httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp29W61pwTA

Gunman seems like a keen little iPhone app. Think of it like suburban Lazer Tag, replete with a healthy dash of augmented reality, but missing the cute beeyooping space guns or the likelihood of being shot to death by a trigger happy cop.

In Gunman, two iPhone-toting players square off in a suburban deathmatch arena. First, each player identifies the shirt color of their opponent; then, using their iPhone’s built-in camera as both gun barrel and sights, they take aim and shoot at one another, shaking their iPhone to reload their virtual glocks. If the Gunman app detects that the opponent’s shirt color was in the iPhone’s crosshairs when the shot was fired, it will register a kill and vibrate the iPhone of the perforated victim.

It looks like a lot of fun, and for this holiday week only, it’s on sale over at the App Store for only $0.99. You can check out Gunman’s trailer above. Matrix techno ahoy!

[via 9to5Mac]

For the crime of selling Hackintoshed PCs with OS X pre-installed, Florida-based Psystar, Inc. got the sort of suing from Apple usually consigned to the pages of slash fiction written by the most depraved of litigation fetishists. If the word “reaming” can be used in polite society, that’s what Psystar got, and from the resulting hole agape Apple’s lawyers reamed out every last, ill-begotten penny.

Needless to say, Psystar’s now resorted to rattling around the Web 2.0 equivalent of a beggar’s tin cup as they plead for alms. Since they can no longer sell their line of Mac clones to make money, and since they appear to have decided not to risk Apple’s wrath further by selling their Rebel EFI software until the courts have clarified its legality, Psystar is now asking for $20 to $100 donations on their website.

If charity isn’t your bag, they’re also selling t-shirts for $15. The t-shit reads “I sued Psystar” on the front and “…and all I got was a lousy injunction.” on the back. It’s sort of a nonsensical slogan, unless Steve Jobs buys one of these, but it’s also flat-out misleading: Apple was awarded $2.7 million in damages from Psystar, which they have presumably yet to pay.

Finally, Psystar have announced their new business plan, taking the injunction into account. It’s smart: they’ll basically sell desktops that are built using only components that have Snow Leopard drivers available for them, leaving it to the end user to install OS X on the machine, or not, as they see fit. In other words, they are still targeting the Hackintosh community, just legally. It’s a good idea. I bet they wish they’d done that in the first place.

Has AT&T stopped online sales of the iPhone in New York City due to fraud? If you live in the NYC metro area, you may need to go to a local AT&T store to buy an iPhone.

Over the weekend, the Consumerist reported readers with NYC area codes were blocked when attempting to buy an iPhone online. At first, AT&T’s response was not enough bandwidth, as the following interaction between a company salesperson and Consumerist apparently shows:

Apple’s tablet, initially just a whisp of rumor, appears to be taking a more concrete shape. The Cupertino, Calif. company has instructed suppliers to provide glass panels and connectors ahead of a potential Jan. 26 announcement, multiple reports claim.

A subsidiary of Foxconn, Innolux, will supply Apple with the majority of 10-inch glass displays and Wintek, which provides most iPhone display panels, will handle the remainder, according to Taiwan’s DigiTimes. The publication said Apple could announce its tablet in January with major shipments by March, 2010. One report has suggested Apple has told Foxconn it needs 300,000 tablets per month. If true, the report would dovetail with recent speculation Apple booked San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Jan. 26 for a product announcement.

Just in time to track Jolly Old St. Nick, here’s a free app code for the Santa Tracker 2009 iPhone App.

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On the day before Christmas and all through the house, nary a deal was stirring — not even Apple’s Super Mouse.

Well, there’s still some bargains to be had even at this late date. We lead off this day with an iPhone accessory roundup with items made of everything from silicone to rhinestones. If you haven’t found that perfect iPod touch case, don’t worry – we have an 80 percent off deal with an extra 20 percent off coupon. Lastly, Tapulous, the makers of Tap Tap Revenge have made iPhone headlines and we have Tap Tap Revenge 3 for free.

