New Zealand fails to launch iPhone 4? We’re getting email and tweets from New Zealanders about ready to sharpen their pitchforks and light their torches as the iPhone 4, supposed to launch today, is nowhere to be found. Apple’s saying nothing. Vodafone is saying nothing. And no one is getting anything. [Thanks @psychorn for the pic!] New Zealand fails to launch iPhone 4? is [...]
We’re getting email and tweets from New Zealanders about ready to sharpen their pitchforks and light their torches as the iPhone 4, supposed to launch today, is nowhere to be found.
Apple’s saying nothing. Vodafone is saying nothing. And no one is getting anything.
iPad Soon To Go On Sale In 9 More Countries Most people around the globe have heard of the iPad by now, even in areas where it’s not yet being sold. The iPad no longer needs an introduction but it will become available in 9 more countries this Friday. Apple’s trend setting gadget, tablet computer, or whatever you’d like to refer to it as, is [...]
Most people around the globe have heard of the iPad by now, even in areas where it’s not yet being sold. The iPad no longer needs an introduction but it will become available in 9 more countries this Friday.
Apple’s trend setting gadget, tablet computer, or whatever you’d like to refer to it as, is scheduled to make it’s debut on July 23 in Belgium, Ireland, Hong Kong, Mexico, Austria, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Singapore and New Zealand.
You might remember the iPad international availability graph I whipped up back in May. Hard to believe that was over two months ago already. Guess time flies when you’re having fun on your new iPad.
So you can just imagine how many new faces will be lighting up with smiles this weekend as people wrap their hands around the iPad for the first time. I hope their initial experience is better than mine. I love my iPad now, but as embarrassing as it is to admit, I spent over an hour getting it up and running after taking it out of the box. I was even working on an iPad unboxing video to submit to YouTube, you know like all the cool people are doing these days, but unfortunately you only get one chance for that. I suppose I could have wrapped the box in saran wrap and pretended to do it all over again (only properly the second time), but that just wouldn’t have been the same. My tech savvy score probably just went down a few ratings, but I can live with that.
As Apple continues to sell the iPad in more and more countries one thing I really hope they start doing soon is allowing iPad app store promo codes to work in areas outside of the US of A. I know in my case I’m way up here in Canada but I’m sure Steve Jobs could make it happen if he really wanted to! I’ll even buy him a Canadian smoked meat sandwich and poutine just out of courtesy next time he’s in the area!
Aza Raskin of Firefox fame has just announced one of the most amazing concepts I have seen for Web browsing in a long time: Tab Candy. Lee covered a slightly out-of date version on Monday, but now it's out for everyone to play with.
It's a completely new concept of tab management: today, it's very easy to have too many tabs. I mean, 12-13 tabs is already "too many". Just try doing three or four things at once with your browser (checking out a link someone sent you, doing some research for work, checking out travel options, reading DownloadSquad and following some links) and see how confusing it all gets. It's a mess!
Tab Candy is a radical re-imagining of the whole notion of tabs. You browse using Firefox, as per usual. When you start feeling you have too many tabs, just hit Ctrl-Space. The screen instantly zooms out, and each tab becomes a tile. Now the fun begins.
Grab a tile and drag it out of the group; it detaches and floats freely. Throw another tile onto it - now it's a group. Now you can click the top of the group and label it, say "apartment hunting". When you click this group, it expands back into "regular" Firefox mode, but now only with the four or five tabs you're using for apartment hunting. Of course, any new tabs you add get added onto this group. I know this sounds like "saved sessions meets visual tabs", but it's so much more.
This is not an extension; rather, it's a very early Alpha build of Firefox 4. Also, the potential is far from realized; if you think I sound excited now, check out Aza's video after the jump - he goes into hyperdrive somewhere around the 3-minute mark.
There is lots more to this concept than what I've covered above; for example, you could have a tab group shared with a friend in real-time, where each sees what the other is doing and you're both researching something together. Or you could send tabs to a friend just by dragging them somewhere on this canvas.
The possibilities are really mind-boggling, and the UI is very impressive and intuitive. If you're brave, go download an Alpha build and take it for a spin. They are really looking for feedback.
