Fresh Apple: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) (6 сообщений)

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Twitter 360 Augmented Reality app for Twitter
Filed under: iPhone, App Store
As far as AR (augmented reality) Twitter apps go, Twitter 360 [iTunes Link] looks like the best of the bunch... so far. In what will no doubt become the top term of 2010, this augmented reality app allows you to track your friends via geolocation of their tweets. If you're into that sort of thing (or have an iPhone 3GS, since AR apps use the compass to position their markers). If the thought of strangers tracking you while you tweet creeps you out (and frankly, it should), rest assured that tracking is opt-in in that you can turn off geotagging for your tweets.

As Fast Company points out, a neat feature is setting your "limit" or range of detection for tracking tweets. You can set this to World and see just how far away everyone is from wherever you happen to be standing. So yeah, pretty soon we'll all be tracking each other all over the place. What could go wrong?

Twitter 360 is currently $2.99US and is from Presselite, the folks who snuck in the first AR app without Apple's detection. Thanks for opening the floodgates! Check out the video of the app in action, below.

TUAW Twitter 360 Augmented Reality app for Twitter originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone - Apple - AppStore - TUAW - iTunes
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DIY DSLR iPhone
Filed under: Hacks, Odds and ends, iPhone
Sure, you can take the commercial approach and just buy a telephoto lens for your iPhone, or hack together a macro lens, but if you're looking to combine the two into a hacked-up telephoto lens held together with a heaping of duct tape, look no further. Bhautik Joshi created the Phone-O-Scope as an experiment "to transmit light from one optical device to another to make an image". The result is an iPhone with duct-tape, cardboard, putty, PVC pipe and an SLR lens attached. It certainly won't win any design awards, but it does produce some very unique imagery.

Check out the tutorial for instructions on how to create your own, as well as side-by-side comparisons of a standard iPhone's pictures compared to the hacked-up iPhone shots.

If you're not a tinkerer at heart, you'll probably wonder why he bothered to produce an item as large as a standard DSLR but took worse photos. However, if you were one of those kids who quickly took apart your new toys just to see how they worked, this may be a little experiment you could appreciate.

[via Hack-a-Day]
TUAW DIY DSLR iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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IPhone - Apple - TUAW - Handhelds - Smartphones
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Super Monkey Ball 2 arrives for iPhone
Filed under: Gaming, App Review

Super Monkey Ball 2 [iTunes Link] is now available for the iPhone. There is good news and bad news, and yes, some of it relates to App Store policies which are out of developers' hands.

I bought the original Super Monkey Ball [iTunes Link] for US$10 on the first day the App Store was available (July 10, 2008, for those who might some day want to win a trivia contest). I had seen the demo and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. I also bought Bejeweled 2 [iTunes Link] for $10 on that same day.

Bejeweled 2 is now selling for $3 and the original Super Monkey Ball is selling for $4. If you ask me, Bejeweled is a steal at the price, and the original version of Super Monkey Ball isn't worth $0.99. It was far too "twitchy" for my taste. I tried everything to steady my hands, but I was never able to get enough precise control to be able to enjoy the game. In all the time I've had it, I bet I've played it less than an hour. Every time I tried, it ended quickly in frustration, usually with my shouting "Drown, stupid monkey! Drown!"

I wasn't alone in my frustration. Macworld's first look at Super Monkey Ball 2 begins with this look back:

"The original Super Monkey Ball was an App Store launch game and sold like gangbusters. Taking advantage of the iPhone's accelerometer controls and already possessing a huge following thanks to its console success, Super Monkey Ball was one of the most highly anticipated apps on the iPhone.

The only problem was: it wasn't very good."

