Eli Milchman - page 31

Sure, the app store is swimming in trivia quiz games, but Qrank is different — and ever since the game raised its shiny little head up off the App Store floor earlier this month it’s had us hooked like sugar junkies to a candy factory.

the free app cranks (you knew it had to be in here) out a fresh quiz every day, and you’re only allowed one crack at it per day, which is one big reason why it’s as addictive as, well, crack. That, and the way the game connects players socially — everyone has to answer the same questions, which makes it easy to let your friends know you’re smarter than them.

If you don’t have friends, the game publicly ranks you against everyone else playing that day, so you can be smarter than your state, the nation — or the whole world.

Last year, we  were pretty impressed by UpNext’s 3D mapping app for the iPhone, which rendered landmarks like the Empire State Building in 3D — which is, of course, cool; but it was only available for NYC, there was no iPad version (because there was no iPad — wow) and it cost a whopping $3.

Now, UpNext 3D Cities has a new name and is available for a bunch of new cities (San Francisco, Boston, DC and Austin, home of SXSW), it’s been tweaked to play well on the iPad and its price has been reduced by $3 — yes, it’s free.

But the pretty, 3D-rendered buildings are just icing on the cake — check out the cool way the app graphically illustrates where to find Asian restaurants through a sorta infrared-vision trick toward the end of the above clip, or the way it overlays public transportation routes. And if that’s not enough, they’ve added the ability to see what’s trending and where your friends be at in Foursquare.

Things sure have changed for music-lovers in a big way over the last decade; I still remember balking at paying $50 for a pair of Sony earbuds not so long ago. Then the iPod ushered in the age of the portable MP3-player revolution, and things would never be the same — the earbud market exploded, and a wealth of hi-fi earbuds roared onto store walls.

The $200 Ultimate Ears 700s, with their phenomenal performance, compact, whisper-light profile and no-frills approach, could be considered the two-seater sports car in this mass of earbuds; right down to their lack of tolerance for abuse.

Two of my favorite gadgets to hit up when rec time rolls around are my iPhone and my mountain bike. Combining the two together might result in a sort of Shangri-la-like experience, but until now the only option available to me would have been something like the almost surely life-threatening activity of negotiating twisty singletrack while attempting to score the next mining license in Space Miner.

But the new Xtreme Sports: Biker iPhone app seems a saner alternative that’ll have much less impact on my health insurance. The first-person freeride mountain-bike simulator rolls out 25 levels across forest, mountain, urban, winter and park environments — all for a buck. Pretty sick, dude.

I haven’t tried it yet, but if I actually get to the point where my time is free, it seems a good bet I’ll be trading a dollar for a ride.

Deals are good; free stuff, better —Macbuzzer currently has both on their site.

We’ve just started playing around with Cockpit, a customizable multi-controller that controls other apps on your Mac; normally $25, Macbuzzer is giving it away for free.

If that doesn’t hit your sweet-spot, they’re also selling a collection of nine Mac apps that includes: time-tracking/invoicing app, recipe manager, Twitter client, Internet radio recorder, information manager, backup manager, book-keeping app and a bookmark utility. The $288-valued package is currently at $20, but the price increases by a dollar per day, so best not waffle if you want ’em.

Earlier this week when we ran down a handful of options for mounting an iPad in a car, we missed this gem from blogger Jacky Yuen of alohaeveryone.com. Watch in the clip above as he demonstrates how he affixes his iPad to the dash of his car by running some thin cord through the vent ducts and hanging the iPad — sheathed in an Apple iPad case — on it like boxers on a clothesline (also notice the demo of Air Video, a great little video-streaming app we’ll review soon).

The viewing angle isn’t customizable, it requires cooperative ducts and the official Apple iPad case ($39), and it sure isn’t pretty. But it looks like it works; and unlike the other solutions, it’s cheap and it’s available right now. Or at least as soon as you’ve got the case and liberated that ball of string from your cat.

If you’ve ever wanted a full subscription to Car and Driver or Maxim on your iDevice, now’s probably a good time to take the plunge: Zinio, the biggest electronic magazine rack on the web, has slashed subscriptions today for five of its titles to $5 — a pretty good deal, as a year-long subscription to one of these titles is now what one issue — in either the electronic or print edition — usually goes for.

