Mutant Soup was the name of a drawing I did several years ago in a Freehand Drawing class in college. Here's a snapshot of it that I took on a circa 1999 digital camera (not even 1 megapixel). One day I'll take it back out and use my 10MP DSLR. I always thought it was a funny and unique name, perfect for a software company or rock band. It is in fact the name of my band in the game Rock Band. The face is modeled after Eric Idle from Monty Python.
Hamster Soup is an iPhone app that provides up-to-date, at-a-glance information about what is going on in the Big Brother USA house. Hamster Soup 3.0 documents the current season of Big Brother USA, Big Brother 13. Hamster Soup provides a daily summary, "The Daily Dish," live feed updates from JokersUpdates.com, Hamster Bios, and an Alumni Alley of Big Brother contestants from seasons past.
Big Brother USA houseguests have been called hamsters for several years now, as a reference to "hamsters in a cage". Google "Big Brother hamster" and see.
Hamster Soup 3.0 for Big Brother 13 is in review and will be available soon on the App Store.
MutantSoup writes The Daily Dish and maintains the Hamster Bios so that they show the current status of each houseguest and document important events in each hamster's life in the game. Live feed watchers at JokersUpdates.com write the Live Updates as they happen in real-time. There are always people watching the feeds, so coverage is nearly 24/7, except when the hamsters are sleeping. Sometimes even then, as feed watchers will let you know who snores too loud, who is restless, who gets up during the night to run to the restroom (and if they come back without washing their hands!) and especially any late-night hookups.
Special thanks to Jokerette of the excellent JokersUpdates website for allowing me to broadcast their live update feed!
MutantSoup will update The Daily Dish and Hamster Bios daily for the duration of Big Brother 12. Live feed watchers also write for the duration of the game.
Hamster Soup loads current data each time you run it, but after that you will need to simply pull down at the top to refresh. It does not at this time use Apple's Push Notification Service, but MutantSoup is well aware of how handy such a feature would be, if only to alert someone that the feeds are back from the fishes! (Long-time feed watchers will know what that means.)
Only 1.99 cents. Tell all your friends how much they need to get Hamster Soup! :)
As long as CBS airs new seasons of Big Brother, Hamster Soup will be there. I plan to add In-App Purchasing to Hamster Soup 3.0, so that next season a new app will not be required to view content for Big Brother 13, 14, etc.
Sorry, no. The BB11 Hamster Soup was an iPhone 2.x app, while the new one has a minimum 3.x requirement. Also, it is a big time comittment maintaining and updating the content of the app every season, so the $1.99 price seems reasonable. Even the live updates feed must be watched, because occasionally a poster adds something that causes a glitch and breaks the feed (a .sig image always glitches the feed, for example).
At the top of the list, if you pull the list down, you will see a pull-to-update appear. Once you pull it past a certain point, Hamster Soup will download new updates.
The At-a-Glance feature is turned off by default. To enable it, go to the Settings app on your device, and scroll down to the Applications settings list, where you will see settings for many of your apps. Find Hamster Soup in the list, and enable At-a-Glance.
Now that iOS 4 has been released to the public, it supports some multitasking. Hamster Soup isn't the type of app that allows iOS 4 to do true multitasking, but it can use the fast app switching. An update is now available on the App Store which has this ability, allowing you to switch to another app for some time, then come right back to Hamster Soup without having to restart it. The At-a-Glance feature, if enabled, also kicks in when you switch back to Hamster Soup.