Category: I-phone

It’s time to get your plastic out, and your game face on as Black Friday is almost here. The busiest shopping day in the year is two days away, and we have singled out five apps that’ll help you find the best deals.

Black Friday from DealNews (Free)

When it’s not Black Friday, DealNews is one of the best websites for finding deals on everything from clothes to cameras. On Black Friday, though, DealNews has one of the best apps to track individual deals as they are announced. Besides deals, the app also lets you add deals to a shopping list, search for specific products and even pull up online deals from a retailer’s website. The best non-deal feature is the app’s ability to find local stores so you’ll know where to go when that HDTV hits a rock bottom price at Best Buy. Be sure to watch TUAW’s Steve Sande interview Dan de Granpre from DealNews on today’s episode of TUAW TV Live.

TGI Black Friday (Free)

TGI Black Friday is an app that focuses more on the ad scans from Black Friday promotions than individual deals like its DealNews rival. Each retailer’s ad is scanned and available as a downloadable PDF. You can view sale items on a store-by-store basis or by browsing through categories. You can also search for items and save them to a shopping list. When you are done, you can email your shopping list to you or a loved one. You can also share the deals on Facebook or Twitter.

Road Tripper (Free; US$1.99 ad-free)

Road Tripper is a basic route planning app. It lets you add multiple points onto a map and save the route between them. It’ll let you add all your shopping destinations, so you can plan the best way to travel from the mall to Target and then to L.L. Bean. Once your route is planned, you can print your map or send it via email. You can also share it on Facebook. The app is available for free, but includes advertisements. A US$1.99 in-app purchase will remove these ads.

Google Shopper (Free)

An essential part of shopping on Black Friday is making sure you get the best deal. Even if you have planned every last detail of your shopping trip, you will inevitably stumble upon an item that you want, but did not know was on sale. To make sure you get the best deal, you should use Google shopper to check prices at competing retailers. The app lets you scan or photograph your sales item and pulls down pricing information from Google’s online shopping search engine.

Your Favorite Retailer’s App (Free)

Most major retailers have an iOS app that’ll let you find sales information, store locations and inventory. Most apps will let you make purchases that can either be shipped to your doorstep or held at your local store. Before you start shopping on Friday, you should fill your phone with the app from your favorite retailers. Stores like Best Buy, Target and Walmart are some of the top choices for Black Friday shoppers. Apple also has an app that’ll let you browse its Black Friday sales, place online orders and arrange for in-store pick up. It will even let you checkout on your own when you are in a busy retail store.

5 apps for Black Friday originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Most parents want to keep a close eye on their baby, especially when he or she is sleeping in their room down the hall. Rather than check obsessively, which is what I did when I had my first baby, products like the WiFi Baby 3G let you easily watch your child from afar. Best of all, you can see and hear them without stumbling into their room and accidentally waking them up.

The WiFi Baby 3G is a small color and infrared camera housed in an attractive white or black shell. The camera comes with a mounting bracket that lets you attach it to a wall or a stand. The camera has a solid square body with an antenna that is enclosed in thick plastic. It definitely can sustain a fall without breaking. The front of the camera has a color camera, a cluster of IR sensors, a microphone, a power indicator and a light sensor that’ll switch the camera from color view to infrared view. It’s made by Y-cam and is a quality camera.

Unlike most baby monitors which send audio over the same 900MHz bandwidth used by cordless phones, the WiFi Baby works over your home WiFi network. To set it up wirelessly, you must first connect it to your router using a network cable and use the included software to setup the IP address, camera login credentials and other initial features. The setup is extremely easy, and there’s an excellent customer support option that’ll walk you through the process one step at a time. If you still have problems, a customer service rep can even connect to your computer using a screen sharing tool and set it up while you watch.

If you have a plug-n-play UPnP router, the WiFi Baby 3G will be configured for outside access, which lets you view the camera stream using your cell phone’s 3G connection. If you don’t have UPnP, you will have to configure port routing manually on your router. I tested the WiFi baby remotely, and the video streamed nicely. There was some lag, but it’s not really noticeable until someone starts moving the monitor at home. One nice feature is the time and date stamp on the video. This is fed from the baby monitor and is included to let you know the monitor is still working.

