Hasta La Gadget!

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when the subject of time travel comes up? If you’re like us, you probably think of flying DeLoreans or malfunctioning hot tubs; maybe even the HG Wells chair with a brobdingnagian spinning wheel on the back. Since these types of time machines (you know, the ones that actually go back in time) don’t exist — that we know of, anyway — we need to find other methods of transporting ourselves to another time. That’s where Video Time Machine comes in handy: it chronicles over a century of compiled movies, commercials, TV broadcasts, and other forms of moving pictures into one clever iOS app. We had an opportunity to get some hands-on time with both the iPhone and iPad apps and did some time travelling of our own. Did it satisfy our hunger for one hundred years of visual treats? Head past the break to find out.

Continue reading Video Time Machine for iOS (hands-on)

Video Time Machine for iOS (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jul 2011 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who needs sleep, right? Rather than putting in the tried-and-true “eight hours” that your mum still insists that you get, you’re going to be doing something a bit more adventurous this evening. Something involving a “jailbreak” of your recently updated iPod touch, iPhone or iPad. Just hours after Apple pushed out iOS 5 beta 3 to its developers, a Sn0wbreeze update has been confirmed to support jailbreaking on that very build. Sadly, it’s still tethered for the time being, and the iPad 2 remains unsupported, but those with nerves of steel (and gobs of vacation days) can hit the source links to get started. Furthermore, we’re just starting to see what kind of wacky tricks beta 3 has up its sleeve — things like custom alerts for text messages and what appears to be a shattering of the app grid on the iPad. For more on that, hop on past the break; for more on the jailbreak, we’d encourage you to talk amongst yourselves in comments below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading iOS 5 beta 3 already jailbroken, new features come to light

iOS 5 beta 3 already jailbroken, new features come to light originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 Jul 2011 00:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ready for a newly refined recipe for the next flavor of iOS? After dropping iOS 5 beta 2 on us on June 24th, Apple has now unleashed beta 3, meaning those with sensitive taste buds (and developer accounts) can start sniffing and sussing out what’s changed. Of note seem to be a bevy of toggles controlling location services in detail, while there’s also a new switch for voice roaming in settings. From what we’re seeing not a lot has changed visually anywhere outside of the gears icon, but don’t let that stop you from grabbing this savory download.

Update: In case you were wondering, yes indeed this new beta can still be jailbroken.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

iOS 5 beta 3 comes out of the oven, brings new fixes and toggles to the table originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Did you finally use JailbreakMe to free your iPhone? Well, if you’re also sick of pecking at its virtual keyboard, then Andrew Liu’s new Swype iOS port may pique your interest. Although the app’s still in the earliest of stages — version 0.1.0, to be exact — we can confirm it works, but it did take us two downloads via a repo with Cydia and functionality proved limited. We were able to swipe words in pre-loaded apps like Messaging, Mail and Search, but had no luck with Safari or others we’ve downloaded. Furthermore, Swype’s all-important blue trace-line is absent, and our words didn’t always come out as expected. Liu stated on Twitter that the current release is still a beta and that he’ll be sprucing it up soon; in the meantime, let us know how your swipe-typing goes in the comments if you choose to install it.

Update: Looks like the newest beta includes the aforesaid blue line, and accuracy is said to be improved by some degree.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Unofficial Swype port makes its way to iOS, slides in via Jailbreak radar originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 17:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When we go somewhere new, we wish we could spend more time taking in the sights and less time looking at our phone for directions and info about our surroundings. Apple’s well aware of this conundrum, and has filed a couple of patent applications to let you ogle your environment while telling you where to go and what you’re seeing. One app is a method for combining augmented reality (AR) information and real time video while allowing users to interact with the images on screen — so you can shoot a vid of a city skyline with your iPhone, touch a building where you want to go, and let it show you the way there. The second patent application is for a device with an LCD display capable of creating a transparent window, where the opacity of the screen’s pixels is changed by varying the voltage levels driving them. Such a display could overlay interactive info about what you see through the window, so you can actually look at the Mona Lisa while reading up on her mysterious grin. Of course, these are just patent applications, so we probably won’t be seeing any AR-optimized iDevices anytime soon (if ever), but we can dream, right?

Apple seeks to spruce up the real world with interactive augmented reality, has the patent apps to prove it originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jul 2011 12:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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