Regular visitors to this blog will probably have noticed that we mention Dropbox a lot. I mean, we won’t shut up about it. Why? Because it’s so ridiculously useful.
The way it works is simple: It’s a portal for files from your iPhone to your Dropbox account, a free service that gives you your own 2GB cloud to store files and media, and if you want to, lets you share those files and media.
As unusual as it is to find an electronic gadget manufactured in the U.S. these days, it’s even more unusual for that gadget to hail from New York City — but that’s exactly where Grado’s SR60i is made. Appropriate, because just like the city, these cans have an unpolished-but-genuine persona that’s a little off-putting at first, but incredibly charming once you get past the gritty exterior.
There’s no shortage of choices available for gabbing with buddies these days, but instant messaging remains a favorite (I’ve actually worked in at least one newsroom where the primary method of communication was IM).
There’s no lack of IM iPhone apps either; but a clean interface, wealth of features, ability to connect with practically every IM service in the galaxy and availability for free makes Meebo the best of these.
Super Badminton 2010 by Rolocule is the one and only 3D badminton game available in the App Store for iPhone & iPod Touch. Despite no current competition, this game still boasts “hyper-realistic physics,” HD quality graphics, a slick UI and realistic sound effects, all of which go towards keeping Super Badminton at the top of its game.
A Chinese gadget site has reviewed the best iPhone 4 knockoff on the market, and while it looks good ands costs only $100, it’s really a piece of junk.
Says M.I.C Gadget:
“It’s the new king in the knockoff market, built to look like a real iPhone 4 while doing its best — with features like a front-facing camera with flash, removable battery, and that outrageous imitation of the industrial design, no one would say that this knockoff is not cool.”
But under the hood, the hardware and software are rubbish. The touchscreen barely works; the back is made of plastic, not glass; it says 64GB but it’s only 64MB; video is so crappy it is unwatchable; the Mail app is MMS, not email; the “five megapixel” camera is only 0.3 megapixels, and so on.
M.I.C Gadget: iPhone 4 Knockoff Review.
PS: M.I.C Gadget also has reviews of a knockoff MacBook Air and a phony iPad.
So you’ve just bought a shiny new iPhone, and now you’re itching to plaster apps all over that pretty wallpaper. Well, we’ve come up with a few suggestions; in fact, we’ve come up with 23 of them.
Through the rest of this month or so, we’ll be listing apps we think no iPhone user should be without — apps that almost anyone should find useful — which will fortify your iPhone with just over an extra screen’s worth of valuable apps. And since most of these are free — with a few costing no more than three bucks — there’s really no reason not to own all of them. And this series isn’t just for noobs; we’re willing to wager there’ll be at least one app on our list that’ll surprise even the old-schoolers.
So fire up the App Store and prepare your iPhone for incoming apps as we launch the series with our first essential: the Bing app, in the running for the best Microsoft product I’ve ever used.
I cannot think of another iPad app that makes me want to take out the velcro and stick my iPad on the wall as much as Emerald Observatory does. This gorgeous app is simply stunning to look at and it is a useful astronomy tool too. Once you have it running on your iPad you won’t hesitate to display it for everyone to see and it will become a striking conversation piece.
We previewed this compact dock last January at CES in Vegas and came away impressed that Altec Lansing could make a unit so compact and relatively inexpensive sound as good as it did. When they contacted us and said they had review units available, we wondered if we’d still be as impressed with the inMotion Compact once all those mojitos had cleared our system. Turns out, the mojitos had nothing to do with it.
I was still shooting JPG on my digital camera until a few months ago, but buying a new MacBook and being given a copy of Aperture gave me a chance to switch to shooting RAW.
That also meant a new workflow for managing and editing photos. I didn’t want my Aperture library to be filled up with crud, so I decided to import images to a folder and manually weed out the useless shots before transferring what remains to Aperture.
After doing this in a Finder window I realised I needed a better tool for the job, so I went looking for lightweight image browsers.
And what I found was Xee.
I purchased my first iPad with Wi-Fi and later upgraded to one with 3G when they were available. I am using it more than I am using my MacBook Pro especially for quick and dirty tasks that it is perfectly suitable for like e-mail, internet surfing, chatting, Twitter, reading, shopping, research, etc. My iPad became very useful very quickly and now it has become a very important part of my life at work and at home. Therefore I’m constantly seeking something new, innovative, or productive to do with it and now that I am armed with a VGA video adapter I’ve discovered that my iPad makes a great whiteboard.
When a buddy of mine suggested (insisted, actually) I try using HeyTell, my first feeling was that using it was like having a ridiculously slow-mo phone conversation: short staccato bursts of talking interspersed by long, frustrating periods of having to wait for a response.
Well, that feeling lasted all of about 10 minutes; the more I played with it, the more I realized that — besides the fact that I could already call, text, tweet, email, IM and use Facebook — yep, here’s another method I’ll use semi-regularly to blab with.
You’re probably sick of reading about the iPhone 4, so here it is in a nutshell: It’s slick as sh*t and I recommend without hesitation that you buy it.
There are over 200,000 apps in the iTunes App Store now and everyone can agree that wading through all those apps trying to find the real gems is a big problem. We all muddle through somehow and find an app gem or two usually by word of mouth, a Cult of Mac review, or other means. I’m happy to announce that I’ve found another way to find good apps and this solution is entertaining to boot — Adam Curry’s Big App Show app.
Halogen for iPad from developers RocketHands is a fast-paced action game that kind of mixes air hockey with Space Invaders. Your job is to smash a puck around the screen and activate the colored reactors on each side, while at the same time eliminating the hordes of colorful enemies that invade your space to collect enough Halogen elements to complete each level and achieve your highest score.
