Feb 09

iControlPad for iPhone Finally Shipping, Adds Support for All Phones

Posted in: Accessories and Peripherals, Games, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

At long, long last the iControlPad – a hardware gamepad for the iPhone – can be bought. Well, almost. You can order today for a delivery next week, whereupon you can slot in your iPhone, iPod Touch or any other phone that will fit in the slot and play button-bashing titles like Street Fighter 4 as God intended.

We have followed the on-again-off-again history of the iControlPad here at Gadget Lab, right up until the last setback which saw the iControlpad team pulling the almost-ready design due to cold feet. The fear was that Apple wouldn’t approve of an accessory that hooked directly up to its phone, and would kill the project. The result was a switch to Bluetooth, which has the happy side-effect of making the gamepad compatible with any phone, console or computer that works with it.

The unit has its own 1500mAH battery, which can also charge your phone via USB should you decide that making a phone call is more important than a quick blast on Sonic the Hedgehog. It is also customizable. The main unit is flanked by two “side clamps”. These are plastic bars that clip on and provide a snug case for the following phones, pasted right in from the iControlPad product page:

iPhone 3, iPhone 3G, iPhone, iPhone 3GS, iPhone4, iPod touch (some require padding), Motorola Backflip (needs padding), LG Optimus S, LG Ally, Blackberry Touch (Torch?), Samsung Intercept (may require adjustment), HTC Dream, T-Mobile G1, Era G1

While you’ll need to jailbreak your iPhone to get the most from the controller, it “does work on un-[jailbroken] iPhones in keyboard mode.” So you’ll have to wait for

The price? Well, you’d better be pretty serious about your gaming, as it’s $75 with sides, plus $15 for extra sides, or $60 naked. available “now”.

iControlPad product page [iControlPad]

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Feb 09

Hilarious Google Live Voice Translation Launches on iPhone

Posted in: iPhone, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

Google has released the Google Translate app for the iPhone, bringing the live voice translation feature from Android to iOS. You should try it out: it’s hilarious.

The free app can be used to translate typed words between any of 50 different languages, and you can also hit a button and speak to the app in 15 languages, whereupon your words are “recognized”, transcribed and then piped into the translation engine. The result is displayed as text, but if you hit another button it will be read out in a surprisingly good (and actually quite sexy) synthesized voice (available in 23 languages).

Now, it might be my non-U.S accent, but the thing has some trouble recognizing my voice. For instance, I said “You can’t smoke here” and the app heard “Wake up sleepyhead.” And with my first test last night I said something I can’t recall now, but it certainly wasn’t the “Dog a bagel and cats” that Google Translate seems to think.

Now, you’re not likely to get into trouble as you can preview your phrase before you play it back to an unsuspecting local, and the translations themselves are pretty good for short phrases. If you don’t want to play the translation in the foreign language, you can just tilt the phone into landscape mode and the words will be displayed in large type, and full screen.

You’ll need to be online for the proper translation to work, but single words can be translated offline, and you can also view your starred items without a connection (I have “I’m sorry I’m drunk. I’m English” and “Where is the nearest liquor store?” saved in my iPad). Yes, it works on the iPad, albeit in pixel-doubling mode.

I could honestly play with this thing all day, but here’s a last treat for Eddie Izzard fans. I dialed-in French to English and said in my best accent “Le singe est dan l’arbre.” The result? “Loose change stomach.” You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Introducing the Google Translate app for iPhone [Google Mobile blog]

Google Translate [iTunes]

Eddie Izzard – Learning French [YouTube]

http://itunes.apple.com/fr/app/sparrow/id417250177?mt=12


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Feb 09

Verizon iPhone 4 now available to order / reserve for in-store pickup

Posted in: Apple, available, iPhone, on sale, OnSale, Today's Chili, verizon, vzw

Apple and Verizon’s long-awaited partnership is nearly upon us, folks, and the final piece to the puzzle is general availability of the hallowed iPhone 4. You’re now able to order or reserve your own at the online stores of both carrier and phone maker, though shipping dates for early orders are listed at a distant February 18th. We’d just reserve one and go down to our nearest physical outlet to pick it up tomorrow.

Verizon iPhone 4 now available to order / reserve for in-store pickup originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 09 Feb 2011 03:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  sourceApple, Verizon  | Email this | Comments

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Feb 08

iPad Immigrant Smuggling Game Submitted to App Store

Posted in: Apple, ipad, iPhone, Today's Chili, video games, Weird News

smuggle truck.jpg

Apple’s infamous App Store vetting process is set to come under fire yet again, with the pending release of Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration, an iPhone/iPad game that revolves around the smuggling of immigrants across the US-Mexican border.

Alex Schwartz, the Owlchemy Labs developer behind the title claims to have been inspired by his own friends who had trouble making it over the border. “As we lived through a painful 12 months of our friend struggling through the absurd legal minefield that surrounds U.S. immigration, we felt that we should create a game that touches on the issue,” says Schwartz.

Not surprisingly, the game is being met with all manner of criticism, claiming that the title trivializes the hot button topic. The game is due out in March, pending approval. Trailer after the jump.

