Hasta La Gadget!

Let’s take a second to reflect upon how far we’ve come, from phone owners without the near-decade-old service that people don’t really use that much, to people with it. That far! In other, slightly more scheduled iPhone news: some apps!

12Mail: MMS has only been working on the iPhone for what, four hours? So, uh, here’s an alternative! 12Mail sends short—12 second, to be exact—video messages to your Twitter or Facebook account instantly, and for free. And if you designate a recipient who also has 12Mail, they get a push notification for you message. In other words, it can behave exactly like an MMS, except without using any of your monthly allotment.

Cinq: You can access your entire Mac photo library with your iPhone over the air, sort of like with Simplify’s nearly identical photo sharing app. A couple things: Cinq’s take on the concept seems to work slightly more smoothly, and it costs one third as much, at a dollar.

Proloquo2go: It’s a little outside our normal app beat, but hey! Covering this feels good, OK? Proloquo2go is a step beyond a text-to-speech app, with a massive library of symbols and photos to allow people who have trouble speaking to communicate more easily. Three reasons this matters: It has the potential to truly help people; it’s getting rave reviews from folks who are familiar with similar tech; and even at $190, it costs less than similar dedicated devices, which can reach into the thousands. Neat stuff, to be sure. [via Technabob]

Pocket Sherpa: A wonderful concept that could do with some (read: a lot) of refinement, Pocket Sherpa combines all kinds of—mostly crowdsourced—travel data for virtually any destination in the world. It’s an accompaniment to the Localyte site, which has accumulated thousands of local volunteers, many of whom will answer individual questions sent through the app, for free.

PilotFAR: As you probably know, and Wilson made abundantly clear, the FAA’s rules about how you can use gadgets on planes are labyrinthine and frustrating. The $7 PilotFAR app might be overkill if all you want to do is harass an overzealous flight attendant with some FAA rule disputes, but then again, after reading everyone’s comments on the matter, maybe not. Oh, and all you aviators out there: This clever little app covers way, way more than onboard gadgetry—it’s a full reg book.

Dear Best Camera,
You have a stupid name, and the self-promoting captions you put on uploaded photos are annoying. But! Your filters are genuinely good, and the ability to properly layer effects turns out some fantastic imagery.

I wish you weren’t three dollars.

Love Sincerely,
John xoxo

Hava Player: Sling act-alike Hava is matching their main competitor on another point—they’ve just released an iPhone client, which controls and streams from your DVR, through a Hava box, over Wi-Fi. Feature for feature it matches up well against Sling’s offering, and it totally wins on price: It’s $10 to Sling’s $30.

This Week’s App News on Giz:

• TomTom iPhone Car Kit Priced at $120, Available October

• Bravo Gustavo iPhone App: Conductor’s Baton Hero?

• iPhone Navigation App Battlemodo, Part II: The Best Cheap GPS App

• FoodScanner iPhone App Knows Exactly How Disgusting Your Diet Is

• Pizza Hut Rewards Laziness by Giving 20% Off to iPhone App Orders

• TI Turns $30 Calculator Into $15 iPhone App, Swears People Still Pay for Real Deal

• Griffin’s iTrip FM Transmitter: Hardware Controlled Through an iPhone App

• McSweeney’s iPhone App Delivers Exclusive Content Weekly

• At Gizmodo Gallery ’09: Ghostly Discovery Listening Station

• Apple Approved Almost 1400 iPhone Apps Last Friday…Fourteen Freaking Hundred

• Apple Finally Makes an Honest App Out of Snapture

• Trope, the New Brian Eno iPhone App, Is the True Followup to Bloom

This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory. Have a great weekend, everybody!

It might not look like much — in fact, we’re not sure what it’s trying to look like — but that there is what Freecom purports to be the world’s first SuperSpeed USB 3.0 hard drive. Dubbed the Hard Drive XS 3.0, the drive will be available mid-November in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB sizes, with a surprisingly accessible starting price of 119 Euro (about $175 US). Of course, it takes more than just a speedy cable to up hard drive speeds, but we’d say 130MB/s ain’t a bad start. The drive can handle AES 256 bit encryption, is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, and the fanless, rubber-clad enclosure weighs in at 1.9 pounds.

[Via PCLaunches]

Filed under: Storage

Freecom announces world’s first USB 3.0 hard drive, the XS 3.0 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Sony delivered unto the Gadget Lab a new PSPgo. And while we promised Sony we wouldn’t tell you our opinion of the device just yet, we can show you these pics — almost a dozen of them — of the newest PlayStation portable as it looks coming out of the box.

Scope out these delightful naked PSPgo images by Wired.com’s jolly photo editor Jim Merithew.

UPDATE 9/28/2009: Wired’s review of the PSPgo finds it’s cute, playable, but pricey and likely to disappoint seasoned PSP gamers. Read more. Also, check out photos from iFixit’s teardown of the PSPgo.

What time is it? Time to upgrade your PSP. In this ménage à trois, the original Sony PSP is on top and the PSP Slim is on the bottom, with the PSPgo in the middle.

Just like a parking meter, the PSPgo is big on change.

A side view.

Close up of the controls on the right hand side.

The Pre’s proven to be an eminently hackable platform pretty much from day one, and given that, it stands to reason that major “missing” features are going to either be added in the hard way or a few good programmers are going to die trying. The virtual keyboard developments are seen as a big win for users, and next up is true video recording — something inexplicably missing from the device considering its ample (well, theoretically ample) processing power. Work on homebrew recording tools seems to be moving along nicely, with some open-source tools already available — so far, they’re apparently able to push it to 480 x 320 at 30fps, but it comes out encoded strangely and doesn’t resemble anything your average end user would want to be dealing with. That’s where Palm hopefully comes in with a future webOS update, but for now, at least we’re able to play around. Follow the break for video of the hack in action.

[Via PreCentral]

Continue reading Video recording hacks for the Pre making nice progress

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Video

Video recording hacks for the Pre making nice progress originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 16:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you needed another reason to frown upon the state of the North American wireless industry, allow us to go ahead and turn your attention to Exhibit A here. What you’re looking at is some promotional material backing up earlier rumors that the HD2 / Leo is en route to O2 in the UK, but what’s especially upsetting (though not terribly surprising) is the knowledge that customers will be able to scoop up HTC’s new ultra-high-end WinMo beast for zilch on an O2 1200 tariff — a plan that runs something like £45 (about $72) a month. Oh, and that’s on an 18-month contract, not 24. Meanwhile, we’ll be lucky to ever see the Leo land in its natural, original, HTC-approved state on a carrier at any price in the US, but hey, at least we’ve still got some more Touch Pro2 launches to look forward to, right?

[Thanks, anonymous tipster]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC Leo looking confirmed for O2 UK debut, will be free on the right plan originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments