Angry Birds’ Theme Song Recreated with Real Instruments [Video]

By Federico Viticci

Sure, you can play Angry Birds on multiple devices, install all the possible versions and spin-offs from the App Store – heck, I’ll even go on to say it’s fine if you bought some of those shady guides to get the most out of the game. But can you play the official theme song like those indie Pomplamoose folks did? As noted by TUAW, the duo seems to enjoy the world of Angry Birds quite a lot, and even if there’s some Samsung advertising weirdness going on in the video, the overall result for your viewing pleasure is undoubtedly nice.

Video is embedded below. As for anyone else willing to recreate his own version of the Birds’ song, I’m pretty sure GarageBand for iPad has a share button somewhere. [via YouTube]
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My Artists Levels Up and Becomes A Real iPod.app Replacement

By Federico Viticci

My Artists, a nifty iPod-integrated app for the iPhone I first reviewed last year, just received a major update to version 1.2 which, among several improvements to the interface and speed optimizations, turns the app into the ultimate iPod replacement the developer was aiming for since the first release. My Artist, in fact, used to provide a beautiful alternative view for the standard iPod.app installed on every iPhone, but that was nothing more than a custom extra layer that still relied on iPod.app for music playback and controls. Like most “iPod.app controllers” in the App Store, My Artists added a lot of functionalities but was unable to directly control and play music already synced on your device. This changes today, as My Artists 1.2 finally ditches iPod.app dependence, being able to directly play your music. This means you’ll see a My Artists icon in the multitasking tray when using the app, not the iPod app’s one, and yet you won’t have to give up on standard iOS features like AirPlay – which works just fine even without using the native iPod software. I don’t know how Top Drawer Apps did it, but it works – music is now both recognized and played by my Artists.

Version 1.2 also brings Last.fm integration for those willing to scrobble music to the service, but that will cost you $1.99 as in-app purchase. A little last.fm icon in the playing screen will allow you to activate or disable the feature at any time. Speaking of which, the Now Playing view got some interesting updates as well, namely an icon in the upper right to quickly jump to more albums or tracks from the artist you’re already listening to. Alternatively, you can open the (improved) Bio section, which uses Wikipedia to display artist and album info.

My Artists was a great app before this update, now it’s just a must have for heavy mobile music listeners and general music lovers who would like an app focused on artists, albums, and information coming from the web. My Artists can be downloaded at $1.99 from the App Store.

Wunderlist for Mac Gets Updated to 1.2

By Federico Viticci

Wunderlist, the excellent task / list manager that works on the web, iOS, Mac and Android that we’ve reviewed several times in the past, got a nice update to 1.2 on OS X earlier today, bringing many features of the popular web application to the desktop. For those unfamiliar with Wunderlist, it’s a little app that leverages the power of cloud sync to make your lists and tasks always available on all your mobile devices, computers, and web browsers. Wunderlist comes with a variety of themes to choose from, and it’s clearly not oriented to OmniFocus power users that fiddle every day with large projects, AppleScripts and complex workflow. Instead, Wunderlist tries to be very simple, but always connected.

The Mac app (review here) was criticized by many for being not so “native” on the Mac platform, and I guess that’s because of the “accelerator” installer package that manages the installation process on OS X - admittedly, the app still doesn’t feel as native as OmniFocus or Things with their AppleScript integration and fancy Cocoa tricks, but version 1.2 is definitely an improvement. The app’s window can finally be closed with a CMD+W shortcut, and the sidebar can be moved on the left or right. The desktop app heavily resembles its web counterpart – more so that it even looks like the entire web app has been built into a Mac package. You can now drag files into the “notes” section of a task and have the path to the file saved in a clickable format; similarly, web links are now correctly recognized and synced to the cloud. Alongside bug fixes, real time search, speed improvements and better filters, the app comes with a shiny new icon and login screen.

Wunderlist may not be the ideal solution for OmniFocus geeks, but the team behind it is surely building a reliable solution that works anywhere at anytime, and it’s perfect for keeping lists of tasks always synced across different platforms and devices. Get Wunderlist here, for free.

Safari Books Online Releases New “Safari To Go” iPad App

By Federico Viticci

Safari Books Online is a very popular service that, through a monthly or annual subscription model, allows you to access a vast catalog of design, development and business-related books and video trainings. Depending on your account, Safari Books Online lets you browse through a library of over 13,000 resources, and thanks to release of a brand new app today, this will also be possible directly from an iPad.

Safari To Go, available for free in the App Store, is a complete 2.0 rewrite of SBO’s previous App Store offering that provides a native interface for the iPad that follows Apple’s interface and usability guidelines, yet still enables you to enjoy the library of Safari Books Online, which includes ebooks from publishers like FT Press and O’Reilly. Safari To Go brings the functionalities you’d expect from a native iPad app: page swiping, offline reading mode and in-book keyword search. You can view your recently read books in a different view, mark items as favorites and create bookmarks. Additionally, you can watch videos in-app and perform a search by topic to find exactly what you’re looking for. Ken Yarmosh, one of the developers of Safari To Go 2.0, explains some of the technical decisions behind the app, such as why 3G connection only allows you to read an offline book:

As an example, notes and tags are not initially available in the application. Similarly, we found the performance on 3G to be sub-optimal due to the amount of content that transmits over the air. So, it was collectively decided that only an offline book should be accessible when on 3G for the first release of the v2.0 version.

