Pushing buttons is so yesterday. The most satisfying feeling comes from giving your phone a really good shake

NOT SINCE MY childhood Etch A Sketch has there been a toy as fun to shake as the iPhone. No, I’m not shaking it in anger. I’m vigorously agitating it because that’s the fun new way of getting it to do things.
The magic happens thanks to something called an accelerometer, which, as you might guess, measures acceleration. (They are also used on trains, to deploy airbags in cars and in the Nintendo Wii.) In other words, the iPhone can sense movement.

A flood of new applications has hit the market taking advantage of this technology. And compared to poking around with a finger, shaking is incredibly satisfying.

For a first taste of the jiggy pleasure, try one of the new motion-based games like Shake N’ Break from Posimotion.com. Choose a photo from the iPhone’s library. Give a good shake and watch the image shatter into small pieces. Players then need to drag the pieces back together, jigsaw puzzle style. Why bother, you ask? Good question. Like so many first generation iPhone apps, Shake N’ Break is more proof of concept than anything else. Unless the photo is of an ex.

The second-generation games are getting better. There’s Tap Tap Revenge II, a follow-up to last year’s top ranking shake app from Tapulous. It derives its name from the insanely popular Dance Dance Revolution – a video game which requires jumping all over the place – which is best played by club-going teenagers. Tap Tap Revenge is for the rest of us. It requires rhythmically tapping and shaking your iPhone to the beat of your iTunes tracks. You still get to test your rhythm – proving that you can still dance – without breaking a sweat.

Of course, for all these shake games, it would be wise to secure the phone to a wrist strap before wildly rocking out. All it takes is a slightly sweaty palm to send your iPhone and its accelerometer into the far wall.

For those in search of true utility, the shake revolution promises a way to share information, but this too has sent things flying in unwanted directions.
Consider the ancient tradition of the handshake – an act of greeting, friendship, peacemaking, deal brokering, promise and trust. We all love a good shake. Now our phones do too. Put two iPhones together, give them a shake, and presto! You’ve got my contact details and I’ve got yours.

FriendBook, also by Tapulous, briefly put this handshaking into practice. Each iPhone first needed to be running Friend Book, which was easy enough. As was putting the phones together and shaking. They exchanged data so well that it created a rare “wow” moment.

In fact, it worked too well. The creators of the app quickly discovered that the handshake sent personal information spraying everywhere, like to strangers. So much for promise and trust.

“Within one hour of being made aware of the issue, we removed FriendBook from the App Store to ensure that no more users would install the app,” announced Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem, “and that we could fully evaluate the security issue before making the app available again.”
Better safe than sorry, I guess, but I personally hope they can solve the security problem. The feeling of such a tactile exchange was truly exhilarating.
Here’s something for foodies (or fatties) in North America, the UK or Australia. An app called Urbanspoon turns the iPhone into a sort of three-wheel slot machine, randomly selecting a restaurant based on neighborhood, ethnicity and price.

Each shake sends the wheels spinning. When they stop, if they were in Hong Kong, they might say “Wanchai” “Indian” “$$” or “Causeway Bay” “Japanese” “$$$$” followed by a link to a restaurant review. Just keep shaking until you find something you like. Or you can lock any of the wheels so that, for example, you can find something cheap and close, but still let a shake decide which ethnicity of restaurant gets your business.

If you are looking for the most popular downloads to shake, it should come as no surprise that the hottest are the ones that appeal to our base instincts. ArteFacto Estudio has released an erotic game titled Shake. The goal is simple, gents: figure out the secret shake combination to remove the clothes from the porn stars. It’s sort of like relearning how to unhook a bra strap with one hand. Obviously, this isn’t for mixed company. Consider shaking it in the bathroom.
And as for satisfying the needs of female iPhone junkies, the consensus is that they shouldn’t have to shake their iPhones, but rather that the iPhones should shake them. Women can now enjoy true tactile interaction thanks to an app called iBrate. iBrate, which is available only for jailbroken phones, turns the iPhone into a vibrating sex toy that delivers pleasure way beyond anything my Etch A Sketch could offer.

The ultimate proof that shaking truly is more satisfying than poking around with a finger.