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Filed under: Software

I have used a lot of productivity apps on my Mac and my iPhone. I wound up using Things every day because, for me, it struck the perfect balance of features and flexibility. Now three lucky winners will get a chance to see the Mac-iPhone sync, the keyboard shortcuts and the excellent tagging features in Things. As you can see in the picture, I keep the Things app [iTunes Link]handy on my iPhone as well — it is an excellent complement to the desktop application.

Here’s a pro tip for Things if you use MailPlane (an excellent Gmail front end for your Mac): Select some text in an email, press Shift-Ctrl-Option-Command-P (yeah, that’s a lot of keys) and the HUD will pop up with a link to the email and the selected text in the notes section. As I loathe Mail.app for serious work, this has been a huge productivity booster. Google’s task tool simply isn’t up to par either.

OK, the rules are the same as always: US-only (sorry, promo code thing), 18 and up, only one entry per person (we’ll check!) and three winners. To enter just leave a comment below telling us how you “get things done” right now, and whether or not it’s working for you. Good luck!

• Open to legal US residents of the 50 United States and the District of Columbia who are 18 and older.
• To enter leave a comment telling us what you use to stay organized/productive and if it works for you.
• The comment must be left before Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 11:59PM Eastern Standard Time.
• You may enter only once.
• Three winners will be selected in a random drawing.
• Prizes: One copy of Things for Mac (Value: US$49.95 and one promo code for Things for iPhone ($9.99).
• Click Here for complete Official Rules.

TUAWWin a copy of Things for Mac and iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, Switchers, Mac 101, Snow Leopard

The video shows hints about keyboard shortcuts (such as using the Command key on a Mac instead of the Control key on a PC), and using Command-Option-Escape on a Mac to force-quit an application, much like Control-Alt-Delete does on Windows. There’s also tips on using the mouse on a Mac, and using the trackpad to perform gestures to get around your laptop.

Switchers are also going to need help on controlling windows; closing and minimizing controls, of course, are on the top left of windows on a Mac, much like the buttons on the top right of a window on Windows. There’s also tips on the differences and how to adjust to similar features and applications on a Mac, like the differences between Windows Explorer and the Finder on the Mac, and what parallels there are between other bundled applications. Finally, there’s also tips on which web browser to use, how to eject a disc, and where to go for help.

If you’ve got a friend or family member who’s new to Mac OS X, it’s something they should check out to help get used to using the Mac. Of course, right after that, the next step is to read through our library of Mac 101 tips and tricks for novice Mac users.

TUAWMac 101: AllThingsD delivers a video guide for Mac novices originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Motorsports, Coupe, Performance, Porsche

Porsche test pilot and all-around legend Walter Röhrl will be competing in next year’s Nürburgring 24-Hour race for the first time in 17 years. His weapon of choice for the event: the 2010 Porsche GT3 RS. That’s the rear-wheel drive one with the 450 horsepower 3.8-liter that runs up to 8,500 RPM. The one with the track-specific, lightweight lithium-ion battery and dynamic engine mounts. The one that did the Kessel Run ‘Ring in 12 parsecs 7:33 in light traffic.

Röhrl says the street-legal production car is the closest thing to a race car he’s ever driven, so he wants to find out what it can ultimately do from gun-to-flag. It probably won’t hand comeuppance to the four-liter, $494,000 GT3 RSR, but with the same horsepower as the dedicated racer we figure Röhrl plans to keep it close.

[Source: Paul Tan]

Walter Röhrl entering the Nürburgring 24 Hours in a bone stock Porsche GT3 RS originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google’s Android Market growth has not been as fast or furious as Apple’s App Store, however, as more Android handsets are sold, that’s expected to change.

In fact, the Android Market may have as many as 150,000 apps by the end of 2010, according to Flurry, a mobile-application analytics firm, which merged with Pinch Media yesterday. In November, Apple said it had around 100,000 apps for the iPhone, which completely overshadows the 12,000 Android apps in existence. In an interview with Bloomberg, Flurry CEO Simon Khalaf said: “A lot of developers have come onto the Android platform” because of efforts by Verizon Wireless, Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) to promote the system.”

Flurry estimates that while Google will have between 100,000 and as many as 150,000 by the end of 2010, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) could have 300,000. A handful of recent examples of applications that have moved from the iPhone to Android include: Evernote, CitySearch and Photobucket.

Many developers have held back making apps for the Android platform because it was unclear how big of a market it would become. That won’t be much of a question in 2010. Next year, Forrester Research is estimating that Google Android will take 10 percent of the mobile device market due to “heavy industry support” from Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM), Verizon, Motorola, Google, and others, reports networkworld.com.

