Wednesday, July 28, 2010 03:40
Price: £free
Platform: Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch, Android, BlackBerry
You have to hand it to BA. No matter how easy the company makes it to prefer other airlines - whether from union solidarity, antitrust concerns or simply because you hate Terminal 5 - it's surprisingly difficult to find anyone else flying to destinations even slightly out of the way.
Then our national airline goes and does something like this: a surprisingly well thought-out and easy to use app that does pretty much everything you might want from an airline (aside from instant, free upgrades to Business Class).
First and foremost, you can check in using the app, a process that works quickly and simply. If you're on a Heathrow to Edinburgh flight, the app will even give you a virtual boarding pass to flash at the departure gate - hopefully this will extend to more flights shortly.
The Flight Info icon does what you'd expect: allow you to search by route, flight or airport for specific flights, or browse timetables. It'll give expected arrival and departure times for recent flights, but there are no prices (or miles equivalents) for booking future trips.
Regular BA travellers can enter their Executive Club username and password to get a readout of their miles and tier status, and any upcoming bookings. Don't go trying to change a seat or choose an Asian Veg meal (always a good choice from Heathrow), though.
In the More section, there's a handy list of contact phone numbers for every country BA flies to, Travel News for the latest strike/volcano updates and a list of BA tweets - although annoyingly you can't click on links or twitpics. Despite this, well worth a download if you find yourself on the Heathrow Express more often than you'd like.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010 18:33
Platform: Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch
Price: £free
Don't get too excited - this isn't the full Firefox experience on your iPhone. Safari's monopoly over HTML browsing will continue for the foreseeable future but if you're a Firefox desktop user, you can at last view your bookmarks, search your history and even visit open tabs on your ever-so-controlled Apple device.
Start by installing the Firefox Synch add-on on your desktop. This sets up security and uploads your browsing history, bookmarks and open tabs to a secure server at Mozilla.
Now install the Firefox Home app and sign in. The app checks in with the server and allows you to search your history (lightning fast), browse bookmarks and even visit those tabs you left open on your PC while running to catch a train.
Clicking on a link opens up a mini WebKit viewer with basic forward/back and refresh buttons, plus an icon to copy or send the link, or open it in Safari. The viewer is slower than Safari but formats pages pretty well, and you can pinch to zoom and cut and paste.
The tabs refresh regularly but not instantly - and there are other frustrations. Although the Sync add-on uploads web passwords, the Home app doesn't download them, so you'll have to remember and retype access details for your favourite sites.
If you're working on an iPhone 3G or a 1st or 2nd generation iPod touch, there are limits to the number of history and bookmark links the app will download. The app maxed out at 2000 history links on my 2nd gen iPod touch, and refused to load any bookmarks. After clearing my history - and having to reset the entire Synch add-on - the Home app then downloaded just 3500 bookmarks and ignored the rest. There have also been reports of crashes issues with the iPhone 4.
Having said that, this is still an essential download for anyone using Firefox at home or on other platforms. Being able to search for half-forgotten links or access folders of bookmarks on the move makes your iPhone feel more than ever like a mobile extension of your desktop. It even makes Safari's browsing monopoly a little easier to live with.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 17:38
Platform: Various
Prices: Free
Glow sticks? Check. Whistle? Check. Sun cream? Check. Glasto's over so it's time to hop on an EasyJet to the white isle and lose seven nights (and probably several thousand Euros) in a foam-fuelled dance rage.
Start by getting yourself in an Ibiza mood with radio stations streaming direct to your iPod or iPhone: Ibiza Sonica can be up and running in seconds, delivering decent quality audio (via Wi-Fi), a Twitter feed (about half Spanish and half English) and programme information. Music is a good mid-tempo mix of lounge, chill and nu jazz, with a few deeper sessions mixed in.
A step up from Ibiza Sonia is Amnesia Ibiza, the official app from one of island's most iconic venues (iPhone, iPod touch). As well as 24-hour streaming sounds in good quality AAC+ (up-beat house, Balearic, tech house, euphoric), there's a good calendar of special events (mmm, Laurent Garnier on Friday - still time to get a ticket?) and a news feed. One drawback to both radio apps - they don't multi-task so you can't keep the vibe running while you bash out texts.
