s 3G products outside of the iPhone 4S were in violation of Motorola patents. The “Fair, Reasonable, and Non-Discriminatory” (FRAND) nature of the patents means Apple should be able to purchase licensing rights to those patents at market rates (i.e. what Nokia, Samsung, and others pay). According to Apple, Motorola has not offered those types of terms.

Fast forward to a few minutes ago: Apple stated the 3G devices in question would be back on sale “shortly”…

Slashgear reported:

Apple has been granted a suspension of the German injunction against 3G-enabled iOS devices, with the iPad WiFi + 3G, iPhone 4 and other gadgets back on sale through the company’s online store. ”All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale through Apple’s online store in Germany shortly” the company told us in a statement. “Apple appealed this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

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iPhone vs. Windows Phone

Windows Phone 7 hasn’t been the runaway blockbuster that Microsoft probably envisioned when it launched nearly a year and a half ago. Despite advertising campaigns and a strategic alliance with Nokia, Windows Phone use still ranks well below iOS, Android, and BlackBerry use. But new details about the platforms future that were leaked earlier this week show Microsoft may have a solid strategy for gaining marketshare with the next major Windows Phone update, which will likely coincide with the launch of Windows 8 for PCs and/or tablets.

One thing that seems very clear from this new information is Microsoft seems to be taking cues from Apple’s playbook when it comes to creating an ecosystem of devices – like making it easy to shift apps from a phone experience to a larger tablet experience.

The question is, can Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 on tablets challenge Apple’s iPhone and iPad dominance in the business realms?

Let’s start with some background; Windows Phone was a major reboot of Microsoft’s mobile platform and strategy. In a very un-Redmond like move, the company ditched its existing Windows Mobile Platform (along with its stylus and BlackBerry-style keyboard) and started completely from scratch. That let Microsoft innovate with things like live tiles and social media integration in the OS, but it also meant Microsoft shipped a phone that didn’t integrate with the company’s own enterprise infrastructure in any real way.

That lack of enterprise integration and features was a killer and gave large segments of the business smartphone market to Apple, which had built better Active Directory and Exchange capabilities into iOS. Not to mention the range of security capabilities Apple built into iOS 4 and, more recently, iOS 5.

What new information came from this week’s leak?

Windows Phone 8 (dubbed Apollo) will support multi-core devices, four different screen resolutions (though no details on what those resolutions or the size screens they’re designed to support), removable microSD storage, and NFC. All of that gets hardware support to be on par with current Android phones and some of the presumed iPhone 5 specs.

More importantly, Windows Phone and Windows 8 developers will not just get to reuse user experience elements; they’ll be able to “reuse — by far — most of their code” when porting apps between Windows Phone and Windows 8 – much as iOS developers can reuse elements and code when designing for both the iPhone and iPad.

Clearly Microsoft is hoping this will help build up available Metro-focused apps quickly. That would help provide a solid slate of options for ARM-based Windows 8 tablets and would make make it easier for both developers and users to switch between handset and tablet devices – I’ll avoid including desktops because I don’t think anyone’s happy about the touch-oriented Metro interface on them.

That would very much mirror Apple’s approach when it launched the iPad and would give Windows Phone and Windows 8 a leg up compared to Android, where there isn’t such an easy shift between handsets and tablets, or even a broad selection of tablet-optimized apps.

Windows Phone 8 will also move alway form the Zune desktop app as a sync tool in favor a of a cloud ecosystem. That’s not surprising, considering the company finally killed of the Zune and the cloud is where device syncing is headed. Again, Microsoft is playing catch up here.

However, the biggest pieces of information are very much aimed at the enterprise. Windows Phone 8 will ship with solid encryption capabilities and will be based around the encryption schemes in other Microsoft products, including Window 7 and Windows Server. This really is just getting on par with what iOS has offered for quite some time and what Android has offered on some devices since this time last year. That said, it’s a big deal if Microsoft wants Windows Phone in workplaces like healthcare and finance where data privacy and security are critical.

The other big enterprise feature is a richer set of management capabilities based around Microsoft’s Exchange and System Center. Examples of expanded policies weren’t mentioned. We can assume, however, that complex passcode policies, requiring encryption, automatic device configuration, and app install/removal will be supported.

If Microsoft matches the device management capabilities in iOS, which I can’t imagine they won’t, this could give Windows Phone an advantage in some businesses for cost reasons. These management capabilities will be part of existing enterprise infrastructure and won’t require licensing additional device management solutions, as is the case with iOS and Android.

If Microsoft links its new Data Smart features, which allow users to manage data usage and avoid overages from carriers, to device management, this could be another big leg up for company-owned devices because it will allow a company to optimize data use, which could end up dramatically lower mobile expenses.

Do these capabilities deliver a knock-out blow to Apple’s iPhone and iPad? Probably not. They certainly make Windows Phone a more attractive candidate for business and may position Windows Phone and Windows 8 tablets as an iOS alternative (and a more attractive option than Android or RIM’s BlackBerry/PlayBook combination).

If Microsoft were delivering these products a two or three years ago, they would’ve had much better chances of getting the majority of the mobile market. But in the past two years, Apple has secured such a strong lead with the iPad and the framework for managing iOS devices, Microsoft can’t easily walk in and say they’re the best or most secure option out there.

Another major change over the past few years has been that BYOD programs and the initiative of staff members picking their mobile technology has completely changed how companies approach mobile. The days of IT buying the device and apps and having full control of it are gone. All one has to do is look at RIM’s slide in the market to recognize that.

Microsoft will gain ground with Windows Phone 8, probably at the expense of RIM, but it won’t completely dominate the market. Apple has simply led the show for too long at this point.

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