software - page 48

You’ll remember the $1000 iPhone app, I Am Rich, that made it to the AppStore in August just because it could. Well, for a savings of $100 you can get an app that actually does something useful, like monitor your multiple IP based surveillance cameras.

For only $900 Lextech Labs’ iRa serves the mobility needs of the high-end security industry, enabling users to view multiple video feeds and directly control pan-tilt-zoom cameras from their iPhone or iPod Touch.

iRa is not something you just download and off you go, however. Interested parties are strongly encouraged to locate a surveillance equipment integrator before purchasing the app. End users who download iRa from the iPhone App Store must have a working knowledge of network and digital camera system installation and configuration, with support for the app and for configuring hardware available exclusively through local integrators.

Once installed and properly configured, users can enjoy easy viewing of many video feeds in full screen video view or thumbnail view; pan, tilt and zoom control camera motion; use the touchscreen’s familiar finger drag and pinch controls; and get automatic discovery of properly configured network cameras.

Happy spying!

Google introduced Earth for the iPhone and iPod touch today with a free version of the fascinating desktop program that literally puts the whole world in your hands. I’ve spent a good portion of the morning playing around with it and am pleased to report the satellite imagery and 3D terrain effects are quite amazing.

Earth makes impressive use of touch screen technology and Apple’s accelerometer, letting you spin the globe with a swipe of your finger and literally tilt your view to the curvature of the earth to see the terrain of whatever place you’re visiting. The application has a ton of information and labeling built in, with links to over 8 million Panoramio photographs and Wikipedia articles you can read within Earth or jump to in Safari.

Google’s handy two minute video linked above explains the app pretty well, and there’s additional information at the Google Earth and Maps Team blog.

I’ve also posted below a gallery of screenshots from my journey this morning. Based on my initial experience, I’d say Google Earth is likely to become a popular time wasting app in a hurry.

Image Credit: Engadget

Few things rankle a Mac user more than seeing new and interesting products and services rolled out that only work on PC. In my household, Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” is at the top of this maddening list. Basically, anyone with a Netflix account and sufficiently fast PC can watch any of 12,000 movies direct from Netflix servers at no extra charge. It hasn’t come to Macs because the service relies on PC-only DRM. And this drives my wife nuts. As she sees it, she’s already paying Netflix for service, and since that subscription now includes streaming she can’t use, she’s getting charged for a phantom service.

I can’t say I disagree.

At any rate, Netflix today proclaimed that this sad state of affairs won’t continue for long. Starting tomorrow, a limited number of Mac subscribers will be able to use Watch Instantly via a new version of the software rooted in Microsoft’s Silverlight technology (it’s a lot like Flash). Since Silverlight bakes in the PC DRM, it runs fine on a Mac and takes no additional tweaking to function.

Unfortunately, the new platform will be rolled out slowly, with Netflix only promising support for all Intel Mac users by the end of the year. So it might be awhile before Netflix stops getting the stinkeye from my apartment.

Anyone got access yet? How’s it run?

Hands up if you’re a fan of Fluid, the app that turns any web site (or web application) into a standalone application. Yeah, me too.

If you’ve been following the screencasts and Twitterings of Fluid developer Todd Ditchendorf, you might have noticed some news floating around; he has now launched his official browser spin-off, Cruz.

If you’re confused about the name, don’t worry, you have every right to be. This app was going to be called “Mecca”, but then Todd changed his mind. What was that all about?

The Cult decided to get in touch with Todd and ask him to explain the background. He was kind enough to give us some answers…

Continuing my personal obsession with software cameras (see recent ravings about CameraBag for the iPhone), today’s work time has been largely spent faffing about with Poladroid, a free desktop app that turns photos into Polaroids. It’s fantastic.

WorldView puts global webcams in your pocket, in a really lovely little free app.

What’s lovely about it isn’t the webcam shots themselves – frankly, once you’ve seen one blurry shot of the Eiffel Tower in the rain, you’ve seen ’em all – but it’s the little extras alongside the images.

Developers Phil Ryu and Andrew Kaz are about to release an iPhone eBook reader with a very cool interface. Flip the iPhone’s screen to turn the page, and the page turns as though it’s a real book! It’s very slick.

Ryu’s $2.99 “Classics” app will feature 10 to 12 books including Alice in Wonderland, The Jungle Book and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

“We’ll be adding books with free updates,” says Ryu, 20, who lives in Boston.

Ryu is probably best known for his work at MacHeist, and Kaz, 18, was just 14 when he worked on delicious library. Kaz is based in New Jersey.

