httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dt2_lZFnpbQ
There’s plenty of Twitter clients on the App Store, from Twitter’s official software to power apps like TweetDeck, but watch this peaceful and somnolent video for the somewhat regrettably named Super Twario and you’ll have discovered one of the most pleasant Twitter clients around.
Obihai Technology, a tiny Cupertino start-up, this month brought to market its first product, the OBi110 — an unassuming $70 box with blinky lights that may well prove to be the most disruptive telephony device to come along in a decade.
The OBi110 is the physical hub in a multi-layered communications model the company believes can revolutionize the way consumers use their mobile, Internet and fixed-line telephony services, bringing emerging social networking behaviors together with maturing Voice over IP (VoIP) technology to create total communication freedom at the personal level.
With web and mobile-based software products, including an iPhone app presently in Beta testing, Obihai is poised to show the millions of consumers who’ve bought magicJacks and all 237 of them who’ve bought an Ooma just how IP telephony can be done.
AppBackr was launched this week as an invitation only beta. The service offered by AppBacker, Inc. of Palo Alto, California offers iOS app developers a new way to get cash advances for future app sales. Developers earn these advances by selling their apps wholesale to buyers via the AppBackr online catalog.
The return on the buyer’s investment depends on whether or not the app sells well. This sounds risky for the buyer, but not necessarily since they are expected to promote the app in magazines, blogs, etc. or they might just hire a good public relations firm to help.
Therefore AppBackr provides three very important services to app developers that are not very easy to come by: marketing, financing, and an online wholesale sales catalog.
It’s war! Again. Or still. Whatever. Apple CEO Steve Jobs launched an “epic rant” during an earnings call this week blasting Google’s “fragmented,” er, “open” approach to apps and extolling the virtues of Apple’s “closed,” I mean “integrated” iOS platform.
“We think Android is very fragmented and getting more fragmented by the day… We believe integrated will trump fragmented every time.”
In retaliation, Google mobile strategy chief Andy Rubin apparently posted the following dorky reply on Twitter:
the definition of open: ‘mkdir android ; cd android ; repo init -u git://android.git.kernel.org/platform/manifest.git ; repo sync ; make’.
That’s a set of Linux commands for copying Android.
Does Rubin have a point? No, seriously. What’s his point?
Since Google hasn’t mounted a coherent defense against fragmen… I mean the open approach to mobile platforms, does anyone here want to try?
Go here to read the whole post on IT World.
Apple’s put down webOS before in the smartphone wars, but you can’t keep a solid operating system down for the count: six months after HP acquired Palm, they have just announced webOS 2.0 and the Pre 2 smartphone.
If you’ve ever participated in any kind of canvassing for a political party or for pet causes, you know what an excruciating experience it can be on every level.
From having to put on a cheesy smile as you approach busy strangers in the street to having to put all the information together back in the office, it’s just one of the most tedious tasks around, apart from, say, taking out the garbage.
The Democratic National Committee and Organizing for America have gone a long way to address all of that with their thoughtfully-designed iPhone/iPAD/iPOD Touch canvassing and organizing application, which was launched earlier this month. It’s one of the best tools I’ve seen.
Earlier this year, Etymotic began a new program that allows purchasers of pretty much any of their products — earphones, Bluetooth headsets, whatever — to own custom-molded eartips for an extra $100. Etymotic offered to let me try a set of these custom eartips (full disclosure: on their tab) with the hf2s I tested, and off we went.
Featured in our favorite iOS applications this week is the free content sharing app from Posterous that lets you post any mix of text, photos, and videos instantly to the web, directly from your iPhone.
Phoster is also featured in our must-have application list this week: it’s a universal app for both iPhone and iPad that lets your create stunning posters and invitations. With loads of templates to get you started and various effects and decorations, you’ll be able to produce stylish results in no time at all on your iOS device.
We also have the new T3 magazine app that delivers the world’s greatest gadget magazine to your iPad. Buy and download the T3: iPad Edition every month and access content exclusive to the touchscreen device.
Maybe it’s my (only somewhat) jaded inner journalist, but bubbly marketing language almost never rouses me. So naturally, I dismissed the phrases “rediscover your music” and “stunning mobile music fidelity,” printed on the box of Etymotic’s microphone-equipped hf2 earphones, as standard advertising blather.
After a few hours of listening to music through the hf2s I went back and read the box again, this time with wider eyes — because damned if for once some outfit’s marketing department hadn’t made a claim that was actually spot-on accurate. In fact, the thought crossing my mind as I gleefully ripped through my music collection, trying to see how many tracks would give me goosebumps, was that maybe those marketing peeps had even been too subtle about the hf2’s performance — that maybe the box should have just been plastered in wild neon stickers bearing candid phrases like “THESE ARE *&@#$ AWESOME!!” (and that’s why I wouldn’t last long in marketing).
Yahoo Messenger is a popular chat client with millions of users. It is available on most popular desktop and mobile platforms. So this week when I read fellow Cultist, Eli Milchman’s, news post about the big app upgrade that brought video calling over 3G or Wi-Fi I was excited about trying it out. However, that excitement quickly died off after Eli and I started to test it out. Needless to say today there is one less Yahoo Messenger user than there was before.
That user is me and you can find out why by reading the rest of my review.
As New York Times reporter Kate Zernike notes in her new book “Boiling Mad,” a good portion of the Tea Party movement is composed of youthful, tech-savvy hipsters — so it really shouldn’t be surprising that the movement has its own iPhone/iPad app.
The app features top news of interest to members of the movement, polemics from 11 conservative bloggers, Tea Party videos, and wouldn’t be complete with a feature called “Outrage of the Day.”