The WiFi Baby 3G has lots of viewing options for parents that stay at home and for those on the go. There’s a viewer for the Mac, the PC, iOS and Android devices. I tested both the iOS app and the Mac app; both worked extremely well. On first launch, both apps will scan the network for the camera and pull down the IP address. You will have to enter your username and password to connect to the camera and receive the audio and video stream. These settings are then saved for future use.

The iOS app works on the iPhone and the iPad and lets you watch video and listen to audio on your device. In normal view, the video stream appears in a box at the top of the screen, and the audio levels are below. You can tap the video feed or the audio to mute it and then tap it again to turn it back on. The app has lots of settings to change what you see. You can customize the audio to display either a 5, 10 or 20 minute history or set up alerts for when the baby starts to cry. You can also change the appearance of the app by selecting a pink, blue or night theme.

The Mac app is very different from the iOS app. It’s from Y-Cam and is general surveillance app. It’s not as pretty as the iOS version, but it has several features the iOS version lacks. Because it’s a desktop app, the video window is much larger, and the audio is much louder. The video clarity is a bit grainy when you are viewing it at this larger resolution. It’s still viewable, just not as nice as the iOS app. With one click, you can record a video stream or take a snapshot which is saved to the hard drive. The app even supports more than one camera feed. We tested it with only one WiFi Baby 3G, but you could use it with several more if you wanted.

The WiFi Baby produces a clear video stream and loud audio. It’s great as a color camera and even better in night mode. The video at night is nice and bright, and lets you see your little one while he or she sleeps. If you position it correctly, you can even see your baby breathe. It’s a real pleasure to use a camera that doesn’t cut costs by making it pretty on the outside and then slapping in a low-quality lens and sensor. You can tell from the moment you turn it on; the WiFi Baby is built from the ground up to be an exceptional surveillance camera.

Speaking of the position, that’s my only complaint about this monitoring solution. Unlike the rival iBaby monitor which moves, the WiFi baby is stationary. You can use the mount to get the right angle, but once it’s set, the WiFi baby can’t be changed remotely. You can’t pan it left or right or scan up or down using your iPhone or computer.

This isn’t a big deal if you are watching a baby that’s sleeping, but it could be a problem if you are trying to follow a toddler playing in his room. The camera partially makes up for its fixed position with a lens that captures a wide part of the room. I set it up in the boy’s room, and I was able to see about 75% of the space. It was only the extreme left and the extreme right that I could not see. If you don’t mind this limitation, then the WiFi Baby is an excellent choice for a video-enabled baby monitor. The audio and video are excellent, and, best of all, it’s easy to configure and use.

You can read about the WiFi Baby 3G and watch some demo videos on WiFi Baby’s website. There’s also an unboxing and setup video from WiFi baby embedded below. The wireless monitor costs US$279 and is available from WiFi Baby’s online store.

WiFi Baby 3G baby monitor: Watching your baby from afar originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many TUAW readers may be exercising their credit cards in preparation for Black Friday, and on today’s edition of TUAW TV Live, I’ll be talking to Dan de Grandpre of Dealnews.com about many of the deals that Apple fans can find during the annual holiday shopping frenzy.

Since last week, I’ve also done enough hands-on time with a Kindle Fire tablet to do a really good side-by-side comparison of the two devices. I’ll be taking your online questions and responding to your comments in the chat as I demonstrate the good and bad points of this $199 tablet.

As usual, I’ll be starting the show at 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT / 10 PM BST) sharp, and we’ll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you’re unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel.

The chat is now available as well on IRC: join us on server chat1.ustream.tv, chat room #tuaw-tv.

TUAW TV Live at 5 PM: Hot deals from Dealnews and a Fire smackdown originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cruise lines are always trying to outdo each other on the amenities that they offer to guests. For example, on a cruise I took in September, our large suite not only had a walk-in closet, but came with a laptop and a butler for our use. Of course, I didn’t use the crappy HP laptop because I had my Apple devices with me, but it’s the thought that counts. Now a major cruise line is equipping every stateroom on a ship with an iPad.

