The Social Gaming Network, a company best known for its Facebook Platform apps, has launched a new iPhone app that uses the handset as…a gaming controller.
Called “iFun,” the app is a takeoff on the Social Gaming Network’s existing sports apps: iGolf, iBowl, iBaseball, and the like. But …
Originally posted at The Social
Powerline adapters generally don’t work with power strips or surge protectors, needing to be plugged directly into the wall socket. This would be a problem if you have only one power outlet at the remote corner of the house where you want to put that home server.
The HDXB111…
(Credit: CNET Networks, Matt Hickey)The iPhone is far from perfect, despite what the fanboys claim. Don’t get me wrong, it’s very, very good. But it has some glitches that still need to be worked out, like the dropped calls some users experience, the lack of copy and paste, …
The Polaroid insta-photo system was supposed to die a natural death last year but the popularity of the kitchy format is forcing opportune companies into creating new versions.
Fujifilm announced today that it is bringing the Instax 200 instant film camera to the U.S., which makes 3.9 × 2.44-inch instant photos, costs $70, and will use Polaroid film similar to the classic rig. After taking a picture, the photo will immediately come out undeveloped, and the user will see it come into focus in real time.
There is no word on whether you will have to shake it in order to pretend it accelerates the process, but no there’s no question older folks will do so out of habit. As a result, we expect everyone above the age of thirty to be wildly exposed.
According to FujiFilm, the Polaroid film will sell for $29 for every pack of 20 pictures. Considering that a set of 24 to 32 digital pictures is easily developed in any drug store for less than that, it looks like folks will be paying an awful lot for the pleasure to relive their childhoods.
It’s true that the portable photo printing market seems too niche to succeed (especially when placed against its direct digicam competitors in price and quality), but the ‘Long Tail’ business strategy adopted by many manufacturers is allowing these items to survive, and even thrive. ‘Non-blockbuster’ gadgets gain a modest popularity through a small, rabid group of fans, and Polaroid insta-photos are no exception. Flickr has several Polaroid aficionado groups, and software applications have been created to recreate the classic white-border/smudge appearance of the classic pics.
And the Instax isn’t the only camera about to take advantage and will depend on the popularity of the Ghosts of Gadgets Past. The TOMY Xiao TIP-521 digicam is a the modern version of the Polaroid camera and is a joint project between a Japanese company and Zinc, the digital printing outfit that came out with the PoGo USB printer attachment late last year.
The Xiao is a stylish 5-megapixel digicam that comes with its own attached mini-printer. It pushes out full-color 2 x 3-inch pictures (of thermal-based ink) in less than a minute, and comes with a bunch of small, customizable features, such as a gallery set that squeezes in a bunch of images into the small frame.
The camera is also wireless IrDA-enabled. This means that in theory, your friend could send a picture from his phone to your Xiao for a print out, but the social implications of this feature are fraught with danger. It should be safely hidden from your pushiest of friends.
The Xiao will be released in Japan for about $350 dollars starting next week and should be available in the U.S. by January 2009, if not earlier.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the iPhone to support Adobe’s Flash software: Apple’s terms-of-service agreement prohibits it.
Although Adobe says it is working on a version of its popular Flash player for the iPhone, Apple is unlikely ever to permit it to appear in the handset’s App Store, no matter how much customers want it.
"I’m pretty skeptical that Flash could be
implemented in a way that doesn’t violate the Terms of Service of the
developer’s agreement," said Bart Decrem, CEO of Tapulous, developer of the popular Tap Tap Revenge iPhone game.
Flash is Adobe’s highly popular platform for displaying interactive graphics, animations and multimedia within a browser. According to Adobe, 98 percent of desktop computers currently support Flash, which has led to its widespread use by web developers. Adobe’s recent announcement that it is working on a version of Flash for Windows Mobile has prompted speculation that an iPhone version might be coming soon. But the speculators may be waiting in vain, based on Apple’s TOS and the company’s history of tightly controlling applications for its smartphone platform.
Allowing Flash — which is a development platform of its own — would just be too dangerous for Apple, a company that enjoys exerting total dominance over its hardware and the software that runs on it. Flash
has evolved from being a mere animation player into a multimedia
platform capable of running applications of its own. That means Flash would open a new door for application developers to get their software onto the iPhone: Just code them in Flash and put them on a web page. In so doing, Flash would divert
business from the App Store, as well as enable publishers to distribute music, videos and movies that could
compete with the iTunes Store.
