Macgasm

The original Wired iPad application came in at $4.99 and they sold more than 90,000 versions of the application. For a first look at a breath taking application, $4.99 isn’t all that expensive. But, moving forward, could Wired see sales start taking a little bit of a hit because consumers have already tried the breath-taking application once?

The novelty could slowly wear off, and we’ll only know in short order.  Wired has decided to lower the price of the iPad magazine edition to $3.99 per month. I’m still not sure that I’d be willing to pay that much for a digital magazine, at least not yet. That being said, I’m not a huge fan of Wired, so that could be clouding my judgement a little.

At least it looks like Wired was either listening to consumer’s concerns about the price being a little too steep for an app that would have to be purchased monthly, or they’re a little worried about app downloads. We’re not sure which it is, but after spending a lot of time with the application, I’ve yet to go back and read a lot of the articles. I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that I’m not alone.

Haven’t seen the Wired App Yet?  Here’s our video.

Article via MacNN

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CleanMyMac

“CleanMyMac represents sophisticated all-in-one-suite utility that helps keep your Mac clean and healthy. With just two simple clicks you can delete useless files that basically pile up and waste your valuable disk space. CleanMyMac allows enjoying smooth system performance combining such vital features as Slim Universal Binaries, Clean Unneeded Languages, Logs Rotation, Clean Caches, Quick and Secure Erase, Application Uninstallation, and Killing Trash Left From Buried Applications. CleanMyMac can save gigabytes of disk space and enhance your computer speed. Go ahead and give it a shot! Your Mac will definitely be grateful!”

PodWorks

“ImTOO Podworks is the ultimate iTunes alternative – Transfer iPod music, photos, and videos from iPod to Mac or iTunes. It also will transfer unsupported video and audio files (such as AVI, MPEG, WMV, WMA), backup music from iPod to your Mac, manage several iPods at the same time and transfer from iPod to iPod! ImTOO Podworks is the answer to all your ripping, copying, converting and transferring problems!”

Flux

“Flux has an amazing WYSIWYG rendering engine, which means you can drag, stretch, and move objects like a you can in a DTP application, and your webpages will look exactly how you intended.* Flux will generate all the code for you, with no unneccesary tags. Size, position, even margins and padding can be altered with handles on the elements themselves. If the properties are stored in external CSS stylesheets, these are automaticaly updated.”

I’m sure if I sat down and counted up just how many quarters I pumped into arcade games as a kid, I’d be depressed at the things I could be buying now if I’d only kept that money instead. Like, we’re talking on the level of multiple yachts. A yacht for every day of the week. “Hey honey,” I’d say to my wife, “which yacht should we take to the club this weekend?” We’d ride around in our yachts and laugh and laugh and sip expensive wine out of crystal glasses with our other rich friends and…

… what was I saying?

EAT HIGH KICK TO THE FACE, BEEYOTCH.

Right. Arcades. Man, when I was in junior high I loved me the hell out of those places, and the memories of playing some of those old-school games has always stuck with me. For this reason, I always love it when some development company gets a bout of nostalgia and resurrects an old game for one of the newfangled devices the kids are playing with these days, and it was just yesterday that I randomly stumbled across Karate Champ in the App Store. This is no “modernized reboot.” This is basically the original ROM from the arcade cabinet shoehorned into a touchscreen interface, complete with all of the quirks and charm of the original. Trust me, I played this game enough to recognize that digitzed voice saying “BEGIN,” “HALF POINT,” and “FULL POINT” to have it haunt my dreams.

That's right, baby. You'll be all mine as soon as I lay a sound drubbing upon my evil doppleganger over there.

Karate Champ. Probably the first martial-arts video game to pit Player One against Player Two, two identically-skilled twins, one in red and one in white. Think of them as the original Ryu and Ken. Gameplay is very simple. There are no “energy levels” to deplete. Strike your opponent first to either earn a half or full point, and score 2 points to win a round. Win two rounds and move on to the next stage. Lose just one single round at any time and watch the game over screen. The prize for winning a stage? A woman. This game was made in the 80′s, kids, times were different back then. Men were men and women were prizes.

Just STAY DOWN unless you want to kiss my heel again.

Where most video games employ the use of buttons in their interface controls, Karate Champ controls consist of two joysticks. The original arcade cabinet had four joysticks on the control board, two for each player. A rough guide is that the left stick controls your movement and the right stick controls your attack direction (up to kick high, down to leg sweep, etc.), but of course different combos would result in different advanced moves (up and right at the same time to jump kick, right and left and the same time for a spinning reverse kick, etc.). With 16 different directional combos, there always seemed to be more moves and hidden tricks to discover. Of course, pulling off a victory with more advanced moves resulted in scoring more points.

Next time you WILL be mine, pixellated bikini lady!

Obviously, the iPhone is sadly lacking in joysticks and wood-grain paneling, but a touch-screen orientation perfectly suited to laying two thumbs in the corners of your screen rides to the rescue. Left thumb controls the left stick, right thumb controls the right. After a couple of games to get used to how sensitive the controls are (no wasted quarters! yay!) and I was off to the races. Pretty quickly I was beating Red like a rented mule for the first few levels, but just like when I was younger, about the time you get to the stage that takes place on a log across a canyon, Red starts to get a little more aggressive and defensively sound. A couple of stages after that he seemingly gets possessed by the spirit of Chuck Norris, blocking everything I can throw at him before roundhouse kicking my tits off. I will defeat him, though. She will be mine!

