Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Sneak Peek: Discourse, Beautiful Dictionary App for iPhone

A few days ago I stumbled upon the preview page of Discourse, an upcoming iPhone app developed by Emilio Peláez (the developer of Notified, available in Cydia) and designed by Mathieu White which, according to the website, aims at being a unique and fresh dictionary app for iPhone. Can a dictionary app be unique? – I asked on Twitter. What could a developer ever do to make sure his take on digital dictionaries – a rather boring subject, one might think – feels fresh and innovative?

I got into Discourse’s beta group and Emilio was kind enough to let me talk about the app on MacStories. I’ve been running the app on my iPhone since last night and, admittedly, they’re building something that feels fresh, beautiful and, to an extent, unique. Here’s a sneak peek. Read more

Elements 1.5: Sub-folders, Markdown Preview, Better File Saving

Second Gear’s Elements for iPhone and iPad has been updated to version 1.5 today, a major revision of the popular Dropbox-based text editor that adds lot of new (and much requested) features together with a plethora of bug fixes. We previously covered Elements here and here.

First off, Elements now supports sub-folders and Markdown previews. Sub-folders are really a huge deal for many users out there, as now you’ll be able to hook Elements up with other Dropbox-based apps that organize their documents with a similar structure, such as Plaintext. The family of Dropbox text editors keeps on getting more connected and better integrated.

For me, however, the really huge deal is the improved Markdown support: the app can now view Markdown formatted files (.md, .markdown, .mdown, .mdwn) and open Markdown files from external applications that support the “Open in…” feature. Similarly to Second Gear’s own MarkdownMail, Elements can now generate a live HTML preview of Markdown formatted text for you to instantly check on. Read more

T-Mobile Makes Fun of Apple’s FaceTime With “Get a Mac”-like Ad

With its latest ad to promote the MyTouch 4G, T-Mobile makes fun of Apple’s FaceTime restrictions (it only works on wifi, remember?) and blames AT&T for slowing down the entire iPhone 3G experience.

In the ad, very similar to the old “Get a Mac” ones, a young lady says “Hi. I’m a T-Mobile MyTouch 4G.”, then the camera reveals a man who says “And I’m an iPhone 4.” Another man is hanging on his back –he’s the old AT&T network. The ad goes on to say that Apple’s FaceTime works “everywhere there’s wifi, like in airports”, while you can make video calls anywhere with T-Mobile’s strong 4G network.

It’s a clever ad, and I like it. [via TUAW]

Project Sword Renamed “Infinity Blade”, Coming This Holiday

Remember Project Sword by Epic Games? Yes, that impressive tech demo we saw at Apple’s last music event on stage, the one that made our jaws drop due to that stunning graphics, light effects and animations. The same day, we were also able to download a demo of the demo, called “Epic Citadel” and based on the same graphic engine (the Unreal Engine 3 for mobile devices) but limited to a single town without any people and / or enemies.

Today Epic Games announced the final title of the game, which is now dubbed “Infinity Blade” and will be available on iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch this holiday season. Infinity Blade will feature both a single player and a multiplayer mode based on Game Center, RPG elements, even better graphics than before and free updates with new features in the next months.

The developers worked hard for 4 months on the development of Infinity Blade and, hopefully, we’ll enjoy the great results of the Unreal Engine 3 together with an equally great gameplay in a few weeks.

Check out the press release, screenshots and the old demo video of Project Sword below. Read more

JotAgent for Dropbox: 5 Promo Codes Up for Grabs

JotAgent is a neat little utility for iPhone and iPad that lets you quickly save notes in Dropbox with literally two taps. I reviewed it here a few weeks ago:

The concept is simple: you link the app to your Dropbox account, you fire it up and start writing. With the tap of a button, the note gets quickly saved in Dropbox. That’s it. You can then browse all the notes you saved, or simply write a new one.

JotAgent is not a tool for professional writers: it’s a lightweight app to “jot” down an idea and have it stored on Dropbox, which runs on your iOS devices, the web and Mac. It’s a great way to save random ideas, thoughts and pieces of text in a service that works anywhere, on any device.

The app is available at $0.99 in the App Store, but in case you haven’t bought it yet we have 5 promo codes up for grabs. Jump after the break, check out the giveaway rules and good luck!

Read more

The 58-inch Multitouch Table For iPhone Is Real [Video]

We covered the Table Connect for iPhone (a 58-inch surface that mirrors your iPhone screen) a few days ago, and now the developers posted a video of the “device” in action: as you can see in the video above, the table requires you to start an app on the iPhone (likely available through jailbreak) and plug in the cable. Wifi is not supported at this point.

The two guys in the video seem to access the Springboard just fine, they swipe between pages and launch the Photos app. It doesn’t look like a fake, as many readers claimed. The iPhone also seems to be able to output UI elements on that bigger screen just fine.

The Table Connect is still in development, so we’ll keep you up to date with the project.

Update: some readers have pointed out that the guy in the video holds the power button down when firing up the app required to output the iPhone screen.

Skyfire, Already Approved by Apple, Will Bring Flash Videos To The iPhone On Thursday

As noted by 9to5mac, Skyfire will release its first iPhone app on Thursday, which will allow users to load Flash videos on the device using the startup’s on-the-fly conversion technology.

Skyfire takes a Flash video, sends it to its own servers and translates it to HTML5 on the iPhone in a few seconds. I’m not really sure whether Skyfire’s servers will hold up on Thursday, or if there’s anything more to be noted about this app besides Flash conversion. Read more

miCal, Powerful Calendar App for iPhone

If you follow me on Twitter, you might have noticed I’ve been tweeting about Google Calendar integration on iOS since last week. Indeed, I’m looking at all the possible ways to integrate Google’s calendar utility on iOS, especially on the iPhone which is the device I always have with me. It turns out there are many ways to get your Google Cal up and running on the iPhone, the default one requiring you to create an Exchange or CalDAV account in Mail, Contacts and Calendars. In that way, you’ll be able to use Google Calendar in Apple’s default Calendar app and enjoy the additional sync services offered by Google (very similar to MobileMe).

Or, you can just go looking for a 3rd party calendar application in the App Store and play with features Apple didn’t implement in its default app. So I did, and here’s the first app I downloaded, miCal.

Read more

AppSwitch: Cool Process Management App for iPhone

My  good friend @kenyarmosh tweeted about this app a few hours ago and it immediately caught my attention: a process management app for iOS, like the ones seen on Android and, yes, the dekstop? How’s that even possible without breaking Apple’s ban of usage of private APIs?

AppSwitch, available at an introductory price of $0.99 in the App Store, monitors and provides detailed information about the apps running in the background on your iPhone. As a matter of fact, AppSwitch can monitor both running apps and background system processes, something that I haven’t seen in any other App Store app before - mainly because Apple doesn’t want users to know which system processes are running. With AppSwitch you can keep an eye on your iPhone memory usage (with an interface similar to the Mac’s Activity Monitor) and see which apps are actually multitasking and which are not, with the possibility to quickly jump to another app or to an app’s specific feature. Read more