Much like TinyVox which we looked at recently, you’d think TapeDeck would be its older brother (though the two aren’t related). TapeDeck for the Mac is a cassette deck for OS X, enabling you to quickly label and record audio from the built in microphone or connected pro hardware, and can allow you to monitor (playback) audio as it’s being recorded. If you have the jack for your Mac’s line-in port, you’ll be able to quickly save off audio to a .m4a file which shows up as a cassette in the tap box (the drawer that holds your cassettes). You can organize recordings by color, add notes, select audio quality per recording, and choose either stereo or mono (mono only records audio on the first of the two channels you’re recording to). It’s old school meets… new school?
TapeDeck For Mac Records & Captures Audio, Supports Pro Hardware & Monitoring
Apple Rolling Out iAds for iPad
Back in December, Apple launched the first iAd for the iPad – a fullscreen interactive experience for the Tron: Legacy movie that allowed users to check out characters’ bios, trailers and storyline within a well-designed interface that was the first to make use of the iPad’s larger screen for the iAd platform. When the Tron iAd was launched, however, Apple confirmed that it would be the only one for 2010, with more iPad-specific iAds coming in 2011. As noted by CNET, the rollout of these new iAds has begun today with Unilever and the NCAA.
Unilever has teamed up with the National Collegiate Athletic Association “to give users an up-close view of three of its stars”. The ad runs in fullscreen mode and comes with video ads featuring Earvin “Magic” Johnson, John Thompson III, and Bobby Hurley. The iAd also enables users to answer NCAA-based questions, and check out daily game schedules directly from the iPad.
With the introduction of iOS 4.3, it was clear that Apple had implemented full iAd support in the tablet. The application to design and develop iAds on the Mac, iAd Producer, was in fact updated last week to include iOS 4.3 support and “creation of ads with multiple banners”. The news of new iAds for the iPad comes after Apple cut the minimum iAd buy in half at the end of the first round of campaigns, probably to address advertisers’ complaints that iAds, although successful and well-targeted, weren’t worth the $1 million minimum spending required by Apple.
iOS Games Now Listed on Metacritic
As noted by TUAW, Metacritic, the popular aggregator of movie / TV show / music / game reviews found online, announced yesterday full support for iOS games. For all the people “keeping score of entertainment” through the service, this means iPhone and iPad games are now listed in a dedicated section that displays the overall top-scoring games, and offers the option to filter down results by category and user score. The clean design of Metacritic and the ease of use of the system will surely come in handy to see what the web thinks of a specific game, as Metacritic basically works by aggregating average scores and reviews from highly visited websites like Slide To Play and Eurogamer.
Metacritic is proud to announce that we have added complete coverage of iPhone/iPad game reviews to our site. As many of you know, we have been publishing monthly IPhone/IPad games guides – recommending the best new iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch games available for a total budget of $30 — and this popular feature will continue to appear each month.
As the team behind Metacritic also notes, this change marks a major shift in the gaming community that has grown to accept iOS and the App Store as important distribution platforms for great games. The fact that gems like World of Goo (whose iPad version has been insanely successful), Real Racing, Tiny Wings and Aralon are being listed in the top games confirms many people’s theory that you can find all kinds of games on iOS nowadays.
The big names in the game development industry understand iOS is no platform to ignore, and just about any top console game now comes with an iPhone or iPad counterpart of sorts. On Metacritic you can now browse these games and check out what the reviewers are saying on the web, write a review yourself or even check out trailers and videos for a specific app. To see the new Metacritic page in action, head over here and start looking for your next favorite game.
First Music Video Shot Entirely With An iPad 2
In Cody Fink’s review of the iPad 2’s camera and photo and video examples of what the results look like for the end user, we saw the iPad 2 takes some decent photos and 720p videos for carrying the same cameras of the 4th generation iPod touch, although Cody noted picture quality was suffering from a bit of grain being captured by the lenses chosen from Apple. In spite of a quality clearly inferior to that of the iPhone 4, I still think the average user is going to be more than okay with these photos and media ending up on Twitter, Facebook, and Flickr.
What we’re seeing now, though, is the iPad 2 being used as a video capturing tool in professional environments. This video for the song “NEED” by Eddy was shot entirely using 4 iPad 2 units in a low-light set with pro and DIY steadicam rig. Remedy Films was apparently one the first studios to understand the potentialities of the iPad 2 and decided to give it a shot, literally, to see how well it would perform to record a music video and, why not, gain some free publicity from Apple blogs like ours finding this experiment incredibly cool.
We knew it wasn’t designed as a professional videocamera in the slightest, so we would be stuck with whatever results we got. We probably shouldn’t have filmed in a dark setting, but it actually worked well in a “party” environment, plus it fit the song perfectly! We still treated the cameras as “professional cameras.” we had one mounted to a steadicam rig, one was on a Kessler Crane Cineslider, and the other one was on a DIY hand held rig. The fourth iPad was held by Eddy for a few shots of her singing and dancing.
The shooting session took 5 hours, whilst editing required 12. I don’t think Remedy Films used iMovie for iPad to edit the whole thing, but it needs to be mentioned that they spent 8 hours in line to get their hands on 3 iPad 2s. You can check out the video below. Now here’s to hoping someone will release a music video shot with the iPad 2, edited in iMovie, based on a song recorded in GarageBand. Read more
Now On Your iPhone, SyncPad Marks PDFs From Your Pocket & Dropbox
Just like iPad version we reviewed back in January, SyncPad brings the collaborative whiteboard to your pocket with a spiffy iPhone version that includes recently added Dropbox support. If you’re not familiar with SyncPad, you can mark images and PDFs over the web by simply creating a free private room where you can upload your presentation materials from your library, or from Dropbox. You can also save the final results of your presentation as an e-mail attachment, or upload it to any folder of your choice in Dropbox (no default folders here). You’re given a variety of highlighters to work with from blue, red, green, and black which can be resized and erased as you dot about striking through lines of text or drawing silly images. It’s $4.99 in the App Store, and don’t forget to have your constituents download the free reader for viewing your presentations on the iPad.
