Hasta La Gadget!

Still, with this? Well, luckily there’s plenty of other stuff to tide us over until the Google Voice fiasco resolves itself. Like zombies! And weddings, and exercise, and soundscapes, and urban art, and political activism, and jokes, and, and, and…

The Onion Microfiche Reader: It’s from the Onion, so it’s pretty much guaranteed not to be not funny, but! For all the neat microfilm-esque presentation, this thing doesn’t actually have any articles—just a bunch of those jokes-in-a-headline that the Onion is so good at. Still entertaining though. A dollar.

Foursquare: Now you can see who else is checked in at a given venue, who the current mayor is, collect nearby Tweets, and enjoy better Google Maps integration in this extremely strange, strangely popular, highly addictive territorial app. Free.

Reqall: Evernote integration. That is all. Free.

Strands: The best free exercise app for the iPhone now lets you replay your GPS-recorded running path, signals you with audio cues during exercise, includes route elevation profiles and supports in-app playlists.

Dream Day Wedding: Married in Manhattan: A fantasy wedding planner that is evidently really, really popular. Maybe because it’s fun, or maybe because it’s the easiest way to make your boyfriend super, super, super uncomfortable. Three dollars.

Alive 4-Ever: There are a surprising number of zombie survival apps in the App Store, I guess because they’re easy to make or something? I don’t know. I do know, however, that this top-down zombie slaughter is extremely fun, and only a dollar. I would pay multiple dollars, even. Like two!

Kodak Smilemaker: A charming app that adds comical smiles to your photos, or a meditation of the tragedies of birth deformities? I have no idea, but either way, its free. So.

NPR News: Sorry to keep bringing this app up, but it’s great, and the biggest issue people had with the last version—the lack of fast-forwarding and pausing—is solved in this one. Still free.

Air: Brian Eno done made another app, y’all! The last one made amazing music based (partly) on user input; this one makes amazing music based (partly) on user input, except it sounds totally different. It’s as mesmerizing as the last one, but feels fresh. 2bux.

Polyghost It took me a while to figure this one out, partly because I’d never really heard of “Vinyl art” toys before. Well, this is what they are, and like them or not, Polyghost is an aesthetically cool app. Here what you do: Using microtransactions, you buy little 3D characters which you can transpose onto photographs. The pricing’s a little unfortunate—four dollars for the app, with new characters at at least a dollar apiece—but if you’re a fan of artists like Tim Biskup and DEVILROBOTS, the rendering in this app does the work justice. So twee!

Howard Dean’s Activism Book Thingeee: Whether or not you’re a LI-BRULL, you’ve got to admire the concept behind this book-cum-activism app, which gets its users fired up with a message, i.e. Dean’s writing, then puts tools at their fingertips to act on their feelings, like a location-aware “call your congressman” function. I think it might be a liiiiittle more effective if you didn’t have to pay for it. Five dollars to CHANGE THE WORLD, or whatever.

This Week’s iPhone App News on Giz

• Google: Apple’s a Liar, Did Reject Google Voice iPhone App

• Navigon Wants an Extra $25 for Real-Time Traffic Data on the iPhone

• I Am Sting App Is Even Whinier Than I Am T-Pain

• Army of Darkness Invades the iPhone

• Wall Street Journal iPhone and BlackBerry App Free Lunch Is Over

• Penn and Teller iPhone App Is as Magical as It Is Doomed

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!

Too busy interrupting other people’s acceptance speeches this week to keep up on all things Crave? Then keep reading.

• Hewlett-Packard heaped on the products.

• Donald Bell polished off his official review of the new Zune HD, and it can be summed up like so: Buy it if …

Earliest this week the internet alarms rang loud with word that Microsoft had added an app “kill switch” to its upcoming Windows Mobile 7 platform. Of course, such a kill switch is not unprecedented, as both the Android and iPhone platforms have their own variant. A Microsoft rep recently relayed a message of peace to assuage fears, telling Ars Technica that the vast majority of app rejections won’t cause a remote uninstall, and it’ll only be used if the app “exhibits harmful behavior or unforeseen effects” — not that we’re entirely assured by the latter scenario, but wording aside, it does echo statements from the aforementioned companies that have so far been very conservative with its use (i.e. we can’t recall a single instance of its use). “While we hope to avoid this scenario,” he said, “we will make refunds available in such cases.” Only time will tell just how trigger happy Microsoft gets, assuming they ever use it. Hey, just be happy we know about it — remember the last time we were surprised to discover such a feature?

Filed under: Cellphones

Windows Mobile 7 joins the ranks of iPhone and Android with its own app kill switch originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We played with the original Siberia headset from SteelSeries, which was specifically designed to emphasize “gaming noises” like grenade pin pulls and footsteps — but didn’t do much good for listening to anything else. The Siberia Headset v2 looks to solve some of that with slightly larger speakers, an enclosed design to reduce ambient noise, improved frequency response and increased volume. There’s also a built-in mic now. We took a listen and found the music listening capabilities much improved, especially in the bass end, but still no challenge for “regular” over the ear headphones. Still, serious gamers should get what they need out of the cans, which will be offered in models with and without a USB 7.1 virtual surround soundcard in November. No word on price until then.

We also got a quick look at the new Xai and Kinzu gaming mice. The ambidextrous-friendly nature of the pair is nice, materials are great, and mousing around briefly on a fancy SteelSeries mousepad certainly felt effortless and accurate, but mouse technology is so wild these days it’s hard to differentiate one multi-megapixel optical or laser sensor from another — to these untrained eyes, anyway.

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

SteelSeries takes another stab at gaming headsets with Siberia v2 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The HP Dreamscreen is a gadget that doesn’t seem to know exactly what it is. And that, I suppose, is part of its charm. It does the whole digital-picture-frame thing, though HP will cringe if you refer to it as a digital picture frame. Really, it’s a media networking device that exists somewhere between a photo frame and a notebook.

I had a chance to play around with the gadget last night, and, all things said, it’s pretty smooth. I asked the HP rep why it didn’t have a touchscreen (the controls are touch, but are built into the bezel of the device), and he answered that it was less of a cost concern than a getting-fingerprints-on-your-screen concern. But heck, that hasn’t hampered the iPhone’s popularity, has it?

Check out a quick video of the device in action, after the jump.