I don’t know what’s going on with mysterious website SayHiToSpace.com. Sure, there’s a countdown in there and even links to email and Twitter, but it’s their Youtube channel that creeps me out. Basically, the first video from SayHiToSpace went viral as it featured a creepy guy finding out that the iPad lacked a camera, then destroying it making a hole in the middle of the device with a water jet.
Here’s the first video:
This falls under the category of neat installations powered by an iOS device we have covered so many times here on MacStories. The Swam Light is a $180,000 LED chandelier based on an algorithm originally meant to analyze the behavior of bees. The LED that power the chandelier, in fact, are organized in a series of grids and lit up to display “simulated collective movement” – or, the movement of groups of insects.
What’s cool is that the creators of the installation, rAndom International, developed an iPhone controller in-house to handle operations remotely. The iPhone app can dim lights and switch between the various modes implemented in the Swarm Light.
Available at $0.99 in the App Store, Webcorder is a rather simple browser for iPhone that doesn’t come with breakthrough functionalities or a beautiful interface. Instead, it stands out because it allows you to capture a Quicktime video of your web browsing session. Read more
The current version of iMovie available in the App Store can’t run on the iPad. Apple specifically built it for the iPhone, and there’s no way to install it on the tablet. iTunes returns an error when trying to do so. As you can guess though, it would be great to be able to edit and manage videos on the iPad: thanks to its larger screen, multi-touch video editing would turn out to be much more comfortable.
Luckily for us, the folks over at iPadevice (Italian) have found a way to install and run iMovie on the iPad, but a jailbroken device is required. If you happen to have a jailbroken iPad running iOS 4.2 and you’ve always wanted to run iMovie on it, check out the tutorial below. Read more
When iOS 4.2.1 came out on November 22nd, several users were disappointed to find out that there was no AirPlay option in the iPhone’s Camera Roll or Photos app. If you have some videos shot with your iPhone and you want to stream them to the new Apple TV, you’ll have to import them into iTunes on your computer first, then sync them back to the iPhone.
There’s no direct Camera Roll -> Apple TV streaming option, and as Daring Fireball’s John Gruber wrote weeks ago, this might be because of the different bitrate of high-def videos recorded on the iPhone. Read more
Air Video is one of our favorite iOS apps here at MacStories. Not only does the app come with a nice icon and polished interface, the real deal’s about the functionality: Air Video allows you to effortlessly stream any video from your computer to the iPhone or iPad – even with live conversion. No matter the format, no matter how big the file is (seriously, you can try with music videos or 3GB movie files), Air Video will stream to iOS just fine.
An update to the app was released yesterday, and it’s a pretty sweet update: Air Video 2.4.2 now comes with Retina Display-ready graphics, support for iOS 4.2 multitasking, performance improvements and enhanced file sorting capabilities.
An already must-have app basically got a lot better with these new features, so if you still don’t own Air Video, go buy it right now in the App Store at $2.99. Also, check out a video below of Erica Sadun from TUAW demoing a custom version of Air Video with AirPlay support. We can’t wait for Apple to open up its APIs and allow third-party apps like Air Video to stream to the Apple TV. Read more
Spotted by 9to5mac and still in development by conradev over at Hackthatifone, Graviboard will basically kill “gravity” on your iPad Springboard. Install it, assign an activation gesture to it and boom – icons will start floating around. You can tilt the device to move the icons, and even drag them around.
We’re not sure if there’s a way back, though. Ok, there is a way back to a normal Springboard, but you don’t have to tell your friend who think his iPad is dead – right? So just watch the video below, and think about the look on your friend’s face when he will see something like this.
Magical.
Walt Mossberg reviews the new Apple TV:
He also says AirPlay works great.
According to the Financial Times (subscription required), BBC will launch a subscription-based iPlayer service for iPads next year. iPlayer is BBC’s popular streaming service that allows users to stream programs after the original air date, and it gained support for Mac in 2008.
It also gained a lot of traction since then, with downloads exceeding 100 millions in the first months of 2010. Unfortunately, the service isn’t available in many areas – namely outside the UK. For instance, I can’t access iPlayer’s TV streaming in Italy, and I assume the same happens to US users.
It looks like things won’t change with the iPad subscription either, as Dave Caolo at TUAW reports:
BBC Worldwide said that this isn’t going to happen until “the middle of next year,” and even then only in “certain target markets.” Additionally, no word on pricing was available, though there will be ad-supported free sections as well as paid content.
In the meantime, I’m just fine with Hulu through a US-based VPN.