Because of how we’ve built the app, we’re now in position to more quickly iterate on these and other features. In fact, we’re just now testing an update internally, which should be pushed to the App Store shortly. The Safari Books Online team also has a roadmap for upcoming releases with the expectation to update it and re-prioritize features based on customer feedback.

The free Safari to Go iPad app is available now in the App Store. You can sign up for a 10-day free trial on Safari Books Online here.

Labels Hoping Apple’s Music Service Will Launch at WWDC

By Federico Viticci

According to a new report by Cnet, multiple “music industry sources” have told the publication the four major music labels in the US (Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony, Universal) are hoping Apple’s rumored cloud music service will launch next month during the WWDC. The labels, Cnet reports, are counting on Apple to provide a full-featured music service with iTunes Store integration that would force competitors like Amazon and Google to start paying licensing fees for their “music locker” services, which allow users to upload songs to the cloud, but have in no way official support or backing from the labels. The labels are seemingly unhappy with Amazon and Google services as users might be able to upload songs they illegally downloaded from the Internet, and it also appears that Google transcodes some uploads to a new format (making a copy), thus raising some questions on copyright issues as well.

Apple is in a strong position to deliver a cloud service that allows for both uploading and streaming of songs thanks to deals negotiated with the labels. Last month, it was indeed reported that Apple had inked a deal with the Warner Music Group, with more labels to follow soon or already signed according to other rumors.

But the services offered by Amazon and Google are not all that they can be because those companies had to tippy-toe around copyright issues. Since neither company was either able or willing to obtain licenses from the four major labels, neither of them could deliver the same range of options that Apple will be able to offer with its upcoming cloud service, according to multiple music industry sources.

Lots of people at the four major labels, however, now hope the service launch at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference on June 7. The risk for the record labels is that the services from Amazon and Google could prove good enough for most music consumers and that the companies don’t feel compelled to upgrade.

The WWDC ‘11 kicks off on June 6 in San Francisco, and previous speculation suggested it would be a software-focused event with on-stage demoes of iOS 5 and OS X Lion. iOS 5 has been in the middle of a debate recently, mainly as to whether Apple will really showcase its new cloud offerings revolving around a revamped MobileMe or other functionalities such as voice recognition, postponing the launch of all cloud services to this Fall. Reuters reported a few weeks ago that work on Apple’s new music service had been finalized on the technical side, and Apple was simply completing the process of signing deals with music labels to offer both upload features and streaming of songs you don’t own, likely through a subscription system. Google launched its new “Music Beta” service yesterday and, similarly to Amazon’s Cloud Player, it allows users to upload songs and albums to an online locker, but doesn’t provide any sort of subscription à la Spotify to enable users to listen to music without uploading it first.

Cydia Tweak Lets You Backup & Restore App Data with Dropbox

By Federico Viticci

One of the biggest annoyances of iOS is the impossibility to easily backup and restore application data to the cloud, without being forced to keep an app installed to not lose everything. This is particularly true for games: not only your Angry Birds record is always at risk of being erased because you might accidentally delete the app from your device or iTunes, there’s also no way to keep data synced between apps running on different devices. For example, it’d be nice to start playing Angry Birds on the iPhone and automatically continue the session (with the same data) on the iPad, or, why not, simply restore data and other settings with one tap from the Internet. This is one of the features Apple is rumored to be working on for the major revamp of MobileMe dubbed iCloud, and while it’d make perfect sense to let gamers restore data using Game Center, a wider implementation of backups and restores across the whole Apple cloud would be certainly more appealing to iPhone and iPad users.

Several hacks in the past months allowed users to extract app data from non-jailbroken devices and back it up to a local computer. These solutions, however, didn’t provide the dead-simple approach of DataDeposit, a free app available in Cydia that backs up your app data to Dropbox, and even allows you to restore it with a single tap from your device, using the cloud.

Once installed, DataDeposit will look into your iOS Applications folder to see apps that can be backed up to Dropbox. This list includes apps installed from the App Store, not the system ones. More specifically, not an entire app will be backed up, just its saved data for your app specific settings and progress – like Angry Birds records or a 1Password local database. Once you hit Backup, DataDeposit will create a “DataDepositApp” folder in your Dropbox, with sub-folders inside it containing .zip archives of data. If you only use your iPhone, you won’t see any of this by default – just a progress bar and a confirmation dialog. When you want to restore, make sure the app is closed, hit Restore and wait for DataDeposit to move the data from the cloud to your device again. I tested this personally and it worked really well: I backed up my Angry Birds data and uninstalled the app; I installed the app again, made sure I had no progress in the game, then restored using DataDeposit. All my completed levels and stars were there, in a matter of seconds.

