While direct movie and TV show downloads on the iPhone certainly seems like a reasonable enough proposition (over WiFi, at least), we’re not completely convinced that a rogue ad in the Twitterfon app is the first place such a feature would leak out. According to a report on Open Salon, however, that’s just what has happened, and there’s even a few not immediately dismissible pics to back it up. Of course, the ad in question is now seemingly nowhere to be found, but it supposedly did once point to some movie and TV show listings broken down by genre, and even to the individual, non-working titles that would apparently be available. Head on past the break for a glimpse of the ad itself, and feel free to let us know if you happened to see it yourself.
This week, we revisit some classics from your (and your grandfather’s) childhood, iPhone browsing gets upgraded, and I play what it probably the best 3D multi-animal hunting game available for the iPhone.
Boulder Dash!: Whether you’re just leaving college or having your third kid, there’s a pretty good chance that you played Boulder Dash as a kid. The official 25th anniversary iPhone edition is as faithful as you want it to be: you can choose either classic, spritey graphics or a modern, cartoonish look, and opt for either an overlaid d-pad control scheme or a new swipe-based system. The game looks great and both control system work a treat, so collecting jewels on the iPhone feels about as natural as it did on the Commodore. $4.99.
Deer Hunter 3D: A hunting video game! What kind of bizarre nerd bumpki—oh, wait, this is actually pretty fun. Deer Hunter 3D for iPhone, licensed from the Walmart-famous Deer Hunter PC franchise, takes you on hunting trips to various locations to shoot various animals with various types of guns. It looks great, and the aiming system—the core of the game—is executed well. The walk-aim-shoot routine seems repetitive at first, but the game has enough unlockable content to keep it interesting for a while. $5.99.
Nightglow: This browser brings proper tabs, more gestures and a few other little odds and ends to your iPhone. Its tab switcher is definitely faster than Safari’s, though the app as a whole can be a bit sluggish, and the screen grab feature, which lets you explore the page while still maintaining focus on a text field, is sometimes useful. It kinda reminds me of one of those old Internet Explorer tabbed shells from 2003: it’s mildly attractive for power users, but wouldn’t be necessary at all if Safari was just a little bit better. $0.99.
Pickin’ Stix: A vintage vintage game, this app asks you to do precisely one thing. Doing that one thing is easy, and strangely gratifying. It feels like it ought to be free, but $0.99 isn’t so bad.
HDR Camera: No, you can’t take DSLR-grade, hyper-realistic dynamic range photos with your iPhone. You just can’t. That said, HDR Camera does do a convincing fake. The app coaxes some decent pseudo-HDR imagery out of the iPhone’s sad little camera, albeit with filters and effects you could easily just apply in Photoshop. Its $1.99 pricetag is too high.
UpNext 3D NYC: If your life revolves around NYC, there really isn’t a better way—wait, let me rephrase that: a prettier way—to navigate the city on your iPhone. If it doesn’t, UpNext 3D’s exquisitely detailed view of the city is still great eye candy. It does everything you could want from a mapping app: subway schedules, local listings and basic mapping functions and restaurant reviews. Tapping buildings even tells you what’s inside (but only sometimes). Sorry, Brooklynites, it’s Manhattan only for now. $2.99.
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.
This week’s iPhone apps are all about growing up, taking control, and inheriting new responsibilities. Get a job! Kiss important peoples’ butts! Organize your shopping! Record important things! And for some reason, SLEESTAKS.
First, a moment of silence for the recently departed John Mahoney, the great emcee of iPhone apps that everyone had grown to love so dearly and from whom I’ve inherited this hallowed feature. You’ll always live on in our hearts, other John. (And also in the real world, because you’re not dead.)
—
On to the apps.
Nobody wants to build a resume; it’s daunting, and usually depressing. ResumePRO streamlines the process for you, building a passably professional-looking resume from whatever information you enter into the various fields it provides (previous experience, education, references, pictures, whatever). It’s still up to you to grossly inflate your every modest accomplishment. Unfortunately for its intended audience (unemployed people?), ResumePRO is two bucks.