For details on these and many other bargains, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Microsoft has lost its edge to Apple and Google, becoming like IBM in the mid-1980s when the Seattle, WA. software giant unveiled its first version of the Windows operating system. “I think Microsoft today is a lot like IBM was in 1985,” ex-Microsoft employee Don Dodge told a Seattle newspaper.

Dodge, who worked with startups at Microsoft before laid off in November, was hired by Internet giant Google one week later.

The former Microsoft worker said his previous employer is now overshadowed by Apple, Google and Facebook when it comes to innovation. “Microsoft is still a powerful company – $60 billion in revenue and very profitable – but I think after 20 years they are losing the innovation edge,” Dodge told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer site.

China Unicom, Apple’s first pick to break into the world’s largest cell phone market, is leaning away from the iPhone, according to new phone orders. The carrier said the iPhone will comprise just 4 percent of phones it plans to order. Instead, a mix of Symbian, Windows Mobile and BREW-based handsets are getting the majority of interest.

Phones based on the Symbian OS received 16 percent of the orders, with 8 percent going to Windows Mobile handsets, 4 percent to the iPhone and the remainder to phones using BREW or a proprietary operating system. More than half (63 percent) of the new phones are mid-priced (below $439), according to reports.

A series of patents may detail the user interface of Apple’s tablet, which could be unveiled in January. At the heart of ‘surprising‘ method for users to interact with the much-awaited device is what the Cupertino, Calif. company describes as an ‘articulated frame.’

“The articulating frame may provide key edge ridges that define the boundaries of the key regions or may provide tactile feedback mechanisms within the key regions,” according to an application entitled “Keystroke Tactility Arrangement on a Smooth Touch Surface” uncovered earlier this week.

Many of us have gumdrop iMacs sitting on our desks, too adorable to dispose of, too antiquated to be of any use. One of my New Year’s Resolutions, in fact, is to finally figure out what to do with my bondi blue iMac. My earlier thoughts tended to gravitate towards Hackintoshing the sucker into a competitive, modern machine, but tinkerer Klaus Diebel has screwed another notion into my brain: why not turn my gumdrop iMac into a coffee maker?

Of course, Diebel’s iMac CS is a lot more clever than just a coffee maker crammed into an empty iMac shell: it’s also a functional Mac, as well as a working, subwoofer-amped stereo system. It turns out that the Mac Mini’s optical disc slot lines up perfectly with the gumdrop iMac’s, with no other alteration necessary, so if you want to use the iMac CS as a desktop computer, all you need to do is hook up an external display and a mouse and keyboard. Why external? Because the iMac’s built-in screen now squirts out liquid joe. As for the JBR subwoofer, it beefs up the sound of the included Mac Mini, although if you attach an iPod to the iMac CS, it will automatically mute the Mac Mini and output your tunes through the iMac CS’s speakers, replete with sphincter-loosening bass… possibly messy funtionality, given all the coffee you’ll be drinking.

It’s a great little mod. Better yet, if you’re lazy, you can just pay Dubei to make you one, although you’d better be prepared to pony up: the raw materials of the mod cost between €300 and €400, even before you add in the price of the gumdrop iMac and the Mac Mini.

[via TUAW

After leading his company through a year of unbridled financial success and unparalleled market share growth in both the home computer and smart phone sectors, Apple CEO Steve Jobs will finally take home his paycheck. He earned a buck this year. That’s ten thin dimes.

Of course, we’re all Apple fans here, so we know that’s Jobs’ customary salary. We also the man’s hardly hurting for money: he’s sitting on 5.5 million shares of Apple stock, which is worth a cool $1.1 billion. Additionally, he owns a 7.4 percent stake in Disney, valued at $4.5 billion. In other words, the man can afford to buy us all an iPod.

Still, has a buck ever been harder earned?

