Filed under: Desktops

Asus Eee Top ET2002 reviewed, thoroughly enjoyed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 19:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In this week’s net-neutral iPhone app roundup: Wild Things, physics games, Photoshop!, Twitter again (but that’s ok!), horse music, human music, and much, much more.

The Best

Where the Wild Things Are: Promotional apps are normally garbage, and in a few areas, this is a little fluffy (though there’s some neat media in here—it’s fairly generous). But hey, the people marketing this movie know exactly whose heartstrings they’re pulling at, and how to pull them. And the 3D monster toy is genuinely cool. Free.

iBlast Moki: A visually stunning physics-based platformer, with bombs. The levels are puzzles, but they don’t feel like work at all. A very, very safe buy at a dollar.

Photoshop: This app bears almost no resemblance to the Photoshop we all know and steal love. That’s fine though, because it’s a serviceable photo-editing (on the iPhone, this means filters, cropping, and a few other tricks) app that is free, unlike virtually all of its competition.

Tweetie: Few people like Twitter as much as Matt, and Matt likes few things as much as Tweetie 2: The $3 app is described as

the most polished Twitter app yet, oozing slickness with every swipe. Yet, it’s exploding with new features, and still really fast.

“Tweet tweet?” “Who’s there?” “THE WORST JOKE YOU’VE EVER HEARD.”

Weight Watchers: I’ve never thought about my diet too much, which means my life will be short, brutal and tasty. But I have seen people using WeightWatchers, and they seemed to sorta like it, and sometime get less fat! An iPhone app pretty much seems like the ideal tool for keeping a food journal, plus this one’s free.

Pet Acoustics: Excuse me everyone, I’ve got an announcement: People write muzak for dogs. And cats. And horses! Then they put it in iPhone apps, so you can use it to soothe your stable of animals, uh, on the go? This makes me laugh, which makes me happy. (Though I have absolutely no idea if it works, because my Labrador only listens to gangsta rap.) Two dollars.

Command & Conquer: Red Alert: This one isn’t out yet, but I defy you to name a game franchise that needs an iPhone title more than C&C. TouchArcade got an early hands-on, and they say it’s fantastic—and surprisingly faithful to the original.

Rock Band: Another long-overdue addition to the store, Rock Band, the app, is kind of a jerk: While it was taking foreeever to show up, companies like Tapulous stepped in an made decent rhythm games to fill the void. Now that it’s here, and it looks great—multiple instruments, a decent song list—it’s going to poop on everyone else’s party. It’ll be here in a few weeks, price TBD.

MotionX Drive GPS: It’s not brand-new, but it’s too good a value not to mention here. $3 a month, or 25 per year is amazing for a turn-by-turn nav app, and Wilson enthusiastically deemed it to be fine:

I am not going to tell you this is the best turn-by-turn road navigation app in the world. The designers made some funny UI choices, there’s no multi-destination or point-on-map routing, it doesn’t have text-to-speech, and it only runs in portrait mode, taking up awkward space on my dashboard. Still, there’s almost no reason not to get it.

Indeed.

iLickit: This app deserves more credit than I can give it for being the first designed for use with the human tongue. Ho ho, you wacky app developers, what’s next!? Wait, ugh, don’t tell me. Not in the store, yet.

Honorable mentions

• Explore the New York City Which Could’ve Been With the Phantom City iPhone App

• PewPewPew (With Your iPhone): Ahem:

pewpewpewpew, bangbangbang boomPEW, swishpewpewpewpew.

Also, augmented reality. A dollar.

• iSheriff: It’s a lot like that PewPew AR app above, rebalanced: It’s free, which is cool; and it’s not quite as playful: it puts people in zoomable crosshairs, and has gore effects, which makes it a little creepy.

• Good Things Do Come in Threes with Tap Tap Revenge 3

• MapQuest Stumbles Back Into the App Store With Budget Turn-by-Turn

• FHM: DUDE MAG, in an app. Lots of near-nakedness here, with daily updated FHM non-boob content too. $2.

• Let’s Draw Some Sheep: No, really, let’s draw some sheep! Because that’s just about all you can do with this moderately charming little app. $1.

Other App News on Giz

• ChilliX, who makes all kinds of neat, usually paid iPhone apps, is giving away their entire catalog for free this weekend.

• Flash Apps to Come to the iPhone, But Not to Safari

• The iPhone App Store Gold Rush May Be Running Low on Gold

• Apocalypse Nigh, AT&T Opens Network for VoIP Over 3G on iPhone

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!

Street dates are invariably broken somehow, somewhere even when it comes to the biggest products and companies, and Microsoft is certainly no exception, with it now able to chalk up at least one sold copy on the Windows 7 charts thanks to an exceptionally eager college bookstore. While it didn’t come in an actual retail box, this does indeed appear to be a legitimate education copy of the OS and, according to our tipster, it has been successfully activated. A little earlier than the usual slip-up to be sure, but we have a sneaking suspicion this won’t be the last copy that drops before the big October 22nd date. Feel free to let us know in comments if you happen to come across one.

Filed under: Software

Windows 7 sold early at college bookstore, order somehow maintained originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 09 Oct 2009 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Imagine if you could browse the web through your eye vision: A review of a restaurant when you stare at its sign, or the times that a bus will arrive while standing at a stop.

That’s the idea behind Layar, an augmented-reality browser available for Google Android smartphones. Layar allows a user to view their environment through their camera lens and see real-time Points of Interest (POIs) from the physical world, providing a mixed reality. In the Layar Reality Browser, you can discover and save specific POIs depending on what you are looking for.

Layar is a unique AR app because it allows third-party developers to contribute layers to their platform. Other AR apps pull their data from search engines, Wikipedia or review-based sites. As location-based features grow, such as Flickr and Twitter, allowing you to tag your location to your content, the ability to see how others are interacting around you in real-time is a compelling element in AR technology.

Layar provides an easy-to-use interface with four clear sections that list layers by name and description. For example, “i-Metro, locate the public transportation stations and stops around your area” allows you to judge its relevance without having to open it. You can sort the layers by popularity, search terms and favorites.

During my testing, I found many of the layers were well done and useful. However, the open platform of Layar has attracted some not-so-polished layers with kinks that need to be worked out, mostly involving usability. For example, BuildAR, a layer that allows you to create your own POIs, has a difficult account sign-up process: You need to type their domain into a separate browser, sign up, then return to BuildAR, and it’s not clear where you’re exactly putting your POI.

This small example could serve as a clue for Layar to implement a user-rating system to hold developers accountable and maintain a standard of experience. Personally, I wish I didn’t spend as much time as I did fiddling with BuildAR. The description made it sound interesting, and I initially thought I was doing something wrong; a rating system would have informed me that the problems were with the software.

In November, Layar will be further expanding their platform by incorporating a 3D grid into their layers. Developers will be able to build 3D objects and assign actions such as sounds or clicking on the object for a link.

Layar is a free application available in the Android Market.

See Also:

• At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry
• If You’re Not Seeing Data, You’re Not Seeing
• Digital Contacts Will Keep an Eye on Your Vital Signs

Back to basics about bit depth and the great whiteout contest.

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EPISODE 65

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Originally posted at Indecent Exposure Podcast