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- Intelligent and insightful mobile movie reviews: the Empire Movie Guide app
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Multimedia, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touch, App Review
Empire is a venerable British movie magazine that has amassed quite a library of film reviews since it was first published more than 20 years ago. Their reviews tend to be aimed at the enthusiastic film buff, rather than academics. I have always found the reviews entertaining and a worthwhile read.
Now, the entire Empire archive has come to the iPhone and iPod touch with the Empire Movie Guide [iTunes link]. The US$4.99, 8.9 MB app puts all of the reviews on your phone without need for a data connection. As a nice bonus, Empire grabs the most recently published reviews over the air when you are connected and launch the app.
The Empire app contains about 9,000 reviews, searchable by actor, director, genre, writers, or release dates. Want to share the reviews with friends? Empire allows sharing via email, Facebook, and Twitter.
If a movie or soundtrack is available in the iTunes store, the review provides a purchase link. The Empire Movie Guide won't help you find movie times or locations, but it does put a library of well-written reviews in your hand.
Now, the entire Empire archive has come to the iPhone and iPod touch with the Empire Movie Guide [iTunes link]. The US$4.99, 8.9 MB app puts all of the reviews on your phone without need for a data connection. As a nice bonus, Empire grabs the most recently published reviews over the air when you are connected and launch the app.
The Empire app contains about 9,000 reviews, searchable by actor, director, genre, writers, or release dates. Want to share the reviews with friends? Empire allows sharing via email, Facebook, and Twitter.
If a movie or soundtrack is available in the iTunes store, the review provides a purchase link. The Empire Movie Guide won't help you find movie times or locations, but it does put a library of well-written reviews in your hand.TUAWIntelligent and insightful mobile movie reviews: the Empire Movie Guide app originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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iPhone - AppStore - Facebook - Apple - IpodTouch
Переслать - iPhone app helps Tasmanian cops nab crooks
Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store
Tasmanian cops are using some pretty sophisticated technology to catch criminals down there -- they have hardware in their cars now that will not only catch pictures of criminals, but upload them to a database, track down any outstanding warrants or other red flags, and update GPS information and location data of where the checks are made. Oh, and there's apparently an app for that. When the cops realized that they could do all of those same functions with department-issued iPhones, they built an app that replicates the functionality seen in the cop cars. So even while the police are walking a beat, they can pull out an iPhone and check up on any drivers they happen to see.
Very interesting. Unfortunately, there's not much information available about how long it took them to build the app, or just who put it all together -- the article from Australia's The Mercury seems mostly intended as a warning to criminals everywhere that even though a cop may not recognize you, an iPhone will. But this is just another reminder that we're all walking around with a little handheld device that has the ability to replace most of the technology we were using just a few years ago. When we hear about a cop making an arrest while on a phone call, we'll let you know.
[via Obama Pacman]TUAWiPhone app helps Tasmanian cops nab crooks originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Pastebot, another useful and beautiful bot from Tapbots
Filed under: Software, Found Footage, iPod touch, App Review
Over the past couple of years, I've had the pleasure to write about iPhone / iPod touch apps from Tapbots. First there was Weightbot, a beautifully designed app for tracking your weight. Next came Convertbot, a unit converter calculator that featured an innovative and extremely useful interface. Now Tapbots has introduced a third app to their stable of products; Pastebot [US$1.99, iTunes Link], which is a combination of clipboard storage and (with a companion Mac app called Pastebot Sync) inter-platform cut and paste.
Launching the app brings you directly into the Clipboard. As with all of the Tapbots apps, the user interface is not only functional, but a treat to the eyes. To add items to the clipboard, you simply use the iPhone's copy and paste function to copy something. It can be text or a graphic, a URL or a photo. When you copy the item, then launch Pastebot, the item is automatically added to the Clipboard. The Clipboard items have a frame around them with a small circle up in the top right corner. When that circle turns blue (it looks like a blue LED), the clipboard item is selected and ready to perform some action on. Tapping again slides a small toolbar out of the bottom of the frame.