Of course I’m biased because of my childhood memories, but so far Karate Champ is turning out to be the best iPhone app I’ve maybe ever purchased. At 99 cents, you really can’t go wrong!

I LOVE YOU I AM MANLY AND VICTORIOUS

Is your iPhone 4 dropping calls? Steve says stop holding it like that.

In case you missed it earlier, the iPhone 4 is dropping calls when users hold the device in their left hands, or block the seam on the left side of the device. How sweet is that.

Well, I’m sorry Steve, but I’m left handed. I was born like that. As much as you like to think that everyone on the planet holds your phone with a right hand, you’d probably be shocked to know that a small population doesn’t fit your mould. But, given that four out of the five original Macintosh designers were left-handed, I’d think that you’d be a little more inclined to the plight of the left-handers.

What if Apple didn’t decide to create those bumpers for no reason. They knew they had a problem on their hands, and since Gizmodo went and ruined a release for everyone, Apple’s hands were tied. An announcement had to be made, and a half-designed device made it to production. Insert your favourite golf clap here.

Some would argue that i’m being a little bit paranoid, but it really has given me a reason to pause and think about it. Wanna buy our phone? Well, you should probably buy this crappy rubber as well so that it works.

I think Apple Inc just made my decision for me — I’ll be waiting for the next model.

I also find it hilarious that all the A-List reviewers who got their hands on one of these phones didn’t notice a problem at all. I say hilarious. You might say curious—tomato, toe-mat-o.

What’s the official word from Apple? It’s “a fact of life for every wireless phone,” and users should “avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.” Classic.

Next up the iPhone 5. “Want to make a call? Step right into our reality distortion field first.”

Article Via The Loop

Todo for iPad (currently $4.99, but the price is going up soon) is a task management app by Appigo, the makers of Todo for iPhone. This is one beautiful app, but its beauty goes beyond appearances — Appigo has created a sophisticated, feature-rich task manager.

First, a confession:  I am a task manager addict, and I can’t make a commitment to any one application. On my Mac, I had trysts with Things and OmniFocus, but OmniFocus won my heart with its nested folders (Things’ insistence on a tags-only interface just didn’t work for me, so I said, “Adieu”).  On my iPhone I have at least ten task management apps, and, admittedly, I flit between them like a butterfly in a field of bluebonnets. I still haven’t chosen one.  On my iPad, I currently have only three to-do apps (Taska, Things, and Todo), so my affections aren’t stretched as thin.  I’ve already reviewed Taska, and I plan to review Things soon.  Today, however, I have eyes only for Appigo’s Todo.

One of the first things you’ll notice about Todo is its beautiful user interface. Todo replicates a three-ring planner, complete with embossed leather in your choice of colors, a nice selection of paper styles, and even different colors for the binder bracket and rings (see the options in the gallery). Page turns are smoothly animated, and the motif is so carefully polished that it doesn’t seem cartoonish or cheesy.

All View

The main view contains your project lists on the left side (they appear on the plastic paper protector of the binder).  Here you see several permanent categories:  All, where you can have the app list all your tasks or filter them; Focus, which lists tasks that are due soon; Starred, for special tasks; and an Inbox where you can dump all your tasks initially. Underneath the permanent categories you can add your own project categories.

On the right hand side is where your sub-projects, tasks, and checklists appear. Todo allows you to create three major kinds of task items when you press the ‘+’ button on the upper left:  normal, project, or checklist. “Normal” creates a single task; “Project” creates a project with multiple tasks, and “Checklist” creates a list of items.  When you create tasks and projects, you can assign due dates and times, repeat actions, priorites, contexts, and tags. Checklist items do not have these options. In addition to these major task items, Todo allows you to create specific kinds of tasks quickly:  call a contact, email a contact, SMS a contact, visit a location, and visit a website. Each of these specialized tasks has its own dialog for filling in the requisite information. This is a helpful and unique feature in Todo.

Task Category Options

One really nice feature is the quick task button (a plus sign with a lightning bolt). When you tap this button, a one line dialog pops up and you can add several tasks rapidly simply by pressing the return button. This is especially handy when you want to do a brain dump into the inbox without having to categorize tasks.

Quick Task Entry

Settings

Along the bottom screen are four buttons:  the sync button (syncing is discussed below), the context button (for filtering by context), the tags button (for filtering by tags), and the settings button. The settings button takes you to the back inside cover of your binder.  In its pocket are the settings options.  Here you can choose how you want to sort your tasks, decide on your theme, and adjust all the other settings for your tasks.  In addition you can configure alerts (which requires you to provide Appigo with your email address), and set up synchronization.

Sync Options

Appigo offers two methods by which you can synchronize your tasks with your iPhone, Mac, and/or PC: Appigo Sync or Toodledo.  Both methods are easy to set up in the app, but you’ll also have to download a copy of Appigo Sync to your computer and/or create an account at Toodledo if you don’t already have one. Using Appigo Sync has the advantage of allowing you to sync your computer with iCal or Outlook.

