Posts tagged with "iPhone"

This iPhone Case Will Cost You More Than An Actual iPhone

Franck Muller is a luxury fashion brand that’s very popular in Europe and is now starting to get a name in the US as well. Many of you may not have heard of Muller before, but the company really makes great accessories. And expensive ones, above all. Like this new line of iPhone 4 cases, produced my Franck Muller in Switzerland and up for pre-order though Japanese carrier Softbank.

The only problem is, this series will be produced as limited edition, with 6 different models manufactured 500 times each. Each case will cost you $1270. Ouch. Not exactly cheap.

Still, it’s Franck Muller. If you’re a fan of the brand, happen to have some bucks to spend and you can find a way to pre-order them with Softbank, go ahead. [via CrunchGear]

FaceMan Is Like Photo Booth For Your iPhone

I should have seen this coming. With iOS 4.3 rumored to introduce Photo Booth-like features for FaceTime or the Camera app, a developer created a full-featured alternative to Photo Booth that’s called FaceMan and it’s available now in the App Store at $0.99.

Put simply: FaceMan is great. It comes with 20 effects from the most popular Squeeze and Bent to a geek’s dream like Broken TV and LED; it’s got a slider to adjust the strength of effects; it can do both photos and videos WITH effects applied. Videos don’t have audio right now, but it’s coming with the next update, almost ready to be submitted to Apple. The interface is clean and polished, supports the Retina Display and you just need to flick through pages of effects to pick one and snap a picture. I did, and the terrible result can be viewed in the screenshot above. Full effect list includes: Swirl, X-Ray, Stretch, Heat, Sketch, Sepia, Dent, Led, Emboss, LightTunnel, Bulge, Squeeze, BrokenTv, Mirror, Toon, BlackAndWhite, AsciiArt, ModernArt, 100Me and NightVision.

Last, you can share photos on Twitter, Facebook, email and Tumblr. The app has a dedicated album to view all the photos and videos without having to open the iOS camera roll. I don’t know what else will Apple add in their own Photo Booth app, but FaceMan is an excellent alternative, available now. And it does videos. Go get it.

Google Improves Weather Results on Mobile Safari

There is no shortage of weather apps on the iPhone, from the most professional ones to beautiful user-friendly software like Outside, but Google thinks you should just head over google.com and check out their new, mobile-optimized weather forecast view. The feature, which should work both on iOS and Android phones, will be activated once you open google.com on your browser and search for “weather”. The browser will ask you to give location permissions to Google, and you’ll be presented this neat search result page with fancy graphics for your location’s weather on top of everything. Fortunately, you can also enter a location manually inside a dropdown menu (Google got my location wrong, and I don’t know why).

The information displayed on screen are pretty useful and well designed. Google even bothered to add a slider that flicks through hourly updates and changes the background gradient from darker (night) to lighter blue (day). You can visualize temperature in Celsius or Fahrenheit degrees, check on humidity and wind strength.

Well done, Google. We look forward to better Twitter integration in your search results now.

Woman Tries To Get Past Airport Security with 44 iPhones Around Her Body

Looks like we have another “this is just wrong” story here. If yesterday’s suicide attempt from a woman who lost her iPhone wasn’t enough, here’s what we have today on the menu: a woman who wanted to become an iPhone smuggler and tried to a) get past airport security with 44 iPhones around her body in b) typical Georgian outfit. Picture the scene. 44 iPhone 4’s below the outfit to get them into Israeli without paying taxes. Must have sounded like a good plan to the woman.

The Ben-Gurion International Airport security staff of course got suspicious over this woman who was walking slowly, asked if there were any problems and the woman replied “she was not feeling well”. Perhaps 44 iPhones are a bit too much for anyone? Anyway, security called a full body scan and surprise, they found a Cupertino treasure in there.

You know what’s missing from this curious story? A white iPhone. Just because. [Engadget via Haaretz]

iPhone, iPad Rumored to Get NFC Technology, Large Opportunity Awaits

A report by Bloomberg today suggests that Apple’s next iPhone and iPad are likely to feature NFC (Near-Field Communication) technology that would allow various forms of data transfer between the iPhone and another NFC capable device. Richard Doherty of consulting firm Envisioneering Group explains that the technology would be primarily used for making purchases at physical stores, expanding Apple’s reach in commerce beyond just iTunes.

Near-Field Communication is a technology that can send and receive data between two such devices with NFC that are up to 4 inches apart. The technology has gained popularity in recent times, most notably being included in Google’s Nexus S.

By including NFC into the iPhone and iPad, Apple could use it’s existing iTunes accounts and give consumers an alternative to more traditional financial services by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal. Richard Crone, an industry advisor suggests that “It would make a lot of sense for Apple to include NFC functionality in its products.”

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