The actions vary depending on whether or not the item on the Clipboard is a graphic or text. For graphics, there are five filters available that can be applied to the photos -- brightness (allows a user to lighten or darken a graphic by moving a slider), convert to black and white, invert, saturation (increase or decrease color saturation, once again with a slider), and sepia.
Text snippets also get the royal treatment from Pastebot. Here, the filters let you convert text to lowercase, uppercase, encode or decode HTML entities, find and replace text, quote lines, add smart quotes, straighten quotes, or wrap text in HTML tags.
All of these are very useful functions on their own on the iPhone or iPod touch. But if you're a Mac user, Pastebot has a cool companion that creates a powerful combo. Pastebot Sync -- a free download from the Tapbots site -- is a system preference pane that adds the ability to let you copy and paste between devices automatically. This capability, as you can see in the video at the top of this post, is nothing short of sheer genius.
I often need to take screenshots on my iPhone and then ship them over to my Mac for inclusion in a post I'm writing. Usually this entails either mailing the photos to myself five at a time, or putting them in my Dropbox to pick up later.
I then run the screenshots through Preview for cropping and resizing. Using Pastebot, I simply tap on a photo that I've already cropped (yes, Pastebot does that, too!) and it is "pasted" to my Mac. Using File > New from clipboard in Preview opens the iPhone screenshot in a new document, ready for touchup, annotation, and resizing before publishing in a post.
Pastebot works the other way, too! Let's say that I want to have a company logo saved on my iPhone so I can paste it into my emails. Since I leave Pastebot Sync running on my Mac all the time, I open the logo on my Mac, copy it, and seconds later it's in the Clipboard in Pastebot on the iPhone. To paste it into an email, I can either tap and hold on the logo to copy it to the iPhone's clipboard, then paste it in the text of the email, or I can simply tap on the Share icon below the logo in the Clipboard and select Send as Email. The Share icon also lets me choose to paste the graphic to a Mac, save the image into my photo library, or save it in a folder.
Pastebot can hold up to 99 items in its Clipboard, but if you have more graphics or text snippets to store, you can create any number of folders. The folders can be given a unique name and one of six different folder icons for visual identification.
Is there competition for Pastebot? PasteCatcher [US$0.99, iTunes Link], a product from our TUAW colleague Erica Sadun, can send clipboard items from a Mac to an iPhone, but there's no two-way capability. There are also a number of apps for transferring text and graphics to and from Mac and iPhone, but none of them work as seamlessly or as easily as Pastebot.
As I've said before, Tapbots apps are beautifully designed, and an incredible amount of thought goes into making them groundbreaking in their functionality and usability. If you do any work that requires you to keep a lot of boilerplate text or graphics available for pasting into emails or moving to your Mac, Pastebot can be a powerful assistant. While I often use an app for a while and then delete it from my iPhone, Pastebot is a keeper. It's even moving to my iPhone's home screen.TUAWPastebot, another useful and beautiful bot from Tapbots originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Sketches 2 available now for creating even better art on your iPhone
Filed under: Software, iTunes, Developer, iPhone, Graphic Design, App Store
Our friends at LateNiteSoft sent word that they've updated Sketches, one of the first iPhone apps I ever picked up, to version 2.0. The app has been released [iTunes link] as an entirely new download, so even upgraders from version 1 will have to pay the current price of $1.99. LateNiteSoft tells us that upgrade price is temporary -- they plan to keep the original app on the store as "Sketches Classic" for 99 cents, and eventually the price of the new version will go up a few more bucks. If you want to upgrade, go grab Sketches 2 as soon as you can.
Tthe new app offers a number of improvements, including a completely revamped UI designed to quickly run through large collections. The new UI also keeps tools handy, but out of the way, as you use them. As you can see in the screen shots above, all the tools are stashed at the bottom of the screen instead of covering up your picture while you're working on it. Sketches 2 now lets you paint using brushes, which makes for some nice choices in terms of marking pictures, canvas, maps, or whatever else you choose as a background in the app. The zoom functionality has been updated, with new gestures and a smoother shape adjustment interface. As with the original Sketches app, you can share and export your work however you like. You can use the app to create a masterpiece and then tweet about it, or just mark some notes on a map and send it off to a friend.
