Category: I-phone

When fellow TUAW blogger Dave Caolo teased you with the news of Twelve South releasing the US$69.99 BookBook cover for iPad, you knew that a review and giveaway couldn’t be far behind. We’re happy to say that you’ll have a chance to win one of these beautiful iPad covers. But first, let’s give the BookBook for iPad a test flight.

It’s rather ironic that the sleek glass and aluminum iPad is inspiring a lot of old-school cases. The first out the door was the Dodo Case, a leather-bound tome that resembles a Moleskine in more ways than one. It has a hand-carved bamboo interior shell to hold the iPad in place, and an elastic band holds the cover closed when the iPad is not in use. These $59.95 cases have resulted in a resurgence in the book binding trade in San Francisco, and there’s a long waiting list for them. Minneapolis-based Pad&Quill also has a similar case called “The Case, Vol. 1” with a hand-carved birch interior lining.

The Dodo Case has spawned a host of imitators, including a number of blog posts from people who are creating their own Moleskine-type iPad cases by hand. A lot of iPad owners, however, were waiting to see what Twelve South would do for the iPad. This, after all, is the company that started the whole retro case market with the BookBook for MacBook Pro. Well, the wait is over, and now Twelve South is shipping their beautiful distressed leather book binding case for the iPad.

TUAWTUAW review and giveaway: Twelve South BookBook for iPad originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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How we love the ingenuity of Apple fans. This enterprising musician took some scissors and a roll of oh-so-useful duct tape to an iPhone 4 box to create the awesome guitar cam you see above.

Inside the iPhone 4 box is a section of plastic that separates the phone from the accessories. There’s a hole in the center that allows a small tab to peek through. Gleeful new owners pull that tab to remove the booklet and get at the headphones, USB cable and wall adapter.

Our musician friend took that piece and cut it flat on the bottom and removed the top to make room for the iPhone’s display. He then duct tape’d the daylights out of it to mount it to his guitar’s head. The result can be seen above: a rock-steady guitar cam that stares down the neck.

Well done! We love it.

Thanks, Dylan!

TUAWFound Footage: DIY iPhone 4 guitar cam originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I really do love the look of moleskine books. When you’ve got a well-worn leather moleskine book, bursting with notes and bookmarks, you sort of feel like you’re holding onto the long lost notes of Dr. Henry Jones Sr. on the whereabouts of the Holy Grail. No? Just me?

If you’re completely nuts about all things moleskine, there’s a new iPhone case that should be right up your alley. As seen pictured, the case looks like a hollowed-out moleskine book that fits your iPhone, complete with traditional elastic band. In essence, the iPhone replaces what would be oh-so-passe paper. Finally, a classy way to hide your cell in your cell during prison guard shakedowns.

[via The Daily What]

TUAWMoleskine case hides your iPhone, prison-style originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As we said last year, long before the iPad became public, whichever ebook manufacturer nails the textbook market will have a distinct and serious advantage. Inkling (free) represents a huge step forward. It’s a “textbook platform” for the iPad that uses social connectivity and the features of the iOS in a unique and interesting way.

Once you’ve created a profile,* the app will load The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. as demo content. Inkling calls pages “Cards,” and you can jump to any one easily, either by swiping, entering a number or dragging across the digital “spine.”

A unique feature lets you highlight text and create notes which can be shared over the air with fellow students or teachers. Once a note is displayed on another person’s iPad, s/he can respond to the note’s author.

There are a number of books available and we assume there are more to come. Check it out for yourself and explore the demo content. We’ll have a full exploration of this interesting app soon.

[Via Daring Fireball]

*You must tell Inkling which college or university you attend. If you’re not in school, leave that field blank to receive only the demo content (no Inkling store).

TUAWTextbooks for iPad progress with Inkling originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TUAWTUAW’s Daily App: Plates! originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 23 Aug 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has pushed an update for its Google Mobile App for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch which brings push notifications for Gmail and Google Calendar. The updated app also features suggestions for search.

New In Version 0.6.0.4416

• Push notifications for Gmail and Calendar.

