Eli Milchman - page 32

The iPhone’s stripped down version of Safari lacks many of the features of its more well-endowed OSX brother — for instance, Mobile Safari won’t do tabs, or let users make in-page word searches. And iPad’s Mobile Safari won’t perform those tricks either.

A couple of months ago, we reviewed Vais Salikhov’s Find In Page, a $1 app that patched the latter hole, making in page searches possible on the iPhone. Version 2.0 was just released yesterday, making it fully compatible with the iPad.

Find In Page is probably even more of a must-have item on the iPad than it is on the iPhone, since the iPad is such a surf-board that Safari will probably get used much more heavily than on the iPhone. Although, maybe a few hours worth of patience are in order here — it’s entirely possible the tweaks revealed within the next few hours or so might contain this same little fix.

As noted by new iPad owners (including the Cult’s editor, Leander Kahney), the iPad is a hungry baby, and sucking at the teat of some older USB ports leaves it screaming for more juice.

What about keeping the iPad topped up on a road trip via the USB car-charger you bought last year? No can-do — the one or half-amp those older chargers generally put out is fine for the iPhone, but just like other aging USB ports, starves the iPad.

Which means you’ll end up having to pop for something like Griffin’s new PowerJolt for iPad or Kensington’s PowerBolt (yeah, no potential confusion there), both $25 — about $5 more than what the old, lower-rated units sell for; the chargers are backward-compatible and play happily with all current iPhones and iPods.

Warning: The above video contains violence and/or wanton destruction of Apple product, and should not be viewed by anyone sensitive to either.

We knew it was coming — we just had no idea it’d be here so quickly. Yes, iPhone OS 4.0 will be revealed to the world at a press event this Thursday, at 10 a.m. Pacific, according to our friends over at Gizmodo — and every other tech blog under the sun.

Andrea Nepori, head honcho at Italian-based TheAppleLounge.com, has alerted us to the fact that maybe Steve Jobs doesn’t have anything to wear.

Check out the worn-out pants and forlorn sneakers in the photo of Jobs, left, at Apple’s Stockton Street Palo Alto store in San Francisco on the iPad’s launch day; now sadly note the same fashion choices in the photo on the right, of El Jobso and Google CEO Eric Schmidt kicking back in Palo Alto, taken a week earlier.

So buy an iPad, and maybe Jobs can afford to pop for some new togs. Seriously, before The Gap starts marketing a replica version of his jeans called the iHole. Because we all know where his critics would take that one.

[Thanks to Andrea Nepori for the photo-illustration.]

With the big news that Apple lifted restrictions on 3G VoIP calls in February and rumors that Skype might allow such calls in the near future, it’s no wonder that splashes from the opening salvos in the VoIP app wars can be seen around the App Store.

The latest combatant to enter the arena is Goober, who launched their iPhone app about two weeks ago (though the service has been around for computers since 2006). And while we’re still waiting for Skype to release a 3G-capable app, Goober’s is already here.

There’s a reason high-end car interiors are often accentuated with wood — it wears far better than many other materials, lends a rich, warm look, and each piece is unique due to striations and markings inherent in the wood.

Add the fact that wood is a renewable resource that — if care is taken to plant more trees — won’t harm the environment, and the result is a beautiful, warm, hard-wearing case from Vers that’ll also appeal to the green-conscious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXTbpJt7nn8

Like the Silent Bodyguard app we mentioned two weeks ago, KamAlert will, in an emergency, text authorities — or whomever the user wants — and include details like GPS data in the messege. But KamAlert claims to add two powerful security features: a sensor that uses the camera to detect motion that can automatically trigger a customizable function that sends photos or video to pre-selected recipients, and an audible alarm (in addition to the silent one that both apps possess).

All the features can be adjusted or turned off to avoid, say, the possible embarrassment and/or legal issues resulting from accidentally emailing the cops evidence of your latest frat/sorority party.

For those interested in an inexpensive, portable gadget to augment home security, and if the $5 app works as advertised, it sounds like a valuable, highly customizable security tool; if it doesn’t, well, the iPhone probably makes a decent shuriken.

For about six months now, Starbucks has been testing a system in about a dozen Seattle and Silicon Valley stores that turns the iPhone into a virtual wallet, letting customers pay for lattes and the like with an app that displays a barcode read by a specialized reader at the counter.

But yesterday, Starbucks said the trick will expand to 1,000 Starbucks shops inside Target locations. Which is a little odd, considering Target’s demographic (yes, I’m suggesting a large chuck of Target shoppers may not even know what an iPhone is — despite the fact Target hawks Apple stuff — let alone be aware that, yes, there’s an app for that. In fact, the shift manager at my local Starbucks hadn’t even heard of the program).

Ever wanted to make it look like it was your face on the massive billboard you pass every day on the way yo work? Sure. We all have — and now we can, sorta, thanks to a new app called Mr. Photo from Italian developer Seac02.

Have a look at the English-disadvantaged blurb from the app’s App Store page, and everything will become clear:

“MrPhoto 1.0 is the first genuine Augmented Reality focus with realtime hardness tracking and user generated hardness target. The focus allows to supplement any design from a fire done by a iphone camera, Augmented being algorithm will take caring of a viewpoint of a Augmented being content. Take a print of an outside promotion print and put your design with a single click, no photoediting during all MRphoto and his record will do anything for you. MRPhoto is a initial genuine step to visible tagging, user generated tags for user generated contents.”

