AirPlay Hacks: XBMC on Linux, AVI Live Conversion

Missed Erica Sadun’s latest AirPlay hack yesterday? It’s a new Mac app called AirFlick that allows to send video and URLs (say, from Youtube.com) from OS X to the Apple TV without needing to load a file from iTunes. It’s a standalone app that can send video files through AirPlay to an Apple TV 2nd gen running on your local network. Together with AirPlayer (which allows you to send videos and photos via AirPlay to a Mac), it’s another great hack from Erica Sadun.

It turns out, anyway, that AirFlick can do a lot more than “simply” allowing you to send video from OS X to the Apple TV. First, TUAW reader BC managed to stream with AirPlay .avi files using Air Video Server’s live conversion system, by copying the URL of AVS’ m3u8 playlist and paste it in AirFlick. It requires some serious Terminal skills, but it’s possible. Read more

First AirPlay Speaker From JBL Surfaces Online

When Apple announced AirPlay, it also confirmed that several AirPlay-enabled third party speakers would come out for consumers to use in conjunction with iPhones and iPads without the need of setting up a wireless system based on AirPort Express. Since then, though, those speakers haven’t found their way to the market. Yet. Read more

Confirmed: Instagram Reaches 1 Million Users

We speculated several times in the past about social photo sharing service Instagram (which doesn’t have a website, it only comes as an iPhone app) to have reached and passed the 1 million users milestone, now it’s official. Instagram has gained more than a million users since its original release in early October.

As co-founder of Instagram Kevin Systrom told The New York Times:

Instagram, a social photo-sharing company that opened its shutters to iPhone owners just two months ago, announced Tuesday that it passed a major milestone of 1 million registered users.

“We’ve just been amazed at the growth of the service,” Mr. Systrom said in a phone interview. “My partner and I had a bet the first day about how many downloads we would get and I was off by an order magnitude.”

According to Mr. Systrom, Instagram users are “collectively uploading approximately three photos a second and tens of millions of photos have been shared on the service.”

The past two months have been a great run for Instagram, which launched its iPhone app with only a few selected users who had the privilege to try the app on board. Since then, usage of the service skyrocketed with the developers being busy keeping the servers up and running. The app reached another important milestone when Twitter announced support for Instagram photos in its inline media viewer on Twitter.com. The app also received a few updates to fix bugs and introduce more filters and Posterous integration.

Almost three months after launch and with “just an iPhone app” out in the wild, we think great things will come for Instagram in 2011. One million users is a solid foundation to start with.

Apple Expects Apple TV Sales To Reach 1 Million This Week

Apple just sent out a press release announcing that the company expect Apple TV sales to top one million units later this week. It also announced that iTunes users are now “renting and purchasing over 400,000 TV episodes and over 150,000 movies per day”.

The best part? The Apple TV is not a hobby anymore, but is described by Apple PR as “the perfect iOS accessory”, thanks to AirPlay. That’s quite an evolution.

Press release below. Read more

Apple Job Posting Suggests More Speech Recognition Features Coming to iOS

9to5mac points to four new job listings that appeared on Apple’s website earlier this week and suggest the company is looking forward to implementing more speech recognition features in future versions of iOS. The job positions (1, 2, 3, 4) include one “iOS Speech Application Engineer”, two “Speech Recognition Engineers” and one “Senior Speech Research Scientist”.

Are you looking to contribute to a product that is redefining the smartphone? The iOS Application Frameworks team is looking for an exceptional Speech Engineer. You will work with our team on a wide variety of speech-related development activities. We need a team player - you will be working closely with engineers on the Application Frameworks team as well as other teams at Apple - and we need someone who is comfortable working in a fast paced environment with rapidly changing priorities.

The fact that Apple is looking for not one, but four Speech engineers may be a sign of the iOS team at Cupertino willing to catch up with Google, which already has powerful voice search and voice action functionalities on Android. Speech recognition features on iOS are limited to Voice Control and a few other App Store apps that come with their own speech technologies – apps like Siri Assistant, bought by Apple earlier this year.

If you think the pieces are coming together now for speech-related features to show up in a major new version of iOS next year, then I guess we’re all excited for voice actions to find their way on the iPhone and iPad.

Fruit Ninja Lite, N.O.V.A. 2 for iPad Now Available

Together with an update to Infinity Blade, two other popular games for iPhone and iPad were updated last night. First off, Gameloft finally released an iPad version of N.O.V.A. 2, which as you can guess is simply called N.O.V.A. 2 HD. The app isn’t universal, but at least it’s sold at the same price of the iPhone counterpart. The features are the same (improved graphics, new weapons, better AI, new multiplayer mode) and the game, like the first N.O.V.A., is “just” bigger on the iPad.

Your call if that’s a good thing or not – I personally can’t play first-person shooters on the iPad so well.

Also, Halfbrick Studios released Fruit Ninja Lite for iPhone and iPad (Fruit Ninja HD Lite), two free samples of the smashing mobile hits. The “lite” versions offer most of the game modes of the paid apps, but come with limitations (for example, only a few achievements) so you can try before you buy.

Check out Fruit Ninja Lite and other discounted Halfbrick Studios on the team’s App Store page.

First Infinity Blade Update Now Available→

First Infinity Blade Update Now Available

- 5 new Swords, 5 new Shields, 5 new Helmets, and 1 new set of Armor - Collect and Master them all!

- Maximum Character Level raised from 40 to 45!

- New Enemy - The MARROW FIEND! This creature is rumored to devour its victims, taking their bones for its blade and shield…

- Because it’s awesome, you can now listen to your own music while playing INFINITY BLADE!

- Optimizations and minor Bug fixes

Infinity Blade 1.1 is available here. I can’t wait for multiplayer mode to come in the next version.

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Shocker! Someone At Apple Killed The Unofficial WikiLeaks App

Three days ago we covered the unofficial WikiLeaks app for iPhone and iPad, a $1.99 piece of software available in the App Store which let you access the latest diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks and check on the organization’s Twitter account. It was also nicely designed and sold as a universal app.

Developer Igor Barinov, though, wasn’t planning on taking all the money from the sales of the app. Instead, he decided to donate half of the proceeds to WikiLeaks, a move that likely pissed off Steve Jobs, or someone else at the App Store team. In fact, for some obscure reason or App Store guideline we’re no aware of, the app is gone. Killed. Kaput. There’s no WikiLeaks app in the App Store anymore. Without an explanation, the developer got an email from Apple about the changed state of his app, which was “removed from sale”.

I’m not sure this app violated any of Apple’s guidelines. It was a wrapper for a website (the CableGate documents) and a Twitter account – both of them publicly available on the internet. We all know there’s worse in the App Store, and – to tell the truth – this was also a good app. Assange and WikiLeaks are controversial and one may or may not agree with his efforts to “reveal the truth”, but there’s no reason to remove an unofficial app.

Unless, well, you’re Apple and you don’t care about your own Guidelines.

Still Relevant? MySpace Updates Its iPhone App With New UI and Features

Just in case you were wondering, yes – MySpace appears to be alive. I know, you haven’t logged in the website in ages. But what was that? Two years ago? Man, that was fast. Facebook completely replaced MySpace in our daily digital sharing and wall-posting lives.

Still, MySpace has an updated iPhone app available. Version 2.0 adds a fresh new, darker and somehow sexier look (which reminds me an awful lot of the Facebook’s iPhone grid interface), possibility to browse without login, SuperPosts to share links at the same time on Facebook - MySpace - Twitter (why would I, I don’t really know) and instant notifications.

The update also comes with a bunch of additional features, which – if you really still care – you can check out in the full changelog below. The app is available for free here. Read more