This Week's Sponsor:

Copilot Money

The Apple Editor’s Choice Award App for Tracking Your Money. Start Your Free Trial Today

Measures for iPad Is A Powerful Unit & Currency Converter

Back in 2009, I installed a simple currency and unit conversion utility on my iPhone called Measures. Developed by Michael Neuwert, I remember Measures as one of the first “popular” converter apps for the iPhone, one that actually managed to move thousands of sales back when the App Store was still relatively small. Two years and hundreds of thousands of app later (let alone the iPad and two new App Stores), Measures is coming back with an HD version built specifically to take advantage of the iPad’s screen. Retaining the same icon and UI color scheme of its iPhone counterpart, Measures HD packs 170 currency exchange rates (constantly updated over the air) and 1000 different units, organized in 40 categories.

I like Measures HD not because of its design, but because it’s functional. Measures may lack the amount of polish seen in any Tapbots or Iconfactory app, but as far as the actual unit and currency conversion goes, Measures works better than anything else I’ve tried on the iPad to date. There are two aspects of the app that truly stand out to me: the Favorites sidebar, and the fact that Measures doesn’t stop at normal units like those pertaining to length, area, speed, or temperature. Measures adds dozens of categories ranging from Male Shoe Sizes and Data Storage to Radioactivity, Male Sizes for suits/coats/shirts, and Typography. With all these types of “units” available at your fingertips, Measures lets you convert, say, a European shoe size to a UK or US one, or your milligram/deciliter blood sugar level to millimol/liter. And again: you can easily convert megabytes to yottabytes, short tons to pounds, and obviously US Dollars to Euros and other currencies as well.

Measures’ unit database is huge, and if it’s not the biggest one on the App Store yet, then it definitely get very close to it. Whilst most converter apps focus on providing a fresh interface for the usual units and currencies, Measures sacrifices some attention to the overall design (I don’t like the slider to adjust decimals and the looks of the keypad – but this is just personal taste) to focus on “real life usage” with options like the aforementioned shirt sizes, or fuel consumption and data storage. This is the kind of stuff I always need to check (especially when buying some cool t-shirt from a website that doesn’t list EU sizes), but that very few apps provide. In fact, most of the times I’m forced to look it up on Wikipedia. Speaking of which, Measures HD comes with a Wikipedia search function to look up the selected unit on the website’s database. Multiple Wikipedia articles (when found, otherwise it’s just a single one) are listed inside a popover, and you can decide to open the webpage within Measures, in Safari, or in Sophiestication’s Articles. Next to the Wikipedia button in the top toolbar, there’s also a “list” icon to see all converted results without being restricted to a single conversion.

Another nice feature is the Favorites sidebar, which enables you to save any conversion for quick access at a later time. If you find yourself converting Euros to Dollars pretty often, you might want to consider saving that conversion as a shortcut in the Favorites so you won’t have to use the (gimmicky) unit picker at the botton; Apple itself suggests in its Interface guidelines to use a “date and time picker” for iPad  inside a popover rather the main screen – I agree, as the result is not really pleasant in Measures and it feels unresponsive if your finger runs down to the iPad’s bezel.

Overall, I enjoy having Measures on my iPad because it’s useful. The app could use some UI refinements and re-thinking, but as it stands now it is the converter app for iPad with the largest array of options I’ve seen so far. You can download Measures HD at $1.99 on the App Store. Check out more screenshots of the app after the break. Read more

iPad 2 Getting Retro iPWN Gameboy Case

This is not for the Apple purists, the ones that leave their devices raw and uncovered or only clothe them in Cupertino-issued skins. But for the rest of the world, most people want their Apple products to be as original as the people that buy them. We’ve seen cases/covers in the past that look like classic Nintendo gaming systems but this one supersizes the original Gameboy for the iPad 2.

Lootiful already carries a series of iPWN cases that snap on the back side of your iPhone to make it look like a Gameboy. The iPad 2 version looks just like the iPhone version, only larger. The case not only provides protection from bumps and scratches, but retains full access to your touchscreen and all the buttons.