Royal Caribbean’s 2,074-passenger Splendour of the Seas is currently in dry dock being refurbished, and one of the new additions to the ship will be an iPad for every stateroom. The idea is to give guests a new way to get information. The daily Cruise Compass newsletter will be accessible from the iPad, providing a list of events and activities, personal daily itineraries, and shore excursions. Guests can also watch movies or surf the Internet. Want to look at a restaurant menu or check your ever-growing bar tab? There’s an iPad for that.

Guests will be able to take the iPads around the ship, accessing information from staterooms and any location with a good connection to the ship-wide Wi-Fi network. How Royal Caribbean plans on keeping the iPads from going home with the passengers is a question that needs to be answered. I’m guessing that each device will be outfitted with an RFID tag to keep it from going ashore with guests.

Splendour’s sister ships in the Vision class — Vision, Grandeur, Rhapsody, Enchantment, and Legend of the Seas — are expected to take on iPads as regular travelers as they also go through renovations over the next two years.

Cruise line to offer an iPad in every stateroom originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

I currently provide remote support for my mother-in-law’s 15 year old PC, frequently using TeamViewer to watch what she is doing rather than try to decipher garbled descriptions of what the screen is showing.

This Xmas we are planning to buy her an iPad and so I wonder if there is an equivalent program that will allow me to continue supporting her and retain my sanity.

Your loving nephew,

Dave A

Dear Dave,

There are similar apps, but they aren’t remote and only offered on jailbroken systems — not a good match to your MIL’s needs.

On the other hand, most cats can operate an iPad. I’m pretty sure your MIL is smarter than a cat.

Hugs,

Auntie T.

Dear Auntie,

My MIL is smarter than a cat but most cats do not insist that she is incapable of learning something new ;-). We shall see.

Love,

Dave

Dear Dave,

You cannot solve relationship problems with technology.

Your devoted,

Auntie

Auntie,

Indeed, although the iPad has broken through my wife’s resistance on the subject, I now have to ask permission to use it. Just hoping it does the same with MIL.

Hugs,

Dave

Dear Aunt TUAW: Help me support my mother-in-law’s iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 10:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The owner of several porn related iPhone domain names has agreed to give the domain names to Apple after a complaint was filed.

The seven domain names are:

iphonecamforce.com
iphonecam4s.com
iphoneporn4s.com
iphonesex4s.com
iphonexxxforce.com
iphone4s.com
porn4iphones.com

As of this posting the names are still pointing to porn sites so hopefully Apple will get the DNS updated ASAP if they have not already.

Source: Apple gets control over porn domain names

In this article we present the most popular job sites for designers and developers

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If you’re an iPad fan and a foodie, chances are that you have more than a few of the great iPad cooking apps. With the holidays coming up, it’s also likely you’re going to be spending more time in the kitchen than usual. If you like combining your iPad with your culinary skills, I highly recommend taking a look at the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus for iPad.

The Chef Stand is a simple device that lets you use your iPad without fear of getting the ingredients from that latest batch of cookies all over it. The stand props up your iPad at an 80 degree or 45 degree angle — whichever is more comfortable to you. Using the included capacitive stylus you can safely interact with the iPad’s touchscreen even if your hands are covered in flour. What’s especially nice is the stylus comes with its own holder, so you can put it down and not get ingredients all over it. Another great thing about the stylus is that it has a magnetic tip. This means you can use it to wake your iPad from sleep without using your fingers.

The Chef Stand also features a tough rubber, non-slip base so your iPad won’t go sliding across your counter when you prod it with the stylus. But the thing chefs might like the most is that all three accessories – the stand, the stylus, and the stylus holder – are hard washable with warm, soapy water. Of course, that does mean you have one more thing to clean in the kitchen, but if it keeps your iPad from getting covered in egg yolk and sugar, it’ something I’m sure most people won’t mind doing.

The Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus for iPad costs US$29.99 through Belkin.com and on Amazon. It’s also available through retailers like Target and Apple stores.

Get (holiday) cooking with the Belkin Chef Stand + Stylus for iPad originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Garmin has an innovative way to help you beat the holiday traffic. It’s the StreetPilot USA Onboard app update, released today, and it includes an option for an in-app purchase of traffic camera images from any of 10,000 cameras across the US and Canada. The option will cost US $9.95 per year.