The remaining sale titles are Spin, PC Magazine and Nylon. The subscriptions are for a full year, and the titles can be read on a Mac or PC, or on the iPhone, iPt or iPad through Zinio’s free app (we’ll review Zinio on the iPad soon).

Sale ends today at 4 p.m. PDT though.

I haven’t eaten watermelon in what must be going on a year now, but I’m sure this dollar-app is a must-have for serious watermelon afficionados (the clip looks like it was filmed in Israel, which is notoriously watermelon-crazy).

The developer claims iWatermelon Deluxe can determine if a watermelon is ripe just by having the user set the iPhone onto the melon in question, selecting the melon’s color and size, and tapping its rind a few times.

A somewhat odd description on the dev’s website additionally suggests that “iWatermelon is also fun to try on more Hollow [sic], round objects.” Not sure what they’re suggesting, but plopping an iPhone on someone’s head, rapping on that head and then explaining that you’re using an app made for watermelons to determine whether they’re ripe or not is sure to be a conversation starter.

In a post yesterday about CoPilot’s new iPad navigation app, I remarked that I’d like to see more iPad car mounts than the custom dash fabricated by Soundman Car Audio; turns out, while it doesn’t look as if anything is available yet, there are a few companies working on solutions which should be available soon. Here’s a quick look at what’s coming.

One of the coolest roles of the 3G iPad has to be as that of navigator. No more squinting at the iPhone’s tiny screen while trying to navigate the spaghetti-bowl of the NYC-area highway system; no more ending up in the wrong Springfield because of accidentally tapping in the wrong place.

The relatively inexpensive ($30) CoPilot GPS iPhone app now has an iPad version, CoPilot Live HD North America — currently the only iPad GPS app out there. The good news is that unlike most apps, the HD iPad version is the same price as the iPhone version. The bad news is that so far it’s only available for North America.

Now if only someone would make a car mount requiring less commitment than this one.

I’ve been infatuated with Iron Man ever since I was wee — so give me any reason to mention the red and gold-clad champion and I’m as giddy as a mad scientist in a repulsor-equipped, titanium-alloy exoskeleton.

Iron Man Central, a collection of all-things Iron Man, has just come to the iPhone. There’s a lot of content for fans to play around within the free app: videos, background information on the character, real-world news about Iron Man titles and events, wallpapers, social media interaction — and of course, the obligatory pimp for the new movie.

Yes, the app’s release coincides with that of the new Iron Man flick, but Zumobi, the app’s developer (and creator of a number of media-related apps like NBC’s Meet The Press and FHM magazine apps) says the updates won’t fade when Iron Man 2 finally does from theaters. iPad version’s coming soon.

[via Mashable]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG-uYQxTpbA

When HootSuite’s iPhone app landed late last year, it had already set itself apart with a unique stat-tracking feature.

Now, it’s leapt even further away from the pack with a slew of new tricks, including the ability to translate tweets from 50 different languages and a supercool feature that lets users bump the iPhone of users they’d like to follow. The developers have also upgraded HootSuite’s Facebook integration, given it geolocation functionality and generally tweaked the hell out of it.

The video above has evidently been shoved through a simplification transmogrifier a few times too many, but I’ve included it because owls in stereotypically French costume are remarkably entertaining.

About 30 years ago, Monster began to carve out a name for itself selling cables-on-steroids to musicians. Recently, they’ve decided to take on the likes of Bose and Audio-Technica with a line of hip-hop inspired headphones called Beats by Dr. Dre.

In between the series of massive, battery-operated over-ear models and in-ear buds sits the Solos, a folding, on-ear set that seems to hit all the key points for a stylish set of traveller’s headphones: Fly looks? Check. Portability? Yeah. Sublime, bass-infused sound? In spades. It even has a microphone. In fact, the only thing missing here — except for in one component — is Monster’s legendary build quality.

Had enough curling? Of course not! No one ever gets sick of curling (and if they do, they’re surreptitiously hauled off to Scotland/Canada/Sweden and fed a steady diet of haggis/mapled moose/IKEA furniture until they recant or end up completely insane, or both).

