Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve already seen Epic Games and Id Software show off their respective game engines for iOS devices, but they’re only now finally giving folks a look at the first actual games that will use them. The first of those to roll out will apparently be Id’s Mutant Bash TV, which looks as impressive as the Rage demo promised (although that’s aided in part by being on rails), and will cost just $0.99 for the standard version or $1.99 for the Retina Display-enhanced version. Seemingly even more impressive than it, however, is Epic Games’ Infinity Blade, the game counterpart to the Unreal Engine 3-based “Epic Citadel” demo that was released back in September. While it may look like yet another God of War clone, it sounds like Epic has something quite a bit different in mind — the game’s creative director (of Shadow Complex fame, incidentally) recently described it as a mix of Karateka, Dragon’s Lair and Punch-Out. Head on past the break to check out the trailer, and hit up the link below for Touch Arcade’s preview of Mutant Bash TV (no video for it just yet, unfortunately).

Continue reading Epic Games, Id Software show off jaw-dropping new iPhone games

Epic Games, Id Software show off jaw-dropping new iPhone games originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 08 Nov 2010 21:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The WOWKeys keyboard from Omnio, an Apple-certified iPhone dock, manages to beat out Apple’s own offerings in almost every way. The keyboard features a bay on the right-side, where a number-pad would usually sit, into which your iPhone slides. From there, you can proceed in two ways.

First, and most obvious, is that you now have a hardware keyboard for your iPhone, giving you an iOS version of Asus’ Eee keyboard, only for $100 instead of $600 (not including the iPhone, of course). There are a slew of special keys dedicated to the iPhone, including volume, display-off,brightness, media keys, keyboard toggle and a home-screen button. Even Apple’s own Bluetooth keyboard can manage all those.

The second option is to hook this up to a Mac or PC (via USB-cable) and let the iPhone take on some extra duties. Coupled with any of a number of third-party apps, you can turn the iPhone into a trackpad, number-pad or full-on remote for your computer. You could of course do this without the WOWKeys, but locking the trackpad to the keyboard makes sense, and it’ll also charge the iPhone as you use it. Flipping between these two modes is done by toggling a switch.

The WOWKeys should be available in Korea soon for the equivalent of $105. Start harassing your friendly, neighborhood gray-importer now.

IPhone PC keyboards and fusion [AVING via the Engadget]

See Also:

• IPhone Case Adds Vestigial QWERTY-Slider Keyboard
• Fat QWERTY Keyboard Turns iPhone 4 into Giant Plastic Slab …
• Ultimate Keyboard Smackdown: iPhone Vs. Stylus Vs. Chiclets …
• No Thanks, You're Not My iType: iPhone Keyboard Accessory …
• Hacker Attaches Physical Keyboard to iPhone

Apple is warning iPhone users that the daylight savings time glitch that plagued Europe affects US iPhones too, meaning you’ll wake up an hour late if you rely on the Clock app built into the device. Though Apple representatives say there’s a permanent fix in the works, it’s not due until iOS 4.2, so the company suggests you set a new alarm today if you want to rise on time. Since the bug apparently only affects certain repeating alarms, you can create a new one-time alarm (i.e. with the repeat option set to “never”) instead, and the iPhone clock will take care of the rest. Don’t be the gal or guy blaming your tardiness on failed technology, folks, when it’s this easy to be able to point the finger at traffic, family, or spontaneous bouts of dance fever instead.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

PSA: Apple’s iPhone may not wake you up on time tomorrow morning originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 06 Nov 2010 17:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Instant on a PC browser has always been a clever idea in search of a use case. With the new mobile beta for Android and iOS, the search giant has found its first.

“Wouldn’t it be great to have Google Instant on mobile devices, where each keystroke and page load is much slower and you frequently have just a moment to find the information you need?” writes Google engineer Steve Kanefsky.

Indeed. With fast hands and a full QWERTY keyboard, the time between typing “Google Instant” and “Google Ins” is minimal. On a non-PC keyboard like a phone, e-reader or remote control, it’s considerable.

To activate the beta, you need to be running Android 2.2 (Froyo) or iOS. Then go to google.com in your mobile browser and tap the Google Instant “Turn on” link beneath the search box.