There has been no word on availability for the iPad 2 case, but according to the Lootiful site, pre-orders will be open soon. Pricing has not been announced yet either, but the iPhone versions retail for only $18. I agree with the header graphic, “It’s friggin’ sweet.”

I can only imagine someone carrying their iPad 2 on the bus and sitting down while a curious onlooker snaps some blurry photos and posts them as “Apple + Nintendo Collaborating on New Project - iPadBoy!”

[via TUAW]

Facebook Acquires Award-winning iOS Publishing Platform Push Pop Press

It was only last February that Push Pop Press started teasing a brand new kind of digital books for the iPhone and iPad, promising to revolutionize the way users interact with text, images, and video on a multi-touch screen. Started by former Apple employees, Push Pop Press built a unique publishing platform and physics engine that was best demonstrated in Our Choice, Al Gore’s book ported over to Push Pop Press’ platform, released on the iPhone and iPad and winner of an Apple Design Award in June.

With an update on their website, Push Pop Press has announced that they’ve been acquired by Facebook. It’s unclear how the technology will be integrated into the “world’s largest book”, but the blog post says “although Facebook isn’t planning to start publishing digital books, the ideas and technology behind Push Pop Press will be integrated with Facebook, giving people even richer ways to share their stories”. Push Pop Press’ first book Our Choice will remain available for sale with profits donated to The Climate Reality Project; future books planned with Push Pop Press’ closed beta won’t be published following this acquisition.

Now we’re taking our publishing technology and everything we’ve learned and are setting off to help design the world’s largest book, Facebook.

TechCrunch also reports a statement from Facebook:

We’re thrilled to confirm that we’ve acquired Push Pop Press, a startup whose groundbreaking software changes the way people publish and consume digital content. We can’t wait for co-founders Mike Matas and Kimon Tsinteris to get started, and for some of the technology, ideas and inspiration behind Push Pop Press to become part of how millions of people connect and share with each other on Facebook.

You can read our original review of Push Pop Press’ Our Choice here. Whilst Facebook apparently has no plans to enter the publishing market, Push Pop Press’ interaction methods and innovative engine might be a good fit for Facebook’s iPhone and upcoming iPad app.

Google Chrome’s Latest Stable Turns Instant Pages on by Default for Faster Googling

If you want faster Internet browsing, be sure to hit the About section in Google Chrome to check for the latest update if Chrome isn’t getting you up to speed automatically: the latest stable version of Google Chrome turns Instant Pages (Google’s take on pre-fetching) on by default so as you type, Google figures out which web pages you want to visit and begins loading the search results up. Yes, your Google searches just got supercharged. The omnibox (that universal address and search bar) has been upgraded with some new tricks as well, including being able to jump back to previous web pages you’ve visited if you begin to type that website’s address. Start typing, hit the down arrow if you want to select something from your history, and immediately the webpage is loaded into view. If Google made the call, they’d argue it was faster than clicking the back button. Video after the break.

[via the Google Chrome Blog]

Read more

Lion DiskMaker Automatically Creates Bootable Lion Media

Have a thumb drive, sd-card, a stack of dvds, or an external hard disk drive lying around? Great! Because if extracting files from your Lion download and installing the image onto external media sounds tricky to you, then we have a solution that better automates the process. Lion DiskMaker by Guillaume Gete proposes to take your Lion download and create a bootable installer on your media of choice.

There are few caveats, including that you’ll need to have the Lion download handy in the /Applications folders (the Lion DiskMaker is best used right after the download finishes from the Mac App Store). Lion DiskMaker will also completely erase any media it makes bootable, so be careful not to overwrite any important information. The author recommends simply picking up a cheap 4 GB USB key from the store (your local Staples, Target, or Best Buy would do) since they’re dirt cheap.

