Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on December 28, 2010 by CyberNet.

Picture this: an awesome song from a cellphone commercial has been stuck in your head all day. You want to look it up on YouTube so you can hear the full song, but you don’t know the song’s title.

SoundHound is an app for iOS, Android and Nokia phones that helps you identify these songs. Simply hold your phone’s microphone near the music source and let the app collect a 20-second sample.

After processing your sample, it will show you the best match it could find with the title and artist, the album cover, a song preview and sometimes even lyrics.

While SoundHound has been around for a while, its biggest drawback was that the basic version could only identify a certain amount of songs per month. This week they announced that they were dropping the song identification limit, presumably because they can earn more revenue by going ad-supported and making money from iTunes partner links than by charging people for the service.

SoundHound’s song identification powers are not limited to Top 40 music. I’ve tried it out on a bunch of radio stations (both FM and online) that play oldies, independent Canadian music, classical and ambient. All of them did better than expected.

Click to Enlarge

SoundHound Homepage

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Google+ app update welcomes iPhone users to Hangouts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 26 Sep 2011 00:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A key security feature of Apple’s in-app billing feature for iOS apps has been down since Thursday night, making it difficult for app developers to verify legitimate sales and leaving some of them worried they’re losing money.

Several developers have told Wired.com the verifyReceipt function, which ensures in-app purchases are valid, is showing an error whenever customers attempt to buy something through an app. Without verifyReceipt, faked purchase attempts could be made on iOS apps.

The problem started around 7:00 p.m. Pacific Time Thursday, according to several Tweets describing the problem, and had not been resolved by the time this story was posted. Apple has not responded to our requests for comment.

The Sandbox version of the site, used for testing, is up, but the URL used for real transactions shows a 404 error. With the page down, developers cannot verify that receipts are valid, and therefore can’t honor purchases because of the possibility the receipt has been forged.

The timing is especially problematic for developers because Friday is typically a busy day, said iOS developer Martin Nilsson. He estimates the problem has cost him between $900 and $1,500 in revenue. Nilsson’s app, a magazine aggregator called Paperton, is relatively new, and he feels the issue is particularly harmful because it could damage users’ trust of the app.

The iOS in-app purchasing feature is one of the best ways for iPhone and iPad developers to make money from their apps because it provides for continued revenue long past the initial app download. The function has been a cornerstone of Apple’s success in attracting developers to make apps for the platform. Apple’s App Store now boasts over half a million apps.

The in-app purchasing issue has recently come under fire for both iOS and Android developers with the aggressive actions of patent trolls like Lodsys. This summer, Apple also revamped its in-app purchasing policy regarding subscriptions.

With the verifyReceipt page out, Nilsson says he has had to develop a workaround to allow purchases to now go through. But Andrew Johnson, who develops an offline topographical maps iOS app, said the issue isn’t as critical.

“If this continued for an extended period, this would be problematic for anyone who’s using in-app purchases,” Johnson said. He said his revenue loss has been negligible because in-app purchasing isn’t a primary component of his product.

Nilsson noted that several applications that use in-app purchasing have not been affected. The inclusion of verifyReceipt is part of Apple’s In App Purchase Programming Guide, so this could mean that developers aren’t appropriately safeguarding against the possibility of forged receipts.

If you’re an iOS developer and the issue is affecting you, shoot us an email or sound off in the comments.

Image: m thierry/Flickr

Epson’s projector hooks up directly to your iDevice

When held at movie-watching distance from my face, my iPad’s screen appears bigger than any of my friends’ TVs, all of which are on the other side of the room. But with more than two people watching a film, things can get a little crowded. Enter Epson’s Megaplex MG-850HD, an LCD projector with a pop-out dock.

The Megaplex takes the audio and video from your iDevice and kicks it out through a pair of ten-watt speakers and a 2,800-lumen lamp at 720p resolution. It’s portable, too, with a carrying handle, and will juice your iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch when plugged in.

You can also hook up other gear via component cables, HDMI, USB or VGA and there are even headphone and mic jacks, for solo listening or (presumably) karaoke.

As someone who doesn’t want or own a TV, and does all (and I mean all) of his TV and movie-watching on an iPad, I’m actually pretty interested in this thing. What I’m not interested in is the $800 price-tag. I guess I’ll just have to stick to pico projectors and darkened rooms when friends come to visit.

Epson Megaplex product page [Epson via UberGizmo]

See Also:

• Power-Free iPhone Projector: It's All Done With Mirrors
• Tiny, Portable iPhone Dock Projector

The walls of tyrannical exclusivity may soon come crashing down in Japan. According to Nikkei, “officials” in the know have indicated that KDDI is gearing up to release the iPhone 5 on its network, thus ending competitor SoftBank’s reign as the iconic device’s sole provider in the Land of the Rising Sun. As we’ve come to expect in the days leading up to official Apple announcements, the details are incredibly scant. SoftBank, the third-largest carrier in the country, has been inching closer and closer to second-place KDDI with very little breathing room left; it’s understandable, then, that the latter would be eagerly awaiting the end of iPhone exclusivity to make an agreement with Apple and boost its subscriber count. As it’s all hearsay for the time being, we’ll just have to wait a little while longer before we know every detail on the mystery device(s).

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

KDDI may get iPhone 5, putting an end to Softbank’s exclusivity in Japan originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Sep 2011 20:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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