News - page 2240

Campus police at the University of Illinois are testing an iPhone app that lets them keep an eye on students that puts security cam footage at their fingertips via iPhones and iPods.

They’re using an app called iRa C3, a video command center designed for security personnel and first responders that can be accessed via web interface, iPhone, or iPod touch.

Cost is based on the number of cameras and users; the campus set-up of 15 cameras covered in high-risk crime areas cost $25,000. (Or it would have: app maker Lextech lab, founded by alumnus Alex Bratton took $15,000 off the price, a parent’s group ponied up the other $10,000).

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZW_JEo59Nw

As the resident sadomasochist in love with roguelike games, I’ve been waiting for months for Dinofarm Games to release their lovingly crafted take on the genre, 100 Rogues. Now they have, and it’s available on the App Store for $4.99! Kalloo! Kallay!

During a call discussing News Corp’s latest financial results, Rupert Murdoch told investors that the Wall Street Journal has been extremely successful on the iPad, and it’s far more profitable for them than similar content on the Kindle, at least on a per subscriber basis.

An exciting new feature in the latest iPhone OS 4.0 beta might finally address a long standing complaint of both users and app developers: the inability to easily move non-media files between the iPhone and a computer. According to Boy Genius Report, iPhone OS 4.0’s new File Sharing feature will allow you to transfer and sync files directly between your iPhone and your computer.

All you do is plug your iPhone into iTunes, go to the Apps tab and scroll down. On the left side of the screen, you choose an app from a list of supported programs, while the right side of the screen allows you to copy files into that app’s sandbox or save them from your iPhone onto your computer.

The File Sharing feature doesn’t work yet, but it’s an exciting hint at things to come. It looks like a lot of the office and productivity suites on the iPhone OS are about to get a lot easier to use across multiple platforms.

Beta 3 of the iPhone OS 4.0 SDK has a couple of great new interface features, including the ability to close background apps through a hold-and-close method similar to the way deleting programs functions on the operating system, but I think I like the new media player widgets best.

In the latest beta, if you load the multitasking interface you see a new set of widgets that sit in the dock to control iPod playback. The widgets include three buttons for track navigation (Play/Pause, Track Back, Track Forward), a shortcut to launch the iPod application, and a software orientation lock which serves the same function as the iPad’s hardware switch. Accessing the widgets is as simple as swiping left on the dock.

Very slick, but what interests me most is the possibility of further widget sets. If third-party developers can program their own widgets to control background apps from the dock, multitasking on iPhone OS 4.0 is just going to rock. Skype widgets anyone? My guess is that’s just what Apple has in mind, and the screen orientation lock will be the one standard icon

In what might charitably be called the most toothless and limp parody this side of your dentureless grampa doing a timely Grover Cleveland impersonationation right before nap time, Ellen DeGeneres went on her talk show on Monday to poke fun at the iPhone 3Gs.

Ellen’s hilarious gag? When she wants to send a text message, she can’t do it through the “Maps” application. The punchline? The iPhone’s hard to use!

At Steve Jobs 30th birthday party, the jazz great Ella Fitzgerald sings him happy birthday. She seems to have no idea who he is.

Part 14 of “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs,” Macworld founder David Bunnell’s personal history of the Mac.

I am all for the Federal government funding and deploying a robust and relentless antitrust division. I don’t wish to go into detail or name examples here and now, but I believe the emasculation of antitrust and restraint of trade investigation and prosecution over the past 30 years has meant a great disservice to the public and to the economy. If that arm of the Justice Department gets revived under Obama it will be a good thing for the country and for the world.

With respect to antitrust claims against Apple related to either the iPhone Developer’s Agreement or the iAds program I don’t think Apple has a thing to worry about.

I haven’t eaten watermelon in what must be going on a year now, but I’m sure this dollar-app is a must-have for serious watermelon afficionados (the clip looks like it was filmed in Israel, which is notoriously watermelon-crazy).

The developer claims iWatermelon Deluxe can determine if a watermelon is ripe just by having the user set the iPhone onto the melon in question, selecting the melon’s color and size, and tapping its rind a few times.

