Reviews - page 139

Review by Kelly Keltner

Before encountering Altec Lansing’s women-specific Bliss Platinum earphones ($70), I had never considered the idea that my ears might be too feminine and precious to handle having a larger earpiece forcibly shoved into their delicate canals. Now I know that, like many things, most earpieces are made for men and we poor, sweet ladies must go about life making do with too-big things. Altec Lansing hopes to solve that issue by giving ultra-precious lady ears a much-needed rest from all the bigness with the Bliss Platinum.

Since Apple started popping out the first mouse to be packaged with a personal computer with the Macintosh back in 1984, designers have been trying to find alternatives to the ubiquitous rodent. Apple itself seems to be out front in terms of interesting creations, experimenting on their mice with intriguing, if not always satisfying results. In this case, Smartfish, with their Whirl Mini laptop mouse ($50), have focused on perfecting the ergonomics of the mouse instead of trying to reinvent it. Did they pull it off?

Now that WWDC is over for another year and we’ve put all the excitement behind us, this coming week is going to be a little dull without something good to keep us entertained. Thankfully, our list must-have games is here to help. This week’s roundup features Dream:scape — the latest eye-popping game to use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine; 1000 Heroz which promises a new adventure every day you play; plus more great titles that are guaranteed to please.

Kicking off this week’s list of must-have iOS apps is a great new iPad 2 title from Evernote called Peek – the first iOS release that uses the Smart Cover to create a quiz game. We have a terrific new note-taking app from Junecloud, the developers behind the highly acclaimed Delivery Status Touch. Plus an app that will ensure you never get hit with a parking fine again, and plenty more.

Road Warriors are people, not simply animatronic robots — if you prick us, do we not bleed? If you lose our luggage, do we not get pissy? And people need tunage. That’s where Logitech’s S715i rechargeable speaker dock ($150) comes in. Sling it in a bag and it’ll provide the party out on the road while you’re furiously tapping at that TPS report or chilling post-deadline — and it’ll look hot doing it. Just don’t expect much when the party goes ballistic, because the bass simply can’t keep up.

The Nuu MiniKey is a snap-on case for your iPhone 4 that aims to transform the way you type on your device. It features a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and connects to your device via Bluetooth, and promises to be “perfect for blogging and emailing.”

I’m not exactly sure why this thing works so damn well. The idea is pretty simple: Use Aviiq’s Portable Quick Stand ($40) to prop your laptop up (in this case, Aviiq has settled on a 12-degree angle) and suddenly the screen is closer to eye level, and the keyboard is tilted. And man, does it make a huge difference.

From the creators of Echofon – the popular third-party Twitter client – comes Photofon; the easiest way to browse the photos posted in your Twitter timeline. This isn’t just another Twitter client, but rather a photo browser for those who enjoy viewing all of the photos posted by their friends.

Ranky is a great application for app developers, marketeers, and those who want to keep track of App Store games and applications. It provides you with an overview of how well your selected titles are performing and their position in the App Store’s charts.

Apple’s iWork office suite for iOS has just made its way to the iPhone and the iPod touch, and just like its iPad counterpart, you won’t find an office experience as good as this from anywhere else. For getting things done on the move, nothing compares to iWork.

Find out more about thus week’s must-haves below!

If you’re someone who has even the smallest regards towards fashion, then you’ve probably given some serious thought as to which bag to use for toting your precious MacBook around. What you wear says just as much about you as your MacBook does. If you’re looking for something that looks great for casual occasions but can also feel dressed up enough for business meetings, then you need to consider the Arnald Work Bag from The Property Of. We were lucky enough to receive a bags from the Amsterdam based company and here’s our take.

XtremeMac recently released a thin plastic snap-on shell that covers the back of the iPad 2 called the Microshield ($35). It ships as is with no other options and the minimalist case leaves you wondering about who it was made to appeal to and the use of the word “shield” in selecting a name for it is misleading.

Apple updated its iWork applications for iOS yesterday to include support for the iPhone and iPod touch, and I couldn’t wait to get my hands on them. As a regular user of Keynote, Numbers and Pages on the iPad, I have been patiently waiting for their iPhone counterparts for some time – and these are well worth the wait.

As any fan-boy (myself included) will testify, Macs don’t get viruses – or rather, that’s what we used to say…

With the popularity of the Macintosh platform at the highest it’s ever been, we are no longer as immune to cyber attacks as we could once claim. Only last week the ill intentioned ‘Mac Defender’ virus raged chaos on Macs the world over. The question of Mac security has raised its head once again – and this time, we might actually need to pay attention…

“If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a phrase Etymotic must have taken extremely seriously, judging by a look at their now-mythic, $99 ER-6i. The set has been around since their release in 2004, after which they quickly became the standard against which all other sub-$100 IEMs were tested. But seven years is an eon for a product to have remained essentially unchanged in the gadget world. Are they still as good now as they were then?

Illusion Labs – the team behind the hugely successful Touchgrind skateboarding game – have taken everything that made their first hit such a success and used it to create Touchgrind BMX. Put the skateboard to one side and become a BMX pro – performing spectacular tricks in beautifully crafted locations all over the world.