As a journalist, and a bit of a design geek who’s dipped a toe into the arcane world of tabloid page layout, it’s always oddly thrilling for me to read from a front page that’s actually been printed. Or at least looks like it was intended to be printed.

Kiosko.net, a virtual gallery of the day’s front pages from the world’s top newspapers, is one of those must-visit sites if you’re a newspaper aficionado — and now it has an iPhone app (and yes, it really has gotten to the point where we start making references to newspapers as if they were LP records or Sinclair Spectums).

One of the coolest new features introduced in Leopard’s version of Mail is the ability to automatically add contact details to Address Book. Just hover the mouse pointer over something that looks like an address or phone number, and a box magically appears that lets you import the info, with the details brilliantly ending up in the right places. Well, good news: Now, an app has brought the feature to the iPhone.

We’ve all heard the saying, “the only thing better than an iPad is a free iPad” (and if you haven’t, you have now, because I just said it). No, we’re not crazy enough to be giving away free iPads. But we know who are: the folks over at VIVmag.

I have ridiculously sensitive eyes; the kind of eyes that feel like they’re being repeatedly stabbed with chopsticks if more than just the slightest bit of light hits them before they’ve had time to adjust.

So when I ran across the press release for Wake Up Now? describing an app that makes the iPhone call out the time, I was intrigued.

Sprint and HTC have leaped ahead in the race for 4G, with today’s unveiling of HTC’s new, Sprint-powered EVO 4G smartphone, likely to be the first smartphone in the U.S. able to run on a 4G network when it hits stores this summer.

In an impressive display of gritty stamina and just sheer ol’ gabbyness, a teenager from Mudelein illinois, a small town just north of Chicago, has injured herself while texting; not because she was texting while operating a vehicle, but because she was texting too much — something in the order of 3,000-4,000 texts a month, depending on which figure from  ABC’s story is accurate.

From time to time I come across an iPhone app I think would make a great gift for a friend or family member (in this case, my mom, since she has an iPod Touch and everyone else in my family is either Apple-phobic or a Luddite). Problem is, it just seems too authoritarian to send them a $5 iTunes Store gift card with stipulations on how to spend it.

Well, problem solved: Apple is apparently now allowing individual apps to be given as gifts. Although no official word has come from Apple — the heads-up comes from the folks at TUAW — I clicked on the  “Gift This App” menu item and, sure enough, was taken to a screen to handle the details.

Presumably, the gift is actually a code similar to the redeem codes app reviewers typically receive from developers when reviewing apps. The gift can be emailed or printed out and mailed, but can only be redeemed by residents of the same country as the purchaser, and can’t be bought with iTunes store credit.

[via TUAW]

Last week we reported on a director who shot a music video using only three iPhones. Now, Tom Freeman brings an all-iPhone production to the arena of sound with the release of his electronic soundscape, iMatik.

Take a gander at the clip up there. It’s been forty-odd years since Bobb Goldsteinn coined the term “multimedia,” but I think — and maybe you’ll agree with me — this is the first time I’ve felt that I could easily apply the word and think “yeah, that’s exactly what it is.”

In the clip, Alexx Henry of Alexx Henry Photography guides us through a behind-the-scenes peek at the production of an issue of online-only Viv Mag, tailored for consumption on the iPad. Along the way, you’ll see references to some of the other forerunners of this transformation that we’ve written about in the past, like Wired and Bonnier.

Probably the coolest way I’ve heard anyone yet sum up the new paradigm, from Alexx Henry, late in the clip: “We aren’t making moving pictures — that’s what movies do. We’re creating pictures that move.”

Ever been attacked by a voyeuristic hankering to see what images are being tweeted right now while, say, waiting for a table at the local steakhouse? Well, whip out the iPhone, because Swiss developer Nicolas Seriot has the scratch for your itch.

TweetyShow does for tweeted photos what Chirp Flow did for text tweets: displays a stream of images being tweeted — in this instance, to Twitpic — in realtime. There are sites on the web like PingWire that do the same thing, but Seriot says this is a first on the iPhone.

The app sells for a buck, and also has the ability to search for photos tweeted by a specific user.

You know spring has arrived when apps like this start making appearances: New from App Cubby is KaleidoVid, a dollar-app that turns the iPhone into a kaleidoscope.

Just point the camera at something colorful and KaleidoVid does the rest; the app then lets you unleash your creation on the world through email, Facebook or Twitter.

Seems like a great candidate for the Best Magic Brownie App Award.

About a hundred years ago, while I was still a Windows user and thought that a Mac was what you covered in a cheese and slurped down for lunch, I whiled away way too much time playing a DOS-based artillery duel game called Scorched Earth. Dot Matrix Interactive Designs have created their own version in the extremely polished, multiplayer KIL.A.TON — and it’s even more of a blast to play.

There must be a special space reserved at the table in Valhalla for any designer able to make a fat brick look hot; if that’s true, then there’s a seat reserved right next to Jonny Ive’s for the Vers 1.5R’s designer (and yes, both design heaven and design hell are Scandinavian. Don’t believe me? Take a look at an IKEA catalog; now, go experience a 1980s-era Saab).

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

It’s not like director Tom De Nolf doesn’t have 35mm film cameras and a bunch of other video-making tech at his disposal; no, De Nolf was so surprised by the video capability of his recently purchased 3GS that he chose to shoot the above music video using just three iPhones.