That’s why we’re pretty excited to see iCurling come to the iPhone. Unfortunately, as much as I’d like to slather this post in sarcasm, the graphics look slick and the app’s only a buck; pretty sure that flaming stone isn’t regulation though.

With the iPad kinda bridging the chasm between iPhone and MacBook, it becomes increasingly likely a 70-page legal brief some lawyer’s been working on for months will be lost when junior accidentally flings the iPad into the pool while taking a turn a little too hot in Real Racing HD.

That’s where DriveSavers comes in. Located about a half hour north of San Francisco, these guys are experts at recovering data from hard drives and the NAND flash chips used in the iPhone — and the iPad. The only difference is the iPhone has one set of chips, while the iPad has two.

It’s not cheap, though — DriveSavers says the average bill for recovering data from an iPhone runs about a grand. Ouch. They will, however, provide a free evaluation on an iPad mailed to them, explaining what can be recovered and how much it’ll cost.

The lesson here? Back your stuff up. And maybe get junior a helmet; kid seems a little accident-prone.

Most (if not all) of the cases we’ve reviewed here at the Cult during the past three weeks of iPhone Case Week just lay around lazily like some muscle-bound Miami Beach sunbather, looking good and maybe keeping the pretty iPhone from getting beat up. But the Mophie Juice Pack Air is different; It doesn’t just sit around, man. It’s charging up and down the beach — and it wants to take the iPhone with it.

Well folks, this settles it: cats are Mac, and dogs are PC. Take a look at the little Corgi alarm going off in the video from Tested.com above for the incontrovertible truth.

I suppose this rules out an iPad at Buckingham Palace.

[via TUAW, Tested.com]

While the iPad can’t print out-of-the-box, there’s a veritable plethora (and I swear to never use that word again) of iPad printing options up at your local App Store, and what follows is an in-exhaustive sampling. We haven’t tried any of these yet, but we’re hoping at least one of them will allow us to print a simple shopping list so we don’t have to whip out the iPad at Safeway.

The tweet-world is in a tizzy after news last week that Twitter snapped up both the Tweetie desktop client and iPhone app, as a first step to re-releasing the $3 app as Twitter’s free, official iPhone client.

While iPhone twittaholics might be pretty pumped about the move — the Cult’s Pete Mortensen has said Tweetie 2 is not just the best Twitter app, but “the best iPhone app, period” — Twitter app developers are less jazzed.

In fact, Mashable says there seemed to be a lot of nervousness and uncertainty at an investment panel Wednesday during day one of Chirp, the first Twitter developers conference, in San Francisco — the problem being that Twitter has apparently been leaving developers in the dark with regard to its plans, as last week’s sudden and unexpected acquisition illustrates.

[via Mashable]

Most people on this planet do something in order to live. Some catch bad guys, some heal — others yet write pithy reviews about tiny games.

A relatively new game has another suggestion, by dint of its title: “Tilt To Live.” If you do wind up with this little $2 gem in your hot hands, though, you’ll find it usurps any other activity you might have been engaged with in order to live.

Earlier today, we mentioned how the iPhone’s iPod Out feature will make it safer to play DJ while driving. But SoundMan Car Audio have taken it one step further by building a custom dash that allows an iPad become the centerpiece.

As noted in my last review, I’m not a big fan of iPhone cases (or any sort of cases, really. Or even clothes — when I was a kid, I ran around nak…uh, but back to the case). When I saw Incase’s Perforated Snap Case, and heard it was one of the lightest and leanest iPhone cases, I expected to find a case I would finally keep permanently attached to my 3GS. Well, not quite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xAJmdhQzJ4&feature=youtube_gdata

Golf aficionados — or viewers agog about Tiger Woods’ emergence from hibernation — might have noticed a curiously new AT&T in a TV spot during the start of the PGA Masters in Augusta on Thursday.

Boy, Steve Jobs doesn’t mess around, does he. Not content with his Google throwdown, he’s challenging the entire telecommunications industry with the iPhone’s new Background VoIP.