The pair are planning to submit the app to the app store in a few days.

Meanwhile, they have a preview available, and more details about the app here.

It’s easy to think that software developers spend all their time furiously typing code, but that’s not the case at all.

Rory Prior, developer of nifty photo gallery app Instant Gallery, recently published a little PDF booklet showing off some of the design work he has put into his software over the years. Tucked inside it – and also revealed on this blog post of his – were some pen-and-paper sketches of software idea in progress.

The blog post shows how work is progressing on Rory’s iKanji app for the iPhone. There’s some much older work (not just sketches, but also mockups and early application designs) in the booklet.

This is a rarely seen side of software development, and one that deserves a little more limelight, I think.

Do you draw your software ideas? Let us know.

Proving yet again that it pays to shop around, at least two recently-released apps are offering broadly the same functionality. One is free; the other is free (with adverts) or costs three bucks. But which is the better option?

If there’s one thing you can admire in software developers who rip off other people’s ideas, it’s honesty about what they’re doing.

In building WrongRoom, Joseph Lyman has created something modeled on the longstanding best-in-class full screen editor, WriteRoom. It’s his first OS X app, so we should be gentle: but at least he’s up front about why he made something that’s been made before:

“WrongRoom: A shoddy freeware clone of a perfectly good program”

He even encourages anyone who downloads WrongRoom to go and buy a license for WriteRoom. And he’s right. WriteRoom is a much better app with many more features. WrongRoom offers vaguely similar functionality, but it’s just … well, wrong. Even the icon’s a little wonky.

Top marks to Joseph for being so upfront about it, though.

A while back, I compared BBEdit 9 and Coda 1.5, testing the old warhorse against its young competition. However, while quick overviews are all very well, the only way to find out whether applications are any good is under real-world conditions, so I spent 30 days working with BBEdit, to see if it still doesn’t suck. Find out more after the break…

Paramount Digital Entertainment has revived the School of Rock brand with an application that teaches you principles of music education on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

The 2003 movie starring Jack Black tells the story of a struggling musician who scams a job teaching at an upper-crust private high school and ends up teaching the kids how to form a band and play rock music. The app gives users the opportunity to experiment with a variety of authentic virtual instruments ranging from guitar and bass to piano and drums. Users can also learn to play tracks from legendary artists including Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Scorpions and Royal.

The $6.99 app is organized as a game that incorporates features allowing players to explore the history and diversity of music and instruments through a series of quizzes and challenges. Players are challenged to identify brand-name guitars and keyboards using “axes” from well known musicians, receive instruction in the areas of melody, harmony, rhythm, tempo and beats, and have the ability to record and play back jam sessions.

As the game progresses, the songs and variations become more challenging, allowing players to master instruments, advance to different levels and accumulate points that eventually result in graduation from The School of Rock. Groupies and backup singers not included.

This is one of those ideas that hits you like a bucket of wallpaper paste, and you think “Why on earth did no-one think of that before?”

Choosy is a utility for anyone who uses multiple browsers and wants to open certain links in certain browsers under certain circumstances. Web developers will know what I mean, but there’s something in this for normal people, too.

For example, if you’ve created any stand-alone webapps using Fluid, you might want to open some links in one or more of those apps. Say you’ve got a Fluid app for your Google Docs. When an email arrives with a link to a shared document, Choosy will let you open it in the right Fluid-created app, not in your default browser.

I suspect developer George Brocklehurst might be a name to keep an eye on in future. What’s the next smart idea up his sleeve? Watch out for more bucket-of-wallpaper-paste moments.

AppLoop released a program today that turns any web content into a native iPhone app in under two minutes.

Because many websites are produced by people with few to no developers’ skills and because the iPhone does not store web content locally on the device, developers at AppLoop sensed the need for a way to let content providers do a better job of extending their material to mobile platform users.

Enter the Mobile Application Generator, which converts any RSS feed into a brandable mobile application in less than two minutes. It requires no programming, software downloads, or code maintenance – AppLoop does the nerdy stuff. For free.

Along with generating a fully brandable native app for you – you customize the appearance of the application and include your own logos and color schemes in the set-up process – AppLoop provides an end-to-end analytics library so you can track real-time usage, popular content, and application engagement across various platforms.

Native applications will eventually be deployed across multiple mobile platforms, though Apple’s is the only one operational at present. The company expects to be distributing to Android soon.