If you want to explore the world outside dance clubs, get yourself a BlackBerry and download the essential Ibiza Rocks. Although the electric visuals might be painful after an all-nighter, the app has island-wide event info and full details of the famous Tuesday gigs at the rock hotel (also home to daily pool parties). Still to come this summer: Dizzee Rascal, Florence and the Machine and LCD Soundsystem.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010 12:34
Having been given a sneak peak at RIM's forthcoming Blackberry 6 OS, we already know the business-orientated guise of the current OS is being reinvented as something significantly more fun and interactive. And while wandering the virtual streets of the web this morning, we stumbled across a new video from RIM showing off the new OS in all its entirety. Only this time, it comes sans the irritating dancing. Phew.
As we already know, there's a huge emphasis on social stuff and everything multimedia. Aggregated social network integration has been revealed, alongside some pinch-to-zoom multitouch action, a new WebKit-based browser, a Cover Flow style media player, better looking pop-up menus, universal search and a more visually engaging blackberry Messenger.
While we've seen a lot of aforementioned features in the last video, they were revealed at such a fast pace we didn't have time to ogle them before the video moved on. And then there was the dancing. Now, we've been treated to much nicer (and slower) visual goodies.
The huge emphasis on full touchscreen activity probably hasn't gone unnoticed. But surely RIM isn't going to ditch the QWERTY form-factor that made it the emailing behemoth it is today? I'm sure all will be revealed in due course. For now, why not tell us what you think in the comments below? Does Blackberry's OS have the potential to commence battle with the iPhone and Android?
Monday, July 12, 2010 17:23
Did
someone say iPhone killer?
Not yet, but it would only be a question of
time if HTC decided to realise Andrew Kim’s designs for the “1” handset.
“Would?”
“If?” This doesn’t sound promising
These renders were put up on the Design
Fabulous blog. The designer has tried to make the point that with a bit more
effort, HTC et al aren’t that far off being able to genuinely build the
long-awaited challenger to the iPhone. And we think he’s succeeded, too.
Pretty
pictures don’t make a good phone
Correct, but there are plenty of nice
touches here. Part of the casing folds out to form a kickstand for watching
movies or using the phone as an alarm clock, for instance.
I
suppose it makes phone calls, too?
It does, and plenty more. Kim has seen fit
to redraw the Sense UI, too. What he calls Sense Mono chimes more closely with
the minimalist feel of the device.
So,
are they giving him the job?
Well, his idea for UV light that beams from
the inside of the device to clean bacteria off the outer surface is a bit
far-fetched, but we’d be surprised if someone in HTC’s design labs isn’t biting
his nails today. Just don’t expect it to launch in time for Christmas.
[via Engadget]
Thursday, July 08, 2010 17:46
There hasn’t been a flashpoint for ereaders yet. Ignore the iPad – you could read a book on it, but it’s not an ereader. This is about E Ink – for reading novels, biographies, that sort of thing. It’s a simple solution to a simple problem. In theory.
As expected, iriver is on the cusp of selling its Story ereader. But this isn’t about the launch of another monochrome screen that does more or less the same thing as all the others. With apologies for the unavoidable pun, the real story here is that the reader will give access to WHSmith’s online bookstore.
Gadgets cannot live on spec alone these days. They need to continue to add value through updates and – for want of a less managementy word – content. Content can be apps or music or TV shows or films. Or, indeed, books.
The most likely reason Sony is still holding back on its 3G Daily Edition Reader this side of the pond is that there are deals to make with publishers and distributors. Amazon was able to take a short cut, while Apple had a proven sales environment (iTunes). And, now, iriver has WHSmith, one of the biggest brands in bookselling.
Does that leave Sony out in the cold? Or will we see a deal announced to put it back in the ereader game? Either way, this is one part of the future library that isn’t getting any quieter.
We'll be getting hold of iriver's Story soon. More thoughts then.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010 23:12
Price: £0.59
Platform: Apple iPhone, Apple iPod touch
Before you get too excited, this footie game doesn't pit your ball control skills against the shambling undead corpses of Stanley Matthews and Bobby Moore - although the way Rooney was playing in South Africa, he's probably in here somewhere.
From the same stable as Angry Birds and Predator, Pro Zombie Soccer is in fact just a fairly standard scrolling shooter, with your character (Jax) fighting off hordes of brain-gobbling zombies using nothing more than a football. Luckily, it's not a Jabulani, so you've some chance of actually hitting something.
