Awesome Note is a charming, flexible, free-form app that combines elements of both note-taking and todo apps. But like uncle Chuck at an all-you-can-eat Vegas-style buffet, trying to shoehorn too much good stuff into one thing can sometimes lead to messy results.
Like LogMeIn Ignition, TeamViewer lets you access a computer over the Internet from your iPhone. The big difference: TeamViewer is completely free.
The iPhone 3GS is like a Formula One car: fast, sleek and a thrill to drive. And then, every hour or so, it has to hit the pits to refuel (only, unlike refueling an F1 car, it takes hours, not seconds). Now, imagine if every F1 car had button on the steering wheel that the driver could punch, and a fuel cell would drop from some kind of team drone-copter and refuel the car while it was rocketing around the track. Pretty cool, right? Well, that’s what using the TruePower iV Pro is like.
Sure, Apple stuffs the iPhone full of perfectly functional apps before they hit stockrooms. Ok, more-or-less functional. Look, who are we kidding here: Many of the iPhone’s native apps are about as functional as a box of matches; sure, I can get a fire started with it (maybe) — but if I really want to set something ablaze, I’d rather have a butane torch. Or a flamethrower.
Here in Arizona, the general rule is to keep our hands away from anything that sounds like it has even the remotest chance of being prickly or having fangs. Strange then, that my fingers seem magnetically drawn to the triadic snake emblem on the palmrest of Razer’s Orochi Bluetooth mouse. The little sleek black gadget is like crack for my hand.
While Apple has relaxed its grip on a few things recently, no, the image above isn’t a sign that One Infinite Loop has let all hell break loose.
Apparently, it’s an example of an alternate-reality iPhone the friend of blogger Steve Cassidy over at the UK’s PC Pro bought for £25 (about $38) — in a pub, no less. The dual-SIM, dual-battery thing apparently looks and feels much like an iPhone (apart from the icons, which look too bizarre even for a jailbroken unit), says Cassidy, down to the “iPhone” and Apple logo emblazoned on the back.
So, you think you have the legs to take on Lance Armstrong. One way to go about it would be to race against his time in the latest ingenious use of Twitter, the Twitter Time Trial (and for the cycling-illiterate, a time trial is where riders leave the start gate one at a time, in an attempt to set the best time over the exact same course and distance).
But a better way would be to race Lance using TrailBlazer Challenge.
A few months ago we reviewed Osprey’s Flap Jack Courier laptop bag, and it scored a pristine five-turtleneck rating.
Well, turns out they actually come in two flavors, and we decided to put the Courier’s big brother — the Flap Jack Pack — through the Cult’s rigorous, uncompromising bag-testing procedures. The result was a demonstration of how applying the exact same design elements to a slightly different application can change things.
Who knows — soon, having to watch your cell minutes might just be a thing of the past, as more communication apps embrace VoIP over 3G after Apple nixed its no-Internet-calls-over-3G policy. The latest to do so is Fring, announcing today that calls — and video calls — can now be made over the 3G network (in addition to the already available wifi call/videocall function).
Last month, we wondered how many people would care about the iPad’s restrictive DRM shackles, which makes Apple the only available supplier of software for the iPad through the fact that users can only download software onto the gadget from Apple’s App Store (unless someone figures out a way to jailbreak it — which’ll probably happen within the first 48 hours after it ships, considering the fact that the iPad’s OS is based off the continually jailbroken iPhone, and the supposition that every genius hacker on the planet is spending every waking moment thinking about it).
Anyway, apparently the answer is: thousands.
There aren’t many games on the iPhone platform that can match games on the big 64-bit boxes for production value — but Electronic Arts Mobile‘s Madden NFL 10 can, and does, fantastically. Unfortunately, it also has one gaping hole.
And now for something completely different.
I’ll admit, the first alarming thought that shot through my head when I stumbled across this vidclip on YouTube of Cult jefe Leander Kahney, was that he’d created it as fun-yet-terror-inducing way of emphasizing the “dead” part of the word “deadline” to Cult staff.
Turns out it was actually created by app developer Toga Pit — btw, cute marketing there, guys — to promote their new, maniacal-laughter-inducing iTouchMyFriends app, which turns images of your friends into manipulatable puppets. Just the evilness of the name ran shivers of anticipatory pleasure down my spine as I secured a copy to explore. I wasn’t disappointed.
Well, that didn’t take long — app developers have already begun rolling out versions of their apps that’ll expand the capabilities of the iPad, still a good two months away from store shelves. One of the first is ActivePrint, from developer Pocket Watch.
Currently, ActivePrint lets iPhone users pop out things like photos, web pages, plain text and clipboard contents. But Pocket Watch says the new iPad SDK will allow printing of office-type stuff — like word processing docs, spreadsheets and presentations — to any WIndows PC.
…wait, what? You heard right — currently, ActivePrint only outputs to printers connected to a Windows machine. But not for long, the developer says: Mac compatibility should be out in March.
Just in time for your new iPad.
Someone at Apple really seems really thrilled with the whole modular-approach thing; just like they’ve done with iWork, Apple is selling the iPad in pieces. Take what you want, leave the rest.
The nifty keyboard dock above is a good example of this concept. Heavy typists — like us journos — can plop down the extra money, while the game-playing, movie-watching user can save a little dough. Of course, there’s no SD card slot, USB port or video-out either, all baubles Apple is happily hawking: the USB/SD adapters come together in what Apple is calling a “camera kit,” and a VGA-to-dock connector is required for video-out.