Lion DiskMaker has both French and English info pages on Serial Serveur if you want to get familiar with the software, or you can always use Google Chrome with its automatic Google Translate features built in if you want to read up. The software is simple to use: just run the app, select the media you want to make bootable, and let it do its thing.

And don’t forget, we have a huge Q&A that answers your Lion installation questions.

[Serial Serveur (US page) via Cult of Mac]

Iomega’s “Mac Companion Hard Drive” Combines USB, FireWire, and iPad Charger

Iomega today announced a new Mac Companion Hard Drive which incorporates a large capacity desktop hard drive (2 TB or 3 TB models are available) with two USB ports to connect a printer or another external drive, two FireWire ports and an additional high-powered USB charging port for an iPad or iPhone.

With the new Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive, Mac users now have a convenient and stylish way to quickly charge their iPads with the bonus of plenty of new storage capacity for their Mac computer,” said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega Corporation. “With more than nine million iPads sold in the last quarter alone, the new Mac Companion Hard Drive is the perfect complement for all those iPad owners.

Iomega has made special effort to make a device that matches and suits Macs, which is most notable in the design and stylings of the device – not only is it sleek with its metal enclosure but the very shape of the Mac Companion Hard Drive has been sculpted so that it sits perfectly on the iMac or Thunderbolt Display stand, tapering out at the back. The whole device is fairly simplistic but stylish in design and it hides all but the high-powered USB port at the back of the device. Iomega has left the three visible sides with nothing but the high-powered port on the right hand side of the device and four LED lights on the front panel of the device to indicate HDD capacity.

The charging port is a high-powered 2.1 Amp hookup that makes it easy and convenient to charge your iPad and other portable Apple devices so they’re ready to go when you are.

The hard drives are also pre-formatted as HFS+ so that they are compatible out of the box with Mac OS X, and whilst the lack of Thunderbolt is a little disappointing, this device looks like a solid option for anyone looking for an external hard drive for their Macs. The Iomega Mac Companion Hard Drive will initially be exclusive to Apple online and retail stores at a cost of $195 for the 2 TB model and $295 for the 3 TB model.

Jump past the break for some more pictures of the device.

Read more

iCloud Storage: International & Competitor Pricing Comparison

Last night, Apple launched a first developer beta of iCloud.com, a set of web apps based on the iCloud functionality originally introduced in iOS 5 beta that mimic the appearance of Apple’s Lion desktop apps like Address Book and iCal, or the Mail app for iPad. The new web apps, seen as replacements for MobileMe’s existing web offerings, have been completely rewritten to take advantage of iCloud’s faster and invisible sync of content between devices, and they also include a new web-based version of iWork that, however, isn’t live yet. Screenshots (and videos) of the iCloud web apps have surfaced online and partially on Apple’s website too; early screenshots of the login page had been leaked ahead of the WWDC in June.

The iCloud web apps provide an alternative to their iOS and OS X counterparts – being entirely web-based, they can come in handy “if you happen to be away from home without your computer or one of your iOS devices” so that “you can access your mail, contacts, and calendar — ad-free — from any computer at icloud.com”. Read more

US Retailers Begin To Reduce iPhone 4 Prices

In recent days there have been reports of various retailers beginning to reduce the price of the iPhone 4 as the release of an iPhone 5 draws ever closer. Rumors on when exactly the next iPhone will be released have varied quite substantially from an August release to a September release and most recently, suggestions from AllThingsD of a late October launch.

Whenever the release is, US retailers Radio Shack and Target have both cut the price on the iPhone 4 models. Radio Shack is currently offering the 16GB model for $169.99 and the 32GB for $269.99 whilst also offering $100 credit with the trade-in of previous iPhone models. Meanwhile Target is now offering the 16GB iPhone 4 for $149.99 and the 32GB model for $249.99. Unfortunately these discounted iPhone 4’s still come attached with a two-year contract with either AT&T or Verizon.

These iPhone 4 prices being offered by Radio Shack and Target are reduced from the standard $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model that AT&T, Verizon and Apple are still offering.

[Via Ars Technica]