Eli Milchman - page 34

LAS VEGAS — More on the noise-cancelling front: Sony has taken the trick tech of their award-winning, $400, MDR-NC500D digital noise-cancelling headphones and dropped them into these tiny new buds.

Like its big brother, the MDR-NC300D uses artificial intelligence to sense then adapt to the type of background noise occurring in the user’s environment; Sony claims an impressive 98.7 98.4 percent noise-reduction. Tne control unit also has a switch that adjusts the sound to one of three settings (anyone remember the bright yellow Sony MEGABASS swicthes?): Movie, Bass, or Normal.

While my rather limited experiences with the NC300D’s bigger brother never fails to amaze me whenever I try them on, the jury’s still on the little guys. The noise-cancelling feature didn’t seem as impressive; plus, you have to deal with the unit’s control dongle — which is bigger than some mp3 players out there.

LAS VEGAS — Back in September, we reviewed Audio-Technica‘s outstanding ATH-ANC7b QuietPoint noise-cancelling headphones; had we been doling out ratings at that time (we weren’t, because — at the time — we lamely thought ratings were lame), the ANC7bs would have donned a majestic 4.5 turtlenecks.

Seems Audio-Technica thought it could do better.

Gadget producers seem to have gotten the message that more bang-for-buck is what sells products in the current economic climate. In keeping with this philosophy, Altec Lansing are showing off three new/refreshed budget-minded offerings at CES.

Left: Altec Lansing says its InMotion Compact is the most compact yet in its line of portable docks. The slim little system was designed with some impressive traits: it’s GSM shielded (so no annoying iPhone buzz), runs on AC or four AA batteries and is faux-leather wrapped. Available for $80, Feb.

Center: The Octane Plus 2.1, a three-piece speaker set with a 6.5-inch subwoofer and 3-inch down-firing mid-range speakers. It’s also much prettier than the VS4121 speaker system it replaces. The set runs $80 and will be available this Spring.

Right: Portable sound from Altec Lansing for a Jackson? Yup. Altec Lansing will offer three versions of their neatly designed, $20 MUZX earbuds, including one with pivoting earpieces. Available March.

With the 3GS demanding practically permanent attachment to a power source like a morphine addict to an IV drip, bringing a car charger along to placate the iPhone on a road trip is simply mandatory.

But an iPhone without a Bluetooth headset or backpack battery to play with is both un-fun and/or treacherous. Monster‘s solution, then, is their new iCarCharger 800, a $30 charger that sports an inline USB port. Typical for a Monster product, the 800 veers toward being over-engineered, with gold-plated contacts and an output of one amp (most peripherals typically require only half that).

The other solution is an outlet splitter, an extra USB car plug and another cable; to which the iCarCharger 800 says, “I’m cheaper, less cluttered and I look damn hot. So, ha.”

iHome may have challenged the likes of Bose and Bowers & Wilkins with their iP1, but they haven’t neglected their position as the big boys of the portable-dock space, as evidenced by this trio of updates to their line (no word on pricing yet):

Upper Left: Zipped up, the fabric-covered iP48 alarm dock looks like one of those over-stuffed CD (yeah — remember those?) wallets we used to carry around. Cool feature: the time adjusts automatically just by docking with an iPhone.

Upper Right: An update to the iHM77, iHome says the assegai-like  iHM79 speaker set yields improved battery-life and sound. Like their ancestors, the speakers have magnetized bums to keep them together in transit.

Lower Left: The iP1’s Digital Power Station technology trickles down into the high-end, feature-packed iP49 clock-dock. Sound enhancements also include an EQ and neodymium compression drivers (which must mean something to the audiophiles out there). Comes with a remote to control all that tech.

Back in the day, Louis Lumière and others magically set still pictures in motion, and — voila — the motion picture was born.

Over 100 years later, unbelievably, the ability to make motion pictures still hadn’t appeared on arguably the most advanced smartphone in the world — even more absurd was the fact that phones much cheaper and less sophisticated had absolutely no problem shooting video. Yes, the 3GS has a pretty cool vidcam feature, but the Original and 3G still couldn’t shoot video.