There are 4 game modes that will each push your reflexes to the limit – single player mode features 16 insanely crazy levels that start off fast and then become faster. Your enemies get bigger and nastier and the black hole at the bottom of your screen gets wider. This intense, fast-paced gameplay is what makes Halogen so addictive and keeps you returning to the game in an attempt to beat each level and complete the game.
The wait is finally over. Apple has conspicuously ignored consumer demands for third-party application multitasking over the last three years, but now anyone with an iPhone 3GS or 3G iPod touch can now freely switch between apps without missing a beat. In many ways, today’s launch of iOS 4 is Apple’s most anticipated software release in almost two years. Not since the opening of the App Store via iPhone OS 2.0 has the company made such drastic changes to its flagship product line.
Having installed and played with iOS 4 on my 3GS a bit more than two weeks ago, I can say with confidence that it doesn’t disappoint — but it does take some getting used to.
Still haven’t gotten that geeky dad of yours anything for Father’s Day? Here’s a late last-minute suggestion: Run out to your local bookshop and grab a copy of 62 Projects To Make With A Dead Computer. It’s a sort of $15 Maker Faire for dummies that’ll keep him busy for months, get rid of some of that junk lying around and maybe save him a little moolah in the process.
I like my apps to be simple and clean and I think that you would agree that is what Apple likes to see in apps designed for the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. Echofon Pro from Naanstudio is a universal app which makes it compatible with all of Apple’s iOS based devices. All of these attributes made Ecohfon Pro a great Twitter app for my iPhone, but the recently released iPad compatible version really put the icing on the cake.
Yesterday saw the release of Google Earth for iPad, and I cannot put into words how awesome it is. Though there is no amazing new feature or killer new interface, using it on the iPad’s 10-inch, high-resolution screen is pure joy.
This app is one of the best uses for the iPad to date. I wholeheartedly encourage you to give it a try.
Just point and shoot as fast as possible, or you might miss the moment. This is the mantra of most digital camera owners. Set the camera on auto exposure, auto focus, auto everything – and expect the camera to figure everything out instantly and also provide you with museum quality photos. All this expectation and I want it to fit in my shirt pocket.
It is what American consumers have grown to expect. If, on the other hand, you want a choice of interchangeable lenses, manual control and professional results you have to spend an arm and a leg for one of the many pro SLR cameras on the market. Do you want to spend $1,300 and up on a body and another $500 or more for a decent lens? How about the bulk and weight of a pro system? Who wants to carry all that stuff around? Trust me, it won’t fit in your pocket.
Enter the new Olympus PEN E-PL1 interchangeable lens micro 4/3. Retailing for about $525 (MSRP is $599), the E-PL1 has a 4/3 inch 12.3-megapixel high-speed Live MOS sensor and TruePic V image-processing engine; this little camera can also do 720p HD videos. It has built-in image stabilization (IS), a Live Guide user interface, HDMI output, ISO sensitivity ranges from 100 to 3200, TTL-AUTO and Super FP flash, and wireless remote control flash. It may not fit in your pocket, but you won’t need a pack of horses to transport it.
Arguably the best soccer game on any console, the much anticipated Pro Evolution Soccer is now available on iPhone and iPod Touch and boasts a unique ‘true flow’ control system, unrivalled realism and official UEFA competitions exclusive to Pro Evolution Soccer 2010. But does it compete with other big soccer games already available in the App Store?
Apple your idea about iPad file syncing using the manual file-sharing capabilities of iTunes is disappointing. Especially in my case — I sync my media content with my iMac, which by the way isn’t very easy to carry around, and I cannot sync that same content on my Macbook Pro. If I try to sync using iTunes on another computer my syncing options are to Cancel, Transfer Purchases, or Erase and Sync. None of these options are useful, but if I click Cancel eventually I can manually access the files shared on my iPad even on my Macbook Pro.
It isn’t clear why Apple didn’t add a simple thing like automatic file syncing, but that doesn’t matter now after I discovered Ecamm Network’s new Mac application, PadSync, which adds automatic syncing capabilities to the file sharing feature of the iPad.
Whole civilisations have risen and fallen while the Mac community has discussed notebook applications. Everyone has tried different notebooks, and everyone has their own preference.
It’s hard to pin down just one, because the best ones each offer something unique; as a result, there might be a few mentioned in this series. But the first to qualify is Evernote.
As a big fan of the sport, I’ve played a lot of soccer games on the iPad – from full 3D soccer sims like Real Soccer, to little 2D 1-on-1 games. However the most addictive pick-up-and-play soccer game I’ve played so far is easily Deadball Specialist HD by Full Fat Productions Ltd, which pushes your finger flicking skills to the limit!
We’ve known for some time that the iPhone and iPod Touch are not as secure as we would like them to be — and unfortunately the same can be said about the new iPad. The lack of built-in encryption leaves our personal data on any of these devices at risk. Luckily for iPhone and iPod Touch users third party vendors are supplying apps that help fill some of these gaps in security. One such app, which was popular on the Palm OS platform, is SplashID from SplashData, Inc., which stores all your passwords, logins, and banking details.
With Motorola behind one of the main challengers to the iPhone (at least, the current ones, anyway — the emerging iPhone 4, for now, seems fairly peerless), one doesn’t get much chance to observe the iPhone and the Motorola M in close proximity outside, perhaps, some smartphone cage match, or on the bedside table of two star-crossed lovers.