A company has come out with a new app for the iPhone and iPod Touch and guess what, it has sounds like farts and stuff. Not really newsworthy except if you know how they finally got this app released and also the relevance of the week in which it was released.

Alkali Media made up a soundboard type app called Crudebox. It had what Alkali calls “16 high-quality and mildly disgusting sounds” but, as they point out, no worse than many similar apps in the App Store. But Apple turned them down, citing Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:”Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.” So, they took out the sound of a female moaning and replaced it with the Boing of a spring and resubmitted again. Again they were turned down but they didn’t quite know what was objectionable (Apple doesn’t provide such info). Then they decided to change the graphics to a happier theme and make the names of their sounds nicer. Like Wet Fart became Big Toot and Fart became Toot (because you know the word “fart” is sooooo objectionable in the App Store). They also gave a nudge and a wink to Apple and called it PrudeBox. And you know what? Yeah, that’s right. Apple approved it.

And this approval happening this week is particularly significant because it’s both the week the billionth app was downloaded from the App Store and the week that Krapps.com started the Baby Shaker app story. The Baby Shaker app let you shake a crying baby to stop it from crying and then red Xs appeared in its eyes. Ugh. But once Krapps.com highlighted it, news organziations scooped up the story and ran with it. Apple removed the app with an apology that admitted the app was offensive and should not have been approved. But it was approved! And so have lots of apps with questionable content. But CrudeBox was too offensive? Well, PrudeBox is not, apparently. And while it may not exactly be our kind of app, it is just as good as any other soundboard app out there and bravo Alkali Media for pointing out a perfect example of how the app store approvals seem so very unbalanced.