Only now, they can.

As the Twitter revolution gains momentum (or hype, take your pick), a virtual smorgasbord of Twitter clients has presented itself at the App Store. One of the newest plates at the feast is Chirp Flow, which — like Twitterfall — streams tweets in real time. Except that where Twitterfall is a buck, Chirp Flow is free via ad-support.

Right now, Chirp Flow is pretty stripped-down and spartan, with a search box and the resulting never-ending, pause-able flow of tweets that match the search phrase. But the app’s website promises much more functionality, including clickable links and the ability to author tweets. Chirp Flow’s creator, Garrett Moon, told us the new features could be up-and-running in as little as a few weeks.

Besides being strangely mesmerized by watching tweets drift down my screen, I can totally see tweeple becoming attwicted to this app: tracking trending tweets (another function that might be added soon), planning the next Operation Chokehold…

Hot on the heels of Playboy‘s — and, we neglected to mention, Playgirl‘s — foray onto the iPhone earlier this month, Cosmo last week released its Sex Position of The Day app.

And guess what: The $2 app trumps Playboy’s for titillation, by graphically (yet tastefully) depicting 77 illustrated positions from Cosmopolitan’s book, The Cosmo Kama Sutra. A rating system and clear-cut instructions accompany each entry, as well as the ability to rate each position based on the user’s preference. (Note: The app’s accuracy hasn’t been tested, but I’m open to suggestions from anyone attractive and female).

Even with the app’s fairly innocuous illustrations, I’m a little surprised this one made it through — perhaps the hyper-vigilant App Store guardians are relaxing their Vader-like grip ?

There’s probably nothing so dissimilar to an iPhone as a fresh, greasy donut covered in powdered sugar; and Homer would probably be the last person on Earth to ever have one (an iPhone, not a donut, dufus). So pairing Homer Simpson with an iPhone might just be crazy enough to be brilliant (this is Homer logic, it doesn’t necessarily have to make sense).

The Simpson’s Arcade features a hungry Homer in a quest for — you guessed it — donuts, with mini-games that include using “touch and accelerometer controls to ‘Slap Homer’ back to life,” says game publisher Electronic Arts.

EA says the the game — which it says is due out sometime this December — is voiced “by the real, live actors” from The Simpsons; with any luck this means the incontestably brilliant Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer will be channeling Chief Wiggum and Mr. Smithers from iPhones everywhere, soon.

Yes, settle down, we realize you’re just dying to dive into this one — so we’ve compiled a hot, attractive little FAQ about Playboy magazine’s new iPhone app:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YwC3PXB_Ns

Choosing a Twitter iPhone app seems to go something like this for me: I play around with one, mess around with another, poke at a third, go back to the first…and because they all largely have the same features, the decision becomes acutely personal — I’ve picked one that just feels right to me (which happens to be TweetDeck).

Then HootSuite came along on Thursday and messed up my whole process — it contains two new features not yet seen on a Twitter app: the ability to fire off tweets at a predetermined time; and a screen that tracks Twitter statistics.

Of course, it also features integration with the HootSuite web app, photo sharing and all the other requisite stuff that any Twitter app worth its salt should boast.

HootSuite isn’t free, but it’s on sale at the App Store for two bucks (a dollar off) till December 17th. Stay tuned for a head-to-head comparo later this week.

We begged. We pleaded. We begged some more. Steve Jobs finally listened — this morning, Ustream made live streaming from the iPhone a reality (pinch me!) with their Broadcasting app.

Yes, the clouds are finally parting. In the last week or so, there’s been a flurry of activity on the streaming-iPhone front: On November 30th, Fring — a VOIP app that allows users to stream one-way video to another iPhone with Fring installed (turning the iPhone into a one-way videophone) — went live at the App Store. One day later, Knocking Live Video allowed two-way video-iPhone-ing.

Now, Ustream Live Broadcaster lets the iPhone broadcast to a mass audience via the Ustream website — and it’s pretty damn cool. And free. It even works over a 3G connection (albeit a bit wonkily — a friend of mine likened it to a NASA broadcast from the shuttle). And because the iPhone’s camera is on the gadget’s backside, using the little guy to stream to a wide audience makes much more sense than does two-way videophoning with it.