Rock Band is getting a little help from Sir Paul McCartney to usher in the New Year. A three-song track pack of live McCartney tracks has been announced for the game along with a second helping of country

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I recently saw the film “Forgiven,” Paul Fitzgerald’s moving and thoughtful directorial debut, which ponders the injustice of a wrongful conviction, the healing and redemption possible in the aftermath, and the politics that can get in the way. It became available (streaming and DVD) on Netflix this week, and it’s well worth moving to the top of your queue.

The well-crafted (though sometimes meandering) indie flick explores the fallout of a wrongful death sentence and the inherent dangers in society’s thirst for tough-on-crime policy. Fitzgerald plays a conservative young district attorney making a bid for the U.S. Senate. His commitment to conviction may have been too strong, however, and an exoneration threatens to overwhelm his political ambitions. The movie has plenty of twists and turns and I won’t spoil it here.

The trailer is after the jump.

(more…)

Last summer, when Apple pulled third-party Google Voice applications from the App Store, one of them was VoiceCentral. Apple’s subsequent rejection of the official Google Voice app spurred an FCC investigation, but Google Voice never made it to the app store and none of the other apps ever made it back in.

Well, that’s not stopping the developers behind VoiceCentral. They are bringing back their app to the iPhone via the browser. They call it the Black Swan edition. You can get on a waiting list to be on the private beta here. The app is completely browser-based but has the look and feel of a regular app, complete with a dialer, list of transcribed voicemails, and SMS messages.

When you dial a number, Google Voice simply makes a call to your iPhone while simultaneously calling the number of the person you are trying to reach, so you still pay for the voice minutes. But the appeal of having Google Voice on your iPhone is the ability to read transcribed voicemails, or play them, and avoid SMS charges by texting through Google Voice. (You cannot yet do all of these things when you access Google Voice via the iPhone’s browser directly).

The downside is that it cannot access your contact list on your iPhone through the browser. Although, VoiceCentral mimics the look and feel of the iPhone contact manager, you have to export your contacts to Google Voice first and access them that way. Another limitation is that the audio plays through the speaker instead of through the earpiece, but if you are using a pair of earphones that is not a problem.

VoiceCentral will probably be a paid app, but Apple won’t get any of the revenues since it is simply a mobile Website. It even offers offline caching and takes advantage of the HTML5 features of mobile Safari. This could very well be the future of mobile apps. As mobile browsers become more capable, more and more developers are going to ask themselves why bother with the limitations of the App Store and be at the mercy of Apple’s whims? And it won’t just be developers like VoiceCentral who have no other choice.

Below is a promotional video which shows some of the features of VoiceCentral’s Black Swan app. Remember, this is all happening in the browser:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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Sandia National Laboratories have unveiled their newest photovoltaic cells — glitter-sized particles made of crystalline silicon. The cells are made using common microelectronic and microelectromechanical systems techniques, and the results are pretty spectacular to behold. More interestingly, however, is the fact that they use 100 times less material in generating the same amount of energy as a regular solar cell.

Here comes the sun

Bacteria for better solar panels

Because of their size and shape, the cells are well-suited to unusual applications, and researchers envision mass-production of the cells for use on building-integrated tents or clothing, so campers (or military personnel) could recharge their cell phones on the go. Researchers also think that these particles will be inexpensive to produce, but there’s no word on when they’ll be ready for consumer application. We’ll keep you posted — but hit the source link for more a more detailed description.

Snowflake-shaped photovoltaic cells bring the holiday cheer originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of Robert Frank’s The Americans, the exhibition “Looking In: Robert Frank’s The Americans” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City through January 3, 2010. Dominique Nabokov—whose own photographs appear regularly in The New York Review—saw the exhibition both in New York and in Washington, where it originated at the National Gallery of Art. Recently, she stopped by the office to talk about why Frank’s photographs are not only still relevant but also a “miraculous” body of work.

The catalog of the exhibition is edited by Sarah Greenough and published by the National Gallery and Steidl. In addition to the original photographs from The Americans, it contains many other photographs by Frank from the exhibition, reproductions of his contact sheets, and essays by Greenough and others, including frequent Review contributor Luc Sante on Jack Kerouac’s introduction to the first American edition of Frank’s book.

One of my favorite Intel foibles to ridicule is the way that the company continues to stress Flash support as a rationale for x86 in handheld portables—x86, we’re told repeatedly, gives you “the full Internet experience,” by which Intel means, “you can run Flash on it.” This is supposed to make x86 a better option than ARM for portable CPUs, but the chipmaker doesn’t bother to mention that ARM Flash support is here as of Flash 10.1, making their favorite talking point inoperative.

With the arrival of Flash 10.1, ARM-based SoCs from vendors like NVIDIA can now offer “the full Internet experience,” so the company’s Tegra line competes with x86-based SoCs for Web-enabled design wins on pure price/performance/watt. But the Open Screen Project doesn’t just hurt Intel PR; it’s turning out to be a headache for NVIDIA PR, as well.

