Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Localscope 1.1 Integrates Navigon MobileNavigator For The Ultimate Find & Drive Combo

Localscope is well known for its location based discovery prowess, helping you gather information about your current location thanks to the combination of augmented reality, geo-meta-search, and social driven capabilities. Comparable to Google’s Places, Localscope enables users to find the nearest hotspots for coffee, movies, and more. As of Localscope 1.1, you can not only find the hip new club in your city, but you can navigate to it as well thanks to Navigon MobileNavigator integration. Swipe across your destination, tap the map, and bring up MobileNavigator so you can quickly reach your destination. Localscope with MobileNavigator brings the functionality that Android has delivered with Places and Navigation Beta to the iPhone: if you own both the applications, the combo presents a terrific way to traverse new landscapes without getting lost.

Localscope can be downloaded from the App Store for $2.99, and Navigon MobileNavigator (USA version) can be downloaded for $39.99.

iFusion for iPhone: All-In-One Landline Dock, Speaker, Charger [Macworld]

Officially announced at the Macworld Expo yesterday, the iFusion for iPhone is an interesting all-in-one solution that combines a standard landline dock, a speakerphone, charger and USB connector into a single device that can let you have phone calls, listen to music, charge the iPhone and sync data with a Mac or PC. The unique design of the device, which will ship in April at $149, is highly ergonomic and allows for superior voice quality thanks to the hand-free speakerphone that, admittedly, also looks pretty good.

The creators of the iFusion call the product the first “iPhone communication docking station”, which comes with its own app (geared towards business users) but that, at the same time, can work with any other audio app for the iPhone, like Skype or Viber.

The iFusion can be pre-ordered here. Demo video embedded below, courtesy of TUAW. Read more

Instagram 1.1 Released: Now With Hashtags

Popular photo-sharing / mobile social network Instagram has released an update to their iPhone app, which reaches version 1.1 and adds a couple of interesting new features. First off, #hashtags: called “Topics” by the Instagram developers, you can now tag your photos just like you can tag a status update on Twitter, and perform a search for that specific hashtag. Thus, topics can create alternative photo albums that have their own RSS feeds you can subscribe to and to which anyone can contribute by using the same hashtag in other photos. If you’re a Twitter user, you know the drill. As in typical Instagram fashion, it’s all very easy and user-friendly.

Instagram now has a proper comment management system, too. You can manage your own comments on other people’s photos and delete inappropriate ones on yours as well. And if you really don’t like a user, you can now flag him and block him. I guess spammers found their way onto Instagram, and now we can do some cleaning. Personally, this one’s a welcome feature.

Last, the usual bug fixes, more languages and overall improvements. No new filters this time – maybe they will come with version 1.2. Instagram 1.1 is available now in the App Store.

This Copter Is Controlled By An iPhone [Video]

Is there anything the iPhone can’t do these days? People come up with the greatest and, at the same time, weirdest accessories to extend the capabilities of Apple’s shiny smartphone. From the black diamond that brings apps to life or the iPhone-based steering wheel to the 8x optical zoom and heart monitor, you might think “we have seen enough”. Luckily for us, no.

Meet the iPhone-controlled copter by AppToyz. It’s a copter (RC car coming soon) that’s entirely controlled by an iPhone running a special app and plugged into a receiver dongle that fits into the headphone jack and can let the copter communicate with the device. You can fly the copter away, play real sound FX – you can’t shoot.

These toys will be available in April starting at $80. Epic demo video after the break. Read more

AT&T Q4 Earnings: 4.1 Million iPhone Activations and 442,000 iPads & Tablets

US-based carrier AT&T has announced its quarterly results for Q4 2010, and there are some interesting numbers in there worth to be considered. The company reported 4.1 million iPhone activations in Q4, the last quarter as the exclusive iPhone carrier in the United States. On February 10, Verizon Wireless will begin selling a CDMA version of the iPhone 4, with pre-order sales starting February 3rd.

Mentioning “continued expansion in new wireless growth areas”, AT&T also announced they added 1.5 million “connected devices” including 442,000 iPads and Android tablets. AT&T started selling the iPad WiFi + 3G model in its retail stores on October 28th, 2010.

AT&T also reported 9.9% growth in wireless revenues and consolidated revenues of $31.4 billion in the fourth quarter. Full press releases embedded below. Read more

Verizon iPhone Pre-Orders To Start on Feb. 3, AT&T Trade-Ins

According to MacRumors, Verizon Wireless has started sending out emails to corporate customers informing them that “pre-order sales” of the new device will start on February 3rd at 3AM ET, one week before the general public release of the Verizon iPhone:

According to the email we’ve received, Verizon will begin pre-order sales at 3am Eastern on February 3rd.

- Make sure you have your My Verizon self-serve account set-up online. Orders can only be placed through your my Verizon account. You can register/setup your account at… myaccount.verizonwireless.com

- On February 3rd at 3am EST, Verizon Wireless will allow our current customers to order upgrades or new lines to their accounts through your My Verizon online account (make sure you have registered before the 3rd).

MacRumors also reports inventory will be limited and customers who won’t be able to get the iPhone on Feb. 3 will have to wait until the week later. Trade-ins in credit should also be available for existing AT&T customers who want to replace an old iPhone model:

  • iPhone 2G - 16GB: $60
  • iPhone 3G - 16GB: $105
  • iPhone 3Gs 32GB: $160
  • iPhone 4- 16GB: $280
  • iPhone 4 - 32GB: $360

It’s unclear whether corporate accounts will have access to this trade-in program or not.

Where To? for iPhone Gets 3D Augmented Reality

Where To? by Future Tap is one of the most popular apps ever released for the iPhone. In fact, I remember buying the app years ago on my original iPhone, and I still have it. Where To?, like many other alternatives that eventually came out in the App Store, gives you detailed information of nearby points of interest using the iPhone’s built-in GPS technology and Google Maps. It features a popular and unique “click-wheel” interface that Apple even used in patents to describe functionalities of iOS apps and, overall, it’s powered by a great design that’s really a pleasure to look at.

A few minutes ago, Where To? got a major update that introduces a neat 3D Augmented Reality feature I’m just playing around with as we speak. The Future Tap developers added this new option as a $0.99 in-app purchase that’s a no-brainer for as much as it’s well realized and perfectly consistent with the rest of the app. As the app fetches your location and provides you a list of POIs, you can switch to the usual map view and you’ll notice a new “eye” icon in the bottom toolbar that activates Augmented Reality. Unlike other AR software, Where To’s 3D implementation stands out because of the use of OpenGL that brings smooth animations to the reality layer captured by the iPhone’s camera. When pointing the iPhone, the app will create a virtual grid that displays POIs as boxes, all based on the distance between the user and the target. The developers explain:

Our solution: First, results are displayed in a real 3D world and their size and stacking order depends on the distance. Then, you can zoom in and out using the gestures already known from the map: Double-tap to zoom in, two-finger-tap to zoom out, pinch for fine grained zooming. Zooming of course affects the camera picture as well.

Where To? 3.5 also uses the gyroscope for much smoother AR animations and location info. In my initial tests, I’ve found the system to work exactly as the developers described it in the introductory blog post; you can zoom it and pan out with two fingers, tap on a POI’s box to get to the usual portrait view. The UI is gorgeous.

Where To? 3.5 is available here at $2.99. To see the app in action, check out the promo video below. Read more