As if their already prodigious line of cameras wasn’t enough, Panasonic has bolstered it with five new models today, including two with a paparazzi-worthy 24x zoom lens, and another built for covert-op, low-light situations with an f2 lens and a high-sensitivity sensor.
Number seven in our series is free, streamlined, an absolute joy to use — and here’s the biggie — syncs seamlessly with one of several desktop companions (which are also free); it’s also the first essential in our series that fully replaces a native app.
It’s made big waves at the Japanese iTunes Store since its launch in March (not surprising as it was developed by Japanese developer Inforteria), and this morning Twitcal — an app that allows its users to import and update their calendars via tweets — has landed in app stores elsewhere.
The app looks pretty nifty: Just follow another user’s calendar, and your calendar is automatically updated anytime they make a change. Users-sans-Twitcal aren’t left out completely though, because the app can also send event notifications via email. As expected, Twitcal also syncs with Google Calendar and iCal.
Yesterday, Nokia made it clear they wanted nothing to do with Apple’s all-smartphones-suck-at-making-calls spiel made during a press conference on Friday (a breakdown of Apple’s test can be found on the company’s website, here). Blackberry maker Research In Motion followed with much stronger words, saying that “Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.”
Then just this morning, HTC appear to have made their position clear, telling the folks at Pocketlint HTC has only received complaints about the Droid Eris — which was one of the hapless phones demonstrated to have antenna issues by Jobs on Friday — from “approximately .016 percent of customers,” far below Apple’s claim of .55 percent of customers complaining about the iPhone 4.
While the comparison may or may not be all that significant, what’s certain is that Apple seems to have its competitors snarling at it. Expect the shouting match to get louder tomorrow.
[via Pocketlint, Gizmodo]
In early 2009, Apple loudly announced support for the hardware interface concept — a fusion between third party hardware and apps created specifically to communicate with that hardware. Unfortunately, no one came to the party, and our initial enthusiasm faded.
But it may be time to get excited again, especially if outfits like Wilmington, North Carolina-based New Potato has anything to say about it. They’ve even trademarked a name for their new gadgets — they’re calling them “appcessories.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhbGgLOxc-Y
For those one-foot-in-one-foot-out Cult readers who have an iPad and a Windows machine (or running Windows on a Mac), there’s now an iPad app called Maxi Vista that lets users turn their iPads into a second display — just like Air Display, which we reviewed last month, does for Macs.
We haven’t tried it yet (we’re somewhat allergic to Windows devices) but it looks like it works practically the same way as Air Display does, seamlessly creating additional screen real estate wirelessly over a wifi network. At $10, it’s even priced the same as Air Display.
It’s said Odin gave one of his eyes in exchange for a drink from the Well of Wisdom. Luckily for us, quenching our thirst for knowledge is somewhat less dramatic — all it takes is the punch of a button and bam, we’re at Wikipedia. Question is, which button to punch?
With its dizzying collection of features, Wikipanion is that button.
Screaming at the screen in a theater when things start to head downhill for the hero never really seems to work fro me. With the iPhone app of the interactive film The Weathered Underground, though, it might (ok, screaming at an iPhone still won’t produce results, but the idea is that the story can be affected by input).
The movie, which showed up at the App Store yesterday after being available on DVD since earlier this year, lets the viewer choose the protagonist’s path after the young musician loses the love of his life and adventures through the city trying to win her back. Over a hundred path forks are hurled at the viewer — one every 90 seconds or so — which makes for a lot of movie packed into the $4 app.
An interesting idea that seems tailored for the iPhone or iPad; question is, how well does it entertain once the novelty has worn off, and will we see more of these?
This is the app every iPhone sold int he U.S. should come pre-installed with. There are probably good reasons — or maybe bad ones — why it isn’t; but it’s easily available, it’s free and it might just save you some money.
If you’re a kid who grew up in the 80’s or 90’s, you might remember days spent carefully building slot-car tracks that would eventually overrun the entire floor; now all that fun can be had on the iPhone with HTR High Tech Racer — without the annoyance of hunting for slot cars sent unceremoniously hurtling off a sharp corner.
Build tracks, customize tires, chassis and motors, then race the creations. The game claims “realistic physics” and an “intuitive track editor.” And if the lure of racing slot cars on an iPhone isn’t enough, the app’s developer, Graffiti Entertainmant, says they’re also giving away an iPad to the top racer on the app’s race leader board.
HTR High Tech Racing is $2 on the iPhone, $5 for the iPad’s HD version.
TeamViewer released their free app that lets a user remotely control any computer over the Internet (with permission) back in March for the iPhone. Yesterday, they brought out an iPad version.
While it’s a pretty cool app to have sitting around on an iPhone, it practically gains Essential Status on the iPad because of the latter’s much bigger screen, making remote-access sessions much easier than on the iPhone’s tiny screen — not to mention the fact that the iPad is the kind of tool that lends itself to functioning as a remote client.
As with the iPhone version, if you’re using the app in any sort of professional circumstance, TeamViewer ask that you purchase a $100 license.
Money makes the world go ’round, right? If that’s the case, then there’s no more essential app than PayPal; and here in the U.S., it’s really the closest thing we have to a virtual wallet — a concept other cultures (like Japan) have enjoyed for years.
At least one car in this year’s NYC to Las Vegas Bullrun Rally — an invitation-only rally (which the organizers claim differs from a race in that speeding is not allowed…uh, sure) in which 100 supercars race (sorry, rally) across the U.S. Cannonball-Run style — is packing Apple tech.
