Eli Milchman - page 27

Cast your mind back to June; remember reading about an app that used the iPhone’s GPS to bulls-eye the user’s location on any map imported into it? Well, the developer, Fog Technologies,  is back with Expo Tec, an app that starts with the same basic principle, but narrows its focus to convention-like events and adds some features to help the user through his chaos-laden convention visit.

The developer says it’s pretty easy for event planners to create “event packs” through a web interface designed for the app, which then shunts the pack to users of the app. Besides a GPS-enabled event map, the app provides event schedules, instant event updates, detailed vendor info and general event info.

Expo Tec is $4, and boasts that it’s a “fist-in-the-industry” solution. Yeah, sure, it was probably supposed to read “first-in-the-industry,” but we like the fist version better; “we’re angry as hell (about getting lost) and we’re not going to take (poor convention info) anymore!” Or something.

As if its frenetically gleeful yellow and purple icon wasn’t enough enticement to download, yesterday saw Yahoo make its free Yahoo Messenger app even more appealing with some beefy upgrades: backgrounding, voice calling and the biggie, video calling.

We tested it briefly and found the video calling works pretty well over wifi, even with a 3GS — though, obviously, the person on the other end won’t see a face unless the 3GS is turned around — with decent transmission of both voice and picture. But the app suffers from a few issues, which fellow Cultist David Martin will reveal in a full review later this week.

While voice and video calls will only work between users of the app, Yahoo also yesterday added the Skype-like ability to make voice calls (including international calls) to landlines or mobiles at low fees via a Yahoo Voice Phone Out account.

Pogoplug has updated their free app over the weekend, and it now sports the ability to stream and play music in the background over either a wifi or 3G connection from a network-attached storage device running the Pogoplug engine — which currently means either a Pogoplug unit or one from Seagate.

The big advantage the Pogoplug app’s new function has over, say, the free Zumocast app (which debuted last month and does the same thing), is that the Pogoplug version doesn’t require a computer running from which to stream music. Downside? You’ll need to pop for a Pogoplug-equipped NAS unit, if you don’t already have one. The app also gains background photo uploading and fast app-switching.

Next, hopefully Pogoplug will improve the app’s movie-streaming capability, which sorely lacks the ability to convert videos on the fly to a streaming-freindly format, like Zumocast does.

Let’s face it — for a multi-purpose device heavily weighted toward music, the iPhone’s music-player interface is crap. Dealing with those tiny buttons crammed onto the bottom of the screen is bad enough under most conditions, worse for meaty-fingered users and infuriating when the iPhone is docked or when movement is involved.

Enter Quick-Tunes, a $1 app that replaces the iPhones native chintzy soft controls with a big, meaty, attractive buttons. It also adds cool additional functions around the main play/pause button that let the user play more songs from the same artist, genre or album.

in case you missed it, last month saw the debut of Golf Vision Green Analyzer, an app that uses the iPhone’s accelerometer to calculate the perfect putting angle to sink a ball on the green; just measure the slope angle at the hole and at the ball by laying the iPhone on the ground, then set the green speed, and the app does its magic calculations and overlays the premium angle graphically over a still photo of your view to the hole.

Skeptical? That’s ok, the developers have just released a free version to try before considering the $5 full version. Unfortunately, the free version uses a generic photo to overlay the calculations on, and more importantly, only allows for slope measurements at one end, so results may not be as accurate as with the full version.

Foodmatic‘s fun website suggests you might want this app if you’re trying to become “the next top chef,” a suggestion we think can only lead to a rash of contestants staggering off Chef Ramsay’s Hell’s Kitchen with iPhones lodged in various body cavities.

That’s because the app employs a proprietary algorithm and built-in database with hundreds of ingredients to score the tastiness of ingredients the user wants to combine. The app will even suggest ingredients that compliment any already input. The app includes info on ingredients in the database and the ability to save successful (or not) concoctions.

Foodmatic is currently $1, but the app’s Store page says that’s not likely to last.

Seems the iPhone’s become a superb diagnostic tool through sound analysis — not only can it evaluate watermelon ripeness, but now it can also be used to measure the tension of tennis or squash racquet strings with the racquetTune app.

The $1 app sports a slick, clean interface that displays a string’s tension after a few taps; there’s also a swingweight calculator thrown in for good measure.