At some point, everyone has to start shopping like an adult. This means: planning, lists, budgeting, and muesli. Bazaar takes care of nearly all of these things, making it sort of easy to create shopping lists based on recipes, weekly plans, or preplanned lists from a picky spouse. This is definitely one for people with an organizational bent, but the ongoing basket price tally is pretty useful no matter how lazy you are. Three dollars.
In these hard times, you can’t blame people for turning to blatant sycophancy. Try it! Sometimes it works, but it always gives you a good gauge for how much your dignity is worth in the free market. Anyway, ExecTweets is a Microsoft-backed venture to collect and aggregate tweets from power players in a variety of industries. Now it’s got an iPhone app, which lets you peek the minds of various Twitter-inclined bigwigs, organized by industry, topic or popularity. FYI, Lee Iacocca just took a huge dump. Free.
Poddio is a great little sound recorder and editor, and the new free version is just as good, though it cripples most of your file sharing options. Still, it’s a dead-simple app that’s perfect for recording long interviews, meetings or events, and editing down to size with many of the features of a desktop nonlinear editing app. It’s free, but if you want easy recording transfers, you’ll have to go Pro, which’ll set you back ten whole American dollars.
And because, lets be honest, this whole “adulthood” thing is a hollow charade, here’s a game. I didn’t know about this until, like, right now, but Will Ferrel is about to star in a Land of the Lost remake. What the hell? Anyhoo, they made an iPhone game for it, and it’s kinda fun. It’s puzzlier than you might expect, but it’s a great time-suck and above-average for a piece of promotional material. Warning: if you don’t think that everything Will Farrel does is funny by default, do not expect to laugh. If you do, I guess the interspersed quips and quotes might work for you.
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.
There will be no judgment in this post. No sound snobbery. I’m simply asking the age-old question: At what bitrate should we encode MP3s? And I need your help.
This test is occurring in two parts. In part one, I’m sampling three songs chosen from vastly different genres, encoded from CD and transcoded into the various popular bitrates available for MP3s (64k, 96, 128, 160, 192, 256, and 320kbps with VBR off). I tell you what I hear, then you sample the files yourself, and tell me what you hear.
Part I – My Test I’m sitting here with Pioneer’s brand-new VSX-1019AH-K receiver, a $500 model that actually pulls the MP3 data off of USB drives and iProducts for decoding within the receiver itself. (According to Pioneer, this “Advanced Sound Retriever” technology restores sound lost in the MP3 conversion process, so I figure it’s the best MP3 experience I’m gonna get.)
The sound is being sent through 14 gauge Monoprice speaker wire to twin Definitive Mythos STS Supertowers ($3,000/pair). We wanted to assemble an ideal, nice home audio system that could make MP3s sound their best. We feel that this combination of superb speakers and MP3 decoding reaches a reasonable benchmark for the reasonable enough price of around $3,500. Since most readers including me aren’t going to run out and buy anything nicer, it represents a decent ceiling of audio quality. Pure Prairie League – Woman My first pass, I couldn’t hear a difference beyond 128. And it was a little worrisome. But no judgment, that’s the rule! I took another pass…things did seem to get better…but was I imagining it?
So I skipped from 128 to 192. Then I could hear an improvement as the instruments were unchanged but the vocals grew more lifelike. Songs encoded beyond 192 sounded different in terms of balance, but not necessarily any better. I wonder if, since the song was “digitally remastered,” studio technicians compressed the audio to begin with. My conclusion: 192
Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc. It was a total shock. I could hear the differences in bitrates, all the way to the top, the first pass through the list. I had assumed, whatever, some electronic type music. It won’t matter. But even the jump from 192 to 256 was dramatic on my system, with every enhancement giving me more detail in the laugh and a richer, wetter bass line. My conclusion: 320
Bizet – Carmen Suite #1 During my quick first pass, I didn’t hear a difference beyond 160. Skipping intervals, I found no improvement going from 160 to 192, but a noticeable improvement from 160 to 256. The middle just feels fuller, with a far more lifelike reverb to the low to mid horn section. I’d like to say that I heard a difference up to 320, but I’m willing to chalk that up to the power of suggestion. My conclusion: 256
Also, I compared the 320kbps recordings to their uncompressed WAV counterparts. The only difference I could hear was in the Pure Prairie League’s Woman. The vocals and high level instrumentation felt ever so less harsh. It’s a bit ironic, as that was the song I had the biggest problem distinguishing bitrates in the first place.