With the updated app, an icon badge displaying a message appears on your home screen as soon as you receive a new mail along with calendar event reminders.

You can download Google Mobile App for iPhone from the App Store for Free! [iTunes Link]

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It’s the dream of pretty much everyone who has worked on an app to get an app featured by Apple.  By now I’m sure we’ve all heard the stories of ridiculous profits that can be earned within a few days.

Now the problem is, how does Apple choose which apps are featured?  I’ve seen absolute junk get featured in the Canadian app store while some brilliant apps seem to get glanced over.  So unfortunately,  no matter what luck definitely seems to be the biggest factor in the formula for getting your apps featured in the magic formula.

All that being said I read an interesting article from one developer who was able to get their app featured by Apple, a game known as Alienz which was able to reach the top 100 strategy and arcade game categories of the app store earning them nearly $2k in a week.

Here’s a quick summary of the formula they came up with:

1. Presentation – Definitely looks are the most important factor that you can actually control.
2. Uniqueness – The author emphasizes this, and it seems to be a factor, but I have seen a lot of rehashed stuff get featured so I’m not too sure about this one.
3. Time of release – Interesting stuff here.. definitely seems like on some days Apple has slimmer pickings on some days as opposed to others.  Their suggestion is not to get your app listed right after the weekend if you want to get featured.
4. Make The App Paid – According to the author Apple typically only features free apps by big publishers.
5. Get Mentioned By The Big Sites – Apple seems to favor apps featured on big sites by Engadget (I would say though that these are usually only quality apps anyways

Interesting stuff, and you can read the full article here.

I would say that it is 90% luck, 9% presentation, and 1% the other stuff, but definitely some things to consider.

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We’re back live tonight on Talkshoe, so call in and chat with us about the biggest Apple stories of the past week.

We’ll continue the Apple TV wishful thinking, consider the graphics optimizations brought to us by eager gamers, and mull the impact of a jailbroken iPhone on late-night TV. It’s bound to be a fun evening.

To participate on TalkShoe, you can use the browser-only client, the embedded Facebook app, or the classic TalkShoe Pro Java client; however, for maximum fun, you should call in. For the web UI, just click the “TalkShoe Web” button on our profile page at 10 pm Sunday. To call in on regular phone or VoIP lines (take advantage of your free cellphone weekend minutes if you like): dial (724) 444-7444 and enter our talkcast ID, 45077 — during the call, you can request to talk by keying in *8.

If you’ve got a headset or microphone handy on your Mac or your PC, you can connect via the free Gizmo or X-Lite SIP clients or using the Talkshoe client’s ShoePhone tool; basic instructions are here.

We’ll kick things off at 10pm ET/ 7pm PT. See you there!

TUAWTalkcast reminder: join in the fun at 10pm ET originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 20:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one: a geek leaves his phone in a bar, and… oh, you have heard that one? It turns out that Brian Lam, the Gizmodo editor involved in the iPhone 4 “bar heist” saga and one of the biggest tech scandals of 2010, left his cell phone in a restaurant the other day. How did the aftermath play out? Lam, apparently blind to the irony, posted about it on Twitter: “left my phone at lunch, lady turned it in. good thing we were nice, earlier, and gave her the chair she asked for #karma”

Lam couldn’t have been blind to the irony for long, because he’s now locked his Twitter account. And apparently, he also doesn’t understand how karma works.

This would have been real karma: the lady who found his phone would have realized what she’d got her hands on, then offered his phone to the highest-bidding (and least scrupulous) media outlet willing to pay for it.

After the transaction, whoever paid out the most for Lam’s phone would have dissected it, then posted photos and videos of the aftermath online. Next, they would have posted all of Lam’s contact info on their site, opening him to ridicule and jeopardizing his career. As a final indignity, they then would have sent a letter to Lam’s lawyer assuring that he’d get the (now broken) phone back as long as he publicly admitted it was his phone.

That would have been karma.

P.S. I know at least one person will be tempted to call me out on my use of the word “irony.” Please read this Oatmeal comic on irony first, then we’ll talk.