All the usual power-ups are on the pitch, with cool weapons that includes a space-based zombie laser. Graphics are on the small side, so it's hard to see the full spatter of a proper head shot but the screen is soon full of teams of undead baddies, with end of level bosses that need fairly skillful trick shots to dispatch. Sounds effects and music (you can choose tunes to play) are bone-crunchingly atmospheric.
You aim by dragging your finger up and down, then release to shoot the ball. PZS has a wide selection of levels (though most are pretty static), between which a well-drawn manga comic strip tells the story of Jax's gradual transformation into a zombie himself. In later levels, your iPhone becomes soaked in cartoon gore as ultra-powered balls rip through dozens of a zombies at a time - occasionally even slowing down your Apple if you're playing on an older handset.
The game is part of the Crystal online network, for chatting, sharing scores and leaderboards. PZS is never going to become a classic like Angry Birds but as a high-energy interlude to Sunday's World Cup final, it'll take some beating. A bit like the Netherlands, come to think of it.
Tuesday, July 06, 2010 14:49
To misquote Magritte, this is not a car. It’s a design sketch from BMW’s Project i – an imagination of what its future battery-powered vehicle might look like. But it’s more than a fuzzily futuristic concept, even if the wheels do like they were ripped off an Xbox controller.
BMW is building its electric car from the ground up. And that hasn’t been done before. Everyone else opens the bonnet on an existing model in their range, hoicks out the combustion engine, bungs in an electric one about the same size and slams the lid down again. Job done. More or less.
And the German company is talking a big game for its battery-powered plans. Which is great, because it’s about time we gadgety folk had a better set of wheels. Even better, it’s an opportunity to create some new in-car gadgets.
In-car tech has had a pretty rough ride. We know what’s possible – head-up displays, modular dashboards, intelligent self-drive, light-sensitive automatically tinting windscreens – but we don’t seem to have got much further than hands-free kits and iPod chargers that plug into the ciggie lighter.
BMW is stridently approaching the gates of possibility by building the drive system first and creating the car around it. And that should be a clarion call to action for all wannabe in-car gadget makers.
How can we improve the gadgeteer’s driving experience?
How do you make it easier for people to use their gadgets while driving? And safer? There’s a good reason you can’t remove anything from a modern dashboard without writing the car off, but why not turn the whole thing into an open-source project, capable of being upgraded and customized?
Assuming all this happens on Beemer’s new electric, there’s only one problem remaining: there are no door handles. In fact, there aren’t any doors. Although we have a hunch those wheels control the stereo…
Monday, July 05, 2010 14:18
This is a king-size rumour with king-size doubts on it, but it’s out there and it’s an interesting proposition: Apple really could build its own TV.
In less than ten years, the company has transformed the way we listen to music through iPods and iTunes. Since launching in 2007, Apple’s phones have dominated mobile internet usage figures.
Partly as a result of mainstream adoption of these ‘satellite’ devices, Apple’s desktop and laptop computers have become more accessible, too. Once Apple computers were the preserve of graphic designers and architects. Now your mum has one.
And the iPad? Even without the benefit of hindsight, you’ve only to look at the investment in tablet computing from every major manufacturer to see that Apple’s got that licked, too.
Yet Apple TV never took off as a standalone box, exactly the reason Apple should mount a second charge and build the screen as well.
In iTunes, it has the ecosystem to sell movies and TV shows. And here is a company that has just blown apart existing conceptions of what good glass can be with the iPhone 4’s Retina Display; Apple knows its screens.
So why not? Coupled with Jonathan Ive’s knack for inventive industrial design and the iOS user interface, it could be the next big thing in TV.
As long as it can pick up a good signal, that is.
[speculation from the New York Times blog]
Thursday, July 01, 2010 21:34
Femtocells isn't a term that gets propelled around Stuff.tv too often. So if your expression currently reads 'vacant', this bit of learning is for you. Firstly, it's not biological, despite the connotations. A femtocell is a low-powered base station (or mobile phone access point) enabling you to use your phone via a broadband connection. So essentially, service providers can extend coverage indoors or to other places access would otherwise be limited or unavailable (like parts of Stuff Towers). Great if you live/work/hang out in places with no windows and rubbish coverage.
