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Posts tagged with "iPhone"

QuickBins: Call and Email Your Contacts via Drag & Drop

In these past months on MacStories, we have covered two apps that aim at becoming replacements for the standard Apple Phone app: Favorites and Dialvetica. By leveraging the APIs of iOS that allow for 3rd party apps to access your contact’s list, these apps are focused on letting you quickly access your favorite contacts and either call them, text them or email them with a few taps. Favorites and Dialvetica are not really focused on the number dialing part of the phone experience (although the latest Dialvetica update introduced a dialpad), they’re rather simple interfaces to get to your most contacted friends and do stuff. Shortcuts, that is.

QuickBins, a free iPhone app by Chalk, is very similar to Favorites, but it’s based on drag & drop. The app displays your favorite contacts (which you’ll have to add manually) as profile pictures on a grid, and you can even create multiple pages of contacts. As you fire up the app, you’ll notice 4 big buttons at each corner: those are shortcuts to initiate a call, send a text message, an email and check on a contact’s address. How do you activate these commands? Simple: you take a contact, and you drop it on a button. QuickBins will then forward you to an external app (third-party software can’t send calls or text without loading Apple’s stock apps) to perform the action.

That’s it. QuickBins will soon introduce support for Skype, Twitter and Google Voice, it’s free and ad-supported, but you can remove the ads with a $2.99 in-app purchase. QuickBins also happens to have a beautiful UI design that makes it a real pleasure to tap on its icon and look at the dashboard.

QuickBins is available for free here.

This Lego iPhone Case Won’t Brick Your Phone

Of all the iPhone 4 cases I’ve seen in these past months, the SmallWorks BrickCase has to be the most original, if not craziest, one. In true old-style fashion, the BrickCase is a Lego-compatible iPhone case that, according to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, feels good in your hands and also provides good entertainment for the most loyal Lego fan.

The cases are available on Amazon in White, Black and Clear versions at $19.99. If you’re a Lego guy, I guess you know what you have to do.

Google Goggles for iPhone Gains Ad Recognition and…Sudoku

Earlier today, the Google mobile team announced an update to their official Goggles application for Android and the Goggles component in the Google Mobile App for iPhone. While Android users get advanced barcode scanning in version 1.3 of the app, printed ad recognition and Sudoku puzzle solving have been enabled both on iOS and Android. Yes, that’s right: as part of the Google Goggles labs experiments, the app can now solve Sudokuy puzzles. Just take a clear picture and let Goggles provide some help.

As for ad scanning, Goggles for iPhone can now take a look at any printed ad and return web search results for that brand or product.

Goggles will recognize print ad and return web search results about the product or brand. This new feature of Goggles is enabled for print ads appearing in major U.S. magazines and newspapers from August 2010 onwards. This feature is different from the marketing experiment that we announced in November. We’re now recognizing a much broader range of ads than we initially included in our marketing experiment.

The official Google iPhone app doesn’t seem to be updated yet, the new version should be propagating in iTunes in the next hours. In the meantime, check out the promo video for Sudoku support in Google Goggles below. Google Goggles for iPhone was launched in October as part of the Google mobile app. Read more

Little List Is The Simplest GTD App Ever Made

…Or maybe it’s not really a GTD app at all. Little List is an iPhone app developed by Caleb Thorson, the same guy behind the Trickle Twitter client we reviewed here. And just like Trickle, Little List is a minimal, elegant and focused app that takes a simple approach at a complex system: getting things done. Instead of providing tags, folders, projects and contexts, Little List is, well, a simple and clean list of things you have to do.

Many apps in the App Store have tried to go extremely simple against the most fundamental GTD principles. Little List, however, has a cool trick up its sleeve: it’s got yet another implementation of Loren Brichter’s “Pull to refresh”, but instead of refreshing, the gesture sorts items. The command is, in fact, called “Pull to sort”. So what do you sort? Normal items and starred ones. You can create a new entry by tapping on the + button and start typing; if you have important tasks you’d like to highlight, you can star them with an additional tap. “Pull to sort” will put the starred items on top.

