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Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Official PlayStation App for iPhone Now Available

Announced by Sony in December, the official PlayStation app for iPhone is now available in the App Store. The app is propagating in iTunes as we speak, so if you can’t download it just yet – make sure to try again in a few hours. In the meantime, the app is now live in the French store.

The PlayStation app doesn’t let you play games, but it allows you to check on the PlayStation Network by signing in with your PSN account. In this first version of the app you can read your friends’ status updates and browse the games they own, check on the trophies you have collected and read the latest entries from the official PlayStation Blog. Last, you can also read the latest news of games available for all PlayStation devices directly in-app. The interface seems to be quite clean and polished, although far from being native on the iOS platform.

PlayStation app for iPhone is available for free here. Check out the full description below. Read more

iGotYa Takes Photos and GPS Location Of The Guy Who Stole Your iPhone

The iGotYa app is one those utilities you don’t know you need until you try it and see its potential. Available in the Cydia Store at $5.99 (Big Boss repo), iGotYa can take a picture of whoever tries to unlock your phone with the wrong passcode, using the front facing camera. We all want to keep an eye on our iPhones, right? iGotYa, combined with Apple’s Find My iPhone remote functionalities, is the ultimate tool to make sure you know who’s trying to mess with your iPhone.

The app requires a front facing camera, meaning that it will only run on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4th gen. As a picture is taken in the lockscreen, iGotYa can send it via WiFi or 3G to a specified email address, also attaching GPS information in the email message. So if you ended up losing your iPhone because of someone you took it, not only you’ll know where he is, you’ll also get to see his face. And he won’t know while attempting to unlock the stolen phone.

iGotYa will cost you 6 buck, but it’s that sort of investment you will not regret. Check out the demo video below. [Gizmodo via Redmond Pie] Read more

Kindle iOS App Updated, Lets You Add Your Own Files

An important update to the official Kindle app for iOS (free and universal for iPhone and iPad) was released earlier today. Version 2.5 of the app adds much requested features that should satisfy all the Kindle users on the iOS platform that have been asking for functionalities such as proper multitasking support and access to the free Internet archive of Project Gutenberg books.

Kindle 2.5 for iOS, in fact, can now download books in the background leveraging iOS 4 APIs and supports thousands of ebooks downloaded through Project Gutenberg. Most of all, the app can now load files from any other iOS app thanks to the “Open in” feature seen in Safari, Mail and any other iPhone or iPad app that can forward files to other applications that can open a specific file type. This means you can now add your own files to the Kindle app, or even better drag & drop files into it using iTunes’ File Sharing. To add books in this way, simply connect your device to iTunes, head over the Apps tab in the device’s info screen, and drag files onto the Kindle section right below the iOS Springboard preview window. The bad news is that, like the actual Kindle, epub books don’t seem to be supported at this time.

Other new features and improvements in this update include bug fixes, a new book indicator and better image zooming. You can get Kindle for iOS for free here.

Who Wouldn’t Want To Perch This Wireless Speaker?

Interested in a two-piece wireless speaker and charger that looks like half a zen-birdhouse? Check out the Perch Mobile Wireless Speaker from Quirky. A two piece design elegantly flips around so you can stand it up, lay ‘er down, and stream your music through bluetooth through the little guy. It includes an AC Charger and allows you to dock, erm, Perch your iPhone for a makeshift bed stand, perfect for something like Rise if you’re not into the default alarm clock. It’s also compatible with Androids, Windows phones, and Blackberries, but face it – it doesn’t look as cool without an iPhone nested in its maw. It’s kind of pricey at $179.99 during pre-order (it’ll be $199.99 once it launches), and we think for the commitments needed it’d have been better left to Kickstarter.

MacStories Product Review: Powermat Wireless Charger for iPhone

To inaugurate our new series of hardware and gadget reviews, I’d like to cover a product that, in the past months, has completely changed the way I carry my iPhone around and charge it. The Powermat, a combination of case and charging mat for the iPhone we first covered in October, allows you to charge your iPhone wirelessly, without any cable, through a case you’ll have to put your iPhone 4 into.

Courtesy of the great folks at Powermat, I was sent a single mat, a receiver case for the iPhone 4 and another mat that can charge up to two devices on a single surface. So far, my experience with the charging system has been very good; then only issues I ran into involved some kind of difficulty trying to find the “right spot” on the 2x mat. But overall, I do believe the Powermat is one of the most innovative, powerful and, why not, cool gadgets you can buy for your iPhone right now. Read more

The Verizon iPhone Is For App Lovers

Let’s state the obvious, Fink. Geez. I’ll be blunt: this is an, “Should I keep my Android phone or get the new iPhone on my Verizon contract?” post. Specifically, I’m talking to my fellow Android owners who’re on the fence about switching to the Verizon iPhone.

I’ve been sitting on this article all day between five thousand or so words of rant material, iPhone gawking, Android squawking, and just about every title under the sun that would attract more iPhone and Android fanboy rage than my little heart could handle. Good grief! I told Federico that this piece could do me in for a few days – this one was hard to write. “Ticci!” I said. “This is too controversial for the Internetz! They’ll explode!” After much deliberation I decided to focus on one specific aspect of Android and the iPhone, instead of comparing the platforms as a whole (there’s simply too much to talk about). After dramatically toning down the content, today’s topic is all about apps and the phones that have them, but which one is better for you?

As someone on Verizon who’s had a year long matrimony with an Android… do you dare click the read more link? I think you should.

Read more

QuickBins: Call and Email Your Contacts via Drag & Drop

In these past months on MacStories, we have covered two apps that aim at becoming replacements for the standard Apple Phone app: Favorites and Dialvetica. By leveraging the APIs of iOS that allow for 3rd party apps to access your contact’s list, these apps are focused on letting you quickly access your favorite contacts and either call them, text them or email them with a few taps. Favorites and Dialvetica are not really focused on the number dialing part of the phone experience (although the latest Dialvetica update introduced a dialpad), they’re rather simple interfaces to get to your most contacted friends and do stuff. Shortcuts, that is.

QuickBins, a free iPhone app by Chalk, is very similar to Favorites, but it’s based on drag & drop. The app displays your favorite contacts (which you’ll have to add manually) as profile pictures on a grid, and you can even create multiple pages of contacts. As you fire up the app, you’ll notice 4 big buttons at each corner: those are shortcuts to initiate a call, send a text message, an email and check on a contact’s address. How do you activate these commands? Simple: you take a contact, and you drop it on a button. QuickBins will then forward you to an external app (third-party software can’t send calls or text without loading Apple’s stock apps) to perform the action.

That’s it. QuickBins will soon introduce support for Skype, Twitter and Google Voice, it’s free and ad-supported, but you can remove the ads with a $2.99 in-app purchase. QuickBins also happens to have a beautiful UI design that makes it a real pleasure to tap on its icon and look at the dashboard.

QuickBins is available for free here.

This Lego iPhone Case Won’t Brick Your Phone

Of all the iPhone 4 cases I’ve seen in these past months, the SmallWorks BrickCase has to be the most original, if not craziest, one. In true old-style fashion, the BrickCase is a Lego-compatible iPhone case that, according to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, feels good in your hands and also provides good entertainment for the most loyal Lego fan.

The cases are available on Amazon in White, Black and Clear versions at $19.99. If you’re a Lego guy, I guess you know what you have to do.

Google Goggles for iPhone Gains Ad Recognition and…Sudoku

Earlier today, the Google mobile team announced an update to their official Goggles application for Android and the Goggles component in the Google Mobile App for iPhone. While Android users get advanced barcode scanning in version 1.3 of the app, printed ad recognition and Sudoku puzzle solving have been enabled both on iOS and Android. Yes, that’s right: as part of the Google Goggles labs experiments, the app can now solve Sudokuy puzzles. Just take a clear picture and let Goggles provide some help.

As for ad scanning, Goggles for iPhone can now take a look at any printed ad and return web search results for that brand or product.

Goggles will recognize print ad and return web search results about the product or brand. This new feature of Goggles is enabled for print ads appearing in major U.S. magazines and newspapers from August 2010 onwards. This feature is different from the marketing experiment that we announced in November. We’re now recognizing a much broader range of ads than we initially included in our marketing experiment.

The official Google iPhone app doesn’t seem to be updated yet, the new version should be propagating in iTunes in the next hours. In the meantime, check out the promo video for Sudoku support in Google Goggles below. Google Goggles for iPhone was launched in October as part of the Google mobile app. Read more