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Posts tagged with "iPad"

Multimedia JFK Biography Hits the iPhone and iPad

On the 20th of January 1961, John F Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States, now fifty years later there’s a new iPhone and iPad app that commemorates his life and achievements.

Historian and publisher Marc Schulman who developed the app whilst writing the text biography told Reuters “The paper book is limited, in that you can’t see all the supporting documents, videos and photographs.” The app, JFK Historymaker for iOS however is a rich multimedia experience full of videos, documents and includes the retrospective biography of the President.

The app comprises of many key sections including those documenting his family, him as a Congressional Candidate, the Space Program, Cuban Missile Crisis and his Assassination. Schulman emphasized that it enables the reader to do their own research so they don’t have to “rely just on my voice as the biographer.”

According to a November Gallup poll, JFK remains America’s most popular President with an 85% approval rating. Whether you approve of him and want to know more or you simply want to learn something about a pretty significant historical individual, JFK Historymaker undoubtedly seems like a treasure trove of information for the price of $4.99.

[Buy on iTunes]

[Via Reuters]


SyncPad: The Collaborative Online Whiteboard For iPad. Review & Giveaway!

Inspiration hits us often at MacStories, and we’ll usually collaborate by sharing sketches thanks to Skitch and iChat. Imagine, however, if we didn’t rely on static images and browser refreshes to share content collaboratively over the Internet: SyncPad is an answer to our clunky workflow, thanks to immediately accessible online sketch rooms available via the Internet or SyncPad’s reader component for the iPad. In realtime, you can watch as the creators create instant wireframes, sketch over photos, markup PDFs (yes!), or draw the “OctoTicci” as I’ve done screwing around when I first tried the app with Federico. Below you’ll find many a 4th grader’s sketch (read: my terrible finger painting), an overview, and a little something for our readers who’d like to win one of ten copies. We can’t keep all of this collaborative-ness to ourselves after all.

Read more



The Kork™ iPad Case

The Kork™, by A PRODUKT, is an eco-friendly iPad case. It’s made from 100% natural leftover cork, then formed into a uni-body shell for the iPad. It gives great protection and is ergonomically designed to fit in your hand, just like the iPad. It has a very natural grip and feel and is very light weight while leaving easy access to all the buttons and ports. “The Kork™ is a fine blend of Technology and Nature.”

FEATURES and TECH SPECS:

  • Recycled and Recyclable Natural Cork
  • Easy access to all Buttons and Inputs
  • Ergonomic Natural Shape and Feel
  • Angled Audio Output for Front Projected Sound
  • Larger Dock Connection Extra Space for Connectors
  • Extra Space for Bigger Jack Input
  • Angled Mic. Wall for User Directed Sound Caption
  • Very Light Weight

Video after the break. Read more


Flight Control Lands Nearly 4 Million Sales

Firemint, which recently acquired Infinite Interactive has posted on it’s blog some sales statistics of it’s popular Flight Control game that is currently featured in Apple’s Top Paid Apps of all time. As of the post it had sold 3,881,634 copies and has raked in $3.8 million dollars and that’s after Apple 30% take.

As demonstrated by the graph it released that is shown above (click for larger size) it’s pretty clear that Christmas and big feature updates really helped increase sales of the game. In particular the addition of Game Center support led to a peak of 120,000 sales, the largest peak since the release of the app. The new maps update and Retina display support were the other notable peaks.

Also notable is the sales by country, as the graph below the break shows, the US has the lion’s share followed by Great Britain, Australia and Germany.

Read more


The iPad Screen Resolution Rumor Merry-Go-Round

Well in the past 24 hours we’ve had another two rumors regarding the iPad 2’s screen resolution. First there was DigiTimes that reported Apple would up the iPad’s screen resolution to that oft-reported figure of 2048 x 1536. Then Kevin Rose who had previously stated the iPad 2 would have a Retina Display reversed his position with a picture of text messages from his supposed source who said “no change in resolution” which he posted on Instagram.

Then there was also the suggestion that floated across various blogs and publications that Moore’s law suggested the iPad 2 wouldn’t have a retina display. Both DigiTimes and Kevin Rose have dubious accuracy regarding Apple rumors and this vicious back and forth contradictions of rumors regarding the display are certainly odd.

UPDATE: Oddly, Kevin Rose seems to have removed the Instagram photo which is now unaccessible and does not appear in his Instagram feed.

So readers, what are your thoughts on this whole high resolution/retina display on the iPad 2 rumor merry-go-round?

[Via Cult of Mac, DigiTimes]


XBMC Comes to the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV 2

XBMC, a popular media center originally made for the first Xbox has become fairly widespread has been available for a variety of platforms, today that platform base extended to include the new Apple TV, iPhone and iPad.

The client on these new platforms is not stripped down to simply just view streams but is fully fledged with all the features you would come to expect it to have on a Windows PC. Because of this it is being distributed for the iOS devices through a Cydia repository and for the Apple TV through an apt-get install.

Scott Davilla one of the XBMC developers talked to TUAW and he revealed that development for the Apple TV 2 started only on November 1st last year and the iOS versions a few weeks later. He notes that the built in web server is currently disabled and the skin isn’t optimized but says improvements will be made including the possibility of implementing AirPlay into all the Apple related releases.

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments that occurred whilst XBMC was ported was the discovery of an API called VideoToolBox that allows hardware video decoding, encoding and scaling of the video size to match the final display size. So powerful is this API that Davilla and others that developed XBMC for iPad are able to stream full 1080p video with no transcoding to the iPad and it plays nearly perfectly, only dropping a few frames. Davilla’s confident however that the A4 processor can handle 1080p and will be working to ensure fully smooth playback.

TUAW put together some video’s demonstrating it running on all three of the new platforms, check it out here.

[Via XBMC, TUAW]


TestFlight Goes Live For Everyone - Distribute & Receive Beta Apps Effortlessly

TestFlight has been in lockdown mode for a while, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to put the service through its paces before they opened their doors to everybody this evening. I’ll just say that TestFlight is incredibly convenient for installing beta applications on the fly - there’s nothing more annoying than unzipping iPad or iPhone files, dragging them to iTunes, syncing, and it doing all over again when updates are distributed. TestFlight simply has you log into their site via your iPad or iPhone, tap a button, and you can browse through the beta apps developers have subscribed you to for immediate downloads. It’s so much easier for developers to submit one beta to TestFlight than to package their app and distribute it to dozens of emails, and it’s much easier on the tester to be updated and install updates. It’s completely Apple worthy, and if you’re a developer we encourage you to sign up for the service so you can focus on creating content instead of worrying about beta distribution.

TechCrunch notes that the service is free to developers, while a paid Enterprise version is in the works that will allow for licensed versions of apps to be passed through the airwaves (presumably for corporate/in-house application use).

[via TestFlight, TechCrunch]