Notica: A Visual Database For The Most Important Things In Your Life

We love discovering and talking about new apps for the iPhone and iPad. In fact, we love covering apps so much that sometimes we feel a little guilty when we can’t seem to find the right app to feature on MS. This week though, also thanks to a huge Black Friday sale that kind of forced us to buy new apps, we’ve got plenty of material to feature.

Notica is a new iPhone app by Cleversome which aims at enabling you to collect the most important things, people and moments of your life inside a gorgeous and intuitive interface. Notica is a little, elegant app you might just fall in love with in a couple of minutes. Read more

Dutch Newspaper Gifting iPads with New Subscriptions

The Dutch newspaper ‘nrc•next’ is giving free iPads to people who sign up to receive their printed subscription for two years and it also includes their daily digital iPad App version.

This is a great idea to grow your readership but they underestimated the response to their subscription promotion. Now they have posted a page on their blog “Zeg, waar blijft die iPad?” which translates to “Say, where is my iPad?” It’s basically a Q & A for people who signed up for their promotion and have yet to receive their new iPads.

Read more

How The Internet Can Fix Paul Thurrott in 2010→

How The Internet Can Fix Paul Thurrott in 2010

Let’s take a look at Thurrot’s latest piece, “How Apple Can Fix the iPad in 2011”.

The one major change Apple will institute in the existing iPad models is the price, which is far too high for a device that is essentially a large-screen iPod touch.

Considering that current competitors are in the same price range of the iPad, and sometimes way above it, I don’t think pricing is a problem to fix in 2011.

Granted, not everyone is going to want a 7-inch iPad. But this model, positioned squarely between the iPod touch and currently 10-inch iPad, would provide a perfect middle ground, especially for those who will continue to use the iPad for consumption purposes only. (As is the case with virtually all iPad owners today, by the way.)

Same old story all over again. He says Apple needs a smaller iPad, but that won’t change the fact that the iPad is a consumption-only device. Either someone didn’t get the memo, or I haven’t been briefed on the incredible content creation capabilities of the Galaxy Tab.

The iPad’s currently storage allotments are simply too small. Apple should use its iPod touch as a guide and offer 32 GB, 64 GB, and even 128 GB versions of the device.

There’s no 128GB iPod touch.

While Apple clearly intended to include dual cameras in the current iPad–there is a hole designed for this purpose inside the case–it didn’t, and now there’s no way to add one.

That hole is there to make the ambient-light sensor work.

The current iPad’s screen is far too glossy and reflective to be used in many situations, making it less than ideal for eBook reading, movie watching, and other activities where you can more clearly see your own reflection than the onscreen content.

I thought glossy was meant to make movies look better?

Apple currently sells 6 different iPads, three with Wi-Fi only and three with 3G wireless networking as well. Since Apple likely pays something like $6 for a 3G radio, my advice is to simplify the lineup to 2 or 3 models only, differentiated only by storage capacities.

This is the best part. First he says Apple’s selling too many different models, then he goes on to suggest Apple should make a smaller version available as well, with different screen and storage options.

Someone’s confused here.

Permalink

Steve Jobs Confirms AirPlay Video Streaming For 3rd Party Apps Coming in 2011

Finally, our questions have been answered by Steve Jobs himself. We love AirPlay, but we can’t stand the fact that the current version that ships with iOS 4.2 comes with many limitations, especially when it’s about video streaming to the Apple TV.

You can’t stream video through AirPlay from Safari or any 3rd party app. This lead me to think that the AirPlay we’re playing around with now is just a teaser of better things to come in the future.

Now, a Steve Jobs email posted by MacRumors confirms that Apple is planning to add the feature in 2011:

Hi, I recently updated both my iPhone 4 and iPad to 4.2. I think my favourite feature is airplay. This is seriously amazing and makes sharing content seamless. I just purchased Apple TV and was wondering are you ever going to make airplay video work for videos in safari and 3rd party apps? I hope to get a response.