Sketches 1 was a bargain back when I picked it up for $7 in the earliest days of the App Store, and this new version adds even more features at less than half the price. If you have any inkling about making some art on your iPhone, it's a solid buy.TUAWSketches 2 available now for creating even better art on your iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Attention last-minute Christmas shoppers: try Express Shopping at the Apple Store
Filed under: Retail, Odds and ends
Are you finished with your Christmas shopping? Like most people, there's probably not enough time in the day to work, hang out with the family and friends, and then actually do shopping. If you're missing the perfect gift for someone and you're getting down to the last few days, Apple wants to make your life easier.
Apple has had an "Express Shopping" service since 2006 at the Apple Stores. They take a limited number of Apple products and keep them in a roped-off area. If you need to purchase a MacBook Pro, for example, you wander into the area and one of the Apple Store employees helps you to make your purchase and get you out the door as quickly as possible.
This year, they're adding a new touch that is sure to bring Christmas cheer to hundreds of thousands of procrastinating shoppers throughout the world -- pre-wrapped presents available at the Express Shopping area of your Apple Store. Dan Frommer of The Business Insider noted in a post yesterday that this seemed to be preventing chaos at the Apple Store on Chicago's Michigan Avenue (yes, that is grass on the roof of the building).
The wrapping leaves little doubt as to what you're giving, since there's an iPod nano-shaped gift tag with a gleaming Apple logo attached to each package. In following with ancient Christmas giving traditions, you can always hide the presents somewhere before handing them over to the lucky recipient.
If you feel the need to take advantage of Apple's free express shipping or the new Express Shopping area, be sure to let us hear about how you procrastination problem gets solved in the comments below.TUAWAttention last-minute Christmas shoppers: try Express Shopping at the Apple Store originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Переслать - Court orders Microsoft to stop selling Office 2007 by January 11th
Filed under: Software
Update: A statement from Microsoft's director of public affairs, Kevin Kutz, clarifies the affected versions. Note that Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac was not cited as an infringing product, so this ruling is not applicable to Mac versions of Office.
Whoa.We have just learned that the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has denied our appeal in the i4i case. We are moving quickly to comply with the injunction, which takes effect on January 11, 2010.
This injunction applies only to copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007 sold in the U.S. on or after the injunction date of January 11, 2010. Copies of these products sold before this date are not affected.
With respect to Microsoft Word 2007 and Microsoft Office 2007, we have been preparing for this possibility since the District Court issued its injunction in August 2009 and have put the wheels in motion to remove this little-used feature from these products.
Therefore, we expect to have copies of Microsoft Word 2007 and Office 2007, with this feature removed, available for U.S. sale and distribution by the injunction date. In addition, the beta versions of Microsoft Word 2010 and Microsoft Office 2010, which are available now for downloading, do not contain the technology covered by the injunction.
While we are moving quickly to address the injunction issue, we are also considering our legal options, which could include a request for a rehearing by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals en banc or a request for a writ of certiorari from the U.S. Supreme Court.A judge for theThe U.S. Court of Appeals has just upheld an earlier verdict forbidding Microsoft from selling both Office and Word after January 11th, 2010. This suit, which was filed by i4i, a creator of a XML plugin for Microsoft Office, alleged that Microsoft's Open XML format, which uses the DOCX and XLSX extensions that have been a part of Officeon the Macsince Office 2007, violated i4i's patented XML handling algorithms. The court ruled in favor of i4i back in May, and Microsoft today lost their appeal, with the judge telling them that they don't have the right to sell the software as-is.
Microsoft now either has to attempt to appeal the rulingagain, or settle with i4i (read as: "Ballmer has to write a big honking check"), and is currently considering further legal options. The company is also working to remove these features from Microsoft Office (possibly in time to release new versions of the old software on January 11th), and this ruling doesn't affect the upcoming Office 2010 for Windows. We'll keep you posted if anything further develops.TUAWCourt orders Microsoft to stop selling Office 2007 by January 11th originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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