Back when I tested my ear in college, I found the cutoff to be 160, and have since encoded all of my music at that level (though it’s become less of an issue now that MP3s are more often downloaded than ripped from CDs). Now, however, it’s pretty apparent that with more hard drive space and a nicer audio system—my earlier testing was just on a set of decent computer speakers—it might be worth reassessing my encoding rates. In just these three songs, I found a huge fluctuation, and not in any way I intended. Honestly, I figured that Carmen would require the best bitrate to assuage my ear.
Now, I wouldn’t encode lower than 192kbps, and I’d be tempted to push the boundaries to 256kbps and 320kbps on the music I planned on listening to very closely, though my laptop’s hard drive would probably hate me for it.
Part II – Your Test Enough with me talking, now it’s your turn. You’ll find the files you need below alongside an accompanying poll. Please don’t vote based upon past experience or my subjective impressions, and feel free to test on any system you like (as long as you note it in the survey).
Oh, and the easiest way to peruse the files quickly is to click the first audio link, let it load in your browser, then just change the bitrate number in the filename up in the address bar—fast and easy to do any side-by-side comparison you like. Well, at least on your crappy computer speakers.
We’ve been wondering when we’d see the next Laptop Hunters ad from Microsoft, but it looks like the company’s throwing a change-up: its latest 30-second spot features Wes Moss, Certified Financial Planner, explaining that iTunes “costs a lot” while Zune Pass “costs a little.” The argument, of course, is that at a buck a song (or more), filling up your iPod costs way more than the $15 / month cost of the Zune subscription service, but we’ve got a feeling that Wes just won’t convince as many people as Lauren and Giampaulo — while we certainly think Zune Pass is a great deal, especially with the 10 free tracks a month now included, most people have plenty of music from all kinds of sources already, and an additional monthly bill in the current economy doesn’t seem all too appealing. Plus, well, this argument has never really worked for services like Yahoo and Rhapsody in the past, so we’re not sure it’s going to work now. But that’s just us — we’re sure you’ve got your own opinions, so check out the vid after the break and sound off.
P.S. If Wes looks familiar it’s because he was a contestant on Donald Trump’s The Apprentice. He was fired.
The kids at LaCie are clearly out of control. Every time we turn around they’re unveiling another big, bad storage solution aimed at a world hungry for… well, more storage. If the old 8TB model was a little slight for your liking, the company has announced product upgrades for both the 2big Network and 5big Network devices, featuring Apple Time Machine and in the case of the 5big device, iTunes server support. While the latter rocks five hot-swappable drive bays for up to 10TB storage with models starting at $799.99, the 2big device sports a ‘mere’ 4TB of RAID action starting at $319.99. These are devices that speak calmly, in an eerie monotone, pronouncing that they still have the “utmost enthusiasm and confidence” in your mission. They clearly “want to help you.” Available soon on the company’s website.
People are always eager to point out cool technologies that America ignores, but what about the ones that we—and only we—use? Enough with the grousing: Here’s what we’ve got that they don’t.
TiVo For a long while, TiVo was the undisputed king of TV recording. Other DVRs have come a long way in the last ten years, but they’re all late to the party, and still playing catchup: The TiVo name is now permanently tattooed into the public’s consciousness, synonymous with recording shows and backed up by still-impressive hardware.
But the fact that TiVo has attained a near-Kleenex level of brand recognition in the US doesn’t mean a thing overseas. As of writing, the service is only available in a few other places—Canada, the UK, Mexico, Taiwan and Australia—where it has been met with limited enthusiasm. While the US, with its huge, old, fragmented cable industry, offers a fantastic opportunity for a meta-service like TiVo, smaller countries with one or two dominant pay-TV providers—which have their own increasingly formidable DVR alternatives—are tougher nuts to crack.