So have the floodgates finally opened? And will the next iPhone, rumored to be in the works, bring major advancements in video conferencing (for instance, a camera that isn’t on its butt)?

[ via TechCrunch ]

When I was a kid, I always thought those photostrip booths dumped unceremoniously near the entrance of suburban malls were like a mini fun house and a comic-strip press rolled into one.

Now, with a service they’re calling Wink,  Shutterfly brings those booths to your iPhone ( the comic-strip press part, anyway — but I’m assuming instructions for making a booth out of cardboard and gum can be found at Craft:)

Just download the free app, shoot away and upload anywhere from three to five photos; Shutterfly does the rest, combining the photos into a strip and shipping the product off to any Earthly address desired — all for $2.50, which includes shipping and tax (and Shutterfly says the photos can be uploaded from anywhere in the world). No iPhone (really?), no problem — photos can be uploaded from Facebook and Flickr too.

Bonus: Shutterfly says it’s giving away three (count ’em!) free strips to the first 50,000 strip-crazed iPhone users who download the app.

Me first. Just as soon as I head over to Craft: to figure out how many packs of Bubblicious I need to chew for booth material.

First Boston launched its CitizensConnect app in June, giving its citizens the ability use the iPhone to tag locations and upload photos of potholes and other urban hazards; now San Francisco is using the iPhone to build a better city too — through tracking cyclists with its CycleTracks app.

Dragon Dictation is a cool, free little app that allows you to write emails or text messages just by talking into your iPhone, because it transmogrifies your speech into text. In fact, I’m using it to write this.

Well, sorta. As documented by the above-left screenshot, even with the most pristine elocution I could muster, the results provided by Dragon Dictation still left me with errors to clean up. The above-right shot is what happened when I spoke with my everyday, habitually clipped delivery.

So, perhaps not the best solution for popping out a quick text on the road, but a good option to quickly get text down in words that you can straighten out later. Because Dragon Dictation is service-based, connection via wifi or 3G (i wasn’t able to test it using EDGE) is required. And right now Dragon Dictation is free, making it easy to take out for a test spin.

PC users (yes, PC users read Cult of Mac) might correctly identify Dragon as the same engine that powers Dragon NaturallySpeaking, the impressive speech-to-text PC app (and MacSpeech Dictate, a similar app for the rest of us).

Now, if you’re in the middle of a pub crawl, your reality is already pretty augmented. But if you’re just starting out, or aren’t yet wasted to the point where dropping the iPhone down a street grating is a real possibility, then finding the closest watering hole has never been easier — thanks to Belgian beer-maker Stella Artois’ just-released, free, augmented-reality bar-finder app.

In a sea of bulky, boxy waterproof cameras that do little to encourage stashing them in a pocket and bringing along for the ride, the Pentax Optio WS80 is a refreshing change — it’s tiny, and practically begs to be stuck in a pocket and brought on the next romp. But that scaled-down size is at least in part responsible for scaled-down performance.

Two weeks ago, we mentioned that the ALK’s CoPilot Live app, an already inexpensive iPhone GPS option, went on sale for $20 (from $35) during Thanksgiving.

Today, ALK announced they’re introducing a similar deal — now $25 — through the end of December.

To make the deal even more enticing, they’re making available a “Premium Live” package that includes live traffic info and routing (from the same source as the $80 Navigon app), a live Internet local search feature and something I haven’t seen before on a GPS app: A live gas-price feature that can route you to the cheapest gas near your location.

The Premium Live option runs an extra $20/year, but the savings from hassle-free routing to cheap gas might just make the package valuable enough to pay for itself.

The iPhone can already be used to buy coffee; now it can sell it too. Square, a new venture from Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey, lets retailers swipe credit cards using a tiny reader that plugs in to the audio jack on an iPhone.

Using an iPhone to collect money is nothing new, and apps like Credit Card Terminal and iSwipe Pro have been around for awhile. But Square marks the first time a card can be physically swiped — and, says a post in Wired’s Epicenter, that also means the ability to accept gift cards.