The Swedish developers say racquetTune has been tested at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm to good result — who knows, perhaps even by Bjorn Borg himself.

I figure there’re two ways an iOS tower-defense game set in the Star Wars universe might succeed: by being an excellent example of the genre, like TowerMadness Zero, or by immersing the player in the Star Wars universe, like Star Wars: Trench Run.

Unfortunately, Star Wars: Battle for Hoth (by THQ, who also put out Trench Run) does neither, and ends up being only slightly more pleasant than crawling into the slit belly of a dead Tauntaun.

Yes that’s right, now you can capture yourself throwing up while filming a first-person view of the rails as you fly through that new 120 mph ride at Six Flags — all with the same iPhone (so long as it’s an iPhone 4).

Flexicorder ($1) features on-the-fly switching from shooting video normally with the rear camera to shooting with the front facing camera; it also lets the user adjust video resolution.and aspect ratio. Images captured through the forward-facing camera normally appear horizontally flipped, so the app also flips the image to look as if they were shot with the rear-facing lens.

I gave up running a long time ago, when I realized that, well, bicycles were just plain faster. But if I were to start running again, an app that figured out my pace and looked through my library for music with a beat that matched might be a pretty cool running partner.

Panasonic today proffered up what sorta looks like an iPodaphone-powered mini home theater for the bedside table, complete with Lilliputian hi-res 9-inch screen and audio whiz-bangery.

The MW-20 can display a digital clock/calendar, photos or play movies on its adjustable-angle screen from an iDevice resting in an attached cradle. Stereo sound is enhanced via a 5.6mm “super slim” semi-dome speaker that incorporates a digital-signal processor which optimizes sound for the small speaker, and hopefully makes the MW-20 sound as tantalizingly good as it looks.

No bedside table? The unit is also wall-mountable, includes a SD-card slot and generous 2-gig internal memory, and will automatically adjust the brightness of the screen to match the ambient lighting. The MW-20 hits stores in late November, priced at $250.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANpzCJHcvU

Augmented reality has been buzzed about, spun and just generally been hyped to death. Problem is, the technology has so far been used more for flash than actual function, with features like Yelp’s cool-but-useless “monocle” view a typical application.

But that’s about to change. Spearheading new possibilities — at least as far as the iPhone is concerned — is German-based augmented-reality expert Metaio, who yesterday flexed its muscles at its own AR conference in Germany.

So much for the laughable idea, spouted just months ago by some, that the iPad is just an iFad. Today, heavy-hitter Research In Motion, maker of BlackBerry smartphones, unveiled the PlayBook, a 7″-screen tablet at its annual developer’s conference in San Francisco.

“RIM set out to engineer the best professional-grade tablet in the industry'” said RIM President Mike Lazardis in a press release today about the tablet.

There are a few Essential Apps that handle themselves so well on the iPhone they quickly eclipse the website they evolved from; apps that, once installed on the iPhone, completely replace their browser-based ancestors.

Essentials Yelp, The Weather Channel and Twitter clearly fall into this category. But Facebook’s app is different. It doesn’t just replace — it hooks.

We haven’t…uh…tried this yet (primarily because Cult editor Leander Kahney refuses to get back into his fencing Mexican-wrestler costume after last year’s Halloween fiasco) but it looks pretty damn cool, or something.

Sonic Speed Ball sets up a Bluetooth connection between two iPhones (or BT-equipped iPods), then simulates a virtual ball that can be smacked around using an iDevice as a paddle. Different gestures affect the virtual ball in different ways, à la the Nintendi Wii controller.

Sonic Speed Ball is $1; leash not included.

Earlier this month saw the debut of Awareness, an app that should make life considerably safer and less embarrassing for people who (like me) walk around with earphones semi-permanently attached to their ears. And now, it’s on sale.

CES won’t be around for another few months or so, but there’s already big iPhone news emerging from Las Vegas. Wahoo Fitness, start-up created with the purpose of transforming the iPhone into a serious fitness tool, is introducing their two big “Fisica” products at Interbike, the annual bicycle trade show taking place in the desert for the next few days.

What’s that you say? Not enough work stress in your life? We’ve got something that’ll ramp it right up, courtesy of Dutch graphic designer/cartoonist Metin Seven: a half-foot, 3D-printed bust of a glowering Steve Jobs. Try positioning it on your desk facing you, somewhere off in your peripheral vision, for maximum effect.