Apple’s well aware of these problems, which is
why the company wrote a clause in its iPhone developers’ Terms of
Service agreement (.pdf) that prohibits Flash from appearing on the iPhone:
"An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code
by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in
architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise," reads clause 3.3.2 of the iPhone SDK agreement, which was recently published on WikiLeaks. "No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except
for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and
built-in interpreter(s)."
This
could come as major disappointment to iPhone owners, as the lack of
Flash support has been a paramount complaint about the handset since
its release. No Flash means that the iPhone browser is incapable of displaying a large portion of
the internet. For example, free Flash games aren’t supported, videos
can’t be streamed from the vastly popular television and movie site
Hulu, and websites that use Flash to render content or navigation won’t work on the iPhone.
It’s no wonder
Adobe is expressing reluctance about the prospects of Flash for iPhone.
The company on Monday demonstrated a version of Flash for Windows
Mobile handsets. And all that product manager Michele Turner could say
about iPhone was, "We are working on Flash on the iPhone, but it is
really up to Apple."
Adam
Dann, CEO of Nullriver, agrees that Flash would take away some of
Apple’s control. Apple eventually banned Nullriver’s application
NetShare because it violated AT&T Terms of Service agreement by
turning the iPhone into a wireless modem for tethering. If Apple
introduced Flash to iPhone, it’s possible Nullriver could code a Flash
version of NetShare, repeating that violation, Dann said.
Dann added that the only way
Flash could ever appear on the iPhone is if Adobe offered an extremely
stripped-down version of the software. But even if there is a "Flash Lite" for
iPhone, that just reinforces the point that the handset’s owners still will not have a true Flash experience.
And aside from taking
software control away from Apple, Flash would introduce a slew of other potential headaches
as well. Flash apps could hurt battery life, suck up the graphics-processing unit’s
power, use an inordinate amount of memory, or potentially introduce security risks. Apple has plenty of customer complaints to address about the iPhone; the last thing it needs is to add Adobe and Flash to the pile.
In August, Britain’s Advertising Standards Authority pulled
an iPhone
advertisement because the commercial
said, "All the parts of the internet are on the iPhone." The lack of
Flash and Java support on iPhone were enough for the ad to be deemed
misleading. And it’s
looking like Apple won’t be able to air that ad again.
Apple did not return phone calls for comment.
The newly announced Asus P565 will include one of the fastest processors in a smart phone in the market but it will not be the fastest overall phone out there.
There are two reasons why: The maximum HSDPA 3G connection speed of 3.6Mb/s is slower than the 7.2Mb/s available in other phones and it’ll be handicapped by (surprise!) the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.
The Asus P565 comes with an 800MHz Marvell processor, 256 MB of flash memory (plus 128 MB of DDR SDRAM), and a 3 megapixel camera that can also take video at 24 frames per second. Other processors come close in speed, but are not at the level of the P565: the iPhone, for example, has a 620 Mhz ARM processor.
The P565 will play most of the major video and music files types, and comes with a SiRFStar GPS chip that will help you track your movements around the grid. Not surprisingly, the phone’s UI will also be a touch screen type, on a 2.8" VGA screen (at 480 x 640 pixels).
But it’s the WinMo terrain navigation that will surely prove to be a challenge and significantly downgrades our excitement for this phone.
Even with Asus’ Glide touch software that is built on top of it (and it has attractive small design elements similar to the iPhone’s, like a gray ‘scroll ball’ when you select an item), it still seems to be another phone trying to circumvent the flaws of the OS. Remember, these are still smallish devices and the simpler the connection to the most important applications, the better the experience.
There is no word yet on the price for this phone, but expect it to become available by the first quarter of next year.
A new piece of software could turn the iPhone into an online-savvy gaming device.
Steve Demeter, developer of the popular (and extremely profitable) iPhone game Trism, is offering
a free tool called Onyx Online. Developers who choose to embed Onyx in their games can immediately add social networking features
— e.g., leaderboards, achievements, forums and so on. More
interestingly, iPhone owners who play Onyx-embedded games will be able to view each other’s profiles to compare scores and
see what games other people are playing. That would enable them to find more
games or challenge each other to duels, Demeter explained.
"Right now games don’t introduce the social aspect at all on the
iPhone," Demeter said in a phone interview. "If there is a social
aspect it’s an island. If these users are playing Trism, they’re
playing Trism; it’s an island. How does that tie into
other puzzle games? If players are still connected to a larger whole
then they’re more likely to keep playing other games."