There’s also a really pretty, portfolio-looking iPad case that doubles as a stand. No word on pricing for any of these goodies yet.
If print media is looking for its messiah, the iPad just might be it: notice how amazing the paper looks plastered on the iPad’s screen above; the highest-quailty (don’t argue) journalism fused with the easiest -to-use tech.
It’s got in-line vidclips too. If they’ve imported some of the great ideas from Bonnier’s Mag+, they’ve got a huge winner. Would you pay to read the NYT on an iPad? I would.
Moodagent is one of those apps that seems like, at first glance, it’ll cure world hunger, or abruptly manifest all those single socks you’ve lost over the past seven years — a holy-crap,-I-just-gotta-have-this-app, app.
Sometimes I wake up from a dream where I’ve fashioned a majestic rock symphony. I’ll fumble around for my trusty digital recorder, groggily hum a few throaty bars and fall back asleep; then in the morning I find myself listening to something that sounds like a drowning donkey (or more frequently, I find I’ve forgotten to flip the “hold” switch).
Well, hell with that — for $3, I bought VoiceBand by WaveMachineLabs and turned my iPhone into a recording studio. What’s really cool is that all I have to do is vocalize into the mic and the app transforms my voice into a remarkably credible imitation of a musical instrument.
It was a rainy Sunday afternoon when I was suddenly bewitched by the heavenly tones of a siren’s call radiating from the single speaker inside my favorite Starbucks. I was enraptured, overwhelmed with the sudden desire to find out to whom these dulcet tones belonged! Gripped in a fever of curiosity, I quizzed the barista, but — tragedy! She didn’t know! Would I never find the answer?
After I calmed down a bit, I realized, like everything else, there’s an app for that. In fact, there are two — one of which is truly outstanding.
People think Texans own the whole “bigger-is-better” thing. But just look at the size of Canada — yeah, Canadians know a thing or two about big. No surprise then, that it’s a gang from Canada who are trying to squeeze billboard-sized images from the iPhone’s wee 3mp sensor.
Yelp is kinda like that know-it-all friend who collects all those old Macs and watches Dr. Who obsessively: full of obnoxious, sarcastic comments, but more precious than gold when information is needed.
Those who don’t yet have Yelp on their iPhones, go get the free app now. It’s ok — we’ll wait.
LAS VEGAS — Out of the seven (!!) new Cyber-shot models on display at the sprawling Sony “booth,” the two at the very top end grabbed my attention and shook it vigorously. The 14mp, $400 DSC-TX7 and the 10mp, $350 DSC-HX5 are quite different from each other, but share four really cool features.
LAS VEGAS — I’d never heard of Florida-based Augen before running into the tiny, gadget-strewn booth at this year’s CES.
That’s because, says VP of Product Dev Daniel Gofman, they’ve been working to produce tech for other companies the last few years; 2010’s CES marks the first year they’re striking out on their own into the already over-saturated iPod/iPhone dock market. But Augen has a trick or three up their sleeves worth looking at.
LAS VEGAS — The audio fanatics over at Blue Microphones have popped out the second-gen Mikey, a major overhaul to their plug-n-play iPod microphone.
The original Mikey was a plug-n-play, $80 microphone with on-board software that turned any iPod into a recording device. But it had several drawbacks: It didn’t play well with the iPhone unless you switched on airplane mode and it was only adjustable in one direction (it didn’t swivel). The second-gen Mikey is now $100, swivels, has a USB pass-through and works seamlessly with the iPhone; and like the original, it’s equipped with a three-way sensitivity switch. It’s also even lighter than its predecessor.
As a bonus, Blue Microphones has introduced Blue Fire, a free, feature-rich recording app available from the App Store that can be paired with Mikey to maximize performance.
LAS VEGAS — Finally, someone is going to turn iPhones everywhere into tiny, portable TV receivers. I found this little guy tucked away in a corner at a booth manned by Cydle, a young South Korean company better known for their car gadgetry. It’s a receiver/tuner that plugs neatly into an iPhone and pulls in digital ATSC broadcasts.
Why not sooner? A few months back, in October to be exact, the way was finally cleared (according to Macworld) for mobile devices to receive broadcasts from the new digital ATSC standard. South Korea is one of only two countries — the other being Taiwan — outside North America using the ATSC system.
I wasn’t able to use the system, but Cydle says it’s ready to go and will be priced at $150 — just don’t break out the mini-kegs quite yet in anticipation of watching the Saints claim their first Superbowl victory (yes, I just stamped my prediction here in this post) on the iPhone’s glorious 3.5-inch screen — the little tuner won’t ship until March.
LAS VEGAS — Most video camera makers concentrate on the video, then poke one (or if you’re really lucky, two) tiny pinholes in it to record sound through. Yeah, like that’s enough.
So Zoom’s approach is to take a honking great, smurf-colored stereo microphone and stick a vidcam, screen and controls on it.
While sound from the mic seemed pretty darn impressive, the $250 Q3’s video capability is bare-bones, recording in 640×480 at 30 fps (but in a Mac-friendly Quicktime format) with only a 2x digital zoom.
But that’s the idea — to put sound first. The guys at the Zoom booth said the idea behind the Q3 was to give sound recordings a little video accompaniment, like say as a way to record what guitar chords sound like for a music student, along with accompanying video of technique.
