Hasta La Gadget!

The iPhone 4‘s best new feature in iOS 4.1—besides not hanging up on people with your face—is its ability to capture HDR photos. But you’ve gotta use it correctly. More »

iOS 4.1 is live, bringing Game Center, HDR photos, a proximity sensor fix and more to iPhones (3G, 3GS, and 4) and iPod Touches (second-generation on up). Let the Game Center username land grab begin! [Apple] More »

Screenshot via PairItApp.com.

When you buy a bottle of wine, you usually have both too much and too little information. Unless you know your stuff, you might find yourself scanning hundreds of bottles in search of a label whose font and color strike your fancy. In the age of the iPhone, there are apps for that.

Wine and lifestyle writer Jessica Yadegaran looks at a few new applications for oenophiles in the Contra Costa Times. “Sure, wine’s great with cheese,” she writes. “But it’s better with technology.”

Pair It, which matches wine with food (and vice versa), has been a longtime favorite for iPhone wine drinkers and has been recently released for Android. More interesting yet might be the forthcoming app from wine information/social-networking site Snooth.com, due out later this month. According to Yadegaran, it solves the what-do-I-do-with-this-label problem by packing in image recognition technology. Take a picture of the bottle using the Snooth app and it will give you background, reviews, and even pricing help for comparison shopping.

Sadly, the Snooth app won’t be ready for tonight’s Rosh Hashanah supper. However, there’s still plenty of time before the Kiddush to find out what will go well with apples and honey.

Story via MercuryNews.com. Image/screenshot from PairItApp.com.

See Also:

• What Climate Change Means for Wine Industry
• Wine Snobs Geek Out on “Systems Oenology”
• Food: How Iron Chef America Engineers a Visual Feast
• Hate Talking to Restaurant Workers? Download This iPhone App …
• Yelp Takes On Foursquare in Latest iPhone App Upgrade

Abvio’s trio of motion-tracking iPhone fitness apps have been updated with a major new feature: they know when you stop.

This information isn’t used to detect the lazier amongst us, but to give more accurate readings of your times and average speed. The three apps, Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter, now use GPS signals to detect when you stop moving. They then “roll back your elapsed time to when the stop started,” adding this chunk of time to a new “stopped time” counter. This means that when you next get stuck at the traffic lights (or stop for a beer), you won’t see your average speed

It’s a useful feature, and one that is curiously lacking on almost all other apps in the store. It joins some other neat options, too. First is the new calendar-sharing function, which automatically adds your workouts to your calendar, from whence they can sync across the cloud. Better is the integration of the iPhone’s inline remote, which can be used to stop and start the timer with the phone still in your pocket.

But perhaps best of all is the apps’ ghost-mode, which will project your previously recorded runs onto the map so you can compete against yourself. This, I don’t have to say, is lifted straight from Super Mario Kart and is quite awesome.

The apps cost $5, but it appears that you can just buy one and use it for cycling, running or walking (aka running slowly). Available now.

Abvio product page [Abvio. Thanks, Lori!]

See Also:

• Nike+ App Ditches Dongle, Gains GPS
• RunKeeper Is a “Nike+” for, Runners, Cyclists and More

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

In the early, chaotic, primordial years of the mobile phone era, you had to press real, actual “buttons” to get things done. Almost barbaric to think about now, isn’t it? As society advanced and we gradually became a more civilized species, buttons gave way to touchscreens and voice control, mercifully giving the atrophied sausages we call “arms” and “fingers” a bit of respite every time we needed to surf through cyberspace, place a phone call, or send a text message. Now, it seems the evolution of Homo sapiens is reaching its inevitable final stage with the release of the PLX XWave, headgear that plugs into your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad and — after a bit of training — lets you control the device with your mind alone. As you might expect, the headset makes use of the NeuroSky technology that we’ve seen several times through the years and will be made available with a number of apps upon its release next month including a game, dedicated training app, a music controller (which will let you compare brainwaves with other XWave users, interestingly), and an “Om Meditation Timer.” If none of those titles have captured your imagination, you’ll be able to write your own apps with the device’s SDK; needless to say, we’ll be patiently waiting for the levitation app depicted here. Orders are online now for $100 with delivery in October.

Continue reading XWave lets you control your iPhone with your noodle, levitate if you’re lucky

XWave lets you control your iPhone with your noodle, levitate if you’re lucky originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 18:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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