OK, boring bit over. The point of that mini science lesson was to give you a bit of an understanding of the technology behind the Airvana Femto Family Tablet. So what is it? Well, it's essentially a multimedia portal for family or household communications and sharing. Its primary concern is keeping you connected, both at home and remotely via your mobile.
Not in the mood for reading? Check out our video demo.
Despite what the name implies, there's no hardware - that'll be the job of third party manufacturers. This means the software is potentially compatible with any touchscreen device, be it iPad or a mahoosive all-in-one like Medion's The Touch. Once you've set up your private network, known as the femtozone, your phone will automatically sync with your personal portal once you're within range.
Features range from syncing calendars, to location notifications, network based customised homescreens, to automatic photo uploads from your phone to the tablet, as well as Facebook (Flickr and Picassa are options too). Of course, if you like to do questionable things with your cameraphone, it's probably best to keep this feature switched off.
And if at any time you have need to know the whereabouts of your ambulant brother or you tantrum throwing teenagers, you can grab this information from the Family Location pane.
When you're not in your femtozone, the software will register you've left the house and send you an SMS asking 'Have you locked the door?' and similarly will send you a 'Welcome Home' message when you step back through it. A message is also whizzed round to everyone on the network informing them of your departure or arrival. A feature that will no doubt prove popular with parents everywhere and the bane of teenagers everywhere.
Of course, the Family Tablet can be customised to your liking - it won't sync or share anything without your permission. And the option to access all the data remotely from your mobile is there too, should you want it.
The Family Tablet is currently under further development and while there won't be any hardware from Airvana, it's working with potential carriers to host its software. So it will be up to them what guise the Family Tablet takes, whether it's specific hardware or compatibility with devices like the iPad, your touchscreen PC, or even your hi-def gogglebox. Whatever form it takes on, we could potentially see it in our living rooms sometime next year.
So while femtocells may not be the peak of interest right now, it has huge implications for the future of wireless technology. It's pretty obvious who the Family Tablet is directed at, but bringing this kind of technology to the mobile phone arena is quite an exciting prospect and could potentially mean cheaper calls, better coverage, more attractive tariffs and longer battery life.
Thursday, July 01, 2010 10:06
MeeGo – the OS made by the Nokia-Intel alliance – is the fourth way. Neither iOS 4 nor Android nor Windows Phone 7, it plans to cut its way back into the smartphone game and return Nokia to its former dominance of pocketable communication. Today, we’ve got the most solid grasp of what it’ll look like to date in the shape of a video and a load of screenshots. See for yourself below…
Here's the vid:
And here are the screens:
Thoughts?
Wednesday, June 30, 2010 02:16
Platform: iPad
Price: Free
You've got your shiny new iPad and want to start to saving trees by swapping to ebooks but which bookshop should you choose? Kindle has been around the longest, has the widest selection of bestsellers and works smoothly with your Amazon account, but iBooks has colour, more search options and works equally easily with iTunes.
Browsing and buying books – iBooks
Open the iBooks app and a gently polished virtual walnut bookshelf cradles your purchased ebooks. In Kindle, covers float eerily in space – although you can grow or shrink jacket thumbnails with a quick pinch. Both can be sorted by title, author or category.
The iBooks store is as slick as you'd expect from Apple, with featured buys, paid and free charts and an easy search. With Kindle, it kicks you out of the app, opens Safari, asks you to log in again and. well, you get the point. Your purchases do end up back in the app soon enough but it's nowhere near as seamless as iBooks.
Reading – dead heat
The iPad's lush LCD screen is no competition for the hardware Kindle's e-Ink display, but both apps do their best, with a choice of font sizes and brightness sliders to minimise eye strain. Both allow for sepia backgrounds but only the Kindle has a white-on-black mode that saves power and is particularly restful on the eye at night.
To make up for that, the iPad's page turn animations are smoother and more realistic. I also slightly prefer its fonts and table of contents navigation. Both have easy to set bookmarks and notes.
Fancy extras – iBooks
There hasn't been so much fuss about colour media since The Wizard of Oz but, in truth, iBooks' full colour titles add relatively little unless you're browsing a children's book or something management-y with lots of pie charts. Much more impressive is its ability to search the text for a particular word, call up a dictionary at the tap of a finger and expand that search to Google or Wikipedia.