Square’s website says that card swiping can begin immediately after account setup, with “no contracts, monthly fees or hidden costs.” Square also says it will do cool little things like email customer receipts and keep track of how many lattes to go till that free tenth one.

If it works as advertised, the system might spread quickly among retailers and consumer alike simply because of its elegance and ease-of-use. And as you may have noticed with Dorsey’s previous project, sometimes that’s all it takes to change the game.

[via Wired]

Yup, it’s just that easy — Kentucky-based MHA’s new Airlock app turns your Mac into a proximity sensor that un/locks the computer’s screen when your iPhone enters a user-defined range; it can also do nifty things like run apps when it senses your iPhone enter or exit the area. And there’s nothing to install on your iPhone, it just sits there and looks pretty (and broadcasts a Bluetooth signal, of course).

Yeah. Well, that’s the theory. Unfortunately, Airlock would have nothing to do with my iPhone — repeated attempts failed to get my 3GS to even show up on the pairing screen. MHA says they’re aware of the problem, that it seems to affect newer iPhones, and that they’re working to fix it.

Until that happens, I’ll just have to laugh at the clever writing on MHA’s website and marvel at technology’s potential.

Airlock is downloadable for a limitlessly renewable three-hour trial; $7.77 will let you use Airlock without having to ask to try it every three hours.

Epson should have called the Artisan all-in-one the “Intern” instead — it works that hard to please. It’s up on all the latest technology, surprises with nifty tricks; and while it isn’t exactly cheap, for what it does it’s a bargain. And unlike that sloppy, kind of half-working old printer with coffee-stained teeth you hired ages ago, Epson’s new beauty is snappily dressed, fast and reliable.

The crowded iPhone GPS nav market is already starting to resemble a Southern California freeway on a Friday afternoon. But two just-launched GPS apps by Portuguese-based NDrive are different: they cover a much smaller area — they also carry a much lighter price tag.

The two apps, NDrive Los Angeles and NDrive New York City, cost $3.99 a pop, and are on sale during Black Friday for $2.99 each. NDrive has been outfitting our friends across the pond with GPS devices since 2005, but the two new city-cenetered iPhone apps mark the company’s first adventure into the US market

The apps look like they cover the two metropolises in gorgeous detail, with 3D-rendered landmarks, and an abundance of detail. One thing to note, though: The prices cover map licenses for one year only, which probably means forking over another couple of bucks every year.

[via Macworld UK]

I’m probably not anything like the target demographic of the Harry Potter: Spells iPhone game. Even so, a chance at reviewing an app that leverages the iPhone’s motion sensing abilities to let me turn my friends to stone was too good to pass up.

Unfortunately, Warner Bros. has taken an ambitious idea and executed it without much thought to gameplay.

Tired of all the ringtones the iPhone comes with, and can’t stomach loading a Kenny Chesney tone onto your phone? Here’s your salvation: The ringtone upstarts at San Francisco-based iRingPro are tossing out free goodies for Thanksgiving — namely, a free, tri-pack sampler of their sangfroid-inducing ringtones.

We ran a post in August pointing out what makes these quieter, more civilized tones so cool.

The sampler includes one ringtone from each of their three theme packs: Zen, Tek and Origin. The last is my personal favorite of the three, as the complete tone is split into three pieces and plays progressively with each ring.

The theme packs are $9.95 for anywhere from 22 to 31 ringtones. The free sampler is, well, free.

They’ve been out for the last few days, so you’ve probably already seen one or both of the two new TV spots where Apple hops in to aid AT&T. The ads attack rival carriers by flaunting the iPhone’s ability to perform 3G-related activities while on a voice call, and end with the question “Can your phone, and your network do that?” Then the  AT&T logo then flashes on the screen in a show of solidarity right before Apple’s.

The ads follow strong assaults on TV by Verizon designed to exploit what it believes is a weak chink in the iPhone’s shiny armor, namely AT&T’s 3G coverage.

But the ads also follow one early indication that young men are deserting the iPhone en masse, as reported by CoM in a previous post.

So, are these ads a show of strength? Or is Apple feeling the heat?