Hasta La Gadget!

When Apple pimps the iPhone as this magical tool, my cynical self can’t help but laugh. Not anymore. With GIF Shop, you can make GIFs with an iPhone app. You can make GIFs with an iPhone app. You can make GIFS with an iPhone app. Whoa. More »

Mosquito bites are perhaps the one thing that are worse than the heat in Japan during the summer. Not only do they itch the entire day, these pesky little blood-suckers annoy the general population with their loud buzzing and constant flying in circles. Sea’s Garden, a smart phone gaming and utility app maker, offers a solution to the terror that mosquitoes bring to man, without harming the environment.

The Mosquito Buster is an Android app (soon to be released for the iPhone as well) that acts as a mosquito coil, but instead of burning off insect killing smoke, it releases a high-frequency sound from your smart phone speakers which these insects detest.

The app is extremely simple to operate: users choose between 3 modes, each with corresponding frequencies. The first is obviously to avoid mosquitos, and the second, rodents. The third was what caught our attention and seemed particularly amusing. The third mode is titled “Avoid Children”, as it releases a frequency only detectable to children, as adult ears cannot hear the high pitched sound. It would be useful for parents who need a little bit of peace and quiet from their screaming, energetic toddlers. It’s nice to see useful utility apps like these that offer clever ways of solving consumer problems in an eco-friendly manner. Looks like I’m going to finally get a good nights sleep tonight without having to worry about pesky insects (or children for that matter) that bring a world of itchiness to my feet .

Related Posts:
Japan Mobile Marketing Round-Up: Part 4
Summer brings itchy groins, fun commercials
Cooling Beverage Menthol Shock from JT

Ka-ching! The App Store has proved to be quite successful

Apple’s App Store has served 15 billion application downloads, the Cupertino, California, company announced Thursday.

According to the official numbers, the store has gone from zero to 425,000 apps in just three years. About 100,000 of those are iPad-native.

Those are impressive figures, whichever way you cut them. And, doing some math actually makes them even more interesting. Apple says there are 200 million iOS users worldwide. Dividing one number by the other gives us a figure of 75 apps per user.

Sure, many of these apps are free (and lots are just plain junk), but that’s really not the point here. Before the App Store, installing software on your phone was a horrible experience. I’m a total nerd, but even I shied away from putting much extra software on my old Symbian-based Sony Ericsson P800 and P900. And when I did, it was uniformly ugly and buggy.

Now, it is so easy and compelling to install apps that the average user has 75 of them on their device. That’s pretty incredible. In fact, shopping for apps is actually something of a pastime. I have friends who browse the App Store in idle moments and think nothing of trying out something new for a few bucks.

How many apps do you have? ITunes tells me I have 209. The Mobile Application folder on my Mac, where the apps are stored, has 730 files inside (including some updates of the same apps). The truth probably lies somewhere in between.

Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 15 Billion [Apple]

See Also:

• 10 Billion iOS Apps Downloaded, Winner Hangs Up on Apple
• Apple’s App Store Surpasses Half-a-Million Apps
• Apple’s App Store Hits Six Digits; How Many Apps Do You Need …
• iPhone App Store Approaches 1 Billion Downloads

Capture: Launch the app and you’re already shooting video

Capture is an app that does just one thing. And if that thing is useful to you, this could be the best 99 cents you’ll spend today. Capture is a video-shooting app that starts recording as soon as it is launched.

Hit the icon on your home screen or — even better — the dock, and you’ll be shooting one second later. No fiddling to switch between still and video, no adjusting settings, and no missing the moment you want to record.

Once you get going, you can make a few adjustments. You can tap to shift focus, hit another button to toggle the rear LED flash, and of course start and stop recording.

The app also works on the iPad 2, although not with a native interface. I tried it out and it does just what it says it does, saving the captured footage direct to the camera roll. It’s like having a dedicated video-record button on the home screen. You’ll never miss a skateboarding dog ever again.

Capture — The Quick Video Camera [iTunes via MacStories, an Apple enthusiast site]

It ain’t the first time Mark Zuckerberg has taken the stage to announce… something, but today’s shindig is resulting in “something” that’s a bit more exciting for the average user. As rumored, the world’s most notable VoIP service is set to become exceedingly integrated with the world’s most notable social network. Skype has just thrown up a teaser page for v5.3 for Windows (and v5.5 Beta), noting that Skype and Facebook will aim to provide “the best of both worlds.”

Zuck is primarily announcing three main things today: group chat, a new way to chat (“an easier way to find someone who is online”) and Skype-enabled video chat. Oh, and the tiny, tiny fact that there’s now 750 million Facebook members. What’s notable is just how easy it is to fire up a group chat (or send transcripts to group members who miss out) and get a video call going using your existing Skype contact list. A single click is all it takes, and we’re told that it’ll be rolled out to everyone “over the next few weeks” in 70 different languages. The new chat design will be scalable based on your browser size, and the company made a point to mention that it’ll be listening closely to user input in order to iterate as it moves forward.

Tony Bates stepped up to the plate, and noted that over 300 million videocall minutes a month are going through Skype, and at peak times, over half of its traffic is video. He also noted that the technology behind it was “tough” to construct, but somehow it managed to hammer this whole thing out in around six months via joint development. There’s also talk about future “paid products” in due time, and it’s strikingly clear that this partnership isn’t going to fade anytime soon. If you’re looking to take a dive yourself, hit up the source links below for the Windows applications, and wear that F5 button out over at Facebook’s homepage if you’re more of the “in-browser” type.

Oh, and if you’re curious about mobile — video chat isn’t active on that front yet, and Mark’s not spilling any details on “when.” To quote him on a question of time tables: “We’ll see.”

Update: Those on the web can get started right now. Of note, this forces open the familiar chat bar, so it doesn’t much look like you can hide from “those people” while attempting to find folks on Skype. Sadly, we’re also seeing that doing so can add loads of Facebook contacts to your Skype program, and there’s no real way to see that it’s happening until it’s too late. Clever, Mark.

Update 2: We’ve spent a little time with both of the new options, and you can read up on our impressions here!

Skype comes to Facebook, and Facebook comes to Skype (update: available now!) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Jul 2011 13:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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