Amazon is promising text search soon. For now, you have to make do with a weird feature called 'Popular Highlights' that shows sections of the text that other people have found interesting (actually even duller than it sounds) and the new Audio/Video Editions – currently limited to just two books – that have embedded sound or video clips. These are potentially excellent – but we'll have to wait and see just how many titles include them.
Portability and expansion – dead heat
I'm not talking about lugging the iPad around (an unpleasant experience that might soon have you ordering a recently discounted Kindle 2) but the ability to read your ebooks elsewhere. Both Kindle and iBooks have iPhone and iPod touch apps but if you want real flexibility, only Kindle software can also be found on Windows desktops, BlackBerrys, Android devices and even Macs. Plus the original e-Ink hardware, of course.
On the other hand, if you're shopping for ebooks elsewhere then iBooks's ability to read the increasingly standard EPUB files is worthwhile. You simply drag and drop (unprotected) books into iTunes.
Verdict – iBooks
Totting up the points, iBooks is clearly a nose ahead. But with Kindle having the edge in variety of titles and promising better search options in future versions, it's no foregone conclusion which system you should invest your time and money in. Don't forget standalone ebook apps either – there are some great ones surfacing (particularly if you like interactive kids' titles).
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 15:49
Tony Stark’s idea of a bus?
Good thinking, but this is a work of fact, not fiction. Sort of. The airborne spear of ballistic godliness is a concept submitted to NASA by Lockheed Martin for future development.
Called the flying asparagus?
No, but it’s probably a better name than the curent one – Supersonic Green Machine. Perhaps we should get those Iron Man scriptwriters on board after all.
Concept, bad name… where are the promised fantastic facts?
Fantastic facts is an oxymoron. But since you ask, it uses an inverted-V underwing engine to reduce the effects of sonic boom, helping it fly faster, further and greener.
I still don’t believe in it.
Should NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate decide to fund the project, you’ll be able to pick one up from all good Lockheed Martin stockists by 2035. The queue starts here.
More on Stuff.tv
- Next Big Thing – submersible yachts
- Next Big Thing – robot sportsmen
- Next Big Thing – 3D cameraphones
- Next Big Thing – rollable ebooks
- Next Big Thing – water-scrapers
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 13:19
We're not sure if this is the N9. It says it's the C0 on the fascia and the N00 in the settings. All we know is that it's definitely a Nokia, is surprisingly slim for QWERTY slider and runs Symbian. Hands up if you're excited...
Nokia N9 from Negri Electronics on Vimeo.
Thursday, June 24, 2010 17:32
Platform: Android
Price: Free
Android users! Stop whatever you're doing (probably telling all your mates that the Droid X is *way* better than the iPhone 4) and head over to http://beta.swype.com. The world's fastest texting system is now available in a limited release beta that is simply a must-have.
After a simple download and install (ignore the dire warnings that Swype will nick your passwords, credit card numbers and love notes), you simply tap any text field to bring up the Swype virtual keyboard.
Now instead of pecking out each letter individually, just swipe (geddit?!?) your finger around the keyboard to form a word. A blue trace follows your finger as it zips around the screen, then release. Voila! Your word magically appears, Swype automatically adds a space, and you're ready to write on.
The learning curve is zero. With my very first texts and emails, I had no spelling mistakes, no weird capitalisations and no annoying backspacing moments. There a few things to get used to, though: double letters require a pause that takes practice, and words that aren't in the dictionary kick you back to tapping them in individually (although it's dead easy to add them to its word bank).
If the Swype engine isn't certain what you typed, you'll get a little selection box popping up. This automatically chooses the most likely word after a short interval.
In the Settings menu, you can tweak Swype's smart systems, favouring speed over accuracy, adjusting the blue trace line and how long it waits to auto-complete words. But even out of the box, this is a revolutionary app that accelerates typing as much - or even more - than the first predictive text systems.
And bear in mind Swype worked this smoothly in pretty much a worst-case scenario: the sluggish resistive display on an aging LG InTouch Max. On a new capacitive screen, you'll be gliding through mails, chats and texts while iPhone users are still congratulating themselves on having a single inbox.
And with Apple's control fetish over basic functionality apps, there's little chance of Swype finding its way to the iPhone 4 or iPad anytime soon. Pixels or practicality - the choice is yours.