Garmin is also reducing the cost of the app 50% this Friday only, making it a $24.99 purchase. The updated app also adds some nice freebies, like additional weather information, and a 5 day forecast for your current location and destination. The points of interest search function now auto-completes,which makes finding a destination faster. The app also allows you to see user contributed photos taken at points of interest, and to submit your own to share with other StreetPilot users.

StreetPilot Onboard keeps all its maps on your device (hence the ‘Onboard’ in the name) which is the preferred way to navigate if you’re in an area with weak or no cellular data service.

The Garmin app also includes 3D buildings, a trip planner and a ‘Where Am I?’ safety feature to let a towing service or ambulance know exactly where you are.

The Garmin app requires iOS 4.0 or greater.

Check the gallery for some screenshots of these new features.

Garmin offers real-time traffic cam photos and a bargain price for StreetPilot Onboard app originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This one kind of came out of left field — there isn’t really any reason for Chillingo to release a Superman game, especially one created by Flash developer Tiger Games. Superman games in general don’t usually work well anyway: How exactly do you put a challenge on pretending to be the Man of Steel himself? But this one works because it stays simple — you control the big blue boy scout running around Metropolis, and perform various tasks, like stopping robbers, killing big robots, or smashing asteroids or missles as they threaten the city.

Most of the gameplay simply consists of flying around, and this is where Tiger Games gets it right — Metropolis is a nice big 2D world to explore, and arrows on the screen will quickly directly you where Superman needs to go. There’s a not-bad storyline propping the whole thing up, but let’s be honest, this is superhero fantasy. You really just want to jump in as Superman and blast some robots with your eye lasers. The game’s not bad at all, and for a Superman game, given the IP’s history, that’s enough.

The iPhone version is available for just 99 cents, or you can pick up an HD version for iPad for $2.99.

Daily iPhone App: Superman originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bloomberg reports that Apple has allowed Big Fish Games to begin offering its games in a subscription-based model. For US$6.99 per month, iPad users will have access to Big Fish Games’ entire library of iPad games.

Subscription models have already been introduced for newspapers and magazines sold in the App Store, and Netflix is a prime example of how the subscription model can succeed for movies. According to Big Fish, it took some extra arm-twisting to convince Apple to allow the subscription model for Big Fish’s games.

Big Fish Games will also offer free, ad-supported access to its game library for thirty minutes per day. As an alternative, users can sign up for all-you-can-eat access at an initial cost of $4.99 per month, which will increase to $6.99 per month next year after Big Fish adds more titles. (As always, Apple will collect its 30 percent commission on subscription sales.) The company also plans to expand its subscription services to the Android platform early next year.

Games played through the subscription service will be streamed to users’ iPads rather than downloaded in their entirety, and as such the service will initially work only over Wi-Fi.

This is an interesting move on Big Fish Games’ part, and it will be fascinating to see whether this experiment with subscription-based gaming is successful or not. I imagine other gaming companies, particularly the bigger houses like EA and Gameloft, are going to be watching developments in this space very closely.

Apple allows subscription-based iPad gaming for the first time originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“Can I use your computer real quick?”

Depending on who asks you this question over the next week, reactions may range from nothing to frantic flailing toward your machine to see if you can make it do something that looks like it is unusable, getting you out of having to relinquish it to a family member with a checkered techno-past. Since you’ve already done the basics to protect your Mac, like set a screensaver password, what else can you do to family-proof your machine?

Luckily, a small bit of prep work can make this question easy to answer. All you have to do is whip up a guest account on your system. Guest accounts are perfect because logging in as a guest user limits the amount of damage that can be inflicted on your system to virtually nothing. Guest users can’t change other user accounts or system settings and have no remote access. If you really want to ratchet things down, you can also use Parental Controls to limit the apps a guest account can use, or filter internet content.

While all of that is nice, one of the most important differences between a guest account and a regular account is files: Any files created or downloaded by a guest account are deleted on logout, so every time you log in as a guest user it always looks like nobody has ever logged in before.

If this sounds like the way to go for you, and you’re running 10.5 or higher, here’s how to create a guest account:

• Go to System Preferences and select Users and Groups (10.7) or Accounts (10.5 or 10.6).
• In that panel, click on the Guest User, and check “Allow guests to log in to this computer.”

