FaceTime was the first thing I tried when my iPhone 4 arrived. The screen being small—like any phone—I expected its video chat to be a novelty, nothing of real value to love or sex. Was I ever wrong. More »
What to do with your iPhone while working out? Putting it in a pocket won’t work, and using an armband makes it hard to see. Enter the iSkin Pulse Sports+, a case that straps the iPhone 3G or 3Gs to one hand, while letting both hands remain free. This way, your phone and any on-screen data are always accessible.
The Pulse Sports+ offers a dual layer design using two silicone layers. The inner layer is there for protection, while the outer layer doubles as a hand band. The band stretches to fit your hand, yet snaps flat when not in use. As for the sweat you’ll work up while working out, the Pulse Sports+ offers embedded Microban antimicrobial protection. The case will sell for $29.99.
Apple has long been an icon for quality products, but its overflowing iOS App Store is a crapshoot: Nuggets of quality are buried in a vast, steaming heap of inanity. In fact, the man who oversees the App Store process runs a side business selling fart and urination apps.
Phillip Shoemaker, director of applications technology at Apple, who runs the App Store process, sells iPhone apps in the App Store under the company name Gray Noodle. (UPDATE: Shoemaker updated and deleted some of his social networking profiles when informed of Wired.com’s story. See bottom of the post for more details and archived pages.) Titles include a fart app called Animal Farts (above, left and middle), a urination simulator called iWiz (above, right) and a refrigerator-magnet app called Medical Poetry.
Gray Noodle’s seven apps range from $1 to $2. Two apps received two-star ratings, one app received one star, one app scored 3 1/2, and the others have zero reviews.
“Simulate the experience of urinating for a long time,” iWiz’s app description reads in iTunes. “Convince your friends that you’ll never stop. IWiz allows you to simulate urination: faster, slower or just a trickle.”
The game Animal Farts features various cartoon images of animals with their buttocks facing forward, giving users buttons to trigger “Fart,” “Poot,” “Drop” or “Wiz” sounds accompanied with animations illustrating said emissions.
The only surprising thing about the Iphone QWERTY keyboard is that it took so long in coming. That, and the curious capitalization of iPhone in its name. With iOS4, iDevices can talk to an external Bluetooth keyboard and, using the right adapter, any USB keyboard. This keyboard, whipped into cyber-existence inside the CAD software of Altamash Jiwani’s computer, is the first we have seen (or first non-fugly, at least).
Jiwani’s mechanical keyboard is a combination of polycarbonate bumper-case and QWERTY-slider, usable whilst closed and covering up the screen or open, hanging in the air just below the display. This not only gives you real, physical buttons to press, but also lets you see the entire screen as you type.
The Iphone QWERTY keyboard communicates with the iPhone via the dock-connector, and has a pass-through port on the outside for charging as you use it. It is clearly just a cobbled-together Photoshop job at this point, but the idea is sound. So why isn’t there an external iPhone keyboard on the market already?
At CES 2009, a year and a half ago, I was stopped in a corridor (“Hey! You’re a blogger right? Look at this!”) and pitched a non-existent hardware keyboard for the iPhone. Since then, nothing. Could it be that the included soft keyboard is good enough? That anyone who really needs a tactile set of push-buttons has already gotten a Blackberry? I’d say yes, and that the market for an iPhone add-on would be tiny.
The iPad is a different matter, but there is already an appropriately-sized, wireless external QWERTY for that, and it’s made by Apple.
Iphone QWERTY Keyboard [Altamash Jiwani]
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Most iPhone owners rely on iTunes to back up their data and make sure that if they ever have to restore their phone or recover the photos and videos they’ve taken. iTunes only stores a certain amount of information, and regardless of whether your phone’s been stolen and you want to see what the thief did with it, you work for law enforcement and have a suspect’s iPhone in-hand, or you just want to make sure you back up every shred of data from your iPhone, the iPhone Spy Stick may be the tool for you.
The iPhone Spy Stick is targeted at people who do computer forensics and who need a tool to help them pull data off of iPhones, but for $199 retail, anyone can purchase one. The USB stick connects directly to the iPhone and then to your computer, and gives you access to text messages stored on the device, contacts, the phone’s call and Web browsing history, voice memos, the calendar, and even the iPhone’s map history so you can see where the user has searched using the Maps app, all the way to GPS coordinates.
Currently only iPhones running iOS 3.x are supported, and BrickHouse Security, the company behind the iPhone Spy Stick, claims a version of the device that supports the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 will be available in October.