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By Yukari Iwatani Kane, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

If there is one complaint people have about their iPhones, it’s that the popular cellphone doesn’t have the option of a physical keyboard to type on. That has now changed, at least if you’ve “jailbroken” or modified your phone so it can download unauthorized software.

Matthias Ringwald, a doctoral candidate specializing in wireless sensor networks in Zurich, Switzerland, launched a piece of software called BTstack Keyboard, which will let users use Bluetooth-enabled keyboards with their iPhones. The software is available through the unauthorized app marketplace Cydia for $5.

IPhones rely on typing text using a virtual keyboard on the display screen, an attribute that does not appeal to some people. The handsets have Bluetooth capability–a popular way to connect peripheral devices–but so far Apple (AAPL) has only allowed it to be used to connect with other iPhones to play games or with certain accessories like headsets. Ringwald was one of the users frustrated by the limitation. He spent eight months developing the software before releasing it on Wednesday.

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A mí es que es ver estos colorcitos azul eléctrico, aguamarina y demás en un fondo de cristal y me ganan. Sea cual sea el coche que saque un salpicadero como el que vemos en la foto se convertirá automáticamente en mi modelo favorito. Probablemente muchas de las mejoras que comentamos a continuación no lleguen nunca al mercado, pero al menos sabemos que la investigación avanza por estos lares.

El sector del automóvil es uno de los que más se renueva constantemente en todos los campos: bajas emisiones, consumos, prestaciones, seguridad, confort, y cómo no, tecnología. La informática permite que muchas de las tareas clásicamente dependientes de la habilidad del conductor como aparcar estén guiadas y apoyadas para resultar más fáciles. A continuación os ponemos una pequeña lista de investigaciones en las que trabajan algunas de las marcas punteras del panorama actual.

• Control de destellos de luz: BMW esta desarrollando un sistema que oscurece automáticamente los espejos retrovisores y los parabrisas reduciendo así un 80% de los destellos.
• Sistema de frenado automático: Volvo esta desarrollando un sistema que avisa al conductor con una señal luminosa, para que frene a tiempo.
• Pintura que oculta rajaduras: BMW esta trabajando en una pintura que se puede auto-regenerar.
• Un sistema para evitar el tráfico: Esto se lograra con el sistema Europe Como2React, que enviara los datos de tu auto a una central y hará todo lo posible para evitar el tráfico.
• Sistema de estacionamiento automático de Toyota: Un sistema que permitirá que el auto se estacione solo.
• Sistema de ayuda para estacionar: BMW esta desarrollando un sistema que le indica al conductor como estacionar correctamente.
• Adaptabilidad al asfalto: Audi esta desarrollando un sistema que controlara al vehículo dependiendo el terreno en el cual se encuentre. Este es llamado Road Visión, y detectara todas las situaciones de riesgo.
• Estaciones de servicio de hidrogeno: En Alemania ya funcionan, en Berlín y Munich y en Dinamarca. Cada vez habrá más en Europa.
• Estaciones de recarga de coches eléctricos: En España, Dinamarca, Portugal, e Israel ya prácticamente están funcionado, pero en el futuro habrá en Los Ángeles y muchas otras ciudades más.
• Desarrollo de un convoy de coches conectados inalámbricamente: Esto evitara accidentes y ahorrara combustible. La Unión Europea lo esta desarrollando y lo llama SARTRE (Safe Road Trains for the Environment). Únicamente habría un conductor, el del vehículo principal.
• El primer concesionario para vehículos eléctricos: En Berlín las empresas energéticas RWE AG y enviaM AG abrieron su primer concesionario destinado a vender solo estos modelos.

Vía | Espaciocoches

Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, Apple

As a guy who still kind of winces at the iPhone’s touch surface sometimes (especially when playing games — you don’t realize how nice buttons are until you see a character die because your thumb’s in the way), this is extremely interesting news: Apple’s rumored tablet, which we’ve been hearing a lot about lately, may include a dynamic, tactile surface.

This one’s on a little shakier ground than the other rumors that we’ve heard before, but it makes sense. After that anonymous exec told the NYT that the interface on the new tablet would be “surprising,” AppleInsider pulled out an old patent from a few years ago that talks about a surface that changes its shape and feel based on how it’s being used. For viewing pictures with the multitouch, it stays smooth, but the second a keyboard or button pops up, it can push out dots or shapes and become slightly tactile.

Sounds like it’d be tough to get right (you’d have to figure out when users expect a tactile surface and when they don’t, among other interesting UI questions), but of course if anyone can pull it off, it’ll probably be Apple. Note that this isn’t the only futuristic idea Apple has had for larger multitouch surfaces, and there are lots of different options for interfaces that we’d find “surprising.” But the fact remains that though touchscreen devices are extremely popular, users want a little more feel and a little less look. It’d be great to see Apple pull this off, if they are planning on showing off a larger touchscreen next month.