The Kindle This choice might seem odd—or at least inconsequential—on account of the steady stream of new e-reader hardware available all over the world, but Kindle exclusivity is actually a technological feather in America’s cap. Why? Because the source of the Kindle’s importance isn’t its hardware, but its connectivity and the service it’s tied to.
Anyone can slap a case around a panel of E-Ink and add an off-the-shelf Linux OS—and plenty of companies have. But being linked wirelessly to a massive library of legal downloads, bestselling books, magazines and newspapers, is what will make a reader great. For now, the only mainstream reader that can claim such a feature is the Kindle, and the only country that can claim the Kindle is the US. Not that it can’t go global—similar services for music and TV, like the iTunes store, have found ways to deal with tricky licensing and gone global—it’s just that it probably won’t for a while.
Push-to-Talk Without a doubt, this is the technology that feels the most American on this list. Intended primarily for the workplace, push-to-talk technology has tragically seeped into the mainstream, subjecting millions of innocent mall shoppers to that incessant, inane chirping, and the shouting at the handset that accompanies it. Who hasn’t been inadvertently pulled into the middle of a heated, long-distance argument about novelty Jimmy Dean breakfast sandwiches flavors while waiting in line at Walmart? Well, pretty much anyone who doesn’t live in America—and not just because they don’t have Jimmy Dean, or Walmart.
As it turns out, PTT’s Amerophilia can be explained by little more than poor marketing. According to ABI Research:
In other world regions MNOs have failed to market PTT successfully to business users or have opted to market to consumers, and it just hasn’t taken off.
Nextel, which was inherently crippled by a proprietary network technology that wasn’t built out in any other country but the US, found success with PTT by pitching handsets to businesses as turbocharged Walkie-Talkies, not by marketing them directly to consumers, most of whom would have trouble imagining a more efficient way to make themselves look like brash assholes.
Video On Demand iTunes has gone worldwide and services like BBC’s iPlayer have brought the Hulu model overseas, but America still has the best VOD situation in the world, bar none. The problem is simple: Even countries with a healthy entertainment industry import a tremendous amount of American TV, often well after it was originally broadcast. This regional disparity seems kinda stupid in the age of the internet and VOD, but it’s just as severe as it ever was.
European or Asian viewers have to wait for painful weeks or months for a domestic channel to license, schedule and dub international American hits like Lost or Mad Men, and hope, assuming their stations have a VOD service, that the show eventually finds its way online. As an ad-supported service and a product owned by the networks who profit from the above arrangement, Hulu’s reluctance to stream content to countries is understandable, but the despair is deeper than that: You can’t even pay for TV if you want to. People without American billing addresses are barred from VOD services like Amazon’s Unbox, and will find their iTunes video selections sorely lacking.
Satellite Radio Since is smells distinctly like a waning technology, satellite radio might not do much to stir your techno-patriotism, but goddernit, it’s ours. The US has far more satellite radio subscribers than the rest of the world combined, all through the remains of Sirius and XM, now merged under the lazy moniker of “Sirius XM”. Why? We have lots (and lots) of cars.
Satellite radio actually has roots as a proudly international service—after all, it is broadcast from frickin’ space—having been developed in part by a humanitarian-initiative company called 1Worldspace, which was established to broadcast news and safety information to parts of the globe without reliable terrestrial radio infrastructure. They still exist today, but they broadcast to fewer than 200,000 subscribers, mostly in India and parts of Africa. Satrad’s American success can be solely credited to our auto manufacturers, who eagerly installed satellite units in new cars for years, healthily boosting subscription numbers (but not necessarily car sales). With no comparably pervasive car culture to take advantage of anywhere else in the world, satellite radio is a tough sell.
Hey guys. So this is my last time doing the iPhone apps column, because it’s my last day at Gizmodo. So it’s only fitting that we enter the DANGER ZONE.
That’s right, I’m moving on to other place in the internetosphere as of today (more later), and I will of course be leaving the weekly roundup of notable iPhone apps in the more than capable hands of one John “Mose” Herrman, so fear not, this isn’t going anywhere.
Top Gun: With no apparent peg whatsoever, Paramount has decided to make a Top Gun iPhone game. Since I’ve seen this movie upwards of, well, let’s just say many times, I am pleased. And better yet, it’s no dud—smooth accelerometer controls (with a recalibration option! yes!) guide either an F-22 fighter or B-2 bomber (yeah, no F-14s for some reason) through some pretty intuitive arcade dogfights. Plus, convincing covers of the classic Kenny Loggins soundtrack and some corny Advance Wars-type cutscenes. Well done. $2 for a limited time.
Michelin Guide Restaurants: The folks behind the famous Michelin Star, the mark of a Very Good Place to Eat, have compiled restaurant guides for several cities. Location-based search for when you know you want deliciousness, but you just don’t know where to go. NYC is $7, prices vary for others.
AT&T Wireless Mobile: Finally, AT&T got their shit together and released an app that you can use to monitor your cellphone minutes and text usage and pay your bills. It seems to accomplish those tasks just fine. Free
uHear: This app tests your hearing to see how many years all those hours rocking Mastodon at top volume on the ol’ white buds have set your hearing back. It’s a buck, which apparently goes to charity. [via Gadget Lab]
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.
This is not the first time we’ve heard talk of an Apple media download kiosk, nor does it seem any more plausible this time around, but who knows? According to patent docs dredged up by Apple Insider and dating back to the halcyon days of late 2007, the company has certainly put some thought into this, detailing a wireless iTunes station that would allow users to access the iTunes store on the go, using a “virtual physical connection” to the player. As for the kiosk, it would both access media stored locally (perennial faves and new releases) and the rest of the iTunes store over its Internet connection, with users ponying up by either providing their iTunes account credentials or by credit card. Not a bad idea, eh? Well, we won’t hold our breath. One more pic for you after the jump, jump, jump…
This article was written on January 21, 2008 by CyberNet.
Back in September when there was a ton of hype surrounding the new iPod Touch and the drop in price of the iPhone, there was also another big story over at Apple. They announced that NBC didn’t intend to renew their contract with iTunes once their current contract ran out in December. December came and went and sure enough, NBC didn’t renew their contract. Apparently the two couldn’t agree on a price, NBC wanted to charge double the price shows were being sold at while Apple wanted to drop the price.
Not even an entire month after NBC’s contract ended and the Financial Times is reporting that NBC’s CEO, Jeff Zucker, has patched relations with Apple. The Financial Times says:
Mr Zucker appears to have patched up relations with Apple after a pricing dispute last year led NBC to pull its shows from the iTunes digital media store. “We’ve said all along that we admire Apple, that we want to be in business with Apple,” he said. “We’re great fans of Steve Jobs.”
Apparently NBC is realizing that getting something instead of nothing is better when it comes to selling TV shows on iTunes, and it didn’t take them long to realize this. Apple sure does know how to stand their ground, don’t they?
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This week, we revisit some classics from your (and your grandfather’s) childhood, iPhone browsing gets upgraded, and I play what it probably the best 3D multi-animal hunting game available for the iPhone.
This week’s 
Nobody wants to build a resume; it’s daunting, and usually depressing. 
At some point, everyone has to start shopping like an adult. This means: planning, lists, budgeting, and muesli. 
In these hard times, you can’t blame people for turning to blatant sycophancy. Try it! Sometimes it works, but it always gives you a good gauge for how much your dignity is worth in the free market. Anyway, ExecTweets is a Microsoft-backed venture to collect and aggregate tweets from power players in a variety of industries. Now it’s got an 
Poddio is a great little sound recorder and editor, and the 
And because, lets be honest, this whole “adulthood” thing is a hollow charade, here’s a game. I didn’t know about this until, like, right now, but Will Ferrel is about to star in a Land of the Lost remake. What the hell? Anyhoo, they made an 
There will be no judgment in this post. No sound snobbery. I’m simply asking the age-old question: At what bitrate should we encode MP3s? And I need your help.
People are always eager to 
TiVo
The Kindle
Push-to-Talk
Hey guys. So this is my last time doing the 
Back in September when there was a ton of hype surrounding the new iPod Touch and the drop in price of the iPhone, there was also another big story over at Apple. 