DataDeposit is free in Cydia, works great with Dropbox and it’s very easy to use. If you’ve been looking for a way to seamlessly backup your app data but you didn’t want to use a manual method, DataDeposit deserves a try.

iKeyboard Promises A Better Typing Experience On The iPad

By Federico Viticci

I bought an original iPad last year, and an iPad 2 when it came out in the United States on March 11. If there’s one thing I had to get used to during this last year when using the tablet, that would be the virtual keyboard. Coming from an iPhone background the use of a virtual keyboard on the iPad instead of a physical one wasn’t a surprise (is there really anyone who thought Steve Jobs would accept keys on the iPad’s screen?), but still it required some serious exercise to get actual writing done. There’s no shortage of apps for writers and the iPad is also a great email machine, but getting used to fast typing on the large virtual keyboard was hard. Like most iPad users, eventually I managed to overcome my issues with ”hunt-and-peck typing”, and now I write any kind of piece or email message on my iPad just fine – perhaps not as fast as I could on my computer, but still fast enough to enjoy the experience provided by apps.

However, some people clearly couldn’t get to fully appreciate or get used to advantages offered by iOS’ virtual keyboard, opening the door to a plethora of alternative solutions like cases with built-in keyboards and external Bluetooth keyboards to carry around all the time. The iKeyboard, a Kickstarter project you can check out here, aims at offering a solution between virtual typing and external accessories, adding minimal weight and bulk to your iPad, still promising to dramatically improve your typing experience.

Once placed on top of the virtual keyboard, the physical iKeyboard will simply provide better tactile feedback and give you a sense of the distance between keys on screen. The creator explains:

My solution is to provide the feedback missing from a virtual keyboard by “grafting,” or piggybacking, a real keyboard onto the screen. My invention—the iKeyboard—will sit atop the virtual keyboard and be lightweight. It will add little bulk and not increase the footprint of the tablet. It will be easy and fast to deploy and remove.The iKeyboard will improve accuracy and typing speed, letting tablet users do real writing. It will set the brain free. In certain settings—the lecture hall, the library, the classroom—the iKeyboard will be an essential tool rather than just a useful accessory.

I’m not sure about the convenience of constantly adding and removing an accessory from your iPad’s screen, but I have to say this idea sounds more intriguing than stuffing your tablet into a bulky case or being forced to use an external keyboard for writing long documents. You can contribute to the project on Kickstarter, and check out the promo video below. Read more

Survey Shows iPad Still Primarily Used for Web Browsing, Email, Video

By Federico Viticci

In an unsurprising turn of events following the launch of a survey among readers who own an iPad, BusinessInsider posts a chart detailing how people use an iPad. And unsurprisingly, the usual suspects are on top: the chart shows people use iPads to browse the web (36% in May 2011, 37.7% in November 2010), whilst 23% rely on the tablet for their email needs and communication skills happening on Twitter, Facebook, or other social networks that presumably have a native iPad app, otherwise that would count in the “web browsing” section, I guess. The iPad is also strongly used to watch videos (14.52% up from 11.50% in November 2010), play games and “use other apps.”

The end results of this survey don’t come as a surprise to anyone, but they confirm a widely popular theory – that Safari is the most powerful app Apple could have ever bundled with the iPad and iOS by default. Not only does Safari replicate most of the functionalities seen on the desktop, with the recent iOS 4.3 update it also got some nifty new Javascript engine that makes opening webpages blazing fast. That’s why every little feature that didn’t find its way into Safari and is requested a decent amount of users can become the reason to develop an alternative browser for iPad. The browser on the tablet is the best way to access the internet – it is for me, and clearly it is for other people, too.

What about those other apps? Watching videos with Plex or other media managers is a great experience, especially when combined with AirPlay and an Apple TV in your living room. Playing games? Between Angry Birds and Sword & Sworcery there’s plenty of choice to go by. Other apps? They must refer to things like OmniFocus, Simplenote, LogMeIn, Instapaper and Screens. It’s all about the apps, but Safari is still king when it comes to spending time with an iPad, browsing the web.

Ballmer Confirms Skype’s Commitment to Other Platforms →

Linked By Federico Viticci

Ballmer Confirms Skype’s Commitment to Other Platforms

We will continue to invest in Skype on non-Microsoft client platforms,” said Ballmer during a news conference announcing the company’s plan to buy chat and Internet phone software maker Skype for $8.5 billion.

Following this morning’s big announcement of Microsoft buying online communication giant Skype for $8.5 billion, Mac and iOS users immediately questioned the acquisition as a way for Microsoft to turn Skype into an exclusive service for Windows Live-connected devices and other Microsoft products such as the Xbox. Steve Ballmer, however, was quick to reassure everyone that Skype will continue working on the Mac, iOS and all the other platforms it currently runs on (including RIM’s BlackBerry and Symbian), also citing how the company has a “track record” when it comes to these matters – Microsoft has a full version of Office 2011 available for Macs, and many apps for iPhones and iPads.

The question, however, is whether Skype will ever release a native iPad app as promised last year, and if the new owner will also bring some welcome interface changes to the Mac app. It would interesting to see Microsoft making a better UI for Skype, just as I’d be curious to see Ballmer heavily touting his recently bought software toy on iPhones and iPad. Time, as usual, will tell.

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