News - page 2192

For those who like to work when they travel – and can afford a chauffeured Mercedes – news today of the iPad Car!  High end tuning shop Brabus has created iBusiness, a mobile office on wheels.

Based on the Mercedes-Benz S600, the Brabus iBusiness four-seater luxury sedan packs in a range of multimedia features, including two iPads in the rear seats with Bluetooth keyboards and mouse, an ultra-small Mac minicomputer under the rear shelf and a 64GB Apple iPod Touch. The German super tuners have fitted the Mercedes S600 iBusiness with a 15.2-inch TFT display with 16:9 aspect ratio and USB 2.0 ports in the rear compartment to hook up peripherals to the Mac. You can connect to the internet via UMTS and HSDPA. The two iPads control the complete BRABUS multimedia system and the car’s standard S-Class COMAND system with all functions such as radio, navigation system and telephone. [Born Rich]

With this setup, I don’t know that I’d want to get out of the car when I arrived at my destination.

Apple’s long history of design consolidation is obvious at every level, from the no-button Magic Mouse and Trackpad, to the adoption of MiniDisplayPort, to the iPhone’s iconic home button.

But Cupertino doesn’t want to stop there: a new patent filing, Apple is now exploring ways to combine the headphone jack with the microphone on their iPhone and iPod Touch.

The patent says that “”in addition to using housing real estate, sound input apertures and electrical connectors introduce openings in the housing and breach the barrier that protects components inside the housing.”

In other words, drop a hole from an iPhone and you have less risk of dust and moisture making its way in. The advantages don’t seem to lie just in hardware reliability either: apparently, the two-in-one design would also enhance voice quality through a noise-cancelling technology Apple’s calling “audio beamforming.”

We’d say this one’s a lock: it’s not a pie-in-the-sky patent, but a natural extension of Apple’s predilection for the utmost in simplicity.

[via Gizmodo]

Another promising sign for e-books. The electronic version of a recently-released mystery novel outsold the hardcover version, according to the publisher, HarperCollins.

The thriller by Laura Lippman, “I’d Know You Anywhere,” which hit bookstands Aug. 17 sold 4,739 e-books versus 4,000 hardcover versions during the first five days the title was available. However, there’s no mystery why e-book sales are edging out physical book purchases.

Steve Jobs on the $100 Bill? Why not, shrugs Raffael Hannemann, a German college student contributing to the Dollar ReDe$ign Project.

My intention? There has to be a full-colored US flag on every bank note, and there have to be faces of some of the latest idols on them. Let’s stop looking backwards and focus on the future. This is the time where we live. I’ve chosen Steve Jobs, but why not Zuckerberg, Larry Page or Michael Jackson?

Unfortunately, I doubt that Hannemann’s new design would pass Jobs’ own rigid sense of aesthetics. And really? Steve Jobs on the hundred dollar bill? That’s not even walking around money for the billionaire CEO. Put His Steveness on a benjamin and he’s going to be blowing his nose all over his likeness five times a day.

If the main reason you’re hoping for Apple to announce the new, iOS-driven iTV is for the promise of some app gaming on your 50-inch plasma, you don’t have to bank on Cupertino. Accessory maker Griffin has a new dock in the works that allows you to hook your iPhone or iPod Touch up to your television and then use it to play multiplayer games with up to four players at once.

Don’t expect it to work with just any game: the Griffin PartyDock will only work with select Griffin games, which have yet to be announced and are of unknown quality, with no word yet if Griffin will open the PartyDock up to third-parties.

Download a supported game, though, and you can play an iOS game multiplayer without having to awkwardly hot seat it by passing your iPhone around. Instead, four included remotes allow you to control the action from across the room.

Obviously, a lot of this device’s niche could be filled by a $99 iTV, but if that doesn’t materialize next month — or doesn’t support apps — the Griffin PartyDock might be the only solution in town to treat your iOS device like a game console.

On the wild, anonymous Internet, you just can’t always trust a glowing review… but at least the iTunes App Store has gotten a little more trustworthy, after the Federal Trade Commission slapped down a California marketing company that was employing people to write positive App Store reviews without full disclosure.

In a statement on Thursday, the FTC said that they had reached an agreement with Reverb to remove the offending reviews from iTunes, as well as barring them from doing any more fraudulent reviews in the future and forcing them to to fully disclose their relationship with their clients, which includes Digital Leisure, Harmonix and MTV Games. A monetary fine was not disclosed.

