In App Purchase

Many users are complaining that Sega's Massively Multiplayer Online Game, Kingdom Conquest is "stealing" money from their iTunes accounts. Even though the game itself is free, the game has many in app purchases, ranging from $0.99 - $43.99, which since mid-May, users claim these purchases are being made without their consent. If these complaints are to be believed, it seems that even people that didn't download the original app are being effected as well.

Sega has responded to complaints in their forum:

"We are currently investigating this claim as well as some others, but since we have no access to any customers' iTunes account information or transaction histories we highly recommend contacting Apple directly. "

iOS 4.3 means you no longer have to worry that your little ones might spend away your fortune on Smurfberries and other in-app purchased goodies. According to the Washington Post, Apple's latest iPhone, iPod touch and iPad software updates requires a password to be entered each and every time an in-app purchase is made. Under the old system iOS would remember your password for a short period of time meaning your children (or significant other!) could tap away at potentially costly in-app purchases with impunity. No longer.

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Boxcar [$2.99 + In-App Purchases - iTunes link], a push-enabler for iPhone and iPod touch originally launched with support for a couple of Twitter clients. Then it added a bunch more. As several Twitter clients now offer support for push themselves, what's Boxcar to do for a 2.0 encore? Add Facebook and Email push, of course, as well as Twitter Search and Twitter Trends.

Okay, sure, some major Twitter clients like Tweetie and Twitterrific still haven't added push support, so if they're your go-to apps, Boxcar may still be a go-to middleapp. Likewise, while Google supports Gmail now via GoogleSync, Exchange users can't hand over their only ActiveSync slot, so email push-enablers still have their place. Lastly -- and it's a big lastly, while Facebook 3.0 for iPhone just launched, it did so without push support, and so if you don't want to wait for 3.1 to get your push on, well, here's your middleapp for that as well.

But... it comes with a price. The $2.99 app price comes with one service built in. If you want to add another, like Facebook, you need to make an additional $0.99 in-app purchase. Email, that's another $0.99. Twitter Trends and Twitter Search likewise. And since you can have multiple Twitter, Email, Twitter Search, etc. set up, you can go from that base $2.99 to $4.99, even $9.99 or more. Basically, you pay for what's valuable to you. If you're working customer service and being push-alerted when your company (or your competitor!) and the word "problem" hits Twitter, $0.99 is a steal. If you don't care about trends or searches, or Facebook for that matter, you get a cheaper entry price for the app.

So, whether this particular app is worth it to you, and whether or not the in-app purchase upgrades are worth it to you, we're liking options and being able to choose -- and pay for -- only what we find of value.

So, if you need push now and you decide to try Boxcar 2.0 out, let us know how it works for you, and what you think of the pricing model!

More screen shots after the break...