Creating a native app allows users to access content regardless of internet connection availability. Images, text, and other data are stored locally for access at any time. Users can also share and promote content on a variety of social services, including Digg, Twitter, FaceBook, and Email, as well as mark items as favorites for later access to read and share with friends. The company envisions support for multiple feeds within the same application in the near future, so larger websites can have different categories and a more customizable user experience.

Via Read Write Web

The App Store just gets weirder with every passing day. To celebrate, consider this the first in an occasional series of posts looking at the weirder stuff that’s popping up there.

10 seconds ago is a strange audio widget that records the ambient sounds coming in through the mic, delays them by, um, ten seconds, and plays them out through the speaker. Or, as the app’s maker puts it:

“When you try, don’t you think your vision sometimes hinders your concentration on the sound? If so, then try this tiny app.”

Couldn’t have explained it better myself. (There’s a pro version too, sonic delay fans.)

A California Inn is dubbing itself the world’s first “iPhone hotel.” When guests check into the Malibu Beach Inn, they’re asked if they have an iPhone or iPod Touch. If guests have got the gear, hotel staff loads an app called “Hotel Evolution” from Hollywood software firm Runtriz, to the device. If they don’t, they’re given a 16gb iPod Touch (with the application pre-loaded) to use during their stay.

Guests punch in room number plus security code for access to hotel services: order room service, set a wake up call, request dry cleaning, extra blankets or replace forgotten toothbrushes, check your messages or set your room to “Do Not Disturb.” Shopping, eating and cavorting info for the area is on tap, too. Cost to the hotel is about $10 per room, no word on whether the cost is passed on to guests.

Feeling a bit like an over-Botoxed actress on this one, I’d like to get excited, you know, move some facial muscles, but just can’t.

First, because the usual hotel Flintstone phone service, paper “do not disturb” sign and flesh-and-bones concierge do just fine most of the time. And the fact that most people travel with electronic gear — cell phone, mp3 player, pda, computer, watch — means that stuff like the wake-up call function isn’t all that necessary. The idea of a loaner iPod Touch is cool but you just know it’d be left in a cab, stolen, get stepped on or something. Then what?

It’ll be more interesting if it were to catch on and be widely available abroad, where lost-in-translation mishaps are the order of the day or for foreigners in the U.S. in a bunch of other languages to avoid that problem of not understanding what was just mumbled at you from across the counter.

So, what do you think, is the iPhone Hotel future perfect or conditional?

Via Washington Post

Experience the sensations and mind twisting perceptions you get by ingesting psychotropic drugs – without the harmful side-effects – using a cool new app from Reality Jockey, Ltd.

Available today on the AppStore, the free single release and the $2.99 album release of RjDj will amaze and amuse you with its combination of built-in soundscapes and the unique contribution your personal reality brings to the party.

Using the microphone of your iPhone, RjDj takes the sounds of whatever ambient environment you find yourself in and morphs them into the single built-in track on the free version, or into one of six tracks on the album version, to both create and influence the music you hear.

The program also allows you to record the unique sensations you have while walking through the city, sitting with friends at a cafe, or playing with children in the garden, which you can save and listen to like a normal music track. Well, maybe not normal, but the effects are stunning, sometimes jarring, nonetheless.

In a world of one-off apps available for the iPhone, RjDj is one I could see going back to again and again.

Interested in trying out a cool media center for use with your Apple TV? Cult of Mac readers are invited to receive expedited applications for testing the alpha release of Boxee, a music, video and picture management solution to let your Apple TV play practically any DRM-free multimedia file. Follow this link to receive your alpha testing invitation.

Boxee for (Intel based) Mac works on OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and 10.5 (Leopard). Boxee for Linux is supported on Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon) or 8.04 (Hardy Heron) x86 (not x86_64) operating systems. The Boxee patch works with the 2.2 update to Apple TV, but remember to install the update before you install the Boxee patch.

Detailed instructions for installing the Boxee patch after the jump.

Bathtub III from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

There is no end to the creative wonders made possible with Apple gear, it seems. Combining a variety of techniques including tilt-shift and time-lapse photography, Sydney-based photographer Keith Loutit uses his iMac to produce short films like those presented here, which turn ordinary places into scenes worth a second look.

Loutit also employs Apple software in his workflow, using Automator for file management and preparation; QuickTime pro for assembling stills onto video format; Aperture for archiving of frames as higher quality stills; and Final Cut Studio – mostly final cut pro, for color, compressor and motion for editing, toning and export.