It makes sense that Demeter is seeking to tie together iPhone games with social networking. In September, just two months afters its launch, the App Store was already selling 3,000 apps. And you can expect the App Store to continue to grow at an exponential
rate, with hundreds of companies hiring iPhone developers. But the tremendous growth of the App Store is leading to problems,
Demeter explained.
He said business is slowing down for himself and
many other independent coders, as new software continues to clutter the
App Store. Thus, many high-quality games don’t get the attention they
deserve, and independent developers are going to have a hard time
standing out. The end result? One day you might see a scarce amount of games from
independent developers; you’ll mostly see titles from large companies like
Sega.
Demeter is boldly claiming Onyx Online will "save the App Store." He’s encouraging independent game developers to sign up to use his
code; he explained that the social-networking aspect of Onyx would
benefit developers, because by connecting the games in one network, the
developers would essentially be sharing each other’s customers, leading to growth.
Sounds like a good idea in theory, doesn’t it? What are your thoughts about this, Gadget Lab readers? Should iPhone game developers sign up Onyx?
For more details, read Demeter’s blog.
Image courtesy of Steve Demeter
What is it with gadget makers and their female customers? For the most part, manufacturers are content to toss some pink shit on a pre-existing product and claim it’s "made exclusively for the ladies." Rachel Cericola ponders this point with LG’s newest phone, the Lotus. From her review:
If another electronics-maker slaps a pink paint job and some floral
prints onto one of its products and then tries to pass it off as a
gadget for the fairer sex, this geeky girl is going to be pissed. Come
on guys, use your heads a little to think outside the proverbial box
and try to come up with something that’s actually useful. Look at LG;
they just made a lady-centric cellphone, the LX600 Lotus, and it
doesn’t completely suck.
Check out the entire LG Lotus Review right here.
Filed under: Portable Audio
Update: We’ve found ourselves so visually inspired by the concept of a MySpace player that we’ve decided to run a Photoshop contest (that grandest of traditions) to see what you can come up with. Fire your best ’shops on over to contests at engadget dawt com, and together we can create a brighter future.
[Via Electronista]
Continue reading A MySpace portable audio player? (Design your own!)
A MySpace portable audio player? (Design your own!) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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pimg src=”http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/2008/10/custom_1225234785023_causesmau.jpg” align=”left” hspace=”4″ vspace=”2″ width=”494″ height=”229″ style=”display:block;float:none;” /Many developers are giving up on Facebook’s third-party applications platform, finding it too hard to follow the social network’s strict rules for programs which piggyback on its lists of friends and news feeds to find new users. But one application has thrived: Joe Green’s Causes has seen traffic triple in the past month, helped in part by interest in the election. But only in part./p pCauses, Inside Facebook a href=”http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/10/22/not-all-apps-are-dead-causes-traffic-triples-in-last-30-days/”notes/a, is part of Facebook’s “Great Apps” program mdash; handpicked applications which enjoy special treatment from Facebook, including more frequent appearances in users’ news feeds. What makes Causes a Great App? One hopes it doesn’t have anything to do with Green being Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard roommate. em(Chart by a href=”http://www.insidefacebook.com/2008/10/22/not-all-apps-are-dead-causes-traffic-triples-in-last-30-days/”Inside Facebook/a)/em/p br style=”clear: both;”/
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Motorola has come out with a phone, the Cliq, targeted at a specific market and utilizing the power of Google’s Android platform. It is the first of a family of new Motorola phones, where the Cliq stands at the patronymic fore. As far as features go, Cliq is doing all right. The phone is complete [...]
For Microsoft Outlook users unfamiliar with Xobni, pay attention. The venture-backed company’s first piece of software, not even two years old, is a powerful advancement for e-mail organization, Outlook style. Wednesday, the new version of the tool is available, Xobni1.8 which provides additional power. In addition, the previously free plugin is offering an advanced version, [...]
Ever since June of last year there has been talks of Verizon and Alltel merging, but now it is official. Verizon wireless has now become the largest mobile carrier with over 83 million subscribers. Alltel will continue to run under the Alltel name until a complete merger of the two brands later this year. Now [...]
Pioneer has released a statement saying they have developed a Super Multi-Layered Disc that will play using current Blu-ray players. The disc consists of 16 layers that can hold 25GB of data each, which totals a 400GB Disc. They plan on having a read-only disc available by 2010, a rewritable by 2012, and a 1TB [...]
One of the biggest reasons most Windows users are sticking with Firefox over Google Chrome is its extensibility—and the most popular Firefox extension by far among Lifehacker readers is Adblock Plus.
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