Ustream Updates iPhone App, Broadcast And Chat All At Once

By Cody Fink

Since I might (and that is a huge might) be using Ustream’s latest app on Friday to broadcast my adventure to the Apple Store and the line craziness, I figured I’d give all of you Apple iPad 2 buyers the heads-up on Ustream 2.0, which launched late February but was drowned out in the sea of MacBook news and iPad 2 rumors. Ustream was used extensively by Engadget during their last meet-up, and it worked out incredibly well. Ustream is bringing everything together in the 2.0 release so you can record, talk to peeps in the chat room, share content with friends on Facebook and Twitter, and you can customize Ustream’s menu so you have all of your favorite features right at your fingertips. The app also defaults to an audio stream when your connection is poor, but Ustream is looking into a way to gracefully degrade the quality of the video stream instead. It’s a free download in the App Store, so if you have a Ustream account and want to clog Verizon’s or AT&T’s network with iPad 2 launch shenanigans, join me in downloading the latest update from the App Store.

[Ustream Blog via TechCrunch]

Here Come The AirPlay Systems: Phillips, Pioneer, and JBL Announce New Products

By Cody Fink

2011 won’t be a year just about the iPad. Apple’s AirPlay will be saturating the market this summer with dozens of speakers, docks, and receivers designed to wirelessly stream your tunes in lossless glory. Today, Philips, Pioneer, and JBL have all announced speakers and receivers that all support Apple’s wireless sharing capabilities, and we’ve got press releases, prices, and more after the break.

Google Chrome 10 Release Brings Tabbed Settings, Flash Sandboxing

By Cody Fink

Google Chrome

Google Chrome has a new stable release you can download today (which should arrive automatically or manually via the ‘About Google Chrome’ pane), which offers a couple new features for faster & more secure Internet browsing, and a significant update to Google Chrome settings. Google Chrome’s new settings interface has been overhauled, placing your settings in a new open tab while enabling a new search box so you can find settings (like bookmarks) quickly and easily. Settings have also been extended to the Omnibox, where you can share direct URLs to jump to a specific settings page so you can quickly help mom & dad enable or disable browser options. You can preview the new features via a video after the break.

An Artist’s Tool: Learn Music & Train Your Ear With Capo

By Cody Fink

Capo is one of the brilliant Mac apps that often gets overlooked because of its niche value for musicians that have the will to not just follow tabs on a reading sheet, but to actually tear apart songs and learn them by ear. Capo intrinsically is an odd product in this respect – if you’re learning music by ear, why do you need an aid? I’ll tell ya: there’s nothing like being able to scribble all over a song, create your own tabs, and actually study what’s in front of you. You might want to fondle iTunes as you replay parts and study tracks, but you can ditch the pen and paper as you mark an important bridge, analyze the song’s chord progression, and figure out new riffs.

Rdio Gets A Native Mac App

By Cody Fink

Rdio for Mac

If you wanted to use Rdio without the Adobe Air component (which I thought was pretty good), there is now an official Rdio player built for the OS X desktop. The custom Rdio interface takes on a life of its own by disobeying Aqua’s color scheme for the dark blue seen in Rdio’s online playback controls, and we’d be dipped if it didn’t look a little like iTunes. Similar to something like Songbird, Rdio enables users to browse the site through the music interface, and can scan your music collection just like the Air app did. If you can purchase individual songs, they’ll be added to your iTunes library.

Rdio isn’t available in the Mac App Store - the download is only available to Rdio subscribers through www.rdio.com. You can sign up for a free trial, then navigate to the Rdio for Mac page for a free download.

[via The Next Web, Read Write Web]

TinyVox Is A Social Tape Deck For Your iPhone

By Cody Fink

We typically don’t do audio recordings in replacement or in conjunction with our written reviews, but I’ll make an exception. TinyVox is a very cool social tape deck for your iPhone or iPod touch that enables you to record audio in high or low quality, then publish those audio bits to social networking sites like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

Flickery Giveaway: It’s The iPhoto Alternative For Flickr Fanatics

By Cody Fink

Flickery for Mac

If you want to bring Flickr onto the desktop with minimal fuss, then you may want to look at Flickery. Drag & drop photos into a library that’s synced online, explore community videos and photos, and add all the metadata you want with tags and comments. A neat trick Flickery has up its sleeve is the ability to see local photos from your area based on location – if you’re visiting in Paris or Rome, you might be able to catch up on familiar landmarks with an assumably endless supply of tourist photos. This feature extends so you can click on alternative locations to plan your next photo-venture with just a few clicks (like Localscope where you can browse around manually). Fullscreen mode is available so you can see photographs in their entire beauty, and you can search by text to find exactly what you’re looking for. Federico reviewed Flickery a long while ago, and he found it to be pretty gosh-darned perfect for his volume of iPhone photos. But if you missed out on our earlier giveaway, we’re giving away three more copies this weekend just for you.

One Of Five Copies Of CalendarBar Can Be Yours

By Cody Fink

We reviewed CalendarBar yesterday as the tidy menu drop-down that shows your upcoming events in iOS fashion, and we think it’s nifty enough to give away. First let’s recap: CalendarBar connects with Facebook, iCal, and your Google Calendar accounts to pull in events and display upcoming things you have to do based on your guidelines. I personally only like to see what’s going on today, but you’re free to adjust your own schedules. It’s an event viewer made beautiful, removing the need to keep otherwise large email clients open all day. You can check it out at Clean Cut Code’s product page, or simply visit the Mac App Store for more information. Once you’re done, you can head past the break below for your chance to win a copy of your very own.

Put Screenshots In Your Sights With Crosshairs For Mac

By Cody Fink

Want to take screenshots with precision and adjustable controls? Crosshairs for Mac is what you’ll need if you want a friendly menubar utility that slaps screenshots right onto the desktop. Crosshairs is really simple to use:

Click on the menubar icon to activate Crosshairs
Drag the overlay anywhere and achieve a pixel-perfect with the graphic counter
Press the spacebar to take the screenshot
Press the escape key to deactivate Crosshairs

Simple, no? You might be wondering why you’d use Crosshairs over Snow Leopard’s built in screenshot utility, and the answer is simple. With Crosshairs, you can readjust and take multiple snaps consecutively in one row, making readjustments as needed.

There’s quite a few keyboard commands for Crosshairs, and its main purpose is to get dimensions of anything on screen. For pixel pushers measuring apps or windows for Photoshop, Crosshairs conveniently sits above your workspace so you can quickly rule what you need. If you’re working with a dark background, you could always change that overlay from black to white.

You’ll be set back a meager $4.99 in the Mac App Store for an aiming cursor with mad screenshot & measuring skills. Check it out at Giant Comet for more information.

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