Defending champs Team Wu is packing a dash-mounted iPad running Trapster’s iPad app in their officially named “Trapster Cop Car” (because it resembles a cop car) — in an effort to keep law enforcement off their backs while rallying at-or-below the speed limit in their Vortec supercharger-equipped 2010 Dodge Charger.
Of course, Trapster should also alert them to road hazards; but that’s probably not the reason the team has called Trapster their “secrat weapon.” Good luck, guys.
[via Trapster’s blog]
I’ve spent the last few days glued to my iPhone watching the grand drama of the Tour de France (or “Tour-DAY-France” if you’re an ex-racer from Oakland named Bob) unfold in Europe via Versus’ Official Tour de France Live app.
Regular visitors to this blog will probably have noticed that we mention Dropbox a lot. I mean, we won’t shut up about it. Why? Because it’s so ridiculously useful.
The way it works is simple: It’s a portal for files from your iPhone to your Dropbox account, a free service that gives you your own 2GB cloud to store files and media, and if you want to, lets you share those files and media.
Here’s a new, strange little app; Gyro Draw lets users draw with the iPhone 4’s gyroscope, by sliding a piece of virtual paper (responding to inputs from the gyroscope) under a stationary virtual pencil. Don’t have a 4? It also works with the older iPhone’s accelerometer, only in this mode it’s the pencil that moves. Also works on the iPad.
Not sure this app’ll produce anything prettier than the etch-a-sketch masterpieces I made when I was five, but it’s free right now for a limited time, so it might be cool for a quick impress-your-gyroscopeless-friends session.
As unusual as it is to find an electronic gadget manufactured in the U.S. these days, it’s even more unusual for that gadget to hail from New York City — but that’s exactly where Grado’s SR60i is made. Appropriate, because just like the city, these cans have an unpolished-but-genuine persona that’s a little off-putting at first, but incredibly charming once you get past the gritty exterior.
There’s no shortage of choices available for gabbing with buddies these days, but instant messaging remains a favorite (I’ve actually worked in at least one newsroom where the primary method of communication was IM).
There’s no lack of IM iPhone apps either; but a clean interface, wealth of features, ability to connect with practically every IM service in the galaxy and availability for free makes Meebo the best of these.
With the release of iOS 4, Apple has erased many of the advantages competing platforms — most notably Android — had previously enjoyed. But while much noise has been made about the iPhone’s new multitasking trick, news that the iPhone can now use image recognition to create a more accurate augmented-reality experience has been far less trumpeted.
Maybe that’s because it’s not really an ability of the iPhone itself, but rather an API that Apple has made available to app developers with the release of iOS 4.
It works like this: The app uses a particular API to capture live video from the iPhone’s camera, then shunts the feed back to servers that use image-recognition software to figure out what the iPhone is looking at; the server then sends a graphic (or graphics) back to the iPhone that’s overlayed onto what the user is looking at (we’ve got instructions on how to easily demo the new tech later on in this post).
So you’ve just bought a shiny new iPhone, and now you’re itching to plaster apps all over that pretty wallpaper. Well, we’ve come up with a few suggestions; in fact, we’ve come up with 23 of them.
Through the rest of this month or so, we’ll be listing apps we think no iPhone user should be without — apps that almost anyone should find useful — which will fortify your iPhone with just over an extra screen’s worth of valuable apps. And since most of these are free — with a few costing no more than three bucks — there’s really no reason not to own all of them. And this series isn’t just for noobs; we’re willing to wager there’ll be at least one app on our list that’ll surprise even the old-schoolers.
So fire up the App Store and prepare your iPhone for incoming apps as we launch the series with our first essential: the Bing app, in the running for the best Microsoft product I’ve ever used.
Badminton hasn’t really caught on wildly here in the U.S. Still, if Super Badminton 2010‘s graphics are as good as its screenshots suggest, who cares about popularity. The game boasts “hyper-realistic physics” to complement the slick graphics as well as deep control options and details like being able to play on a wooden court and realistic badminton moves.
The game’ll set you back a moderately hefty $5 though, so those screenshots will have to do a considerable amount of persuading to anyone who isn’t a badminton nut.
When my grandchildren ask me what news I remember most vividly, my answer won’t have anything to do with wars, tsunamis or alien invasions — I’ll tell them about the day Apple admitted they made…a mistake.
Fine, that may be somewhat hyperbolic; but I don’t recall Apple ever kneeling in the past about anything, let alone about what amounts to their killer product — and even managing to look sheepish in the process. Of course, there’s good reason for that lack of kneeling; keeping one’s mouth shut makes perfect sense for any entity, as an admission of guilt is a fatal move in the arena of liability — and in Apple’s case here, may leave it vulnerable to all sorts of nasty lawsuits.
We previewed this compact dock last January at CES in Vegas and came away impressed that Altec Lansing could make a unit so compact and relatively inexpensive sound as good as it did. When they contacted us and said they had review units available, we wondered if we’d still be as impressed with the inMotion Compact once all those mojitos had cleared our system. Turns out, the mojitos had nothing to do with it.
These guys were all unveiled at this year’s CES, but earphone-maker Etymotic doesn’t pop out products very often — their still-popular er6i earbuds have been around since 2004 — so when no less than four Etymotic goodies are hitting stores within the space of a month, we sit up and take notice.
It’s black, it’s hungry, and it gets along with almost anything. While that may sound like the monster-under-the-bed from childhood has found a good therapist, or maybe started smoking weed, it’s actually Seagate’s latest addition to their ultra-flexible GoFlex line of external drives, the 3TB FreeAgent GoFlex Desk.
Seagate’s done a little math in their pr release, and says the drive will store 49,980 hours of music — which is almost six years of tunes, playing 24/7. That’s a lot of partying.
The drive will ship mid-July, with a tag of $249.