A somewhat odd description on the dev’s website additionally suggests that “iWatermelon is also fun to try on more Hollow [sic], round objects.” Not sure what they’re suggesting, but plopping an iPhone on someone’s head, rapping on that head and then explaining that you’re using an app made for watermelons to determine whether they’re ripe or not is sure to be a conversation starter.

In a post yesterday about CoPilot’s new iPad navigation app, I remarked that I’d like to see more iPad car mounts than the custom dash fabricated by Soundman Car Audio; turns out, while it doesn’t look as if anything is available yet, there are a few companies working on solutions which should be available soon. Here’s a quick look at what’s coming.

Federal antritrust regulators are taking a keen interest in changes Apple made to its iPhone developers agreement, the Wall Street Journal and Reuters are reporting.

Steve Jobs is at it again — emailing Apple customers with answers to their questions.

This one was sent to CultofMac.com by reader Paul Greenberg, who asked Jobs about a missing MobileMe feature that’s been bugging him for three years: the inability to sync notes via MobileMe.

As Microsoft’s Internet Explorer falls to just under 60 percent of the browser market, Google’s Chrome has jumped ahead of Apple’s Safari, indicates a new survey released Tuesday. Although Mozilla’s Firefox took the largest percentage of the market lost by Microsoft, Google’s Chrome took 6.7 percent, versus 2.5 percent for Apple’s Safari.

Internet Explorer declined to 59.95 percent of the browser market, down from its high point of 80 percent in 2008, according to Net Applications, which analyzes Internet traffic trends. Firefox picked up about nine of those lost percentage points, with Google’s Chrome snaring 6.7 percent of IE’s share (up from 0 before 2009), and Safari took 2.5 percentage points for 4.72 percent of the browser market.

If you took the plunge on the Spirit jailbreak over the weekend, no need to wait for AT&T to fulfill their long ignored promise to bring data tethering to the iPhone in the United States: the MyWi App will turn your iPhone into a wireless 3G modem right now.

The app costs $10 on jailbroken iPhones and it looks pretty simple: you just launch the MyWi app, flip the “WiFi Tethering” switch to “On” and then you can connect any WiFi-capable device to your iPhone.

This would be a great way to make your iPad WiFi 3G capable while saving yourself $130 bucks. If you want to try MyWi, you can grab it now through Cydia.

[via Gadget Lab]

Apple’s iPad might have sold one million units in just a month, but that’s not impressing Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who thinks that the iPad’s touch-only input approach will ultimately lose to pen-based tablets… at least with students:

“Microsoft has a lot of different tablet projects that we’re pursuing. We think that work with the pen that Microsoft pioneered will become a mainstream for students. It can give you a device that you can not only read, but also create documents at the same time.

While I agree there’s a place for styluses with tablet computers (and, in fact, wish Apple would officially release a pressure-sensitive one for use with the iPad), Jobs is ultimately right: if uses have to reach for a stylus then a touchscreen device is a failure. I don’t think that changes whether you’re a casual user or a student.

The real reason Gates is saying styluyses are necessary for touchscreen devices has more to do with the fact that Windows 7, the operating system Microsoft would like tablets to run, was designed with mouse input in mind. A stylus does a better job at simulating a mouse than a finger, and Windows 7’s stylus support is more robust than its hatchet job multitouch. I wonder if Gates will change his tune when Windows 7 catches up with the iPhone OS, at least when it comes to touch.

Unlimited wireless data plans usually have invisible quotes around them. Although you’d be forgiven if, like Noah Webster, you thought that “unlimited” meant “not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity or extent,” mobile carriers usually define it as meaning less than 5GB of data per month. Does AT&T’s unlimited iPad 3G data plan have a similarly illogical definition of “unlimited?”

Not so far, according to Zach Epstein over at Know Your Cell. He’s pumped 31GB of data over AT&T’s network over the past few days, trying to see at what point Ma Bell will cut him off. They haven’t yet.

“If I can hit 100GB without being shut off by AT&T, I think it will be safe to say that users can consider the $29.99 iPad data plan to be “unlimited”. Considering I’m currently at six times the 5GB soft cap placed on smartphone data plans after just two days of usage, things are looking good,” writes Epstein.