On Reverb’s part, they seem pretty petulant and unrepentant about the whole thing, casting themselves as the victims.

“It became apparent that we would never agree on the facts of the situation,” she said. “Rather than continuing to spend time and money arguing, and laying off employees to fight what we believed was a frivolous matter, we settled this case and ended the discussion.”

A FaceTime-capable iPod Touch with a Retina Display is pretty much a lock in at this point, but what about the Touches distinctive case design: will it be going the way of the iPhone 4, or will it continue to have the smooth, curved metal back that we love (and hate to scratch) so well?

According to a source speaking to iLounge, expect a new back, but not the iPhone 4’s. Instead…

Familiar. Think of the top of a MacBook Pro, only smaller, which is to say flat rather than curved at the center—closer to the look of the first-generation iPod touch’s back, only with modifications. The rear camera is there, but there is still some question as to whether what’s next to it will be a LED flash like the one in the iPhone 4, or a microphone like the one next to the video camera of the iPod nano. We’ve been told to expect a microphone rather than a flash, with a continuation of the bottom-mounted headphone port and Dock Connector port.

In other words, it sounds like brushed aluminum, similar to the iPad’s back. The advantages here are something that isn’t quite as unsightly when scratched, and while the level of excitement this rumor garners has a lot to do with whether you plan on going bareback with your fourth-generation Touch, the picture I have in my mind certainly seems like a move in the right aesthetic direction.

Come September 1st, everyone expects Apple to announce at least some sort of streaming iTunes functionality… but what if that’s all a red herring? According to All Things D, that might just be the case: they are saying that the next version of iTunes won’t stream media from the cloud, but will instead by heavily integrated with social networking features.

The idea is this: future versions of iTunes would basically be little social networks, in which you’d be able to share recommendations of apps, movies or songs with other people. There’d be no actual media sharing ability at first, but this is clearly an evolutionary move, laying the groundwork for a more feature rich streaming iTunes to come.

It’s a very interesting rumor. Apple executives have said that the streaming iTunes capability we should expect in the near future is more modest than the pie-in-the-sky dreams of internet opiners. Combined with the rumored streaming television ability of the new iTV, this would seem to be a more realistic rollout of a future cloud-based iTunes for Apple to take.

Got a current gen MacBook Pro that just won’t play nice with your external display, or has a tendency to freeze at starting line at the sound of the OS X boot chime? Apple has just updated the MacBook Pro EFI firmware to version 1.9.

The new firmware resolves issues where a mid 2010 15- or 17-inch MacBook Pro might freeze during startup or sometimes stall during day-to-day use. In addition, the update clears up some issues hooking your MBP up to certain external displays.

Anyone out there have one of the afflicted models who can give us a first-hand report on whether or not the latest update solves the problem? Hit us up in the comments.

[via 9to5Mac]

Back in June, SurfaceInk made a splash for themselves by demonstrating a 12.1-inch Ubuntu-powered tablet, clearly positioned as a possible competitor against the iPad. Seems like that might have been a mistake: as it turns out, Apple was a SurfaceInk client, and let’s just say Cupertino wasn’t too peachy on the idea of doing business with a company in bed with the enemy.

According to SurfaceInk CEO Eric Bauswell, the two companies decided to part waysbecause of “Apple’s growing awareness of our turnkey capabilities.” SurfaceInk won’t say just what they did for Apple, but given the company’s engineering work for companies like Palm and HP, it’s easy to guess that they had some sort of hand in the iPad.

What really irked Apple, though, was SurfaceInk’s 12.1-inch prototype that used a Freescale i.MX51 800MHz Cortex A8 chipset, ready to sell the reference design to any company that wanted their own would-be iPad killer and claiming they could ship such a device out by Q1 2011.

Of course, what might seem like a mistake on SurfaceInk’s part in alienating a lucrative client may very well end up proving extraordinarily lucrative: there are a lot of electronics makers out there who are scrambling to get their pants back up after the iPad proverbially dropped them, unawares. There’s a lot of lucre to be made selling as many of those guys tablets to rebrand as possible.

Take this with a pinch of salt, but we’ve been tipped that Apple’s rumored $1 TV subscription service, due to be unveiled next week, is technically correct but missing an important detail.