That’s it! No really! All you have to do is determine whether you want to turn on Parental Controls or allow the guest account to connect to shared folders, and you’re done. Now your Mac is ready for whatever your visitors can throw at it.

Mac 101: Create a guest account originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MacTech magazine is the go-to resource for Apple techs and admins, developers and IT pros. Neil Ticktin and Ed Marczak put together a tremendous publication, and we’re happy to let you know about a special holiday offer for TUAW readers.

Follow this link to sign up, and the first 100 readers to apply get a free six-month subscription to MacTech. Don’t worry if you aren’t among the early birds; subsequent entries merit a free single copy of the magazine. Supplies are limited, and the offer is only good through Monday.

We are happy to be among the media sponsors for the recent MacTech Conference and the upcoming MacTech InDepth: Mobile Device Management and MacTech Boot Camp.

The fine print: Offer only available while supply is available and cannot be combined with other offers. Supplies are limited, and offer may terminate early if supplies are exhausted. Offer only valid for U.S. delivery addresses, and not valid for current subscribers. MacTech is not responsible for typographical errors. MacTech is a registered trademark of Xplain Corporation.

This offer is wholly controlled by MacTech and TUAW/AOL Weblogs is not responsible for fulfillment or management in any way.

Black Friday offer: Free MacTech subscriptions for 100 readers originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re a Gmail user who leverages more than the simple mail potential of Google’s email service, you’ll know how valuable labels, stars and other organizational features are.

Trouble is, to take advantage of them you normally have to resort to using the Gmail web app in its various guises, or an app like Sparrow Mail. Starring emails and threads is particularly useful if you don’t have time to process the information there and then, but don’t want the email to get lost in the sea of your incoming email. A simple little menu bar application, Starred, makes using stars in Gmail even more useful.

The tiny little app sits in your menu bar as a star with a counter. The counter tells you how many starred emails you have currently in your account. Clicking on the icon spits out a drop-down menu that gives you the subjects and senders, as well as the first line of the starred emails.

Click on the snippets and you’re presented with a plain text pop-up of the email, allowing you to read and deal with the emails without having to open up your email client or the Gmail web app. The only thing that it’s currently missing is the ability to remove stars directly from the app — for now you have to head into the Gmail web app to do that.

Starred is a nice and simple, free app that should fit into your workflow nicely if you’re a hardcore Gmail user and don’t already use something like Sparrow Mail or Mailplane on your Mac. If you star things for later, give Starred a whirl.

Daily Mac App: Starred originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Earlier my colleague Steve wrote about the US$249 Photojojo iPhone Lens Dial, an iPhone accessory that gives iPhone photographers access to an array of three camera lenses on rotating dial. For those of you who like the ability to add lenses to your iPhone, but don’t like the $249 price, I recommend the Olloclip, a $69 slip on 3-in-1 lens for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S.

The Olloclip started off as a Kickstarter project and went on sale in May. The body of the Olloclip is made of anodized aircraft grade aluminum and it comes in two colors, red or black. On the front end of the Olloclip is the fish eye lens, which gives you a 180-degree field of view. The rear of the Olloclip houses the wide angle lens, which gives you a greater field of view than what your iPhone 4/4S camera would normally have. You can unscrew the wide angle lens to access the macro lens that gives you about ten times the magnification of the subject of your shot within 12-15mm.

To use the Olloclip, simply slip it onto the end of your iPhone, over the iPhone’s camera. The notch in the Olloclip is made of plastic so you don’t need to worry about it scratching the glass front or back of your iPhone 4 and 4S. The Olloclip’s entire 3-in-1 lens solution is quite small, which is nice when traveling. It easily fits into your pants or shirt pocket. The Olloclip also comes with a small, draw-string bag/case made of microfiber material that also doubles as a lens cleaner.

The Olloclip’s primary difference from the pricier Photojojo iPhone Lens Dial is that it comes with a macro lens instead of a telephoto lens. However, if macro shots are more important to you than telephoto shots, the Olloclip is a terrific choice for photographers who want to get more out of their iPhone4/4S camera. The quality of its construction, size, and features can’t be beat for the price. You can order the Olloclip from Amazon or directly from the company’s website.

The Olloclip 3-in-1 iPhone camera attachment: a cool iPhoneography accessory originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Tue, 22 Nov 2011 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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