Neat App Store app puts calling, texting, emailing, web, tweeting, Facebook, and more shortcuts in Notification Center (UPDATE: Pulled)

UPDATE [Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 2:06pm ET]: It appears the app had originally slipped past Apple’s censors after all as the company just yanked the program out of the App Store.

A new iOS application called Quickpick hit the App Store (no jailbreak!), and it fills a void that many feel Apple left in their implementation of the iOS 5 Notification Center.

For those unfamiliar, Notification Center is a place on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch where a user can view their device notifications along with weather and stocks widgets (iPhone and iPod touch only). Many hoped Apple would add a universal launching feature within the Notification Center, but the company did not do so. Until the time comes (if it ever does), Quickpick fills the void.

Quickpick uses the iOS web-based shortcuts feature to initiate phone calls, text messages, website launching, emailing, and more from the Notification Center.

For example, I have set up a calling shortcut, emailing shortcut, web address shortcut, and a shortcut to open YouTube. Since the application uses native iOS URL scheming, the possibilities are endless. Here are some giant databases (1, 2) of URL schemes you can use, and there are cool examples:

• fb://profile – Open Facebook app to the user’s profile
• twitter://post?message – Open Twitter.app to send a tweet
• fb://friends – Open Facebook app to the friends list
• fb://notifications – Open Facebook app to the notifications list
• fb://feed – Open Facebook app to the News Feed
• itms-apps:// – Open the App Store
• maps:// – Open the Maps app
• sms:// – Open the compose window of the Messages app
• music:// – Go to the currently playing song in the Music app
• youtube:// – Open the YouTube app
• itms-books:// – Open the iBooks app

The aforementioned calling, texting, website launching, and emailing examples do not require a special URL; the app sets those up automatically.

Quickpick is now available as a universal application for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch for $0.99. After the break are instructions on how to setup custom URLs in Quickpick:

Instructions:

You can choose one of the few templates the app provides and then choose a contact card or website:

Or you could add one of the aforementioned shortcuts like so: