May 05

Spending Spree. Penultimate Update Adds In-App Paper Store

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

Say goodbye to your allowance with Penultimate’s new Paper Shop

Penultimate, my favorite handwriting app on the iPad, has just added the most dangerous new feature yet: a stationery store. Once I switched away from paper and pen, I thought my days of spending way too much money on beautiful stationary were over. I was wrong.

Penultimate’s strength is its simplicity (well, that and its great design). Essentially, it turns your iPad into a piece of paper. You can add pages to make books, choose nib size and color, and erase. And that’s about it. No handwriting recognition, no photo importing, no fanciness at all. The only technical feature is wrist protection which lets you rest your hand on the screen whilst writing.

The latest update adds in the Paper Shop. This lets you add many, many paper styles to the built in blank, lined and squared papers. Open it up (it’s found in the paper selection menu) and you’ll immediately be transported back to the stationary stores of your nerdy childhood, staring at shelf upon shelf of desirable office supplies, and only a few dollars on your pocket to spend.

Right now you can choose from various packs. My first purchase was Time & Tasks (13 papers), with to-do lists, shopping lists, invoices, memos and so on. You can also pick games (Tic Tac Toe etc.), Young Writers (with line guides to practice upper and lower case, and tall and short letters), the Design Collection (graph, quad and engineering), plus a Writing pack, with various lined stocks and storyboard templates. Finally, there is a music selection with staves, guitar tabs and more. This is the most expensive, at $6, with the cheapest at $1.

A couple of related features have been added, too. When exporting a note, you can now choose to export the paper along with it. And you can import your own backgrounds. Just come up with something that is 718 x 865 pixels, save it to the iPad’s camera roll and import from there. Soon the developer, Cocoa Box, will host a repository where people can share their designs.

This last is a genius move, and could make Penultimate the essential iPad writing app. Penultimate 3.0 is available now for $2.

Papers, papers, papers [Cocoa Box blog]

Penultimate product page [iTunes]

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May 04

Spotify Now on iPod Classic, Wirelessly Syncs to iPhone

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

Spotify will now sync local music to your iPhone over Wi-Fi, embarrassing Apple in its own home

Music streaming service Spotify has updated both its desktop and mobile software to pretty much let you ditch iTunes entirely. The new desktop client will now detect any iPod you have plugged into your computer and let you sync your local tracks with it. This works with not just the iPhone and iPod Touch, but also the iPods Nano, Classic and Shuffle.

This doesn’t let you stream music from the internet to these devices, obviously. Instead, you are using Spotify to replace iTunes as music syncing software. And as Spotify will already import and play local files, it should work seamlessly.

You will also be able to sync tracks that you have bought in Spotify. Music sales is a little known feature of the service, and one the company is pushing with this update with the ability to purchase an entire playlist with one click. Users of the free service, who previously couldn’t use the iOS versions of Spotify (this is an option only for €10-per-month premium subscribers), can now use iPhone Spotify — but only to sync local and purchased music.

IOS and Android users, whether free or premium, also get a rather nifty new feature: Wireless syncing. With the soon-to-be-released update, you can wirelessly sync music from your computer to your phone (or iPod Touch). This is something iTunes should have done years ago. Previously, Spotify tried to let its iOS app play music from the iPod library on the iPhone, but the addition of multitasking in iOS 4 broke this and it had to be pulled.

These updates are rolling out in Spotify-friendly countries over the next few days. In other news, the iPad version of Spotify was recently sighted being used by Bigfoot and/or the Loch Ness Monster.

Spotify says hello to the iPod [Spotify blog]

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May 02

BlackBerry PlayBook to Get Its Own Video-Chat App

Posted in: playbook, skype, Software and Operating Systems, Tablets and E-Readers, Today's Chili, VoIP

On Tuesday, RIM’s PlayBook tablet will receive a video chat app in an over-the-air software update. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

On Tuesday, RIM will debut a new video chat app for the PlayBook, allowing the device to make video and voice calls over Wi-Fi networks.

The company is also planning to release a native Facebook app later this month. E-mail, calendar and contacts apps will have to wait until summer.

The video chat app sounds fairly straightforward, according to RIM’s press release. Much like other currently available mobile video chat options, you’ll have a contact list, picture-in-picture capabilities and a nice little notification that will pop up when you’re receiving a new call. You can also switch between the front and rear cameras on the PlayBook in the middle of the call, so your chat buddy can see the world through your back-facing camera on the call.

Video chat capability is becoming par for the course in the 2011 mobile market. The existence of voice-over-internet-protocol software companies like Skype, Fring and Qik have made it possible for us to communicate between one another face-to-face.

And since the debut of Apple’s official Face Time app for iOS devices with front-facing cameras as well as desktops, we can expect more official video chat app releases from the competition. Last week, for example, Google released its official video chat application for Android smartphones running the latest version of its operating system.

It’s not like the cameras themselves are going anywhere, either. Any tablet-maker that deviates from the predominant hardware profile risks ostracizing itself in an already overcrowded market. Every major tablet debut we’ve seen this year thus far — from Motorola’s Xoom to Apple’s iPad 2 — includes a front-facing camera for taking pictures and video of your mug.

The app will be distributed to existing PlayBook users in an over-the-air software update on Tuesday, and will also be available for download in the BlackBerry App World market.

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May 02

Seamless Pushes Your Current Music Track From Mac to iPhone. Seamlessly

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

Seamless let’s you hand off Supertramp’s finest song to your iPhone and keep listening

Seamless is an iPhone app which lets you easily transition the music you’re listening to between your iOS device and your Mac. So simple is the app that it’s easier to use than to explain. Not that I won’t explain it anyway.

To use Seamless, you need both the iOS app and a helper app running on your Mac. When you are listening to music, or an audiobook, or a podcast on your Mac, the track artwork will show up in the seamless app on your iPhone. Press the button and the music fades down on the computer and up on the iPhone. That’s it. You can now walk away and continue listening, exactly where you left off.

Once listening on your iPhone (or iPad, or iPad Touch), the button changes and you can send the audio back the other way. Here’s a video demo by Lonely Sandwich:

In practice, it really is seamless. You’ll probably smile the first time you use it. The other neat trick is that Seamless is only used for the handoff. The music is played by the iPod app, which means that once you are out and about you can seamlessly (ahem) navigate around your music as you usually do.

What happens if the music doesn’t exist on the iPod? You get a warning in place of the track artwork, so you know what’s going on.

Seamless is simple, but what it does it does well. It is also cheap at $2 (the Mac app is free — find it in the Mac App Store).

Seamless product page [Five Details]


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Apr 29

Google Brings Video Chat to Android, But You Probably Can’t Get It Yet

Posted in: Android, Google, Phones, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

A contact list screenshot from Android’s Google Talk feature. Courtesy Google

Google announced the debut of video and voice chat for the Android operating system Thursday afternoon.

In other words, you’ll soon be able to make calls through Google Talk over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G data networks (if your carrier supports it) to connect with other Android users as well as people using Google Chat on their computers.

The company plans to roll out the release beginning with Samsung Nexus S smartphone owners. After Nexus S owners receive an over-the-air software update in the next few weeks, they’ll be able to take advantage of the new chat options in Google Talk.

But herein lies the caveat: Unless you’re running the latest version of Android on your phone (version 2.3, aka Gingerbread), you won’t be able to use the new features.

The release highlights an oft-discussed problem associated with Android-powered devices: software version fragmentation. As of today, only a handful of phones in the United States come with the latest and greatest build of Google’s Android operating system right out of the box: the Nexus S, the Galaxy S 2 and HTC’s Nexus One. (That last one is a year-old phone that’s no longer available for purchase through carriers, and is only available direct from Google as a “developer phone”). All other Android phones are running version 2.2 (Froyo) or below.

Even phones debuting after the release of Gingerbread are being sold with out-of-date software. The big four Android smartphone manufacturers — HTC, Samsung, Motorola and LG — all launched new devices in 2011 running Froyo, a version of Android that’s one generation behind the Gingerbread release.

Manufacturers often combat customer concerns around software updates by confirming an upgrade will be possible in the future. HTC says owners of its Thunderbolt smartphone should expect Gingerbread to arrive this summer. Motorola says its Atrix will be upgradable, though the company gives no timeline on the release.

Other customers are just plain out of luck. A veritable smorgasbord of devices won’t be seeing a Gingerbread update at all.

“Once again, I am thrilled that I raced out and purchased an Eris,” wrote Android user Mike Rich of his discontinued Droid phone, which Verizon has confirmed will not receive future software updates. “Sadly, after hockey season ends I won’t be able to rent it out to anyone as a puck.”

To be fair, some of it is because of hardware limitations on older generations of phones, which can’t really be blamed on anything but the advance of technology. Devices like HTC’s G1, released over two-and-a-half years ago, can’t even fit the Froyo upgrade, much less Gingerbread, onto its system storage.

And handset makers are doing a better job than others in keeping their customers current. “Smartphone manufacturers update their software almost more than any other industry,” Gartner analyst Phillip Redman told Wired.com.

But Android developers who don’t want to abide by manufacturer timetables are producing DIY software updates. Popular phone modification programs like CyanogenMod offer an unofficial Gingerbread update to phones that aren’t yet upgraded (along with a number of other customizations).

“CyanogenMod exists not because people want to root their phones,” wrote software architect Nikolai Kolev in response to Google’s announcement. “It’s because people are tired of waiting.”


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Apr 28

AirLocation Sends GPS Data From iPhone to iPad

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

Share your iPhone’s GPS radio with the Wi-Fi iPad

AirLocation is an iOS app that sends GPS data from your iPhone to your Wi-Fi-only iPad. To use it, you activate the Personal Hotspot on the iPhone, connect the iPad to the hotspot and run the app on both devices. Now you can use proper, accurate GPS data to track yourself on the iPad’s large screen. It won’t let you use any arbitrary iPad app with GPS, but once the iPad knows where it is you can flip to, say, Foursquare to check in.

It’s certainly a great idea, as using maps on the iPad is way nicer than peeking at the iPhone’s small screen. And currently it’s the only way I know of to actually send proper GPS data between the devices. some of you may remember a video back in March which tried to show that the iPhone shared its location with an iPad. I was skeptical at the time and rightly so — it turned out to be bunk, with the iPad happily finding itself using Wi-Fi triangulation alone.

I’ll be sticking with my current combo of 3G iPad and crappy, Samsung Beyoncé cellphone, but for those of you convinced about the joys of tethering a Wi-Fi iPad, this app costs a single, solitary buck.

Air Location product page [010 Dev]

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Apr 28

Stolen Camera Finder Finds Stolen Cameras

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

Drag a photo onto the box and it will search for other pictures with your camera’s serial number

If you lose your phone or your computer, there’s a fair chance you’ll get it back if you’re using some kind of tracking software. As we have seen before, Apple’s Find my iPhone service has rescued more than one lost phone. But what about your other gadgets?

If your camera is stolen, you now have at least a chance of finding it thanks to the Stolen Camera Finder by Matt Burns. It works by searching the web for photos bearing the serial number of your camera. This number is embedded in the EXIF data of every photograph you take.

Using the tool is easy. Just visit the site and drag a photo from your camera onto the waiting box. The tool searches its database for your camera and if it finds it, you can then go see the pictures. This may — hopefully — give you some clues as to where it is now. You’ll need to use a JPG image (RAW doesn’t work) and some cameras don’t write their serial number into the metadata.

The data comes from Flickr, and also from data crawled from the web. Matt has also written a browser extension for Google Chrome which will check the serial number of photos on every page you visit and add it to the database.

I tried the tool with a photo from my camera, and nothing showed up. I have a ton of photos online, on both on Flickr and here at Wired.com, so I was expecting something. I guess that the service will increase in value as time passes and the database grows. Still, the service is free, and if nothing else it lets you view a whole lot of information about your photos in the drop-down list.

Stolen Camera Finder [Stolen Camera Finder via Photography Bay]

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Apr 27

Google Docs Android App Creates E-Text From Photos

Posted in: Android, app, apps, Google, Phones, Software and Operating Systems, Today's Chili

The Google Docs Android App gives users the ability to access and edit documents, spreadsheets, and more. Photo courtesy of Google

Smartphone users have had Google Docs on their devices for quite a while now, as long as they accessed it through their browser.

Today, Google introduced the Google Docs app for Android, finally providing a native environment for the service, as well as some convenient new features.

The app lets you create, edit, upload, and share documents from your phone, and allows for near real-time collaboration.

You can also take a photo of an actual, physical text document and convert it into a Google doc, without the need for a third-party app. This feature should be handy for keeping track of receipts on trips (expense reports, anyone?) or quickly sharing other important textual information with your phone’s contacts.

From what I could tell, the Google Docs app works swimmingly, though the app experience isn’t quite as fluid as on the PC. In the Docs app, for example, you have to click a button in the upper right to enter editing mode and then save your changes. It’s a minor quibble, but the app is otherwise great for accessing and changing any of your documents on the go.

Google Docs App [Android Market via Android Community]


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Apr 26

Photosmith Syncs iPad with Lightroom

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

Photosmith is like carrying the Lightroom Library Module on your iPad

Got an iPad? Use Adobe Lightroom to organize and mess with your Photos? Then prepare to get excited. Photosmith has launched today, and it’s an iPad app which sits between your camera and Lightroom.

Photosmith lets you tag, rate and otherwise organize all of the photos which you have imported into your iPad, whether using the camera connection kit, an Eye-Fi card or just saved from an e-mail. This means that you really can leave your laptop at home when you go out shooting, or away on vacation.

The app comes in two parts. The iPad app itself, and a plugin for Lightroom. The plugin lets you sync the two, slurping in all photos and metadata over Wi-Fi. You can also import much faster via USB and then just sync the metadata over the air.

The iPad app is where the fun is had, though. Once the app has crunched the data from your photos, you can browse the thumbnails and also view any of the photos full-screen and even at 100% zoom. You can sort the photos into collections (Lightroom speak for folders) and also smart collections (Last Imported, Unmarked, Rejected and so on). You can view and edit metadata, rate images, add colored labels and assign keywords. In short, everything a neat-freak needs to do short of editing the pictures.

Then, when you get home, everything is synced back to Lightroom.

But what if you don’t want to wait until you get to a computer before you share the pictures? Photosmith has you covered. You can export your photos direct to Facebook, Flickr, Dropbox, or via e-mail.

I have been trying to test Photosmith in pre-release form for a while, but my iPad doesn’t like it and the app quits during import. This appears to be an exception, though, as pretty much everyone, everywhere else says that the app is both fast and stable.

Photosmith works with any JPEG, and any RAW file supported by the iPad. If you can import photos from your camera using the camera connection kit, then you’re good to go. Photosmith is available now, for $18.

Photosmith product page [iTunes]

Photosmith – The Grand Tour [Photosmith]

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Apr 25

Weddar Report: iPhone App Is Twitter for Weather

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

Tell us how you feel. Weddar makes weather reporting a social thing.

Weddar is a socially powered weather app for the iPhone that gives you more personalized, localized reports than you get from the official services. That might sound dumb, but I have been trying it since last week and it makes a surprising amount of sense.

Think of Weddar, which launches today, as something like FourSquare or Instagram, only for weather. The app automatically geolocates you, and you report the current weather with a simple, easy interface. This not only gives extremely localized weather reports: It also gives you a more subjective view than you get from the numbers.

“In Weddar, someone, somewhere in Montjuïc [a hill in Barcelona] will tell you that the weather ‘Feels perfect’”, says Weddar co-founder Ricardo Fonseca, “Another one near the beach will tell you that ‘Feels good but windy,’ because weather conditions really are different in the same city.”

You can also request a report from somewhere far away. Tap and hold on the map somewhere other than your current location and the app will submit a weather request. Another reporter in that place will see it and give a report. So you could check if the beach up the coast is too windy before you head off for the day. Reports fade in opacity as they get older, before disappearing completely.

But why would you bother? Because Weddar turns reporting into a competition. You earn points for “checking in” and then you are charted on a leader board. This currently appears to show only the top 50 reporters worldwide (I’m currently number 26!), so some finer-grained groups may be necessary.

You can also share your reports on Twitter and Facebook. Next time you want to Tweet about all the snow that’s dropping on your part of town, you can do something constructive instead of just whining.

Right now the Weddar universe is sparsely populated, but will obviously get more useful as more people join. Best of all, it’s free, and you can go grab it from the App store right now. An Android version is on its way.

Weddar product page [Thanks, Ricardo!]

Weddar app on iTunes.

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