The Heist is currently famous for its overwhelming popularity that has helped it knock Angry Birds off the top spot of the App Store’s paid chart. Featuring a collection of mind-bending puzzles that you must solve in order to get your hands on the valuable prize inside the vault.

Siege Hero boasts gameplay similar to Angry Birds, in that you must destroy a group of enemies protected by glass, rocks and timber. However, instead of taking aim at a group of ugly pigs, vikings are your enemies, and rocks replace the birds as your ammo.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of the week’s must-haves – including Back to the Future: Episode 3 and To-Fu: The Trials of Chi – below!

Already famous for its excellent Pro Messenger IM application, eBuddy has taken real-time messaging to the next level with eBuddy XMS – a free, real-time messenger that enabled you to chat with text, pictures, emoticons and more. It features a highly-polished user interface and an experience guaranteed to give apps like WhatsApp and PingChat! some real competition.

In addition to the recent launch of ‘Apple Store 2.0′, the Apple Store application for iPhone also got a much-needed revamp. The latest version of the app works internationally and boasts some great new features.

Opera Mini has been the iPhone browser of choice for many since it launched, promising to be the fastest, most cost-efficient web-browsing experience for your iOS device today. Its recent update made it a universal application delivering all its Opera goodness to the iPad, which impressed Cult of Mac’s Giles Turnball in his recent review.

Find out more about the applications above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Contacts Journal and Aelios Weather – below!

Like the brilliant Insight we reviewed a month or so ago, Belkin’s Conserve Valet comes form their new line of green-angled tools created with the idea of saving energy. Unlike the Insight, the Valet — a $40, four-port USB hub designed around the idea of smart organization and energy conservation — isn’t as well executed, and not nearly as effective.

Silent Film Director is another app to add to the amusing-video-effects list, but this one’s worth investigating.

As we’re probably all aware by now, Apple’s Thunderbolt I/O debuted earlier this year with the new generation of MacBook Pros and threatened to make all other interfaces, like USB and FireWire, seem like stone-age relics — and at the same time, make obsolescent all current external HDDs. All, that is, except Seagate’s line of GoFlex drives.

Opera has finally released Opera Mini 6 for iOS for iOS, with a bunch of very welcome new features.

There’s nothing like traveling with several thousand dollars worth of expensive photo gear to kick up the ‘ol stress levels: Will I be able to pack all my stuff, and will it ll be easily accessible? Will any of it break? Are colleagues or clients going to laugh at me because it doesn’t look pro enough? If it does look pro, will it make a tempting target for thieves? Can it fit into the overhead bin or under my seat on a plane? And what the heck am I going to do with my laptop?

So it’s always a welcome relief when a bag answers those questions soothingly, in a way that sets the mind at ease — which, except for one or two of those questions, Crumpler’s $172, ruggedly adventurous 8 Million Dollar photo/laptop bag does.

Kicking off this week’s list of must-have iOS games is one of the most enjoyable music quiz games in the App Store called Tuned. It’s is an innovative new game for the iPhone that offers music lovers an endless number of entertaining quizzes from just about every genre there is.

Storm in a Teacup is an adorable little platform adventure in which you navigate your way through magical lands in a teacup, avoiding the bad guys and solving puzzles in an effort to complete every level.

Bumpy Road is another wonderful platformer that features a unique play mechanic and tells a wonderful love story. Despite its slightly soppy storyline, it’s brilliantly entertaining.

Find out more about the games above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Draw Jump and Casey’s Contraptions – below!

This week’s roundup of must-have iOS applications begins with the second edition of PhotoForge – the popular photo manipulation tool for iOS. Completely rebuilt from the ground up, PhotoForge2 promises to be a breakthrough for image editing on the go, with unparalleled tools and amazing effects to transform your photos into masterpieces.

Foodish is a new application that claims to make dining and drinking twice as much fun (is that even possible?), by providing a quick and easy way for you to keep a record of your diet, but in a way that’s fun and enjoyable rather that dull and tedious like traditional diet tracking applications. It makes it simple for you to see how healthy or how dreadfully unhealthy (like mine) your diet is.

Zootool is a great little tool that makes bookmarking, organizing and sharing your favorite images, videos, documents and links from all over the web incredibly effortless.

Find out more about the application above and check out the rest of this week’s must-haves – including Audibly and eBay Motors – below!

When the brimstone rains down and hell freezes over (or whatever the heck is supposed to happen) on Judgement Day, making sure my iPhone stays safe in Griffin’s damn near impervious-to-everything, military-spec Survivor case ($50) means I’ll be able to tweet the whole thing. Assuming there’s still Internet and power and stuff.

Your iPad case isn’t a boring accessory. It’s modern day armor, and it says as much about you as the breastplate strapped to the sinewy torso of any medieval warrior ever did. The sturdiness and thoroughness of its construction reveal your wisdom; its extravagant flourishes of design reveal your spirit and pomp. In the gouges, cracks and dents, you can trace the rigors of an entire life. Picking an iPad case is as much as to tell the world what kind of warrior you are.

So what kind of warrior is the person who picks the BlackBox Bamboo Case for iPad 2? He’s a samurai.