Hasta La Gadget!

The Unreal Engine 3 already made a quite spectacular debut on iOS with Epic Games’ own Infinity Blade, but the company’s decided it’s time to finally stop teasing and give us the software to really play with it. Tomorrow’s planned update to the UDK will deliver iOS support, meaning that all the fancy tools that helped make Infinity Blade such a blindingly gorgeous game will be at your fingertips should you be feeling creative. Licensing for the Engine is free for testing and non-commercial use, but you’ll have to pay $99 if you want to sell anything you produce with it, to be followed by a 25 percent slice of your earnings beyond $5,000 and, of course, Apple’s 30 percent cut of whatever’s left. That might not sound like the best business plan in the world, but consider that Infinity Blade is estimated to have racked up over $1.5 million in sales already — we’re sure there’ll be enough change left for ice cream even after Epic and Apple have had their share.

Unreal Engine 3 dev kit adding iOS support tomorrow, Infinity Blade clones coming Friday originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 10:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whoa, Nelly! ThinkFlood won’t like this… not one bit. If you’ll recall, the RedEye universal remote dongle was well received, as a simple 3.5mm adapter added IR beaming to Apple’s slate of iDevices. But now, Mashed Pixel has taken the integration one step further, seamlessly embedding an Infrared emitter into a case. Simply pop the Surc around your iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS or iPhone 4, download the (free) accompanying app and start programming. Before long, you’ll be dictating your home entertainment setup sans any external accessories, and heck, you may even improve your phone’s reception all the while. The only downside to this approach compared to ThinkFlood’s is that the iPad is obviously not supported, and once you upgrade to the iPhone 5, your trusty IR case becomes a glorified paperweight. If you’re kosher with that, though, you can get your pre-order in now for $69.95, with initial shipments expected to make their way out in Q1 2011.

Continue reading IR-embedded Surc case converts iPhone into a universal learning remote

IR-embedded Surc case converts iPhone into a universal learning remote originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 15 Dec 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cooking nerds, I have some fantastic news for you. It’s called iGrill, and it’s the coolest kitchen gadget you have seen this year. IGrill is a combination of two parts. First, there’s a probe thermometer which skewers your meat, cake or other target food. This unit has its own readout, and can be used with one or two probes (it ships with one). It also has Bluetooth, which brings us on to…

The iPhone app. Instead of beaming its info to a dedicated box like most remote thermometers, the iGrill sends it to an iPhone, iPod or iPad (it’s a universal app). The Bluetooth signal will go up to 200-feet, and tells you phone what is happening back in the oven.

And because it runs on a touch-screen computer, there’s more than just a temperature readout. As well as the current temp (along with a scale reminding you not to cook your beef over 140ºF, for example), you get a timer, an estimate of the remaining cooking time, and a handy feature to dial in the food type and required doneness, which spits back the correct target temperature.

There’s also a browser and recipe book, but those are icing. The main meat (if you’ll excuse me for the pun) is the thermometer, meaning that the iPhone has replaced yet another piece of hardware.

The iGrill itself costs $100, and the app is free. An additional probe adds $20 to the price.

iGrill app [iTunes]

iGrill product page [iGrill via Oh Gizmo]

See Also:

• Thermometer Studies, Withstands Great Balls of Fire
• Wireless BBQ Thermometer Talks Back, Enables Multi-Task Cooking …
• Thermometer Cufflinks
• Wireless Meat Thermometer

iGrill meat thermometer for iPhone is the expensive, unholy marriage of the meat thermometer and iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 23:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So, how exactly does a voice app work on devices without any cellular ties? Glad you asked! Google has just updated the iOS Google Voice app to include support for the iPod touch and iPad, but neither of them can make cellular calls directly. Instead, you can use the app to initiate GVoice calls with a nearby phone. The process is known as Click2Call — users simply click any ‘Call’ button within the app and then choose which of their phones they want to ring. It’s probably more time consuming than just grabbing your phone from the start, but hey, there it is. In other news, the app now disables text forwarding when you enable Push Notifications (to avoid double alerts), and there’s a new Do Not Disturb option in the Settings tab for those who’d prefer to disconnect. Hit the iTunes link below to get your download on, and let us know how things shake out in comments.

Google Voice app now supports iPad and iPod touch, brings Click2Call originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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