Verizon Now Accounts for 12% Of US iPhones
According to mobile ad firm Chitika, the Verizon iPhone now accounts for nearly 12%, or 1/8th, of iPhones sold in the United States. The number comes after weeks of measurements through a live tracker that keeps track of mobile ads being served to iOS devices, and most specifically iPhones. Chitika reported last month that Verizon iPhones were accounting for 3% of US iPhones after 24 hours of availability. That figure led to speculation that several existing iPhone owners were switching from AT&T to Verizon, although neither Apple or Verizon have provided official sales number. Other sources reported Apple wasn’t willing to share any numbers due to sales below expectations. But, then again, that was last month and more new customers or AT&T iPhone users may have recently switched to Verizon, if Chitika’s stats are correct.
Since the launch of the Verizon iPhone, we’ve been tracking iPhones through our system and breaking down what percentage come from AT&T vs. Verizon. As of today, Verizon is up to 12% of all iPhone web usage, based on data from the Chitika ad network.
Apple has expanded its partnership with Verizon Wireless to new devices lately, such as the CDMA iPhone and the iPad 2, which comes with native CDMA integration in a WiFi + 3G model rather than a separate MiFi bundle as we saw with the first generation iPad. There’s no doubt we’ll see more and more from Apple and Verizon in the next months. It’ll also be interesting to see whether or not Verizon’s intentions to discontinue the unlimited data plan this summer will affect the device’s sales in any way, or if Apple will ever release detailed sales number since the Verizon iPhone went on sale on February 10th. [via MacRumors]
Huge Update: Google Launches New Search App for iPhone
Remember the Google Mobile app for iPhone? With an official post on the company’s blog a few minutes ago, Google announced a major new version of the with a completely new look, new features and a new name: Google Search for iPhone. Simple as that, the app packs all the functionalities from the previous version in a new UI, easily accessible for everyone and built on top of iOS 4’s multitasking and fast app switching capabilities.
Google Search presents itself with a new search UI that makes it easy to start typing right away or perform a voice search through the iPhone’s mic. Search results can be tailored to your needs with a new toolbar that slides in and reveals more options as well as other Google applications.
Second, we’ve made it easier to pick up searching where you left off. If you leave the app and come back later, you’ll be able either to start a new search right away (just tap in the search box to type, hit the microphone button to do a voice search or tap on the camera icon to use Google Goggles) or get back to exactly where you were by tapping on the lower part of the page.
Finally, there are a number of improvements we’ve made to everything else you love in the app, including Google Goggles, Voice Search, Search with My Location, Gmail unread counts and more.
After launching the app for the first time, you’ll be guided through the new features of the app with an interactive overlay that places question marks on screen to explain what’s new and improved. Search, Goggles and Voice Search are still there, but placed next to the main search bar that is kept in a collapsible window you can open or dismiss at any time. The effect’s really cool as you can invoke search from anywhere in the app, even when browsing images or news results. A feeling I’ve got when trying the app is that Google is really trying to blend all its services together in this new Google Search app: with a single swipe, you can access Places, Images, Shopping search results, real-time updates, Blogs and more. It feels like they have rebuilt to app to unify all Google’s services in a single package, and I think that’s a step in the right direction. You can of course sign in with your Google Account and tweak the preferences to your needs.
Google Search for iPhone is a free download in the App Store. Check out the promo video and more screenshots below.
DropBook Integrates Facebook With Your Desktop: Review & Giveaway
DropBook is a little more difficult to show off than most apps in part because of its deep integration with your desktop and menubar. It isn’t an app that traditionally sits in your Object Dock, rather, you get a translucent Facebook icon that sits in the lower left corner of your screen which you can drag pictures and favicons/URLs into to instantly share content to your wall. As content is dragged into the Facebook icon, a window appears that shows you the attachment or link to your content. If it’s a picture, you can send it to your album of choice including your profile pictures. On your Mac, a lot of content is bound to be bundled in iPhoto, and you can drag multiple selected photos for a multi-upload. You currently can’t add tags to photos, which might be a deal-breaker for those uploading lots of pictures.
Voice Brief: Listen To Gmail, Twitter, Facebook and Calendar On Your iPhone
Voice Brief, an iPhone app that’s free until this afternoon in the App Store, aims at enabling you to listen to information coming from your social networks, email inbox and more through text-to-speech technology. Voice Brief, available only on the iPhone for now, can plug into Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, RSS feeds as well as Weather and Stock Prices to “speak” rather than simply displaying information.
How does it work? You choose the voices you want in the Settings (announcer voice for when the app switches sections, reporter voice to read status updates and news), set the speed and then you add new contents. You can log in Twitter and Facebook from within the app and set the amount of tweets and updates to fetch, manually enter RSS sources (there’s no Google Reader support) and set other details for your location, and so forth. Once the contents you need are in place, the main page of Voice becomes a dashboard with a summary of all your events (Calendar integration is also supported), social activity, emails and news. Hit the play button, and all this information will be spoken out loud by the app. Voice quality is good, sometimes above iOS’ default text-to-speech capabilities, sometimes below average iPhone quality. Overall, I’ve found Voice Brief to perform very well with regular English sentences, but of course the app fails badly at Italian contents and status updates containing very specific terms like tech products and acronyms (very common in my Twitter timeline).
Voice Brief is an interesting project that’s worth checking out, for sure. I can see some people using an app like this in their car while driving to the office in the morning. Go download it here while the offer is still valid. Read more