I don’t know about that: it’s just this sort of data usage that is going to cause AT&T to clamp down on their iPad data plan. Still, for now, at least, rest assured that your iPad 3G can be used to pump a truly sick volume of data.

Dropbox, the indispensable document syncing app for the Mac, PC and iPhone, has now come to the iPad, thanks to an update that makes the program universal across all iDevices.

Don’t expect anything different: all the core functionality is the same, including the ability to access, edit, sync, download, upload and share files with others through Dropbox. The iPad version does look better than the iPhone app, though, and comes with a useful dual-pane mode.

If you’re a Dropbox user, you can grab Dropbox for iPad now for free over on iTunes.

[via Gizmodo]

China’s government has finally approved the sale of iPhones with Wi-Fi, removing one of the last barriers for Apple to fully introduce the handset to one of the world’s largest mobile populations. Until now, Apple’s exclusive carrier in the country, China Unicom, could only offer the iPhone 3GS with WAPI, a homegrown version of Wi-Fi approved by the government.

The official announcement comes after the CEO of one mobile carrier said in March the iPhone would gain Wi-Fi in the near future.

Reversing their long-embraced policy of buying other companies rarely, Apple’s been on a shopping spree the past six months with the acquisition of Quattro Wireless, Lala, Intrinsity and Siri. What’s behind it?

Bloomberg has an interesting overview of Apple’s evolving acquisition strategy. What it comes down to, at the end of the day? Staying ahead of Google in the mobile space.

According to analyst Brian Marshall, Apple “learned a good lesson with AdMob.” Apple let the acquisition process linger too long, allowing Google to outbid them. Instead, they had to settle for “second-fiddle Quattro.”

It’s not new that international data plans are pecuniary disembowleings, so it’s natural that AT&T’s official pricing for the iPad would be for the sadomasochistic only. Expect to spend as much as $200 a month for a slice of bandwidth exceeded by many App Store video games, or just a couple of downloaded iTunes albums.

According to the Wall Street Journal, industry insiders are predicting that Apple will cave on the terms of the iPhone 4.0 SDK rather than be dragged into an antitrust battle over them.

Happy Sex with Maryline, a sexuality coaching and education guide for adults from La Roche Communication hit the iTunes App Store Tuesday, intimating a new, more comfortable, perhaps an even more mature approach to Apple’s understanding of the relationship between the iPhone and Sex.

After nearly two years of sophomoric inconsistency regulating which kinds of sexually charged material could legally be powered by its iPhone OS, Apple seems prepared to grow beyond the “Whose Boobs” era into one in which iPhone users might legitimately ask, “is that a sex coach in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?”

At a posh dinner party, Steve Jobs eats a plate of raw vegetables with a blonde bombshell sitting on his knee. Instead of going to Macworld and plugging the Mac, he’s too busy partying with Tina the nymphette.

Part 13 of Macworld founder David Bunnell’s personal history of the first Mac: “My Close Encounters With Steve Jobs.”

Picture copyright CNN

This weekend market the White House Correspondents Association, an annual black tie dinner when a large number of political insiders gather to smile politely while a washed-up comic offers up lame impressions of Jimmy Carter. (With the lone exception being that time that Stephen Colbert shot everybody in the face)

During the dreaded run-up to Jay Leno’s observations about the foibles of modern life, CNN’s Ed Henry convinced First Lady Michelle Obama to send her first-ever Tweet from his iPhone. Except she couldn’t — because she had no idea how to type on it.

“How do you type on this?” she asked, before handing the phone back to Henry and dictating the highly inoffensive “from flotus: ‘here at dinner this is officially my first Tweet. i am looking forward to some good laughs from the potus and jay'”.

There you have it. No word on whether Steve Jobs is sending the White House the entire collection of “This is how you…” ads from when the iPhone was first introduced.

CNN via The Awl

Yes, we have an official replacement for the MacQuarium as the best use for a 25-year-old Mac: Cut a slot into it so it can serve as the ultimate past-meets-future iPad stand. Great work from Flickr user Mapgoblin, though you might want to consider washing the front of your old Mac if you decide to emulate him.

(And yes, I know the photographer thought it was a Mac Plus — I’m pretty sure it’s actually a 512k Fat Mac)

Flickr via Unpluggd and TUAW