Those who know what the Apple Tablet actually is have had a circle of secrecy woven around them twice by Cupertino’s Mephistophelean lawyers, but with all the ballyhoo right now about a late January announcement, it’s still easy to forget we actually don’t really know the first thing about the forthcoming device. How big will it be? What will the hardware be like? Is it more like a Macbook without a keyboard, or is it just like a big iPod Touch? What operating system will the Apple Tablet even run?

It’s been assumed for awhile that the Apple Tablet will probably be more iPhone-like than Mac-like, since Apple wants another platform on which the App Store can shine. It now looks like that assumption is correct: Apple has reportedly told select developers to ready full screen version of their apps to demo on the Apple Tablet in January.

When it rains, it pours — and it’s pouring tablet rumors. The latest is from the NY Times, which says Steve Jobs is “extremely happy” with the upcoming tablet, and that it will have a “surprising” UI.

In a report that’s basically a rehash of tablet rumors, the Times adds a couple of tantalizing morsels.

According to the Times, a senior Apple employee said: “I can’t really say anything, but, let’s just say Steve is extremely happy with the new tablet.”

And another recently-departed Apple staffer added: “You will be very surprised how you interact with the new tablet.”

What this surprising UI is, the Times doesn’t say, unfortunately. It doesn’t even hazard a guess. Gestures? The iPhone’s already there. Voice? Same — and it doesn’t even work that well. Handwriting recognition? Remember the Newton.

What else is there? A little rubbery red button like an old ThinkPad? A virtual scroll wheel?

Link.

“Apple has something big up its sleeve for next month,” says the venerable Financial Times of London.

The company has rented a stage at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco for several days in late January, according to people familiar with the plans.

Apple is expected to use the venue to make a major product announcement on Tuesday, January 26th.

The prospect of a three-day event is tantalizing, but why would Apple need three days to announce a new product — like the long-rumored the tablet, say? My guess is the company needs a day to set up and another to break down. The 26th is a Tuesday: Apple’s favorite day for new product announcements.

Note, neither Apple nor YBCA would comment to the FT, but the center’s online calendar says the venue is free on January 25, 26 and 27. IE. there are no artsy events scheduled for those three days on a calendar that is otherwise full.

Having pulled out of Macworld, these days the YBCA stage is Apple’s favorite venue for product announcements. With CES in January, and the Apple-less Macworld in February, a January 26 event would be sandwiched right between.

The rumor comes on the back of reports that Apple is wooing TV studios for a new online TV service, which conjures the Apple TV to mind, but perhaps a new TV service would be tablet-centric? In addition,  the company is reportedly talking to magazine publishers about repurposing content for the upcoming tablet. Earlier this year, iLounge predicted the tablet would be announced in mid-January with a May or June sell date to build iPhone-like hype.

Via 9to5Mac.

MacSpeech Dictate is dictation software for the Mac that helps you enhance your productivity by simply dictating rather than typing. It is based on Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech engine, which ensures highly accurate speech recognition capabilities. In fact, the company claims it to be about 95% accurate. Although the lack of a Beta version makes it hard to believe but surprisingly, it’s very true.

Recently, I had a chance to test version 1.5 of this for myself and from my experience, it works really well. It’s not just a simple application, but a full-fledged dictation solution for any Mac user, especially for a writer or a journalist.

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 ?

Sending a message to the neighbors, no doubt. Anyone else got a good idea for a network name?

Via FailBlog and LinkMachineGo.

Are you looking for a starter Mac, or an Apple for a child? How about a $99 500Mhz G3 iBook? It may be just two days until Christmas, but the deals keep arriving, like up to $250 off items at MacMall. If you have an iMac or new Mac under the tree and you’d like the perfect display, but your budget is blown – how about a refurbished 30-inch Apple Cinema Widescreen LCD display for just $1,299?

Along with assorted iPhone cases and accessories, the App Store has something every exhausted holiday shopper wants: freebies. This batch includes MotionInk, a media painter application. Not to be missed, though, are EA games for the iPhone or iPod; just $5 for NBA Live or Rock Band.

