The Ultimate Toolbox for Photos on the Mac
Engineer Saeki Yoshiyasu created a system that allows him to connect to a server with his iPod touch and draw a design on the web browser using nothing but a Graphics LCD, an Arduino, and a WebSocket server (that he wrote using Python / Tornado). The result: his movements on the iPod touch’s screen are recreated on the LCD. If you want to see his code, or try it yourself, visit his site link below. It’s very nerdy but at the same time very simple and cool!
Video after the break.
From the same developers of Inkiness for iPad comes Sleipnir, a new app for the iPhone that’s without a doubt one of the most innovative, stable and fast alternative browsers released in the recent months. My problem with alternatives to Mobile Safari is that they don’t provide anything better than Apple’s implementation, aside from a different visualization of tabs. Many apps sold through the App Store simply gained popularity because they brought “desktop-class tabs” to the iPhone or iPad, with the trade-off of adding ugly UIs and navigation controls to an already-powerful WebKit engine. I’m all for alternatives and different solutions to built-in software (especially when the third-party version is available for free, like Sleipnir), but I’m looking for something that really takes advantage of iOS. Not just a port of desktop functionalities.
Sleipnir offers just that. From the first first launch, you’ll immediately notice it’s an app developed with the iPhone (and iPhone users) in mind. It doesn’t come with “desktop tabs” yet it allows you to organize open pages in an innovative and useful “tabbed view” I haven’t seen in any other app. Sleipnir might just be the most innovative iPhone browser to date, powered by a nice interface design and a seriously great engine. Read more
As noted by 9to5mac, Skyfire for iPad is now available. As previously reported, Skyfire takes advantage of the iPad’s larger screen to integrate more social features in the app and allow users to constantly share items on Twitter, Facebook and Google Reader (or send over to Pinboard, Instapaper and Read It Later) with the app of a button. Most notably, Skyfire for iPad comes with a series of buttons in the bottom toolbar that let you check on your Reader feeds, Twitter timeline and Facebook wall, together with the possibility to like every page with a universal Like button and see only updates from friends who shared links.
Social features aside, Skyfire for iPad has the same on-the-fly Flash video conversion technology seen on the iPhone version. If the iPhone app is to be trusted, Skyfire Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool is pretty awesome, and it converts video to an iOS-compatible format in seconds. One could ask why Flash videos are needed on iOS when most of web video has iOS-optimized fallbacks now, but still. Skyfire for iPad also comes with additional functionalities such as a new tab design, desktop option to avoid loading websites in mobile versions, private browsing a.k.a. “porn mode”. Also, guess what kind of websites still doesn’t provide iOS-compatible video. I think I know why Skyfire is selling all those copies.
Skyfire for iPhone made $1 million in its weekend in the App Store. With the App Store charts freezing tomorrow until the 28th, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the app having a tremendous success on the tablet as well. Go download it here at $4.99, and check out the demo video and feature list below. Read more
360 Panorama is a neat iPhone app by Occipital which, thanks to some cool augmented reality features such as a real-time on screen grid view, allows you to take panoramic photos on your iPhone. We reviewed the app here, and you can go grab it here.
Today the Occipital developers are launching a brand new version of their panoramic browser for pictures shared online. The new browser, when used on MobileSafari for iPhone running on iOS 4.2, takes advantage of Apple’s gyroscope to let you move panoramas around by just holding your device upright. Once you load a link like this one, Occipital’s browser will detect the device running iOS 4.2 and will ask you to hold your iPhone upright if you want to use gyroscope. Otherwise, you’ll just be able to swipe to view the entire panorama.
Gyroscope support enables you to move the iPhone around to view the entire content of a webpage, and it works really well. When iOS 4.2 came out in November, developers noted that MobileSafari received new features such as improved HTML5 support and “accelerometer integration”. The benefits of augmented reality apps using the gyroscope instead of a compass were also showcased in July.
iLunascape is a third-party browser for the iPad which is available for free in the App Store and we mentioned several times in the past. It’s not exactly a “full-featured” alternative browser like the excellent iCab or Atomic, yet it comes with a neat tabbed interface that makes it simple to switch between multiple websites open at once.
iLunascape doesn’t overwhelm you with functionalities, but it’s OK for most people looking for a sweet alternative to Safari.
