OnLive is a game streaming service that will allow you to play videogames over the internet, without the need of installing them on your local machine. You’ll have to pay a monthly subscription fee, have a decent internet connection and you’ll be ready to play any game available on the platform. You can run OnLive both on a computer using a browser plugin or on your TV by purchasing a micro set-top box. It’s a revolutionary service, and it’s launching on June 17th during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3). We can’t wait.
Sydney Restaurant Replaces Printed Menus with iPads
Now that the iPad has gone international, expect to see more posts like this one. I mean, I can’t wait to see what Italian people can come up with. In the meantime though, the owners of a restaurant in Sydney (the Global Mundo Tapas in the North Sydney Rydges Hotel) have decided to stop using printed menus and adopt iPads instead.
Apple Getting Ready to Launch Free MobileMe? [Screenshot]
9to5mac suggests that Apple is getting ready to introduce a free version of MobileMe. As a proof to that, the MobileMe preference panel for Mac OS X now shows “Full Member” for previous customers who paid for the service.
Considering that the WWDC is in 4 days, we won’t have to wait much longer to find out the truth.
UPDATE: On PC as well: http://cl.ly/1GXn
[Thanks, @chrisherbert1]
“Take Control of iPad Basics” Free eBook Available
Available for free on Take Control Books, great resource by Tonya Engst for everyone who’s getting started to the iPad. If you’re new to iPhone OS / iPa platform, look no further than this eBook to learn the basics.
Reeder Redefines Google Reader on the iPad. Reviewed.
The iPad has been available for 2 months today, and many users are still looking for a great application to catch up with Google Reader feeds. Sure we’ve reviewed a bunch of good apps here on MacStories such as Newsrack, NetNewsWire and Headline, but none of them can be described as the great piece of software that manages to show all the capabilities of the device it runs on.
Don’t get me wrong, those are good applications. I’ve used Newsrack for about a month and, even though it looks like a bigger iPhone version, it definitely did its job fine. What I’m saying is that we’re still missing that application that shines in the App Store, the one you could describe as “the best”.
Now, you’ve already read the title of this post so you know what I am about to review. Before we delve deep into it, let’s provide some background. Reeder for iPhone came out of nothing last year, and we were amongst the first blogs to spot the potentialities of that app and review it. Needless to say, I immediately fell in love with the app and decided to keep it on my home screen for good. Reeder 1.0 was a great app, and a stunning first version. It was fast, probably the fastest Google Reader engine I had ever seen in an iPhone application. The UI design was custom, with faux leather elements and paper to give the feeling of an old journal or something. Animations were smooth and pleasant, and so was navigation.
Overall, using Reeder was like using an Apple application - a perfect and polished experience. Silvio Rizzi, the developer behind Reeder, gained a lot of popularity thanks to his breakthrough app, and surely made some good bucks out of it. But he wanted more, and so he started working on a 2.0 version, which we reviewed here. Reeder 2.0 was (is) a well-thought refinement and betterment of the original application, with an even faster engine, faster loading times, more features and a better overall experience. I am not afraid to say that Reeder 2.0 for iPhone is the best Google Reader client ever made for a mobile phone.
Back to 2 months of iPad, you guys want to know whether Silvio Rizzi made it once again or not. Let me state this straight up: Reeder for iPad is the best Google Reader experience you can have on the tablet right now. It’s the app that perfectly manages to showcase all the great things about this device, and deserves to be installed by every user who daily checks his Reader account.
From Minority Report to Apple Patents, This Is the Future of UI
What’s the future of user interfaces like? In a matter of 20 years, it will all be about gestural interfaces applied to the real world. Something like Minority Report, basically. And we’ve seen Apple exploring this concept before, with patents surfacing here and there showing how the engineers at Cupertino are indeed considering gesture-based UIs to manipulate objects in a 3D space.
eBoy’s FixPix iPhone Game Available
For those of you who don’t know what eBoy is, welcome on board. I didn’t know anything about eBoy either until a couple of months ago, when I stumbled upon a post on Engadget and fell in love with the works of this phenomenal pixel art group, founded in 1997. Just take a look at their famous London poster to get the hang of it.
So, the eBoy guys decided to develop an iPhone game and the app is now finally available in the App Store at $1.99. The game is very simple and addictive, as all you have to do is tilt your iPhone to “fix” the alignment of pictures on screen. It’s fun and it’s gorgeous to look at.
Check out the gameplay video after the break.
[via Engadget]
An Awesome, Working Lego Printer for Mac
I want one. I don’t know what I could ever print, but please give me one.
[via Boing Boing]