Macworld went on to say that Sega had (at that point) not announced a cost. Part of me deeply hoped that they would release it as a free update. As I see it, there are two big remaining flaws in the App Store (ignoring, for the moment, the whole approval process): 1) the lack of demo versions (either timed or number of launches), and 2) no way for developers to provide for upgrade pricing. That means that there is no way for people who bought Super Monkey Ball to get a deal on Super Monkey Ball 2. That left Sega with two choices: 1) release it as an update, meaning anyone who bought Super Monkey Ball would get it for free; or 2) release it as a separate app, meaning that anyone who bought v. 1 has to pay full price for v. 2. The App Store does not give them any other choice.
Continue reading Super Monkey Ball 2 arrives for iPhone
TUAW Super Monkey Ball 2 arrives for iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone - AppStore - Super Monkey Ball - Apple - TUAW
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Quicksilver releases new beta 57
Filed under: OS, Software, Freeware, Open Source, Developer
Macworld notes that my absolute favorite application, and one of the reasons I became a Mac user in the first place, is not quite as dead and gone as many people suspected. Quicksilver has released their first new stable version in two years, besides the developer leaving for greener pastures and setting the project completely open source. Unfortunately, there aren't many new features, but as Macworld says, let's be honest: you don't understand everything that's in there already. No seriously. No, seriously, you don't.

What is new is compatibility with Snow Leopard (mostly -- some plugins are still lagging behind), and a host of background changes. Clang is being used as the default compiler, which the change notes say should speed up runtime significantly. Localization has been tweaked, and lots of previously buggy actions (mouse tracking on triggers, for one) have supposedly been smoothed out and improved. Not necessarily a marquee release, but at this point, any Quicksilver release is a good one.

And if you've never actually used Quicksilver, well, now's a great time to start. Ostensibly, it's a app/file launcher, but the more you learn and use it, the more it becomes a "connector" for everything on your Mac. Your mind is connected to your fingers, and your fingers connect to the keyboard to invoke Quicksilver, but Quicksilver is connected to everything else.
TUAW Quicksilver releases new beta 57 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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OpenSource - Quicksilver - Apple - Macintosh - TUAW
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Exporting all of your playlist names to a text file
Filed under: How-tos, iTunes, AppleScript
The ability to sync ~~albums~~ artists didn't exist prior to iTunes 9.0. My workaround to sync albums ~~was~~ is to create album-based playlists with the following nomenclature: artist - album. This has also made it easy for me to burn CDs of albums, as I could just navigate to a playlist and click on the "burn" button.

If you manage your iTunes library like this, and would like a way to export your playlists to a text file (to share your album collection with your friends and whatnot), then the Playlist Names to Text File AppleScript may do the trick for you. To install the script, first download it and then place it in your [username]/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ folder.

After running the script, you're presented the option of whether or not you want to save a text file with the names of all the playlists (and folders) in your iTunes library. Playlist Names to Text File is available as a free download on Doug's Scripts site, though I'm sure Doug will certainly appreciate any donations.

2009 for me wasn't very musically exciting. To make up for lost time, I'll be embarking on a journey to listen to 52 albums in 52 weeks during 2010. But I can't do this without "a little help from my friends," who'll be reviewing my album list and make some recommendations.
TUAW Exporting all of your playlist names to a text file originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Apple - AppleScript - TUAW - ITunes - Unofficial Apple Weblog
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AT&T ranked last in cellphone service survey
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPhone
There's bad news for AT&T in a recent customer satisfaction poll. Consumer Reports asked 50,000 readers across 26 U.S. cities to rank cell service providers on a variety of scales. Verizon came out ahead in 19 of the 26 cities. AT&T was dead last.

Dropped calls and voice service were among the chief complaints, and that's no surprise to us. We've heard the frustration of fewer bars in more places and experienced it ourselves.

But here's the interesting part. Despite the dissatisfaction with AT&T, 98% of respondents said they'd buy another iPhone. It would seem that the overall experience is good enough to eclipse the gaping hole in what should be the device's main function: making and receiving calls.

Last summer, I spent a week in the middle-of-nowhere, Pennsylvania. Everyone's Verizon-powered phone worked perfectly while my iPhone had gone deaf and dumb. Frustrating for me, and bad PR for my relatives. If the iPhone does go non-exclusive in the US, I'll be the first in line to switch.

When reached for comment, AT&T had this to say:

"We appreciate and value all customer feedback. We learn from it and it helps us serve our customers better. Without question the surest indication of customer satisfaction is churn, or turnover. For the last quarter, our postpaid churn was just 1.17 percent."
TUAW AT&T ranked last in cellphone service survey originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 01 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone - AT&T - Apple - TUAW - US
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