Beached from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Asked how he gets the stunning effects, Loutit is unwilling to give away the store, but allows that “I use two lenses, one Medium format, both converted to tilt further than most manufacturer lenses will tilt on a 35mm body.”

Adobe appears to be pricing its soon-to-be-released CS4 suite of design tools much higher for users in the UK than for its US customers, according to a report at ITHound. For the extra £1000 the full Creative Suite 4 Master Collection is set to cost Mac users in the UK, a clever designer could fly from London to New York, buy the software in the US, and fly home, while still saving around £400.

Google has released Update Engine, an open source (released under the Apache license) software update framework for Mac OS X.

Of course, there’s already a very successful software update framework known as Sparkle, developed by Andy Matuschak. Judging by this comment in his Twitter stream (“Update Engine looks much better-designed and engineered than Sparkle, though a little clunkier in a few minor ways”), he’s already impressed with what he sees.

In an announcement on the Google Mac Blog, engineer Greg Miller says: “Update Engine can update all the usual suspects, like Cocoa apps, preference panes, and screen savers. But it can also update oddballs like arbitrary files, and even things that require root–like kernel extensions. On top of that, it can update multiple products as easily as it can update one.”

So what’s the difference between this and Sparkle? As I understand things (someone correct me if I’m wrong), Sparkle sits inside each app that uses it, and is used by that app to update itself. Update Engine runs separately and independently, and uses a system of tickets to remember which apps it should monitor and when they should be updated. And, as Miller explains, it can be used to update anything, not just apps but also prefpanes and the like.

New today from the Mac devs at Google is Top Draw, an experimental image drawing app.

I’ll let them explain it in more detail: “The Top Draw scripting language leverages Apple’s Quartz and CoreImage rendering engines for graphical muscle. In addition to the drawing commands that are supported by the HTML canvas tag, there is support for particle systems, plasma clouds, random noise, multi-layer compositing and much more.”

It doesn’t do very much, so don’t download it and expect it to suddenly start editing photos or creating beautiful logos for you. It takes text input and renders images based on it; and for kicks, it can set the result as your desktop background, or act as a screen saver.

Still, fun to play with if messing with JavaScript is your thing. Indeed, still fun even if you have no clue about JavaScript and just want something different on your desktop.

If there’s one thing the British like complaining about more than the weather, it’s the transport system.

So it shouldn’t be a surprise to find the App Store bulging with apps for people on the move. Here are just a handful of my favourites…

There’s Alistair Stuart’s Trains, giving near-as-dammit live information from UK station departure boards: essential for people five minutes walk away from the station door, and whose train ought to be leaving in four minutes.

And there’s Ian Smith’s LondonCam, a highly rated app that displays the latest image from any of more than 80 traffic cams that monitor London’s busiest roads and interchanges.

Traffic UK provides real-time traffic updates for the area around your current location, or for any place you care to name.

And TubeStatus is one of several London Underground monitoring apps, providing timely warnings of line closures and service disruptions. Which, as any Londoner will tell you, are many and varied and frustratingly frequent.

It’s… it’s like looking into the Eye of Sauron. If each application were a different Eye.

More at Gizmodo.

Adobe announced its “biggest ever” product release on Tuesday. The Creative Suite 4 product family, a new series of media applications scheduled to ship in October, features tightly integrated workflow solutions designed to advance the creative process across print, Web, mobile, interactive, film and video production.

The entire product line includes Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design editions, Creative Suite 4 Web editions, Creative Suite 4 Production Premium and the Creative Suite 4 Master Collection.

Photoshop, the most widely used Adobe product, will take advantage of new graphics processing unit (GPU) hardware in the CS4 edition ($699) to deliver a smoother pan and zoom experience, allowing users to easily edit images at even the highest magnifications. For an additional $300, Photoshop CS4 Extended give users the ability to manipulate 3D imagery, such as painting directly on 3D models and surfaces, merging 2-D files onto 3D images, and animating 3D objects.

InDesign, Adobe’s page layout program, also comes in for some interesting upgrades, including a feature that highlights potential production problems in real-time from within the layout and directs users to the problem area to resolve the issue. Other new features make it easier to create and manage long documents such as manuals and textbooks, including a Conditional Text feature that lets users quickly produce multiple versions of a document for different uses such as multi-lingual documents or Teacher/Student materials.

Below we reproduce Adobe’s comparison chart to help give you an idea of the range of options available in the new applications and their bundles, but be sure to visit the Adobe website for detailed information and several arresting demos of the kinds of work supported by these products.