I can't wait to see this concept come to fruition. So much more can be done with it; for example, you could have certain tabs "age" and disappear after a while. Or, as Raskin notes and illustrates, you could have extensions which customize tab groups and add their own information or metadata ... this could be the beginning of something epic. Watch the video for more!
If you're getting ready to jailbreak your iPhone, now that jailbreaks have been okayed by U.S. courts, you should know that you're still not getting any help from Apple.
The company maintains that whether jailbreaks are legal or not, they can still void the warranty on your iPhone. (As Victor Agreda points out at TUAW, "can void the warranty" doesn't mean it always does. We don't know whether there will be exceptions in practice.)
This doesn't change anything, really.
Apple has always maintained that they wouldn't provide support for jailbroken devices, but they've never gone after the folks who publish jailbreaking code or run alternative app stores like Cydia. With 10 million jailbroken iPhones out there, developers who are rejected from the official App Store might increasingly turn to these now-legal alternatives.
Hands-On with Streaks Motivational Calendar for iPhone Do you remember as a kid marking off the days on the wall calendar until your birthday, or some other random special future event? I sure do. Like back in ‘82 when I was wasting away in prison, x-ing off the days until I could walk out of that joint and reclaim my life in [...]
Do you remember as a kid marking off the days on the wall calendar until your birthday, or some other random special future event? I sure do. Like back in ‘82 when I was wasting away in prison, x-ing off the days until I could walk out of that joint and reclaim my life in society proper; that calendar was my only friend in those dark times.
[Editor's Note: Jamie was 8 in 1982, you do the math.]
Well anyway, that’s almost exactly what Streaks Motivational Calendar is like! It’s actually a fantastically simple concept for an app, but that’s what makes it so ingenious. Streaks is a simple motivational calendar which allows you to check off days as they go by, and that’s basically it in a nutshell. You want to quit smoking? Set up a calendar called, ‘Days Without Cigs’ and start marking off the days you successfully go without one. It’s the whole visual progress thing, it gives you something a little more than just knowing in your head that you’re reaching your goals, whatever they may be.
Like I said, it’s so simple it’s shocking. Any kind of thing you want to keep track of such as cardio workouts, or days without chocolate, or half-hour meditation sessions, or how long you can go without punching another person in the face. There’s something deeply satisfying about making that little X to show that you’ve once again done something you’ve set out to do. Streaks keeps track of the longest period that you’ve done whatever it is you’re trying to do, hence the name Streaks. If you miss a day or more, the app resets your current streak count and starts counting again all while reminding what your longest successful streak was.
It appears that you can have any number of calenders, tracking multiple things, and it couldn’t be simpler to setup; simply give your new calendar a name and start marking time. It’s just that easy and uncomplicated and that, for me, is pretty refreshing to find for such a useful app. Streaks [iTunes link] is well worth the $1.99 price at the iTunes App Store; if you’re like me and find yourself taking two steps forward and 1 step back when it comes to accomplishing certain things then you will no doubt find Streaks very useful and rewarding.
Facebook has just launched a new feature-slash-PR-initiative called Facebook Stories, which lets you -- you guessed it! -- share your stories about Facebook. Judging by the categories, they're hoping users will share the positive, miraculous things Facebook has done for them.
Love, friendship, peace, communities and support groups are all on the list, but most of the Facebook stories in my social circle fall into categories like parties, stalking, binge drinking and wondering if your data is being sold to advertisers.
It's not that I endorse irresponsible behavior or think that Facebook should endorse it, but it's a huge stretch to recast Facebook as a massive force for good in the community. Granted, Facebook users did the world a favor by getting Betty White to host Saturday Night Live, and you occasionally see a criminal tracked down and caught on Facebook, but it's hardly some kind of sunshiney community social movement with a focus on puppy rescue.
Also, there's no real filtering of the stories, so a lot of them miss the intended point entirely. To see what I mean, click on the "celebrities" category and read all the love notes to Justin Bieber. This PR plan seems like it could backfire pretty quickly.
Kaboom’s Paratrooper lands on the iPhone Kaboom’s Paratrooper is simple in theory — tap the plane to drop the paratrooper, tilt your iPhone or iPod touch to direct them to the landing spot. And right there is where every casual gaming fan knows the addiction starts and the mayhem begins. You want to hit the X. You need to hit that X. [...]
