Clickfree Unveils $249 Time Capsule Alternative

Looking for an unofficial, cheaper, black-er Time Capsule alternative? Perhaps you just don’t want your Time Capsule to die prematurely while you were just getting to love it? You’re in luck. Amongst CES fever, new gadgets and weird round-shaped televisions, Clickfree has announced a wanna-be Time Capsule competitor that’s basically a hard drive with a built-in 802.11n radio that automates backups from your Macs and PCs.

If you’re familiar with Apple’s Time Capsule, or like me you own an AirPort Extreme with an attached USB external drive, you know how it works: in your Mac’s System Preferences you set the external network drive as a Time Machine destination, and backups will happen wirelessly in the background all the time. It’s unobtrusive, smart and pretty damn awesome. Clickfree is showcasing the product at CES as we speak, and they say no software is needed to run the backup system after an initial setup. One of the Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme advantages is the AirPort Utility app Apple gives you to configure almost anything in the device, so I don’t know about Clickfree’s approach. Maybe it’s one of those things that really just works without manual setup.

The Clickfree Wireless comes in two flavors: a 500 GB one that retails at $179, and a 1 TB one that can be yours at $249. [via Engadget]

Fling, A Tactile Game Controller for the iPad

One of the main criticisms of gaming on the iPad (or any iOS device) is that there is no tactile buttons for games that feature a directional pad, or virtual joystick; one example is Super Mega Worm. iOS Gamers rejoice! Ten One Designs came out with Fling, a tactile game controller for the iPad.

Snap Fling onto the iPad glass using the suction cups and starts gaming. It’s clear plastic, offering only a slight obstructed view of what’s underneath. The part that actually touches the screen is made of a conductive material, similar to your finger tips.

It won’t work with all your games, but for only $25 it could make your gaming experince a little more rich. The Fling preorder opens on January 6 so get your credit card ready.

Video and FAQ after the break. Read more

Why Is Saudi Arabia Blocking MobileMe?

As noted by 9to5mac and Arabic website Apple-wd, it’s currently impossible to access MobileMe’s web interface available at www.me.com from the web browser in Saudi Arabia. Since a few hours, the webpage returns an error and a message asking if “you think the requested page should not be blocked”. No word yet from Apple on this, but apparently thousands of users in Saudi Arabia are experiencing the issue.

MobileMe’s web interface allows users to check on email accounts and calendars, contacts, iDisk and even the Find my iPhone feature, which is Apple’s tracking service for stolen or lost iOS devices. Some users are reporting that only the http:// version of Me.com is blocked, while the https:// is working just fine. Others claim both http:// and https:// are being blocked. Direct links to MobileMe’s services (me.com/mail, for example) are reportedly unavailable as well.

In October, Saudi Arabia was one of the countries that didn’t get the FaceTime functionality on the iPhone 4. As of today, it’s still unknown what the real cause of the block was.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary App Adds Dragon Voice Recognition

Merriam-Webster launched a free, ad-supported iPhone dictionary app in mid-December. The dictionary app can pronounce words by pressing the speaker icon in the red button but did you know that you can speak a word for it to search for too? A few weeks ago, they updated it with voice search, first for a free iPhone dictionary app. Just press the microphone in the blue button next to the search text box and it activates the new voice search.

The built-in voice search is powered by Nuance Communications’ very popular Dragon voice recognition technology and it’s very accurate but you would expect nothing less from Dragon. Simply look up a word by speaking it directly into your iPhone. You don’t need a connection to the internet, so it’s very iPod Touch friendly. The UI is polished and the ads don’t distract you too badly; Reader Mode is very cool - it shows you a definition in full screen, landscape or portrait, hiding both the header and the footer.

Voice search is an example of the kind of innovation that Merriam-Webster has been bringing to the dictionary business for more than 150 years,” says President and Publisher John M. Morse. “And with the mobile platform being the fastest growing part of our business, we’re pleased to bring our content to wherever our audience happens to be.

Read more

HandBrake Updates To 0.9.5 In Time For Post-Holiday DVD Ripping

If you’ve been stuck in airport with a luggage case full of DVDs, you might be happy to be returning home to a brand-spankin’ new HandBrake. PowerPC users will no longer be supported from this version on, so don’t update if you’re still toting an old PowerBook. Intel users now have available some delicious new features like dragging and dropping videos onto the main window for scanning, mp3 audio support in mp4 files, improved DVD Main Feature detection, and BluRay disc structure support. Our friends at TUAW noted the latest update wasn’t accessible through the app’s built in updater, so you can check out the remaining release highlights along with a download-link by clicking right-here. You can also check our source below for more information (a commenter noted subtitle-support was still wonky).

[Handbrake 0.9.5 via TUAW]

Real Life Angry Birds: LEGO, Cake, Arcade Booth

In the past weeks, terrific App Store sales aside, we saw the Angry Birds franchise making its way to Apple Retail Stores with official cases for iPhones and iPod touches and custom MacBook Air skins realized by loyal fans of the birds and pigs. Today, we’ve got more real-life Angry Birds creations and mods to share.