The only trouble with Google Instant on mobile devices is the net connection. Google Instant works by making server calls with each stroke. To even make it work in a mobile browser, google had to create a new AJAX and HTML5 implementation to dynamically update the page with new results.

On a good Wi-Fi network, that’s no big deal. On 3G, it’s not a major problem. On (gasp) EDGE, it can actually make search much, much slower.

“With Google Instant on mobile, we’re pushing the limits of mobile browsers and wireless networks,” Kanefsky writes. “Since the quality of any wireless connection can fluctuate, we’ve made it easy to enable or disable Google Instant without ever leaving the page. Just tap the ‘Turn on’ or ‘Turn off’ link.”

See Also:

• How Google Instant Could Reinvent Channel Flipping
• Chrome 8 Adds Google Instant to the URL Bar
• Google Debuts 'Instant' Search (Updated)
• What's In A Search, If You Don't Hit the Search Button …
• Google Adds Gesture Search to Android Phones
• Google Beefs Up Voice Search, Mobile Sync

Maybe Apple approved Skyfire, an iPhone web browser that plays Flash videos, to prove a point: Flash is losing relevance.

Despite widespread excitement over the first app to work with Adobe’s plug-in, it turns out that Skyfire isn’t very useful.

My hands-on time with the app, which came out Wednesday (and quickly “sold out,” according to the developer’s press release), was an eye-opening experience. The app’s primary function is to take websites that use embedded Flash video and automatically transcode that video into HTML5 so that it’s viewable on the iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. To test it, I had to find a popular website loaded with Flash video.

The search was difficult.

I looked at several video-heavy websites, only to realize they were already HTML5-ready. Examples include The Onion, DailyMotion, ESPN, CollegeHumor and CNET. The biggest video websites — YouTube and Vimeo — have moved to HTML5, too.

I also found a report showing 54 percent of web video is now HTML5 compatible.

(Note that Skyfire only displays Flash video — not games, animations, ads, etc.)

Eventually a Twitter follower pointed me to a website where Skyfire really came in handy: CWTV. When Skyfire detected I was trying to play a Flash video, a play button popped up at the bottom of the browser, and the app did its job: Within 5 seconds I was streaming an episode of Smallville. (Hurray, I guess.)

There are some other Flash-dependent websites that work well on Skyfire, like the Daily Show and Colbert Report.

But the browser didn’t play all Flash videos. I loaded the TED Talks website, which is a gallery of Flash videos, and Skyfire didn’t transcode the videos. I tried playing a Flash video on CNN.com, and Skyfire didn’t transcode it, either. But it doesn’t matter so much in those cases, because there are already iOS apps for both TED Talks and CNN, which are capable of playing their videos.

Another major exception is Hulu, whose videos are encoded in Flash. But it’s not Skyfire’s fault that you can’t view Hulu videos. Because of licensing terms, the company doesn’t allow mobile devices to stream Hulu videos for free, as you could with a computer by visiting Hulu.com.

Instead, the company wants you to pay a monthly subscription fee through the Hulu iOS app. If you try visiting Hulu.com through Skyfire, you get a message saying it’s not supported.

Frankly I had a tough time finding reasons to use Skyfire. My hands-on testing of the app made me feel that Flash doesn’t matter anymore (not nearly as much as it used to before the iPad hit stores in April).

But Skyfire was a hot seller when it launched Wednesday — so hot that the developers pulled it from the store because of traffic overload, then labeled it “sold out.”

All this leads me to conclude that the underlying reason is the one big chunk of the web that’s still not available on the iPhone or iPad: free porn. Indeed, many porn-streaming websites still rely on Flash.

That makes me believe that the tipping point for Flash to become irrelevant is when the most-popular porn sites shift to HTML5. My “research” tells me that day isn’t far away.

In the meantime, Skyfire may have only limited utility for most of the web, but it makes a fine porn browser.

See Also:

• Why Apple Won’t Allow Adobe Flash on iPhone
• As Apple Barricades Flash, HDTV Embraces It
• Google Fires at Apple, Integrates Flash Into Chrome Browser
• Apple Video Shows iPad Flash Support, But Don’t Believe It
• Apple Promotes ‘iPad-Ready’ Websites Ditching Flash