The latest 1.3 version, released last week, adds the possibility to sync bookmarks back to the desktop thanks to Firefox Sync, which apparently opened up its API to allow other browsers to access a user’s sync settings. The new version also lets you save images and use bookmarklets. Firefox Sync is one of the best ways to keep tabs synchronized and accessible between computers and devices.
iLunascape for iPad is free and available here.
Remember Skyfire? The Flash browser for iPhone? Yes, the one that lets you watch Flash videos on the iPhone by quickly converting them to HTML5. In our review, we wrote that the app, besides Flash converting capabilities, also had a lot of neat features to bring an innovative browsing experience to the iPhone. Even if I’m sure many users bought it and quickly came back to Safari, Skyfire managed to gain quite a few followers. Skyfire is now coming to the iPad.
The iPad app, which according to Wired should be released “before Christmas” at $4.99, will come with even more functionalities than its mobile counterpart. Skyfire for iPad, thanks to the tablet’s larger screen, will integrate lots of social features such as the possibility to access your Facebook wall at any time, Twitter, Google Reader and a bunch of other websites all within popovers on screen. Skyfire for iPad will allow yo to quickly access your social profiles and check on links shared by your friends and people you follow, tap on them and open everything inside the browser, in additional tabs. The tab interface looks cool and well-animated, but I wonder why the developers went for an iPhone-like approach instead of mimicking the tabs seen in Mobile Safari for iPad.
Also, I don’t know why would I want to see my Facebook wall at any time in the browser. I can understand the Google Reader integration, but all these other social features sound like a useless overlay to me. Oh, and Skyfire for iPad will also have a universal Facebook Like button that will let you like any page without opening Facebook. This, admittedly, sounds pretty cool.
I’m not sure about all this social stuff in browsers (remember RockMelt?), but I’ll be keeping an eye on this new version of Skyfire. With Apple’s devices dominating encoded web video, clearly there’s not this huge need of a browser capable of converting Flash anymore. Perhaps all we need is a social browser for the tablet. [via MobileCrunch] Read more
We don’t know what’s the secret behind webout, a universal app for iPhone and iPad, and we don’t know if Apple is going to remove this soon from the App Store – but it works. As you may know, you can’t stream video using AirPlay to the Apple TV with Mobile Safari. Only native Apple apps have the video functionality enabled, and if you try to open Youtube.com in the browser you’ll notice that the AirPlay icon doesn’t show up. Read more
ATV Flash is an excellent application for jailbroken Apple TVs that adds a browser, Last.fm integration and extends the media playback capabilities of Apple’s tiny black device. The latest update to the app, beta 2, which was released yesterday, adds a number of improvements and fixes and introduces support for iOS 4.2.1 – known as 4.1 for Apple TV owners.
The developers say that aTV Flash is perfectly compatible with the latest OS, even if a untethered jailbreak still isn’t available for iOS 4.2.1 / 4.1. If you don’t want to jailbreak your Apple TV with the current tethered redsn0w jailbreak, feel free to wait for the Dev Team to ship a better solution as, anyway, support for the latest software update is built into aTV Flash beta 2.
aTV Flash is available here. Check out the full changelog below. Read more
In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to worry to manually trigger any sync process. Everything would happen in the background, in your local wireless network or over-the-air, and manual sync would be an option to customize contents and options. In today’s world, and especially if we happen to have multiple iOS devices, we’re stuck with cables and fragmented databases.
Several developers are trying to put an end to this by supporting online sync services such as Dropbox in their mobile apps, some devs are even trying to do this on the desktop. Apple, on the other hand, still forces you to sync music, apps and movies with the cable, in iTunes, on your computer. Read more