What’s Macgasmic: Todo is a terrific task management program with a gorgeous UI and tons of features. It offers some unique touches, such as specific task actions (like call a contact, visit a location); multiple syncing options; and batch task actions. You can set up repeating tasks, receive notifications for tasks with specific due dates and times, and enjoy the benefits of the Focus list which automatically collects your most pressing tasks.

Focus View

What’s Not: As with any application, there are a few things I don’t like about Appigo’s Todo.  First, I like being able to have projects with sub-projects, and sub-projects with sub-sub-projects. Although Todo allows you to have major project categories and projects within those categories, it doesn’t allow you to create projects within projects. So far, I’ve only found one task manager that allows me to make almost unending hierarchies, and that is OmniFocus. Arranging to-dos hierarchically, however, is not important to everyone.  In fact, many people prefer using tags to organize their to-dos.

Second, I discovered that moving tasks from one list to another isn’t very intuitive in Todo.  For one thing, you can’t do this via drag and drop, which seems like an obvious must-have feature on a touch interface.  Instead, you tap a button that looks like a little bookshelf on the upper right of your screen. This opens up several options. You can manually re-order (but not move to another folder) your items; you can select an item or multiple items and schedule a due date (button on lower right); or you can move the items to other projects or checklists or assign contexts or tags to them (button on lower left). While this is terrific for acting on multiple items simultaneously, it took me quite some time to figure out how to move things using this interface.

Move Tasks Options

Third, although Todo syncs with Toodledo, iCal, or Outlook, the fact that it does not have a dedicated desktop counterpart might be a deal breaker for some folks. Personally, I’m beginning to wonder if I need a desktop task manager since I have my iPhone with me all the time and I like the iPad applications even better than the desktop ones.

Last, in portrait view Todo looks strangely elongated and loses the pleasing symmetry of the landscape view.  I normally hold my iPad in landscape position anyway, but those of you who prefer portrait may not like the looks of the app as much.

Todo is definitely one of the best task managers available on the iPad (and iPhone). It offers a gorgeous interface, the flexibility of folders and tags, and two great options for syncing your information. Todo is currently priced at $4.99, but even at its regular price (presumably $9.99), it is still much cheaper than Things ($19.99).

Right now my favorite iPad task manager is Appigo’s Todo. The problem is, sometime this summer OmniFocus for iPad will begin singing its siren song. And, like Odysseus, I will have to be lashed to my office chair; otherwise, I will be off to the App Store, downloading another lover. . . erm . . . task manager.

Bummed out by your slow SD cards? Good news: The SD Association announced a new specification called Ultra High Speed I for SDHC and SDXC cards of the future. The current write speed for SD cards is a pitiful twenty-five megabytes per second. This new spec will bump the speed all the way up to a hundred and four megabytes per second. That’s really impressive.

Electronista says “[...] UHS cards should have no trouble recording HD video or shooting continuous RAW photos.” If the real-life implementation is as good as the spec sounds, we’re in for a lot more availability of HD video recorders.

So, what do you think? Does the idea of having super fast memory cards excite you? Is the current speed of your medium holding you back? Let us know in the comment section, or you can hit me up on Twitter.

Article Via Electronista
Photo Credit: SDcard.org, Piutus

Did you know that you can still universally bring up the iPod settings on your iOS device with a double tap? I didn’t. It took me a day or two to realize that it was still there — it was just hiding.

Much like the way you access the hidden Spotlight on your phone, the iPod settings can be  found by swiping the multi-tasking bar.

You can control your iPod from any application. The downside — not all applications handle this very well yet. For instance, a couple of my games seemed to turn off the iPod entirely while I was playing, and they did it in a not so graceful way. It’s probably going to be this way until all of the apps get updates for iOS.  The iPod buttons that appear are pretty obvious, and it’s a huge step forward from the previous double tap iPhone controls in the iPhone OS 3+ version.  The circle with an arrow isn’t a repeat button. It locks the iPod application in portrait or landscape mode.  It’s curious that the button is available from around the iPhone, and not just in the iPod application itself.  It could mean that Apple’s toying with the idea of implementing a system like the iPad where you can put the iPad OS into landscape mode and lock it there.

Are you tired of iTunes URLs opening in your browser only to then launch that SAME EXACT PAGE in iTunes? You need the NoMoreiTunes Safari 5 extension. This thirty-two kilobyte download will save you from pulling your hair out. You can now browse iTunes as much as you want inside of Safari without being hassled by iTunes.app. Pretty great, eh?

The only real exception to the iTunes blocking functionality is for account creation. When you try to create an account through the website, it will pass you iTunes to handle that. That sounds pretty reasonable to me.

I’m really happy with all of these Safari 5 extensions I’m seeing at this point Apple’s extension gallery isn’t even available yet, and we’re already getting some great stuff. What are your thoughts about this wave of Safari 5 extensions? Have you gone extension crazy? Let us know what extensions you like by commenting on this post or tweeting me.

Article Via Safari Extensions