SJ: Yep, hope to add these features to Airplay in 2011.

A number of hacks and tweaks to enable AirPlay for video have surfaced recently, including packages jailbreak users can download from Cydia and install on their devices. We also detailed that it’s possible to turn any iOS device into an AirPlay speaker.

Here’s to hoping 2011 will bring the AirPlay we’ve always wanted.

Found Footage: Steve Jobs Demoes The Daddy Of OS X

This one’s an awesome finding via Reddit: while many of you may have already seen the following video (it should come straight from 1991), for all those who haven’t – well, it’s about Steve Jobs demoing the father of OS X, the NeXT computer.

In the video you can see Jobs talking about many features that eventually made their way to OS X, such as Interface Builder or the Dock. It’s also interesting to notice how, almost 20 years ago, Jobs and the team at NeXT were focused on making an operating system suitable for business users.

Fast forward today, and we’re waiting for 10.7 Lion that should bring more consumer-friendly features such as the Launchpad or fullscreen apps.

Jailbroken iPad Gets Android-like Animated Wallpaper [Video]

One of the neat features of Android devices is the possibility to install custom “animated” wallpapers that will display moving elements behind or through icons. The effect’s pretty cool and some of those wallpapers are simply crazy.

It turns out, people have found a way to achieve a similar setup on the iPad. Thanks to a tweak called vWallpaper and a video specifically resized for the iPad’s screen, it is possible to set an animated background and keep swiping on the homescreen.

Check out the (brief) demo video below, and go download the butterfly video wallpaper here. Read more

Review: Cloud Calendar, Google Calendar Client for iPad

While searching for interesting alternatives to Apple’s own calendar application for iPhone and iPad, I stumbled upon Cloud Calendar by Clean Cut Code. Cloud Calendar is a new calendar app for iPad that’s specifically meant to work with Google Calendar – and being Google’s calendar solution part of my workflow already, I decided to give it a try.

Cloud Calendar is undoubtedly a very good app to manage your calendars on the iPad, it comes with an elegant interface design and it’s intuitive enough to let you add new events with one tap. It still needs some additional customization options though, the ones that could probably break the app for “calendar power users” that can’t live without edit mode in shared calendars. It’s a very good app overall, so read on past the break for all the details. Read more

A Wooden MacBook Case I’d Actually Buy

Usually, I’m not into wooden accessories. Heck, I’m not even a fan of wooden-like interfaces (hello, iBooks) – I just don’t like the feeling of wood when put next to a shiny Apple product.

The wooden cases from BlackBox, though, are a different thing of beauty. They are detailed, hand oiled, hand rubbed and numbered. They are unique pieces made for the exclusive Apple user. And they don’t come cheap: $129 for the 13” and 15” cases.

Still: they look good. Even to someone who’s not into this kind of accessories. [Gizmodo via BlackBox]

Mozilla Evangelist Asks Google and Apple To Stop Being Evil

Asa Dotzler isn’t happy about the behavior of software giants like Google, Apple and Microsoft. In fact, Mozilla evangelist and co-founder of the Spread Firefox project in 2004 thinks they all should stop being evil. How so? He’s tired of finding unwanted plug-ins installed in Firefox by software such as iTunes, Windows Live and Google Earth.

Why do Microsoft, Google, Apple, and others think that it is an OK practice to add plug-ins to Firefox when I’m installing their software packages. When I installed iTunes, in order to manage my music collection and sync to my iPod, why did Apple think it was OK to add the iTunes Application Detector plug-in to my Firefox web browser without asking me? Why did Microsoft think it was OK to sneak their Windows Live Photo Gallery or Office Live Plug-in for Firefox into my browser (presumably) when I installed Microsoft Office? What makes Google think it’s reasonable behavior for them to slip a Google Update plug-in into Firefox when I installed Google Earth or Google Chrome (not sure which one caused this) without asking me first?

Read more