Little List is as simple as it gets. It’s available at $0.99, it doesn’t have any kind of OTA sync – it doesn’t have any kind of anything, actually. It’s just a list, with starred items. And with a nice icon. Give it a try if you’re looking for a different take on aggregating your to dos.

Acclaimed Film Director Creates New Movie with an iPhone

South Korean film director Park Chan-wook has a new favorite gadget: an iPhone. The director of popular movies such as “Old Boy” and “Thirst”, in fact, managed to realize his latest short film using only an iPhone. The fantasy-horror movie, called “Paranmanjang”, was shot with an iPhone 4 and has a budget of around $130,000. It will debut in South Korean theaters on January 27.

Park Chan-wook says realizing the 30-minute with Apple’s smartphone was easy and fun, and minor edits were required in the post-processing stage. The only downside to the experiment is a little shakiness in the first minutes of footage – although this “real life” feeling of the film should help as far as “horror” and anxiety are concerned.

The short is a fantastical tale that begins with a middle-aged man fishing one afternoon and then, hours later at night, catches the body of a woman. The panicked man tries to undo the intertwined fishing line, but he gets more and more entangled. He faints, then wakes up to find himself in the white clothes that the woman was wearing. The movie’s point of view then shifts to the woman and it becomes a tale of life and death from a traditional Korean point of view.

Intriguing (and kind of insane) plot aside, it’s exciting to see filmmakers and directors exploring new ways to produce content using Apple devices. We know the iPad is already popular among directors at Hollywood, and we look forward to seein its little brother, the iPhone, in the credits of more movies and short films in the next months. [9to5mac via Wall Street Journal via Yahoo]

OmniVision’s New Camera Sensor Would Be Great On Future iPhones

OmniVision, the company behind the current iPhone 4’s camera sensor and among the rumored iPad 2 camera suppliers, has announced a new native 16:9 CMOS image sensor that will provide 1080p HD video recording with simultaneous 10 MP image capturing capabilities. OmniVision is promoting the OV10810 as the “ideal choice for digital still and video camera hybrids and high-end smartphones”, and there’s no doubt such specs would be more than welcome on a future iPhone – perhaps not the iPhone 5 that should come out later this year as that’s likely already been built and it’s in the middle of testing stages.

Still, this new camera sensor from OmniVision sets the bar higher for digital cameras and smartphones, thanks to its 1080p or 720p video recording at 30 fps and the possibility to capture photos at the same time. Sounds a bit like the future of smartphones – no doubt several camera / smartphone makers will adopt this in the next months.

In the meantime, check out the press release below and imagine an iPhone with 1080p videos. [via Engadget] Read more

More Hints At Verizon iPhone Announcement Tomorrow

Last weekend, the big news was that Verizon is holding a special media event tomorrow in New York. Rumor has it, the event will (finally) be about the long-awaited Verizon iPhone. After years of speculation and rumors from major publications such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, it looks like the announcement is happening and the device is going on sale in the first week of February.

Over the weekend, further hints to the device have surfaced online. SAI reports of AT&T public relations head Larry Solomon “attacking” the rumored CDMA iPhone saying that Apple’s phone is built for speed, and that’s not what you get with CDMA:

The iPhone is built for speed, but that’s not what you get with a CDMA phone. I’m not sure iPhone users are ready for life in the slow lane.”

He says AT&T’s GSM technology is faster than Verizon’s CDMA technology.

Read more

Spotted: History of Apple’s Devices

Spotted by TUAW at iLounge’s CES booth, here’s a gallery of Apple’s mobile devices through the years. The collection starts from the original iPod in 2001 and goes straight to the latest iPhones and iPods released in 2010, with the exception of the iPad, which is probably not considered a mobile device by iLounge either.

Looking at the photos, it’s clear how much is changed in 10 years. Even more than iTunes’ interface. Look at the original iPod, or a model from 2005 and 2006 and then take a look at the devices listed under 2007 and 2008. The difference is enormous. Sure, the iPod Classic is still alive and kicking (I have a 160 GB one right here), but we know the majority of consumers are buying iPod touches or Nanos now. These photos are the best example of Apple’s evolution and refinement process from 2001, and then 2007,  through today.

Check out the full gallery here.