TUAWRumored tablet could include dynamic tactile surface originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, iPhone, App Review

Be sure to check out our iPhone game review roundup via Joystiq.

Ask any designer what their favorite font is and you’ll get one of several thousand possible answers. Fonts aren’t merely pretty characters on a display; they are an art form. Each font family conveys a particular aesthetic meaning that can make or break any design, if used properly or improperly. In fact, I’ve long suspected the ancient Egyptian civilization was brought down by the creation of Papyrus. The recent appearance of the faux-ancient typeface in the film Avatar as subtitles will surely doom us all — especially if viewed in 3D.

The folks at ILT share our font fixation, and they’ve developed a highly addictive text teaser iPhone game that puts your font knowledge to the test. The Font Game [$0.99, iTunes link] challenges you to identify a series of fonts presented onscreen; you then select one of four possible answers.Be sure to check out our iPhone game review roundup via Joystiq.

Ask any designer what their favorite font is and you’ll get one of several thousand possible answers. Fonts aren’t merely pretty characters on a display; they are an art form. Each font family conveys a particular aesthetic meaning that can make or break any design, if used properly or improperly. In fact, I’ve long suspected the ancient Egyptian civilization was brought down by the creation of Papyrus. The recent appearance of the faux-ancient typeface in the film Avatar as subtitles will surely doom us all — especially if viewed in 3D.

The folks at ILT share our font fixation, and they’ve developed a highly addictive text teaser iPhone game that puts your font knowledge to the test. The Font Game [$0.99, iTunes link] challenges you to identify a series of fonts presented onscreen; you then select one of four possible answers.

TUAWThe Font Game for iPhone is fontastic fun originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Thu, 24 Dec 2009 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether as the basis for Sandeman Mulled Port Wine or in a new spin on a  sparkling holiday cocktail,  these Port-based potions are sure to impress  even the most cocktail savvy at any soiree, and warm them up even on the coldest of nights.

Embrace this new trend by indulging in some of Portugal’s other famous imports. Be sure to display a sumptuous Charcuterie platter next to your
bowl of mulled wine, and pass a platter of “filhoses,” made of fried pumpkin dough, with your Sandeman Sparklers.

Sandeman Port is the sophisticated secret ingredient for your festive holiday fete. Your guests will never guess the secret ingredient but they’ll definitely be searching for clues (and refills).

Image: Sandeman Port

Sandeman Mulled Port Wine

Ingredients:

• 1 bottle of Sandeman Founders Reserve Port
• 6 part Martell VS Cognac
• ½ cup of Sugar
• 2 sticks of cinnamon
• 6 cloves
• 1 orange cut in small slices
• 4 parts fresh squeezed orange juice

Directions:

Combine all ingredients into a medium size sauce pan and bring to heat but not boil. Serve hot in traditional mulled wine glasses.

Sandeman Sparkler

Ingredients:

• 1 part Founders Reserve Porto
• 3 parts Sparkling wine

Directions:

Serve in a champagne flute or large wine glass.

Post from: Blisstree

Holiday Cocktails With Sandeman Port

Ursula K. Le Guin is a very famous author who many people insist is one of the best — though, I have to admit never having read her stuff. Yet, she is one of those who is rather aggressive in policing the copyrights on her work, and who does not tend to side with those who believe in concepts like “fair use.” Most certainly, she is not a fan of open culture. A few years ago, she got into a bit of a scrap with Cory Doctorow, because he dared to publish a single paragraph of hers in a blogpost as part of a larger (positive!) commentary.

Her latest scrap with the world of copyright is to publicly resign from the Authors Guild. I’m no fan of the Authors Guild myself, and find that it tends to take a rather antiquated view on things — from its absolutely ridiculous claim that a Kindle with text-to-speech software infringes on authors’ copyrights, to its equally backwards take on Google’s book scanning project, which helped index books and make them more findable which many authors have found helps increase sales.

While I am not a fan of the (still ongoing) settlement efforts between Google and the Authors Guild, it is this settlement that has upset Le Guin so much. In her resignation letter, she claims refers to Google as “the devil,” and claims that the Guild has abandoned “the whole concept of copyright.” Of course, nothing is further from the truth, as the Authors Guild notes in its reply (found via Michael Scott). As the Authors Guild points out, Google had a more than decent chance of winning the lawsuit because of something called fair use, which Le Guin still doesn’t appear to recognize as a key part of copyright law. In her own introduction to copyright law, fair use makes no appearance whatsoever.

It really is a shame. Many people tell me that Le Guin is a fantastic writer, but I have no desire to read works by someone who is afraid I might like it so much I might share that joy with someone else. I also have no interest in reading works by a science fiction author who seems to hate technology to the point of calling a tool like Google “the devil.”

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