Welcome to Engadget’s Back to School guide! We know that this time of year can be pretty annoying and stressful for everyone, so we’re here to help out with the heartbreaking process of gadget buying for the school-aged crowd. Today, we have mobile phones in our sights — and you can head to the Back to School hub to see the rest of the product guides as they’re added throughout the month.
Continue reading Engadget’s back to school guide: Mobile phones
Engadget’s back to school guide: Mobile phones originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 14:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Continue reading Sony takes aim at iPhone gaming in new PSP ad
Sony takes aim at iPhone gaming in new PSP ad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 11:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Barnes & Noble told us this update was in the pipeline when it introduced Nook for Android, and sure enough, said update is hitting the intertubes this fine morning. The iPhone and iPod touch version of the Nook app is said to be completely overhauled, while the iPad edition is the company’s first to offer an in-app “rating” feature. In case you couldn’t guess, the former also adds support for the iPhone 4’s Retina Display, while also tossing in a slew of new customization options (themes, day / night content options, line spacing, font styles, preferred justification, previews, etc.). Finally, today also marks the reintroduction of the Nook for PC client, though it seems that most of the fanciful new features are reserved for the more portable versions. Hop on past the break for the full skinny, and tap that source link to get to downloadin’.
Continue reading Nook for iPhone, iPad and PC see updates, slew of new features in tow
Nook for iPhone, iPad and PC see updates, slew of new features in tow originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 17 Aug 2010 08:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
A collection of recently published patents and a new hire at Apple suggest that future iPhones may carry built-in features to replace your credit cards.
Apple recently hired Benjamin Vigier as a product manager for mobile commerce. He’s an expert in near field communication (NFC), a technology that enables devices to exchange information wirelessly over very short distances. It’s the kind of technology that credit card companies have been touting (without much success) recently, where instead of swiping a credit card, you just wave a card or key fob in front of a reader. According to his LinkedIn profile, Vigier formerly directed and developed mobile payment solutions for PayPal and Starbucks.
In addition, Apple in recent months published several patent applications that portray NFC-based hardware and software features utilizing mobile payments for concerts, sports venues, airline ticketing and more.
Apple did not respond to a request for comment.
A growing number of businesses have been eyeing mobile payments as an alternative to credit cards. Earlier this month, Bloomberg reported that Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile were planning a joint venture to form a mobile payment system competing with Visa and MasterCard. Such a move would presumably reduce costs to merchants, who are typically charged 3 percent of the purchase price when customers pay with a credit card.
However, as Wired.com’s Eliot Van Buskirk earlier reported, a mobile payment system would face difficulty breaking into the mainstream. In order for mobile payments to gain widespread adoption, merchants would have to purchase new readers, estimated at $200 per unit, and they’d have to be convinced that a large number of customers will be using the new payment system.
Also, a new mobile payment system would raise security concerns. A location that frequently performs wireless transactions would become a prime target for hackers and snoopers. One reason credit cards have been so successful is that they rely on leased lines and dedicated networks, which ensure reliability and security, according to Aaron MacPherson, IDC Financial Insights practice director for payments and security.
“Even if you’re using a mobile phone network, you do not want to be in a situation where you can’t pay because there’s no 3G signal … and the internet is susceptible to brownouts and denial-of-service attacks. It’s notoriously insecure,” MacPherson told Wired.com. “I don’t think either of them can substitute for the card networks.”
From Near Field Communications
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So BGR‘s got a tipster lined up with alleged details from within iOS 4 beta firmware that shows a section dedicated to bypassing the usual iTunes activation scheme for three new product codes: iPhone3,2, iPhone 3,3, and iProd 2,1. Actually, these product codes aren’t “new,” per se; we saw all three of them in the iPad’s firmware back in April, but they’ve yet to make the giant leap to officialdom. What’s different here, then? Well, apparently, this activation-bypass scheme has historically had a tendency to show up in Apple’s beta firmware right around the time a new iPhone goes into testing — ostensibly so that field engineers don’t need to worry about that rigmarole to do their jobs — which suggests that these new models are getting ready for action. BGR‘s source says these will be the CDMA iPhone and the next-gen iPad, though you can’t tell that from the product codes alone, and that doesn’t explain why we’ve actually got two new iPhones listed. For what it’s worth, the current iPad — iPad1,1 — used to go by the moniker iProd1,1 in firmware, so it stands to reason that we really are looking at a new tablet here. Now if you’ll excuse us, we’ve got some Verizon Wireless field tech van recon to do.
New iPhone, iPad model codes set up for iTunes activation bypass — CDMA versions, maybe? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 16 Aug 2010 13:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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