Steve can be ordered from cutting-edge craft-site Shapeways for $116.81 in a color option described as “white strong & flexible.” Obviously.

Last week, Twitter announced a serious overhaul of their website. It might mean diddly to iPhone users though, who usually access Twitter through any one of a growing heap of mobile Twitter apps — all of which are equipped with a vastly superior set of features compared to Twitter’s site (at least, currently).

Now, I’ve always held that selecting a Twitter app is a highly subjective, personal process, kind of like picking out a bicycle saddle — you just sort of squish around on it for a few days and see if it feels right. Personally, I currently tend to favor HootSuite over any other Twitter app, even though I’ve installed, and sometimes use, half a dozen or so others. But one Twitter app has foisted itself to essential status: Twitter’s own official app. And it’s above the rest for one key reason, really.

3D is all the rage this year — seems like every electronics outfit in existence had a new 3D TV on display at this year’s CES — and now practically anyone can shoot their own 3D photos (to display on the aforementioned 3D TVs).

The $250 stereo-imaging H-FT012 lens is part of Panasonic’s micro four-thirds lineup, and is meant for bodies like Panasonic’s $900 (for the body only) LUMIX DMC-GH2, a touch-screen hybrid (still + video) camera that shoots full HD at 60 fps, also released today. Note to James Cameron wannabes, though: The H-FT012 doesn’t do video.

Focal length is fixed at a narrowish-but-useable 65mm, and at F12, the lens is daylight-use only; still, this is probably the most practical 3D-image kit currently out on the market.

This new app from Epson significantly ramps up iPhone or iPad print capabilities: PrintJinni for Epson will allow users to print from an iDevice, via a web-based cloud service, to any network-connected Epson. It also comes with an impressive range of print options, even allowing the user to print attachments directly from an email — without requiring an app associated with the attachment to open it.

The range of document types the app can work with includes pdf, jpeg and most versions of Microsoft Office documents.

PrintJinni doesn’t come cheap. The app is $10 (though offered now at an intro price of $7 for an unspecified time), and continues to ding the user at what Epson says will probably be $7 each additional year for the cloud services; though they also say that these recurring fees won’t be necessary for all document types (users just wanting to print jpegs, for instance, won’t need to pop for the yearly fee), and that the yearly fee can be opted out of, should the user just wish to print on local networks  not need to print MS Office documents.

The Bundleeicious folks are back with a $10 bundle of six Mac apps, worth over $100 if each were bought separately.

Included are the $29 iDatabase, a database app that has a companion iPhone app (available separately for $3) and Punakea, a $25 app that allows users to organize files with tags.

The bundle will be around for nine more days before disappearing. Hit the jump for a preview of what else is included:

A new app launched today should go a long way to eliminating iDevice storage limitations. ZumoCast is a free app that lets users stream content — videos, music or images — from their computer to their iPad, iPhone or iPod.

I’ve spent the last few days playing around with an advance copy, and I’m pretty stunned with how well this app is put together. Streamed movies are transcoded seamlessly on the fly in the background, and streamed music sounds fantastic — even over 3G. The whole thing is also incredibly user-friendly, works with a minimum amount of fuss and does things like automatically import your iTunes playlists. Content can even be downloaded from your computer to your iDevice, and it also allows browsing, viewing and downloading documents.

And surprisingly, it’s completely free.

Just like the crazy photo-warping effects on Apple’s own Photo Booth app that comes standard on every Mac, Real-Time Distorter can create some freaky cool images — but on an iDevice.

My nephew and I have been playing around with the app this weekend, and we’ve managed to squeeze way more fun than I’d thought from the buck I plunked down. Only four or five of the 11 effects are real winners, but that’s more than enough to play around with; not all the results end up being funny, but even the ones that lack wackiness can be interesting. Added bonus: The app can make video clips. Hopefully developer MacPhun will add Facebook and Twitter sharing in a future update.

It’s taken me 20 years to finally find a task manager I’m happy with. No variation in any PDA I’ve used has passed muster: either they’ve lacked features, or suffered from confusing interfaces, or both — and I’d inevitably end up abandoning them for a simpler system. Then I started playing around with 2Do from developer Guided Ways Technologies. Search over.