It’s just a clever little piece of marketing for a band that’s not half bad — and the back story is that they had their real-life instruments stolen — but here’s Brooklyn band Atomic Tom rocking the NYC Subway with a bunch of iPhones.
Can’t wait to see the band that tries this with some Windows 7 phones.
Phoster is an interesting new app for designing posters and cards on your iPhone or iPad.
The iPad seems a fairly small canvas, but it’s not much smaller than the Mona Lisa, upon which was painted the enigmatic face of history’s most beloved transvestite. Why not sling it up on an easel, then, and do some painting with Remote Palette… easily one of the neatest painting apps we’ve seen lately, largely through its fun cross-device universal functionality.
There’s no other way of saying this: Camera Camouflage is sneaky.
It’s a camera app that goes out of its way to avoid looking like a camera. It disguises itself as an incoming phone call. You can even instruct it to activate your phone’s ringtone, so you can pretend to take the call and hold the phone to your ear.
At which point, things get even sneakier.
If you recently used Limera1n or GreenPois0n to jailbreak your iOS device, and want to make sure that iTunes doesn’t automatically update your device’s firmware whenever the next update is released by Apple, then here is a quick fix to prevent you from accidentally updating your iPhone/iPod/iPad.
Ever since the iPhone was first released, there’s been at least one mouth-breathing dweeb nasally whining that the lack of physical controls completely castrates the device as a serious gaming console. Well, dweeb, three years later and the iPhone’s only the biggest handheld gaming platform ever, but you do raise an interesting point: why hasn’t someone managed to graft a D-Pad onto an iPhone after all this time?
It’s not like people aren’t working on it, of course: the guys doing the iControlPad have been plugging away at the project for years, only to be set back on the eve of release by fears of Apple’s legal team. That appears to have been the last straw for Benjamin Morisse, who has just launched the Controller or Bust project to try to quickly crowdsource the design, production, funding and manufacturing of an iPhone controller.
Coming about one month after the much heralded first release of their client for the iPad, Applidium has just announced that they will be making their popular VLC video client universal as of the next update.
With all due respect, this was originally intended to be a gallery post dedicated to discovering the magic of MC Escher, a 99¢ app that brings users hi-res imagery of the artwork that’s decorated millions of dorm rooms and student apartments worldwide over the years. The app incudes two mindbending games as well, and for a buck, it’s got to be good value. MC Escher on the iPhone and iPad — how could you go wrong?
However, digging around for something to say about the Escher app, iFractal surfaced. It’s a free app that allows users to play around with renderings of the Mandelbrot and Julia sets of images derived from mathematical visualization theory. There’s also Fractals, a $2.99 app that seems to offer the same thing, with perhaps a finer manipulative granularity — but in the end, these apps warrant a gallery.
One of the last bastions of iPhone exclusivity in Europe has finally tumbled: Vodafone and O2 are now reporting that they will soon be offering the iPhone 4 in Germany, breaking the knuckles of T-Mobile’s long standing stranglehold on the handset.
It was pretty easy to see the writing on the wall in Germany that this was coming: earlier this year, T-Mobile’s “exclusivity” was downgraded from the exclusive right to sell all Apple handsets to the exclusive right to sell the iPhone 4. Pretty much every carrier in Germany has been offering the 3GS ever since.
It’s two days late, but late is better than never. GreenPois0n the jailbreak for iOS devices running iOS 4.1 is here. Unfortunately the first release is for Windows and Linux only, but the developers of the hack, Chronic-Dev, expect to release a version for Mac OS X soon.
The jailbreak supports iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, the third and forth generation iPod touch, and the iPad. Although it doesn’t presently support the second generation Apple TV at this time a future update will fix that.
The release of GreenPois0n follows last weekends surprise release of Limera1n by Geohot. Afterwards, Geohot and Chronic-Dev got together, so GreenPois0n now uses the same exploit as Limera1n. This cooperation saved Chronic-Dev’s SHAtter exploit for a future jailbreaking tool.
As far as I’m concerned the hacker cooperation can continue. I appreciate what they do for people who want out of Apple’s walled garden and I hope they continue to work together on future iOS hacking tools. You can download a copy of GreenPois0n for Windows or Linux by visiting www.greenpois0n.com.
If you use Posterous for posting stuff online, you might be interested in the new, free Posterous iOS app that’s popped up in the App Store today.
It’s got everything you’d expect to see in a mobile blogging tool. Namely: a big green POST button that’s everywhere in the app; no matter what else you’re looking at, you can always start a new post with one tap.
The Amazon iPhone app received an update Tuesday, allowing iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 users to scan barcodes anywhere and instantly compare prices on the scanned item at amazon.com.
Using the device’s camera, users of the free app can point at a barcode out in brick-and-mortar land and know within seconds whether Amazon has a better deal on offer.
This new TV commercial for Microsoft’s new Windows Phone 7 inspired me to write a script for this weekend’s Saturday Night Live. No, really!
WEEKEND UPDATE SEGMENT
Seth Meyers, Amy Poehler
SETH
Microsoft this week unveiled its long awaited Windows Phone 7 to compete with the Apple iPhone and Google Android phones. The company also released a TV commercial depicting a world of people so engrossed in their cell phones that they fail in their jobs, neglect their kids and ignore the sexual advances of their spouses. To which people in the commercial respond: “Really!?!”
Which brings us to a segment we like to call, “REALLY!?! with Seth & Amy.”
<Applause>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fXkoIBDXwd8
Taking their iPhone Where No iDevice Has Gone Before, a father and son in Newburgh, NY recently took a weekend science project to new heights. Luke and Max Geissbuhler attached an HD Video Camera, iPhone and some styrofoam packing to a weather balloon, then launched their homemade satellite on a journey that lasted 72 minutes and climbed over 100,000 feet into the atmosphere!