First off, an Angry Birds arcade booth spotted by MIC Gadget in China which lets you defeat actual pig plush toys using a slingshot. Looks like fun, too bad I think we won’t see this become available in Europe or the US anytime soon.

Other fan-made creations found on the Internet today include a full-featured Angry Birds set made of LEGO bricks and a birthday cake for the real iOS aficionado. Great stuff, and I bet the cake was delicious.

The only downside? There’s no achievement to unlock for when you eat it. Read more

Geohot To Release Untethered iOS 4.2.1 Jailbreak?

Last week we reported Internet celebrity hacker Geohot might call his next jailbreak tool / utility rubyra1n, basing on some speculation from the domain he registered and the fact that (PS3 hacking aside) he’s been quiet in regards to the iOS jailbreak scene since the release of iOS 4.1 and limera1n.

As noted by Covering Web, it looks like the Dev Team itself knows something about Geohot’s effort to bring a proper untethered jailbreak to iOS 4.2.1. Currently, owners of jailbroken devices running the latest OS from Apple are forced to boot through redsn0w, an app for Mac and Windows that loads the iOS firmware file and allows a device to boot in “tethered” mode. This is not really convenient, and an untethered tool might simplify things a lot by letting users install Cydia and boot their iPhones and iPads normally.

A recent tweet from Musclenerd says:

I hear geohot does have an untether actually! Though not for all devices.

Take this with the proverbial grain of salt, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Geohot coming out from his silence and release a brand new jailbreak tool for the latest version of iOS. The guy plays his own game, as seen with limera1n before.

iPhone Alarm Still Not Working? Try A Reboot or Reset

The New Year broke the iPhone’s built-in alarm clock app. After much of a backlash on the Internet (and too good reason, people depend on alarms to wake up in the morning and, you know, do stuff like go to work) and a temporary fix that involved setting a repeating alarm on the device, Apple then reassured everyone that the bug would auto-magically fix itself on Januar 3rd. That didn’t happen for many, as seen both on Reuters and Apple’s own Discussion boards. If you’re running an iPhone or iPod touch and you still can’t manage to get the device to work with alarms, the solution might be easier than you think.

Several users on Apple Discussions are suggesting that a simple power cycle (reboot) or “soft reset” can fix the iPhone software to work correctly with alarms after January 3rd. By “soft reset” they mean the procedure that involves pressing both the sleep / wake and home buttons until the Apple logo appears on screen. This will force the iPhone to dump its temporary stored files and should fix the alarm clock app woes. If you rebooted your iPhone before today and it didn’t fix the problems, do it again now.

The clock app on my iPhone 4 (with iOS 4.2.1) is working just fine both with single and repeating alarms, but I think a reboot or two happened in these past days. I have a jailbroken device so reboots and “resprings” are very frequent. If you’re still experiencing the alarm issues, you can give the method above a try and report back.

Draftpad, The Simple Notepad That Works With Any App

On your iPhone or iPad, I bet you’re using a note taking app like Simplenote, PlainText or Writings to organize your notes and have them backed up online. There are hundreds of alternative note-taking applications available in the App Store, and I’m not going to pretend I haven’t thought about trying a different one each week at least a couple of times. They all look so attractive. But I sticked with Writings, in the end. Still, aside from those users who are firmly convinced Apple’s own Notes app is the best you can have on the iOS platform no matter what, the note-taking app genre is strong and alive in the App Store.

Draftpad, developed by Manabu Ueno, might look like yet another take on mobile note capturing, but it’s not. Indeed it is a notepad that lets you jot down quick notes and thoughts, but it hasn’t got built-in online sync nor any other tagging or folder management capability. Instead, Draftpad is all about doing stuff with the text you just wrote. This app can “route” text to a plethora of external native / 3rd party apps, like Apple’s SMS app or Facebook. You can write text and then share it via email or Twitter, search on Google, add it as a Calendar event or make it the body text of a new SMS, send it to Facebook or search in Maps. The “assist library” (the commands you can perform on text) can be extended and you can even write your own actions if you know how to play around with custom URI handlers.

Draftpad comes with a bunch of non-app related actions, too, like “insert timestamp” or “copy all text”. There’s also the possibility to switch to a black theme and check on your previous notes by tapping on the History button in the main page. What I really like, though, is that the app comes with support for multiple Twitter clients out of the box, and if you know how to find your way around iOS you can make Draftpad work with any app that supports text input. It’s really neat. And all of this for free, both for iPhone and iPad.

Draftpad won’t become your new Simplenote but it’s a great addition to iOS – a notepad that’s customizable and you can extend to work with your favorite apps. This is exactly what I’d like to see in a “Services” menu in iOS 5.