Hasta La Gadget!

Your Apple TV just got a lot less boring with the help of nifty new tools that override its restrictions and add powerful capabilities.

Launched Friday morning, the XBMC app for Apple TV 2 — which requires jailbreaking — expands the set-top box’s multimedia playback to support almost every type of audio or video format, including 1080p HD content. By default, the Apple TV can only play a few formats compatible with iTunes, and only supports 720p video.

Most interestingly, you’ll be able to install plug-ins to add new features to the XBMC media player that have yet to be released (similar to the add-ons or extensions found in modern browsers like Firefox and Chrome). That could open the door to additional tools, such as support for Bluetooth keyboards and mice, widgets to display additional web information, new codecs and the like.

The XBMC player also launched today for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, giving these devices similar capabilities to play different kinds of media formats. Installation requires jailbreaking the devices.

“With what we’ve done under XBMC and iOS, we’re going to see very shortly a huge jump from what people start offering under the Apple TV,” said Scott Davilla, maker of XBMC.

The XBMC app is part of a renewed communal effort to hack the Apple TV, as Wired.com reported late last year. Shortly after Apple released the Apple TV 2, coders realized it ran iOS, the same operating system as the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Some key programmers in the iOS community and a few hackers of the original Apple TV have turned their attention to tinkering with the new $100 set-top box.

“Now you have all the people who have done amazing stuff on the iPhone working with us, and it’s made our jobs for the Apple TV a thousand times easier,” said Kevin Bradley, an Apple TV programmer who works under the handle [bile], in a previous interview with Wired.com. “I think some really amazing things could come out of this.”

The first new Apple TV hacks have been promising. Prior to the release of XBMC, programmer Erica Sadun released a utility called AirFlick to stream non-iTunes-supported video from a Mac to the Apple TV. She also released an app called AirPlayer to stream video from the Apple TV to the Mac, which you can’t normally do with the Apple TV alone.

So far, Apple TV has been jailbroken and a few apps, like XBMC, are available for the jailbroken platform. But there is no equivalent to Cydia, the underground marketplace for apps available for jailbroken iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches.

Apple TV hackers are working on that, as adding Cydia support would allow people to add a wide variety of apps to the device’s main menu. For now, you’re limited to adding plug-ins to the XBMC media player, or manually installing a handful of other apps.

XBMC has not yet announced what plug-ins will be available, but stay tuned on the XBMC plug-ins page for any new releases.

To install the XBMC software on your Apple TV 2, you must connect it by USB to a computer and jailbreak it with Season Pass, which will automatically install XBMC.

Photo: _zand/Flickr

Sprint splits its Premier program to Gold and Silver memberships.

Originally posted at Dialed In

Well, it’s about time! We knew Sony was prepping some Reader apps to go along with its physical Pocket, Daily, and Touch Edition e-readers, and while it may have missed that December release date, the Android version of the app is now available in the Market. The free app is pretty much what you’d expect — you can log in with your username and it automatically syncs previously purchased books, and like the e-readers, it also supports ePub and PDF formats. In addition, you can easily highlight text and adjust font and brightness settings right from the page you’re reading. We downloaded the app and found it to be pretty decent, however, the Store shortcut launches within the browser rather than in the app. Ready for the twisted part? Sony has confirmed for us that the app will only work with handsets that run Android 2.2 and higher, which is incredibly ironic considering most Sony Ericsson handsets are, you know, still stuck with 2.1. Of course, it looks like that PlayStation Phone will work just fine when it’s finally released, but that’s neither here nor there — hit the gallery for a pile of screenshots of the app.

Updated: Sony just let us know that the iOS version is still pending Apple’s approval, but it should be available soon.

Sony Reader app finally available for Android, only works with 2.2 and higher originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 21 Jan 2011 15:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Looks like 2011 is shaping up to be the year of Android for electronics manufacturer HTC.

In a conference call Friday morning, the company reported a massive 93 percent increase in 2010 revenue over 2009, as first reported by PC World. 2010 sales weighed in at a respectable 24.67 million units, up 111 percent from 2009.

“The year 2010 was a breakthrough year,” CEO Peter Chou said in an earnings call Friday. “Going from a company of no scale to one of scale, that process was faster than I expected. Last year was the year that smartphones exploded.”

Android is a major force behind the company’s acceleration.

HTC expects to see $3.2 billion in revenues and 8.5 million units shipped in the first quarter of 2011. Most of that will be led by the company’s big push into smartphones running Google’s mobile operating system.

HTC plans to release a host of 4G Android phones in 2011, including the previously announced Thunderbolt, the Inspire and the Evo Shift.

Android, which became commercially available only in 2008, has grown quickly to become the fastest-growing smartphone operating system, with sales outpacing those of Apple’s iPhone by the middle of 2010. HTC was one of the first companies to embrace Android, a bet that paid off handsomely in 2009 — and appears poised to continue doing so two years later. At the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, much of the buzz was around Android-based tablets and high-end smartphones from manufacturers like Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and LG.

We may see even more Android-running HTC handsets released than those already announced, if leaked photos from PocketNow are to be believed. Multiple pictures of unlabeled HTC phones are currently circulating the blogopshere, including one that looks similar to the company’s Desire HD model. Other pictures include a large-screen HTC Oboe lookalike, a phone currently released in China.

Reports of an HTC tablet release circulated Thursday, rumored to launch some time in March. Two more HTC tablets are rumored to follow within the first half of 2011. The first tablet, reportedly named the “Flyer” by DigiTimes, is said to launch running Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread), but will be able to upgrade to the much anticipated version 3.0, or Honeycomb.

Currently the fourth biggest smartphone maker in the world, HTC has focused on manufacturing smartphones in particular — compared to that of relatively inexpensive feature phones — since being founded in 1997. Although HTC’s highly anticipated Google-branded Nexus One left a bad taste in the mouths of many customers, the company has continued to perform well. Total 2010 revenues amounted to $9.57 billion.

Photo: HTC’s forthcoming Thunderbolt smartphone.
Jon Snyder/Wired.com

See Also:

• Sprint’s HTC Evo Shift Hits the Shelves on January 9th
• Hands-On With HTC’s 4G Thunderbolt Smartphone
• Verizon CEO: ‘We’re Working With Google on a Tablet’

Web video of the all-new four-seater Ferrari FF. The 6.3-liter V12 has a top speed of 208 mph.

Originally posted at The Car Tech blog