Apple has today released version 9.0.4 of its iWork productivity suite. With it comes several bug fixes for Keynote, Pages and Numbers, and a new feature which allows for the exporting of Pages documents in the ePub format for use on their own iBooks iOS application.

The full list of changes, as detailed in the support document includes:

Keynote 5.0.4

• Addresses an issue when printing handouts with rule lines.
• Fixes an issue with the slide switcher.
• Resolves an issue when automatically resizing some images while changing slide size.
• Fixes an issue with tables.

Pages 4.0.4

• Fixes an issue with tables.
• Includes compatibility with the standard ePub file format (for use with iBooks) when exporting.

Numbers 2.0.4

• Fixes an issue with tables.

This update is for users with iWork 9.0, 9.0.1, 9.0.2, and 9.0.3. You can download the update through Software Update on your Mac, or directly from the Apple website here.

We start another day of dealing with something for the iPad and iPhone user. First up is a batch of free apps for the iPad, including “Pocket CFO,” a financial study guide for the tablet. Next up is the just-released Netflix app for the iPhone. Previously available only for the iPad, this free application permits you to stream Netflix movies to your handset. We wrap up our highlighted deals with price reductions on many of SEGA’s well-known gaming titles.

Along the way, we’ll check out Apple’s Back-to-School sale, a deal on an iPhone security screen protector and Final Cut for the Mac. As always, details on these and much more is available at CoM’s “Daily Deals” page right after the jump.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the third most popular celebrity whose home is “stalked” by UK users with Google Street view.

From across the pond, there are just two other places that nosy Nellies want to take an up-close look at more than Jobs’ house:  the White House and Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion in Los Angeles. (Just to save you the keystrokes, it’s a futile bunny hunt, no street view is available.)

Depending on your stalkerish inclinations, you can see Jobs’ current residence with his car parked outside, or the Los Altos garage of his parent’s home where Apple was founded.

Bill Gates came in sixth in the survey. Other celebs people wanted to see include David and Victoria Beckham, Jay-Z and Beyonce. Nearly half of the people polled said they also looked for their childhood home and 16% tried to get a glimpse of an ex’s home.

The iPhone Dev-Team will not release a jailbreak for iOS 4.0.2/3.2.2.

“With FW 4.1 still in its beta stages, it makes no sense to escalate the ‘cat & mouse’ with Apple for FW updates that only fix the jailbreak holes,” the Dev Team says on its blog. “To quote WOPR, ‘the only winning move is not to play.'”

Here’s the Dev Team’s full statement:

Apple in named among 22 other high tech firms in a lawsuit by Ganas LLC. The company claims the Cupertino, Calif.-based iPhone maker and others violated a patent regarding object orientation.

The lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Texas, involves patent No. 7,316,913, which covers an “XML/HTTP-based protocol for sending messages from one object to another across the Internet in a platform independent manner.” Ganas claims Apple, HP, Adobe, TiVo, Xerox and others violated patents 7,325,053, 7,734,756 and 7,007,094.

The corn fields of Nebraska are at the heart of these new plant-based iPhone 4 cases.

Bioserie cases are offered in six colors (including two shades of green) and unlike most plastic cases, it can be recycled or industrially composted.

These cases are 100% made from plants, namely Ingeo biopolymer — boiled down that’s a corn-based polymer often used in those earth-friendly coffee cups and food containers — plus a proprietary mix of biobased components. (Side note: even though the main ingredient in Ingeo is dextrose made from No. 2 yellow dent corn, they still don’t recommend you eat it but the material is non-toxic).

Going green will cost you $34.95, cases ship in early September.

The company already offers plant-based cases for iPhone 3G/3GS, iPod touch and iPod nano.
A plant-based case for the iPad is in the works for September.

Another story today of a dramatic, satisfying – yet sadly illegal – way to end one’s career: go out for some brews after a hard day at work, then return with a gun and shoot the company server.

A Salt Lake City mortgage company employee allegedly got drunk, opened fired on his firm’s computer server with a .45-caliber automatic, and then told police someone had stolen his gun and caused the damage.

I’ve often had this urge, but not owning a firearm nor wishing to go to jail, subtler methods of sabotage have had to suffice.

The official Netflix streaming app for iPhone and iPod touch hit the App Store this morning. The free download allows anyone with a monthly Netflix subscription of $8.99 or more to watch unlimited streaming movies and TV on the iOS device of their choice.