[via Daring Fireball]

TUAWNo fair: Gizmodo editor leaves his phone in a restaurant, gets it back right away originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no questioning that the iPhone/iPad game Angry Birds is a huge success. The company is close to seven million downloads of the game, all without any direct advertising of their own.

Now the company that developed the game, Rovio, is taking a serious look into more commercial avenues for the title, including movies. The company has already done a great job with the animation within the product, including a cinematic trailer released on YouTube (which I guess you could say is technically advertisement — check it out after the jump). But is there enough to this to make for a good story?

According to Rovio, the company has been approached by several very interested parties, including movie studios, and they’re giving all offers serious consideration. Chief exec Mikael Hed has grand ambitions to see the Angry Birds brand become much more than games, akin to Pixar with Toy Story, so games and movies would just be the tip of the iceberg.

Do you think something like Angry Birds could translate well enough to other mediums? Is there a potential story in there worth developing?

TUAWAngry Birds: The Movie? originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 22 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are a few apps that are great demos for the iPhone. Pulse News is a super RSS feed reader, iMovie always drops a few jaws, and Siri is a pretty amazing way to talk to your iPhone and get intelligent search results.

You can add Prizmo to the list of great demo apps, and it’s going to be a very useful app for a lot of people. Prizmo combines OCR (Optical Character Recognition), text to speech, and translation all in one place.

Prizmo, which sells for US $9.99, can scan business cards, books, white boards, or even receipts. It can output the text to the clipboard or email, and can even take a receipt and put it into a spreadsheet format.

If that isn’t enough, Prizmo can read the text to you with the addition of an optional text to speech module. There are 35 voices you can choose from, in ten languages. Each module is $2.99.

TUAWPrizmo is a pretty amazing iPhone app for OCR and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Doodle Jump has released a free update, available now, that not only brings out that underwater content that Igor Pusenjak promised us in that interview a little while back, but also updates the graphics on the app to take full advantage of the iPhone 4‘s Retina Display, so you can see the little doodle jumping up those platforms clearer and sharper than ever. Only three stages have been updated with Retina Display graphics so far, but Pusenjak says that “the rest of the Retina Display graphics is almost done and we’ll be releasing it soon!” The update is of course free for the game’s owners, or you can pick up the “Insanely Addictive” title for just 99 cents.

Pusenjak also told us that after the water-related content was done and out, the iPad version of the app would be next up for development, so we’ll keep an eye out for news on that soon. Good to see that just because this little game is so popular, its developers aren’t taking success lying down.

TUAWDoodle Jump gets a Retina Display update originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 21 Aug 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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One of the many beleaguered iPhone 3G owners who’ve been suffering through poor performance after updating to iOS 4 e-mailed Steve Jobs to ask when Apple will offer a solution. Jobs’s response was brief enough for us to fit the whole thing in our headline: “Software update coming soon.”

The real question here is, how soon is “soon?” Apple has been “looking into” fixing iOS 4 for iPhone 3G owners for nearly a month now. While the issues are not universal, many iPhone 3G owners have reported extreme sluggishness and crashiness that renders an iPhone 3G almost unusable after updating to iOS 4 — and the problem’s widespread enough that parody videos have been making the rounds on YouTube for months. While there have been numerous solutions offered from troubleshooters (disabling Spotlight seems to be a popular choice), these solutions haven’t worked for everyone. Although there are methods to roll an iPhone 3G’s firmware back to OS 3, the fact that Apple doesn’t officially support these methods has kept many users from taking the plunge.

Speaking from personal experience, none of the 4.1 betas restored my iPhone 3G to a pre-iOS 4 level of performance. On the other hand, after giving my wife the iPhone 3G and setting it up as a new phone (rather than restoring from backup), she hasn’t seen nearly the same level of problems I suffered through.

At the very least, the fact that Apple’s CEO has acknowledged the problem at all should come as a good sign for iPhone 3G owners. Let’s just hope that “soon” really does mean soon.

TUAWSteve Jobs: ‘Software update coming soon’ for iOS 4 on iPhone 3G originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sat, 21 Aug 2010 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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