Kaboom’s Paratrooper is simple in theory — tap the plane to drop the paratrooper, tilt your iPhone or iPod touch to direct them to the landing spot. And right there is where every casual gaming fan knows the addiction starts and the mayhem begins.
You want to hit the X. You need to hit that X. Things get more complicated quickly, of course. Obstacles build up. They’re paratroopers after all, not sky divers. So don’t be surprised when you start having to leap — and land — into the middle of a paper-art war zone. (Yeah, paper-art. Awesome.)
Kaboom’s Paratrooper originally gained its well-deserved fame on Palm webOS, and Palm has a great article up about the app and it’s transition beyond webOS. (Hard to imagine Apple doing likewise, so kudos there.) Hard hard was it to port?
“The process has been straightforward,” Rob Bredow says. “We were able to re-use most of the code and just wrapped our webOS sprite library in a sprite library designed for the iPhone. All the logic stayed the same.”
Games have historically been among the most platform friendly of fare, with many being ported from iPhone to webOS or Android, so nice to see it can go both ways.
If you check out Kaboom’s Paratroopers for iPhone, let us know what you think.
Microsoft just reported its quarterly earnings, and things are looking pretty good. The official Windows Blog reports that Windows 7 has hit 175 million licenses sold, which adds up to more than 7 copies EVERY SECOND since release.
Wow! Looking at the overall picture, that means 16% of the world's personal computers are now running Windows 7 (and maybe more, if you account for illegal copies).
Microsoft is also excited that businesses -- the one market where Windows still thoroughly blows Apple away -- are buying new computers (and thus new Windows licenses) at a faster rate than ever. MS posted double-digit growth in business license sales this quarter.
I don't want to bring IE6 into this, but all these Windows 7 sales in the corporate world must mean an upgrade to the IE8 that comes with Windows 7, right? I sure hope so!
Google Earth has always been a great way to explore the globe, but now you can use it to explore real-time rain and snow patterns, too. By enabling the new cloud layer and radar layer in Google Earth 5.2, you can track clouds and also see precipitation on a constantly updating radar.
These features are only available in the latest version of the Google Earth desktop app; they are not in the iPhone app or other mobile versions. Google Earth 5.2 also adds the ability to track your speed and elevation by using imported data from your GPS device. You can also see your heart rate and cadence if your GPS records that information.
Kaboom’s Paratrooper lands on the iPhone Kaboom’s Paratrooper is simple in theory — tap the plane to drop the paratrooper, tilt your iPhone or iPod touch to direct them to the landing spot. And right there is where every casual gaming fan knows the addiction starts and the mayhem begins. You want to hit the X. You need to hit that X. [...]
Kaboom’s Paratrooper is simple in theory — tap the plane to drop the paratrooper, tilt your iPhone or iPod touch to direct them to the landing spot. And right there is where every casual gaming fan knows the addiction starts and the mayhem begins.
You want to hit the X. You need to hit that X. Things get more complicated quickly, of course. Obstacles build up. They’re paratroopers after all, not sky divers. So don’t be surprised when you start having to leap — and land — into the middle of a paper-art war zone. (Yeah, paper-art. Awesome.)
Kaboom’s Paratrooper originally gained its well-deserved fame on Palm webOS, and Palm has a great article up about the app and it’s transition beyond webOS. (Hard to imagine Apple doing likewise, so kudos there.) Hard hard was it to port?
“The process has been straightforward,” Rob Bredow says. “We were able to re-use most of the code and just wrapped our webOS sprite library in a sprite library designed for the iPhone. All the logic stayed the same.”
Games have historically been among the most platform friendly of fare, with many being ported from iPhone to webOS or Android, so nice to see it can go both ways.
If you check out Kaboom’s Paratroopers for iPhone, let us know what you think.
We’re getting email and tweets from New Zealanders about ready to sharpen their pitchforks and light their torches as the iPhone 4, supposed to launch today, is nowhere to be found. Apple’s saying nothing. Vodafone is saying nothing. And no one is getting anything. [Thanks @psychorn for the pic!] New Zealand fails to launch iPhone 4? is [...]
Do you remember as a kid marking off the days on the wall calendar until your birthday, or some other random special future event? I sure do. Like back in ‘82 when I was wasting away in prison, x-ing off the days until I could walk out of that joint and reclaim my life in society proper; that calendar was my only friend in those dark times.