I’ve been playing with it since I woke up today, and I’m quite impressed — video looks phenomenal on my 3GS, and performance over both WiFI and 3G have been great (which, as a San Franciscan who resides in a neighborhood AT&T ignores, is very impressive).

Netflix iPhone App Video from Netflix on Vimeo.

My two minor quibbles with the app are both interface-related: NetFlix opted to represent titles to watch with large icons, which makes it a labor to scroll through. Worse, it doesn’t provide a thumb on the right side to provide any sense of where you are in the middle of a long list. Search works very well, however.

But these are minor complaints. Frankly, this puts HuluPlus to shame. Better selection, better performance, and no ads. Download the crap out of this. Get it here.

We’ve seen commercials intrude into nearly every part of our lives, from television, games and the internet. Now comes word Apple is considering injecting its iAds into eBooks. But how long can publishers hold out as they search for a lifeboat?

With the iPad and the plummeting prices of ebook readers “what room is left for publishers’ profits,” asks the Wall Street Journal. The report views iAds in e-books as inevitable.

If past behavior is any indication of the future, Apple’s September 1 announcement could mean more coins in the pockets of savvy investors – or so says one analyst. Since 2005 (except 2008), the announcements resulted in an average 12 percent increase in Apple stock price by the end of the month. That rise nearly doubles to 22 percent by the end of the year.

“We believe that investors generally anticipate the Sept. event by the beginning of the month, and anticipation builds ahead of the holiday shopping season with Apple’s iPod lineup (along with Macs and other products) set for holiday sales,” Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster told clients Wednesday. “However, keep in mind that historical trends are not necessarily an indicator of future events,” he warned.

Although Spotify is “the best desktop music player ever,” the revolutionary music service is only available for people located in Finland, France, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. You can’t get it in the U.S.

This is enforced by Spotify by checking your IP Address and making sure that you are in one of those countries. As such, anyone in the U.S. that goes to https://www.spotify.com/int/get-spotify/overview/ will get a message that Spotify is “Not available in your country yet.”

Don’t worry though, because with this walkthrough I’m going to show you how you can get this great music service on your computer and on your iPhone/iPod Touch.

I-O Data’s new portable hard drive has the standard specs for its class, maxing out at USB 2.0 and 500GB of storage, but it’s the HDPN-U500/V’s video functionality that intrigues: just plug it into a Sanyo Xacti, JVC Everio or Sony Handcam camcorder and it’ll suck in all the video with no bridge computer required.

The big advantage here is to video bugs who find themselves filling up their camcorder’s storage out in the field. If they buy I-O Data’s drive, they can leave the MacBook at home and if they fill up their camera, easily slurp out the footage and keep shooting within seconds.

It’s hard to say, but since it hooks up to your camera via USB, it could theoretically be used with an iPhone too. I’d be interested to know if the drive can offload iPhone 4 videos if you connect it with an Apple Connector Cable.

The seems to be Japan only right now, so if you want one, you’ll need to find an import shop and lay down ¥14,600 (or about $170) for the drive. That’s actually very expensive for a 500GB drive, but if you’re constantly running out of drive space on your camcorder, it may very well be worth it.

[via Gadget Lab]

The application runs in the Mac OS X Menu Bar and will allow you to locate and change the names of files in Finder so they can be copied to Windows OS based systems,  drives, and cloud services like Dropbox. Anytime a file with an incompatible filename is created the program will warn you via a Growl notification. Filenames that are deemed incompatible begin with a space character or contain one of the following characters: \ / : * ? ” < > |.

The application will allow you to work with multiple files and has some filtering options to prevent warnings popping up on files in specific folders. You set those folders to be ignored and you can set others to be watched. Files drag and dropped into the watched folders will be checked for compatibility.

Filerr is available as a single-user license for $6.95 and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or higher. You can download a free trial here.

For those of us poor souls still feeling for the ghost of Google-gobbled SimplifyMedia and looking for a way to easily share our media across our computers and social networks, Libox has stepped in to fit the bill.

Think of Libox as a personal P2P streaming application for your media. You simply download the software for the PC or Mac and let it scan your computer for media like movies, music and images. Once it’s done, any medial then be available for streaming on any computer you own, or even on your iPhone or iPad through a free (and attractive) universal app.

Want to share your media with friends? That’s easy enough too: just add them as contacts and they’ll be able to play any media you select to share. You can even selectively share media: Leander can take a look at my movie collection, sure, but he’s not getting access to the porn directory.