StreamToMe Streams Music and Video From Your Computer To iOS

With all the talk about iTunes’ “exciting announcement” and the possibilities of a cloud-based iTunes streaming and storage solution, I decided to take a step back to cover one of my favorite apps for iPhone and iPad, an app that allows you to stream audio and video from any computer to any iOS device.

The app is called StreamToMe, and unlike the popular Air Video it can stream music just fine, whether it’s organized in your iTunes library or stored somewhere else on your computer. I keep mine in Dropbox and it works just fine. Not to mention video, which works flawlessly with StreamToMe. So let’s see what you have to do to get things up and running. Read more

Is “iTunes Live Stream” The Announcement We’ll Never Forget?

Italian blog The Apple Lounge found something really interesting the property list file of iTunes 10.1: code references of a feature called “iTunes Live Stream”, although it’s not clear what such feature could be aimed at. The Apple Loung and MacRumors speculate it might be something video-related, as Apple recently deployed its own HTTP streaming solution for Apple devices by live streaming the latest Steve Jobs’ keynotes. Read more

Momento 2.0 Collects Your Social Activity In A Single Beautiful Place

Momento is a diary and journal writing app for iPhone I first reviewed back in December 2009 when it came out. Not much happened since then: the developers released a few updates with no new features, Apple released the iPad and the iPhone 4, but a completely new Momento was nowhere to be seen on the new devices. We didn’t get an iOS 4 / iPhone 4 update this summer, we didn’t get the chance to run the app on our tablets.

iPad version aside, everything else is about to change today with Momento 2.0, a free update for previous Momento owners (that like me, might have uninstalled the app as it wasn’t getting an update). Momento 2.0 features an awful lot more feeds you can import your activity from such as Youtube and Foursquare, not to mention the possibility to add any RSS feed and create multiple accounts. For those who missed it: Momento collects all your online activity in one single, beautiful place. And with full Retina Display support and a new landscape view, you can bet it’s beautiful. I’m trying the app right now and it looks great on my iPhone. I liked the UI before; now it just shines.

Momento 2.0 comes with so many new features it’s really hard to cover them all here. If you want, you can take a look at the changelog below and see how much the developers refined, implemented and fixed. For instance, you can now easily backup and restore and export in plain text format.

Momento 2.0 is a free update for existing customers and it’s available at $1.99 in the App Store. Check out the full changelog and screenshots below.

Read more

All Things Digital: Don’t Hold Your Breath For iTunes Cloud Tomorrow

Uh oh, here’s what Peter Kafka from All Things D has to say about Apple’s teaser on its homepage and the big iTunes announcement tomorrow:

I’ll be very surprised if it is music related — like a new music subscription service, or even one that lets you stream music you already own to multiple devices. The music industry sources I’ve talked to so far today don’t know of any new deals between Apple and the big music labels. So that would rule out a new subscription service, which would definitely require a new rights deal.

And that also makes it very unlikely that Apple does the next best thing: Letting users upload their iTunes catalog to the cloud, and letting them access it anywhere they want.

It’s getting trickier. Speculation continues.

How To Change Your iPhone’s Default Browser

Last week I installed a new universal browser for iPhone and iPad called “iCab” which I’m going to review soon here on MacStories. The browser is so good I wondered if there was a way to force iOS to open links from any app using iCab instead of Safari. I know it’s not a recommended move and it might turn out to be pretty problematic in the future, plus I actually had tried to override Safari a few times in the past.

I didn’t know a tweak to change the iPhone’s default browser had been released in Cydia until I stumbled upon iCab’s excellent feature and decided to google that again. Browser Changer, available for free in Cydia, does just that: it replaces Mobile Safari as your iPhone default browser. Read more

Filopanti: Simple Time Zone Conversion Tool for iPhone

Being based in Italy, I have to deal with the fact that stuff happens in the US and I’m in a different time zone. I stay up late at night, and news keep coming in. Also, I have to consider time zone differences when setting up online meetings with developers, writers and casual contacts. Up until today, I used a neat web app called Every Time Zone which comes with an iPad-specific viewport and allows me to quickly check on various time zones worldwide.

Filopanti, however, might be a simpler solution I can fire up at any time to quickly check on U.S. time zone –namely San Francisco’s time. With a straightforward and elegant UI Filopanti lets you pick two different cities and compare their time zones. Read more

“Exciting Announcement from iTunes” Coming Tomorrow

Oh, look what we have here. Apple just updated its homepage on apple.com to include this banner, which states an “exciting announcement” from iTunes is coming tomorrow at 7 AM PST. “Tomorrow is just another day. That you’ll never forget” – that’s quite a thing to write up on Apple’s homepage.

We know that iOS 4.2 should drop tomorrow at 10 AM PST, and we know that iPhone and iPad users will be able to download the software update using iTunes. Will Apple change the system underlying the whole software update process? But then again, how would that be something we’ll never forget? It definitely must be something else than iOS 4.2-related rumors.

What comes to mind if the long-awaited “iTunes in the cloud”, based on that huge data center Apple is building in North Carolina. Apple could deploy a cloud-based sync and streaming solution for apps and media, or the rumored iTunes subscription service for music. The possibilities are really endless, and it’s just up to Apple and how much they’re willing to deploy in the first version of “the new iTunes”. What we’re sure of is, Steve Jobs doesn’t hype something so much unless it’s totally revolutionary and breakthrough. So the cloud would be, in my opinion, the most plausible answer.

We’ll check back tomorrow at 7 AM PST. Is there going to be a live streaming of the announcement, anyway? Or just text and screenshots? We’ll keep you posted as we find out more.

Update: more speculation here.