iGotYa Takes Photos and GPS Location Of The Guy Who Stole Your iPhone

The iGotYa app is one those utilities you don’t know you need until you try it and see its potential. Available in the Cydia Store at $5.99 (Big Boss repo), iGotYa can take a picture of whoever tries to unlock your phone with the wrong passcode, using the front facing camera. We all want to keep an eye on our iPhones, right? iGotYa, combined with Apple’s Find My iPhone remote functionalities, is the ultimate tool to make sure you know who’s trying to mess with your iPhone.

The app requires a front facing camera, meaning that it will only run on the iPhone 4 and iPod touch 4th gen. As a picture is taken in the lockscreen, iGotYa can send it via WiFi or 3G to a specified email address, also attaching GPS information in the email message. So if you ended up losing your iPhone because of someone you took it, not only you’ll know where he is, you’ll also get to see his face. And he won’t know while attempting to unlock the stolen phone.

iGotYa will cost you 6 buck, but it’s that sort of investment you will not regret. Check out the demo video below. [Gizmodo via Redmond Pie] Read more

Solar Walk for Mac Now Available

Winner of an Apple Design Award in the iPad category in June 2010, Vito Technologies today released a Mac version of Solar Walk, available now in the Mac App Store at $2.99. Pretty much like Star Walk for the iPhone and iPad (which Cody originally reviewed here), Solar Walk for Mac is a full-featured 3D solar system model that allows you to move between stars and planets with your mouse, zoom in to check on the planets’ details and read accurate descriptions about them. You can zoom out to view the entire galaxy (well, at least through what’s known of this galaxy), see a planet’s inner structure and learn about its history of exploration. The 3D graphics aren’t breathtaking but they get the job done, the popover menus with descriptions seem to be taken out of the iPad app.

The app also allows you to move in time to see the position of planets and satellites in a certain day, month and year. There’s even a 3D mode that will require you to wear cyan-red glasses – too bad I don’t have them here right now. Neat stuff anyway.

Solar Walk is available in the Mac App Store at $2.99. A demo video of the iPad version, very similar to the Mac counterpart, is embedded below. Read more

There’s a 3D Kinect Viewer In The Mac App Store

We have talked about the coolness and the hacking possibilities offered by Microsoft’s Kinect before. First we heard Apple almost bought the technology from its original creators in 2008 (the rest is history, it got sold to Redmond), then we saw Kinect connected and displaying stuff on OS X and also somehow hooked up to a computer and an iPad with…futuristic cubes.

Now, thanks to the Mac App Store, we have a free 3D viewer for Kinect. When connected to a Mac via USB, the app can visualize tridimensional images of the depth data, and map RGB values onto this depth image. You can zoom, rotate and, of course, take a good screenshot with your Mac to show to your friends on Twitter.

Kinect 3D Viewer for Mac is free and available here.

Kindle iOS App Updated, Lets You Add Your Own Files

An important update to the official Kindle app for iOS (free and universal for iPhone and iPad) was released earlier today. Version 2.5 of the app adds much requested features that should satisfy all the Kindle users on the iOS platform that have been asking for functionalities such as proper multitasking support and access to the free Internet archive of Project Gutenberg books.

Kindle 2.5 for iOS, in fact, can now download books in the background leveraging iOS 4 APIs and supports thousands of ebooks downloaded through Project Gutenberg. Most of all, the app can now load files from any other iOS app thanks to the “Open in” feature seen in Safari, Mail and any other iPhone or iPad app that can forward files to other applications that can open a specific file type. This means you can now add your own files to the Kindle app, or even better drag & drop files into it using iTunes’ File Sharing. To add books in this way, simply connect your device to iTunes, head over the Apps tab in the device’s info screen, and drag files onto the Kindle section right below the iOS Springboard preview window. The bad news is that, like the actual Kindle, epub books don’t seem to be supported at this time.

Other new features and improvements in this update include bug fixes, a new book indicator and better image zooming. You can get Kindle for iOS for free here.

Zune HD Can Sync To Mac While Windows Phone 7 Controls iTunes

While Microsoft isn’t officially advocating the Zune HD march onto OS X, a simple tweak to your Windows Phone 7 Connector software for OS X can add syncing capability in no time. With a little tweak of the .plist file, nate8nate over at Zuneboards discovered this terminal trick:

defaults write com.microsoft.Windows-Phone-7-Connector ZuneEnabled -bool YES

Nate was able to sync pictures and movies to his Zune HD – you might want to give it a try if you’re tired of syncing to that unused Windows box.

If you’ve upgraded to a Windows Phone 7 device, you might be happy knowing your iTunes playlists are now controllable over wifi. This isn’t an official Microsoft implementation, bur rather something you can add for $1.99 on the Marketplace. The WP7 Remote app not only has a pretty nice icon, but also turns your iTunes library into something terrible unique (or dare I say, Zune like?).

[via Engadget 1, 2]

Who Wouldn’t Want To Perch This Wireless Speaker?

Interested in a two-piece wireless speaker and charger that looks like half a zen-birdhouse? Check out the Perch Mobile Wireless Speaker from Quirky. A two piece design elegantly flips around so you can stand it up, lay ‘er down, and stream your music through bluetooth through the little guy. It includes an AC Charger and allows you to dock, erm, Perch your iPhone for a makeshift bed stand, perfect for something like Rise if you’re not into the default alarm clock. It’s also compatible with Androids, Windows phones, and Blackberries, but face it – it doesn’t look as cool without an iPhone nested in its maw. It’s kind of pricey at $179.99 during pre-order (it’ll be $199.99 once it launches), and we think for the commitments needed it’d have been better left to Kickstarter.

MacStories Product Review: Powermat Wireless Charger for iPhone

To inaugurate our new series of hardware and gadget reviews, I’d like to cover a product that, in the past months, has completely changed the way I carry my iPhone around and charge it. The Powermat, a combination of case and charging mat for the iPhone we first covered in October, allows you to charge your iPhone wirelessly, without any cable, through a case you’ll have to put your iPhone 4 into.

Courtesy of the great folks at Powermat, I was sent a single mat, a receiver case for the iPhone 4 and another mat that can charge up to two devices on a single surface. So far, my experience with the charging system has been very good; then only issues I ran into involved some kind of difficulty trying to find the “right spot” on the 2x mat. But overall, I do believe the Powermat is one of the most innovative, powerful and, why not, cool gadgets you can buy for your iPhone right now. Read more

The Verizon iPhone Is For App Lovers

Let’s state the obvious, Fink. Geez. I’ll be blunt: this is an, “Should I keep my Android phone or get the new iPhone on my Verizon contract?” post. Specifically, I’m talking to my fellow Android owners who’re on the fence about switching to the Verizon iPhone.

I’ve been sitting on this article all day between five thousand or so words of rant material, iPhone gawking, Android squawking, and just about every title under the sun that would attract more iPhone and Android fanboy rage than my little heart could handle. Good grief! I told Federico that this piece could do me in for a few days – this one was hard to write. “Ticci!” I said. “This is too controversial for the Internetz! They’ll explode!” After much deliberation I decided to focus on one specific aspect of Android and the iPhone, instead of comparing the platforms as a whole (there’s simply too much to talk about). After dramatically toning down the content, today’s topic is all about apps and the phones that have them, but which one is better for you?

As someone on Verizon who’s had a year long matrimony with an Android… do you dare click the read more link? I think you should.

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