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Journalists Cover Microsoft, Using Macs

It’s not an easy time for Microsoft — with Steve Ballmer having to field questions about being “buffoons” and an “evil empire”  at the shareholder’s meeting (.doc) — so when they get together “the world’s most influential technology pundits and online writers” (nb: we weren’t invited) for Mobius to discuss super-secret mobile tech you’d think [...]

Guide To Black Friday Apple Bargains: Cheap MacBooks, iPods and Accessories Galore

Here’s a guide for finding the best bargains on Apple-related gear during the infamous Black Friday sales on November 27. We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of gear from leaked photos of sales flyers and descriptions of sales.
The bargains include a 2.26 GHz MacBook + $150 gift card at Best Buy for $999.99 ; a 32GB [...]

Review: Voices Is Today’s Best Thing Ever, Grab It Now While It’s Cheap

New on the App Store is Voices from the clever folk at Tap Tap Tap. You can guess what it does.

Open it up, pick a silly voice. Helium is pretty silly. A microphone appears and the app even clears your throat for you (try it, you’ll see what I mean). Now speak your brains, and [...]

Review: Sony Walkman S540 Series Video MP3 Player

Press releases, you will hardly be surprised to hear, are rarely very interesting. But one arrived in my inbox a couple of weeks ago that made me double-take.
“Sony’s S Series Walkman,” it chattered, “is a serious challenger to the iPod Nano.” Gosh, really? Perhaps the Cult had better have a look at one, then, despite [...]

Wow! Check Out This Amazing 3D Map of Paris

You have to see this to believe it. Above is a demo video of Paris 3D, a tourist guide to France’s beautiful capital city in photo-realistic 3D.

It looks absolutely stunning. The detail is unbelievable. Here’s a massive virtual city on your iPhone — right down to the gargoyles. There’s even people and vehicles — plus their shadows! — for added realism.

You can zoom in to particular streets or buildings, or zoom out to get a global view of the city’s layout. Tap on a building to get a data sheet on the structure, which includes the building’s history, photos, and where appropriate, phone numbers or opening times (like a museum).

Type a destination, and you zoom across the 3D city to see it.

You can to highlight particular categories of buildings — hotels and restaurants, for example, which show up color coded on the 3D map, making them easy to spot in a global view. The app is GPS-enabled, so you just tap a button to get directions. Street names are overlaid.

Performance looks fantastic. It renders better than Google maps. The demo looks like it was filmed on a iPhone emulator running on a developer computer. But if performance is as good on a real iPhone, it’ll be killer.

The app has just been submitted to the iTunes App store and should be available soon pending Apple’s approval.

The developer, Newscape Technology, claims it took twenty man-years of R&D over a four year period to develop, and is the first in a series of city guides.

Move over Google Maps!

Link to the Mobile 3D City website.

Via MacFeber.

About the author

Leander Kahney

Leander Kahney is senior editor of Cult of Mac, editor of two books about technology culture, Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, and has written for Wired, MacWeek, Scientific American, and The Observer in London. Follow Leander on Twitter @lkahney and Facebook.

Email the author | Read more posts by Leander Kahney.

3 comments

    [...] found via Cult of Mac via MobilFeber] Tweet This!Digg this!Share this on del.icio.usShare this on FacebookPost this to [...]

    Sounds silly, but what I like best about this demo is how you can ‘crawl into’ de z-axis with your fingers :-)

    As a tourist guide, I can tell you this is great stuff, and let me be the first to say our work is not threatened by it. The more cities on this system, the merrier! :-)

    It’s up now for AUD$12.

    %$#@!

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