As always, for details on these bargains and many more, check out CoM’s “Daily Deals” page after the jump.

Kenji Kojima developed a music app called RGB MusicLab that transforms images into music. You can download the app gratis and do what you will with the ditty coming out of that awkward family portrait on your blog, video or work presentation.

Here’s how it works:

RGB MusicLab converts RGB (Red, Green and Blue) value of an image to chromatic scale sounds. The program reads RGB value of pixels from the top left to the bottom right of an image. One pixel makes a harmony of three note of RGB value, and the length of note is determined by brightness of the pixel. RGB value 120 or 121 is the center C, and RGB value 122 or 123 is added a half steps of the scale that is C#. Pure black that is R=0, G=0, B=0 is no sounds.

The clever folks over at Synthtopia took the app for a spin using a head shot of actress Megan Fox — currently topping lad mag FHM’s list of the sexiest woman alive.

It may be nearing the end of 2009, but there appears no end in sight to rumors Apple is soon to announce its mythical tablet device. The latest talk comes from a site claiming Apple will unveil the tablet in January.

Citing “a very connected source”, Boy Genius Report wrote Wednesday a 7-inch tablet and a 10-inch tablet are in the wings.

The camera in the iPhone is pretty crummy, even when compared to the constabulary of terrible camera sensors installed in other smartphones. When the iPhone 3G came out with a 2-megapixel camera provided by Aptina, the competition was boasting 3.2MP, and when the iPhone 3Gs matched that ante thanks to a sensor from OmniVision, other phones raised the bet to 5.

So there’s reason to believe a report from Taiwan’s Digitimes that Apple’s forthcoming iPhone will again boost its megapixels to match the likes of the Motorola DROID, which has a 5MP sensor. According to their sources, OmniVision is set to supply a 5-megapixel camera for the next-generation iPhone, due to arrive in the second half of next year.

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ql0V4SNt-c4&feature=player_embedded

With yesterday’s release-then-nearly-instantaneous-pull of the Nescaline NES emulator, the message should be clear: jailbreaking is the only real option for iPhone emulation enthusiasts. Good news, then, for jailbreakers: ZodTTD has has released the Nintendo 64 emulator N64iPhone through Cydia just in time for Christmas, with one killer little feature… Wiimote support through Bluetooth pairing.

Emulation tends to be slow on less beefy hardware, and it doesn’t look as though N64iPhone manages to defy expectations in that regard: even when using the Wiimote, the emulator appears tricky to control, with notable slowdowns. Still, at least it’s working. Heck, at least it’s real, unlike the last N64 emulator we wrote about, which turned out to just be a clever video.

If you can deal with slowdowns and convoluted controls in your quest for mobile Metroid Prime, you can download N64iPhone through Cydia for just $2.50.

Apple’s iPhone 3G garnered 4 percent of U.S. cell phone subscribers in 2009, ranking No. 1 in single handset models, according to an Internet research firm. The iPhone beat the RIM BlackBerry and Motorola RAZR, which placed 2nd and 3rd.

Apple may be preparing to sell up to 45 million iPhones in 2010, according to suppliers. The orders for an upgraded iPhone camera would double those expected for 2009. The news appears to coincide with other reports that Apple may introduce a new iPhone in mid-2010.

“OmniVision Technologies is expected to see CMOS image sensor orders for Apple’s iPhone devices grow to 40-45 million units in 2010,” according to industry sources cited by DigiTimes. The orders for a 5-megapixel sensor may be a response to Verizon’s Droid and Google’s Nexus One handsets which both have more sensitive cameras than the iPhone 3GS’ 3.2 megapixel camera. OmniVision supplied the iPhone 3GS 3.2 megapixel image sensor.

At this point, it’s not really surprising that the iPhone 3Gs’ graphics are capable of pumping out the polygons needed to bring a sophisticated 3D engine to the handset, but it’s still wonderful to watch Epic Games’ Mark Rein play Unreal Tournament deathmatch on his third generation iPod Touch. You can see a video of it in action after the jump.