Sphero, the robotic brainchild of the Orbotix robotics company, has been on my mind for quite some time now. The robotic ball fits in the palm of your hand and is controlled completely by your smartphone or tablet. These Android- and iOS-friendly balls have been seen floating around tech events for about a year now, […]
The latest announcement at the 2011 Cable Show comes from the seemingly unlikely pairing of Comcast and Skype, who have arranged to enable video calls through the cable box. All it takes is a camera, adapter and ‘specially-designed remote’ to turn HDMI-equipped Comcast boxes into Skype-on-TV machines when they start trials in the next few months. Senior Comcast VP Cathy Avgiris tells the Seattle Times that video will max out at 720p to start but will be ugraded to 1080p eventually. The tie-in will also means Skype features for the Comcast Xfinity apps on tablets and phones, but according to Avgiris it won’t “necessarily be limited to triple-play” (TV, phone and internet) customers only. Skype has already partnered with several TV manufacturers for HD calling in the living room, but working through cable boxes means a much greater prospective installed base. Beyond the still-unanswered questions of pricing and release dates, we’ve already seen enough Cable Show demos that didn’t amount to much (*cough* tru2way) so this will goes on the shelf with the others until it’s spotted in the wild.
Continue reading Comcast invites Skype into its cable boxes, mobile apps
Comcast invites Skype into its cable boxes, mobile apps originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Jun 2011 06:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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The folks at Swype sure know how to get our attention. The Android keyboard app has always inspired us to get a bit dramatic, but we had no idea that predictive text and moveable QWERTY pads were this intense. To celebrate the beta release of Swype 3.0 it appears the company hired Doug Liman (or at least some one who has studied the Bourne Identity very closely) to whip up a promo video. Enjoy the thrills of a resizable input area! Be wowed by the Honeycomb support! Get stunned by the auto-correct! Oh, and don’t forget to head after the break to watch the clip.
Continue reading Swype 3.0 gets Honeycomb support, intense promo video (video)
Swype 3.0 gets Honeycomb support, intense promo video (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 23:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Let’s face it: RSS is a terribly nerdy wasteland of .xml feeds and weird formatting. Reeder is the shining hope that it doesn’t have to be that way. Already our favorite RSS app on iOS, it’s finally available for Mac. More »
The Downcast podcast catcher does what the iPhone (and iPad) should do already
ICloud SchmiCloud. Apple’s new non-syncing sync service might already let us iOS users get new apps and books and — in the future music — pushed to our devices, but it still doesn’t push podcasts. As these are likely the most often updated things on our iPhones and iPads, it’s an annoying oversight.
There are several iOS apps that will grab podcasts directly to your device, but Downcast is the first I have found that has a great interface, and works on both the iPad and the iPhone.
To use the app, you first have to tell it which podcasts to watch out for. This can be done from a built-in directory, or by importing an OPML file. If you already use iTunes for podcasts, you can export this file (right click “Podcasts” in the left-hand source list, choose export and pick “OPML” as the format), put it in your Dropbox public folder and then point Downcast to that file.
In use, Downcast has almost every feature from my previous favorite, Podcaster, but without the annoyances. First, the interface is way, way cleaner and easier to use. Second, it doesn’t refuse to download episodes of the excellent VFX Show. And third, it doesn’t have tiny play/pause buttons that cause you to skip a track instead of just pausing it.
What it does have is automatic downloading (suck it, Instacast), the ability to not have the next episode auto play, a sleep timer, AirPlay support for both video and audio and — here’s the big one — gestures.
Gestures let you control playback without having to hunt down a tiny on-screen button. To play/pause, you double-tap with one finger. Swipe left or right with two fingers to skip 30 seconds back and forward, and swipe up and down to mark a podcast as listened or unlistened.
I’d ask for just one thing: the ability to sync my playback position between devices. At home I use my iPad more, but when I go out I grab my iPod Touch. Not having to find my place would be great, although I understand syncing is a tricky and expensive thing to set up.
But the best part is the price. Downcast is just $2.
Downcast product page [App Store]
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They hacked Facetime onto the iPhone 3GS, and now they’ve done it again — the iPhoneIslam team’s bringing cellular calling and texting to your jailbroken iPad 3G. We haven’t been able to test it for ourselves quite yet, but the new PhoneIt-iPad app should be available through the team’s Cydia repository right now, and it’ll cost $20 to bring out the full potential of your slate. And with that, it’s only a matter of time before iPad sidetalking becomes a meme.
PhoneIt-iPad available via Cydia now, claims it’ll turn your iPad 3G into a phone (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 13 Jun 2011 04:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone rides Atlantis into space, where no one can hear its ringtone scream originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 11 Jun 2011 07:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Google has already made some tough moves to tackle fragmentation, but it’s clearly still wary of the problem. It’s just tweaked the Android Market web store to show users which apps are compatible with which of their gadgets. Of course, compatibility screening was already in place for users who accessed the Market from within their device, but this update should still be of use to those who surf the web store, especially if they’re rocking multiple handsets or a phone-plus-tablet combo.
Android Market web store now checks which apps are compatible with your devices originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 06:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Microsoft’s App Guy has quite a job on his baby-soft hands: to boost Windows Phone 7’s numerically-challenged Marketplace by encouraging developers to port apps across from other platforms. The little fellow helped iPhone devs out a couple of months ago with an API mapping tool to make it easier to translate iPhone APIs to WP7 code. Now he’s extended the mapping tool to work with Android APIs too, and backed it up with a 90-page white paper and a promise to get more involved in developer forums. Will the App Guy’s efforts unleash a flood of new apps for Windows Phone? We don’t know, but we dig his shorts.
Microsoft releases Android developer poaching package for Windows Phone 7 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 10 Jun 2011 04:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Here’s a little tip for app developers: encrypt everything, especially passwords. Security firm viaForensics fed some popular iPhone and Android apps through its appWatchdog tool and found that Netflix, LinkedIn, and Foursquare all stored account passwords unencrypted. Since the results were first published on the 6th, Foursquare has updated its app to obscure users’ passwords, but other data (such as search history) is still vulnerable. While those three were the worst offenders, other apps also earned a big fat “fail,” such as the iOS edition of Square which stores signatures, transaction amounts, and the last four digits of credit card numbers unencrypted. Most of this data would take some effort to steal, but it’s not impossible for a bunch of ne’er-do-wells to create a piece malware that can harvest it. Let’s just hope Netflix and LinkedIn patch this hole quickly — last thing we need is someone discovering our secret obsession with Meg Ryan movies.
Netflix, Foursquare, LinkedIn, and Square apps expose your data originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 19:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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