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Feb 08

Google Translate for iPhone hits the App Store

Posted in: app, Google, ios, iPhone, IphoneApp, ipod touch, IpodTouch, Today's Chili
iPhone users have been able to use a mobile-optimized HTML5 version of Google Translate for some time now, but they can now finally also get an honest-to-goodness app of their own just like their Android-using friends. That brings with it a number of enhancements over the basic web app, including a speak-to-translate feature with support for 15 languages, the ability to listen to your translations in 23 different languages, and a full-screen mode that lets you show your translated text to others with large, easy-to-read text. Google is still keep a few features exclusive to the Android version, however, including the still-experimental conversation mode that allows for some on-the-fly translations — both apps are also still lacking a much-needed beatbox mode.

Google Translate for iPhone hits the App Store originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Download Squad  |  sourceOfficial Google Blog, iTunes Preview  | Email this | Comments

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Feb 08

Verizon iPhone 4 Non-Review: No Really, Just Wait. [Iphone 4]

Posted in: Apple, iPhone, Today's Chili, top, verizon

The Verizon iPhone 4 is here. It’s been exhaustively reviewed and it’s exactly what we thought it would be. We still think you should wait. More »

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Feb 08

Visualized: KIRFer’s paradise

Posted in: Apple, ipad, iPhone, ipod, kirf, psp, Today's Chili
Visualized: KIRFers paradise

LA lovers of things that Keep it Real Fake, finding your next knockoff might be a little harder than anticipated. The Los Angeles police just busted a warehouse full of knock-offs, things like GiPhones, iPhoncs, PNPs, and Poops. Among all this junk, some $10 million worth, two dudes were found and arrested — two dudes who had records showing more than $7 million in profits. It seems KIRFing does pay, for a little while at least.

Visualized: KIRFer’s paradise originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 12:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear  |  sourceCult of Mac  | Email this | Comments

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Feb 08

iPhone Confession App Gets Church’s Approval

Posted in: Apple, iPhone, Today's Chili, Weird News

confessiona app iphone.jpg

In this fast-paced world, it can often be difficult to find your way to a confession booth. Don’t worry, though, your iPhone can help. A new app called “Confession: A Roman Catholic App” is giving Catholic iOS users a quick and easy way to confess their sins.
The app features a “step-by-step guide to the sacrament,” including a “custom examination of Conscience” based on age, gender, and marital status, as well as a confessional walk-through and seven acts of contrition. You can also add custom sins to the thing.
According to the BBC, senior church officials in the U.S. have given the app a big thumbs up–an apparent first. The app comes a couple of weeks after the Pope preached Internet responsibility. You can download it now for $1.99. A small price to pay, perhaps.
The app will run you $1.99–which may be a small price to pay, depending on who you ask…
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Feb 08

iTunes salvation: Roman Catholic Church approves Confession app

Posted in: app, Apple, AppStore, ipad, iPhone, itunes, Today's Chili
Roman Catholic Church approves Confession app, salvation now available on iTunes

Are you a sinner? Don’t worry, there’s an app for that. The Roman Catholic Church has approved a recent iTunes addition called Confession, a $1.99 app that bills itself as “the perfect aid for every penitent.” As you can see above, it lets you pick a commandment and tick off all your sins, keeping a running tally to bring into the confessional with you — a sort of anti-tasklist, if you will. Can’t find your particular misstep? No problem! You’re able to add your own, custom dastardly deeds, filling in those gaps the app’s authors didn’t think anyone would fill. Now all it needs is a random sin selector: shake the phone to instantly get a wicked suggestion. That certainly could make boring Thursday nights at the dormitory a little more exciting.

iTunes salvation: Roman Catholic Church approves Confession app originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 07:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink BBC News  |  sourceConfession: A Roman Catholic App (iTunes)  | Email this | Comments

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Feb 07

Verizon iPhone’s Chipset Hints at Unified Network Support

Posted in: iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili, verizon

Hardware geeks have carefully dissected the Verizon iPhone to dig up its secrets.

Repair company iFixit pried open the iPhone and found that it uses the same Qualcomm chipset as the Droid Pro “World Phone.” That means this chipset is capable of supporting both GSM and CDMA, which means Apple might unify Verizon and AT&T iPhones in the future.

If Apple made just one iPhone to work on both network types in the future, it would solve a major problem facing the current Verizon iPhone. The current CDMA-only Verizon iPhone can only be used in the United States, as international networks are on GSM. An iPhone compatible with both AT&T and Verizon would turn future Verizon iPhones into world-compatible phones as well.

Why doesn’t the Verizon iPhone support GSM to solve that problem right now? iFixit thinks it’s to keep the antenna design simple for CDMA.

“It may be that it was easier to design antennas for a CDMA-only phone—this phone supports two cellular frequency bands, while Apple supports five bands in the GSM version,” iFixit said. “But this is a sign that Apple may be considering unifying the CDMA and GSM iPhones in the future.”

iFixit also observed that the Verizon iPhone has a redesigned vibrator to make vibrations quieter and a little softer. Check out iFixit for the full teardown details.

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Photo courtesy of iFixit


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