Caption contest: iPhone as a CPR device
Alright, we’ll leave all the zingers for you and our mercurial staff to deliver, and just use this space to dish some info on the hardware. Ivor Kovic, an emergency physician from Croatia, has recently demoed a new iPhone cradle that turns the already multifunctional handset into a CPR assistance device. By using an app titled Pocket CPR and the built-in accelerometer, he can get audio and visual feedback to tell him if he’s doing it correctly, while his basic (but awesome) cradle allows for longer CPR sessions if necessary. Check out the video after the break, then hit the comments with your finest witticisms.
Paul: “Come on Luke Wilson’s Career, stay with me now, you’re not going to die on me!”
Darren: “Man, I could really get a better look at what’s going on if this thing had a 9.7-inch IPS panel…”
Chris: “Everyone is either dying or staying alive these days, and we began to ask ourselves: is there room for something in the middle?”
Nilay: “He then died.”
Vlad: “Our other cradle also measures rhythm and depth, though its purpose isn’t entirely medicinal.”
Andy: “A rare case where a lack of multitasking is actually helpful to the task on hand.”
Thomas: “Can you stop dying for a second, I have to take this call.”
Joe: “This actually adds an intriguing level of complexity to Super Monkey Ball 2.”
Richard Lai: “Come on… COME ON!! Wait a tick… AT&T? No wonder it isn’t working. Dammit.”
Tim: “Looks like this guy’s heart (puts on sunglasses)… has dropped its last call.” Yeeeaaaaaahhhh…
Continue reading Caption contest: iPhone as a CPR device
Caption contest: iPhone as a CPR device originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Palm Pre Gets Unofficial Google Voice App [Google Voice]
Though buggy and as barebones as it gets, an unofficial Palm Pre Google Voice app called dkGoogleVoice will let you use your GV number to call or text from your contacts, and feel superior to iPhone owners. Big win! [PreCentral]
Sports Illustrated Swimsuit App Is as Close As You’ll Get to an Official iPhone Porn App [Boobs]
Who likes ladies in tiny bathing suits? Many dudes do, that’s who. And now they can get them on their iPhone via the official Sports Illustrated Swimsuit app.
Sure, you have access to millions of pictures of scantily clad ladies via Safari, not to mention unclad ladies, but this is an app. An app, people! For $3 you get photos of 20 models and some bodypainting videos. I’m going to go ahead and guess that a Google search will bring up most of this content for free.
Here’s the sad part: this is going to sell like hotcakes. [App Store Link via TechCrunch]
David Bowie Space Oddity iPhone App Lets You Remix the Thin White Duke Anywhere [David Bowie]
Since it’s been 40 years (!!) since Bowie’s classic Space Oddity was released, there’s a fancy new anniversary EP coming out. And with it is an iPhone App that features the original multi-track stems of the song and remix capabilities.
The app, by iKlax, lets you make your own Bowie mix right on your phone. You might have better luck doing a real remix on your computer by just downloading the files on their own, which you can do, but hey, remixing Bowie on your iPhone! You can’t say that isn’t pretty neat. It’ll set you back $2.
DAVID BOWIE AND VIRGIN/EMI CELEBRATE 40TH ANNIVERSARY OF “SPACE ODDITY” WITH COMMEMORATIVE DIGITAL EP & APP WITH REMIX FEATURES
“Space Oddity” Digital EP and iPhone/iPod touch App Available Now for Download Purchase; Both Offer Unique Opportunity For Fans To Create Their Own Mixes of Song
Hollywood, California – July 21, 2009 – David Bowie and Virgin/EMI are celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” with the release of a commemorative digital EP and a new app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The digital EP, available now for download purchase from all major digital service providers, features four versions of “Space Oddity” plus its original eight multi-track stems, enabling fans to remix the song as they please using their own software or with iKlax software. iKlax’s “Remix David Bowie – Space Oddity” app, available now on the iTunes App Store, also allows fans to become ‘Ground Control’ to remix the track their way.
Originally released on July 11, 1969 to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landings, “Space Oddity” was featured by the BBC in its television coverage of the lunar event, and the song later won an Ivor Novello award. The song’s enigmatic protagonist, Major Tom, has become a recurrent theme throughout Bowie’s work and career, and was revisited in the song “Ashes To Ashes.”
www.davidbowie.ultimatefanpage.com / www.davidbowie.com
DAVID BOWIE: “Space Oddity (40th Anniversary EP)” (digital)
1. Space Oddity (original U.K. mono single edit)
2. Space Oddity (U.S. mono single edit)
3. Space Oddity (U.S. stereo single edit)
4. Space Oddity (1979 re-record)
Public Radio iPhone App Adds On-Demand Content, Accidentally Kills FM Radio [IPhone Apps]
A few weeks ago, LA’s KCRW set the gold standard for radio station apps: a streaming client with access to a huge back catalog of on-demand station content. Public Radio Player 2.0 does the same thing—for everyone.
Since the start, Public Radio Player has listed a sizable number of NPR stations across the country, all of which are listenable via live streaming. Given the countless other radio app available for the iPhone, the only real advantage to using version 1.0 was that, if you spent the time to look, you could find just about any NPR or PRI show you wanted playing somewhere.
Version 2.0 provides comprehensive station schedules to make program-hunting easier, but more importantly, provides access to the often generous back catalogs from various stations, meaning that you can get any public radio programming you want on demand, for free. It’s a fairly incredible deal for NPR addicts, who’ll now be able to fine-tune their daily feed of dulcet, strangely androgynous news and lifestyle coverage to perfection. [Ars]
The Month in BlackBerry Apps: Too Sunny to Work Edition [Blackberry Apps]
Hey guys, it was too nice this weekend to sit inside and round up apps for you. So solly! Inside we’ve got illicit messengers, “disruptive” Twitter apps and bloggy blog blog goodness.
BlackBerry Messenger 5.0: It’s a leak and installing it is at your own risk, but if you’ve got a relatively recent BlackBerry—anything after the Curve 8300—it should be compatible with your device. Why take the risk? It integrates GPS location, has a proximity sensor, and other features and aesthetic niceties. Grab it here, if you dare.
Google Voice: We mentioned it before, but it’s worthy of another shoutout—after all, we’re talking about a native Google Voice app for your BlackBerry here. It’s not quite as tightly integrated as the Android app (wonder why that could be), but it does make it easier to make calls from Google Voice number and manage your inbox from your BlackBerry. Download it here.
Camera to Go: Promise you won’t use this to be creepy. CameraToGo lets you silence your BlackBerry’s shutter sound and take timed shots. It won’t work with CDMA BlackBerrys for some reason—maybe that’s for the best. It’s $5, but CrackBerry’s got a free trial. Download is here.
Verizon FiOS Remote DVR: Storm only for now, with Curve (and presumably Tour) support “coming soon,” this one’s pretty self-explanatory: It lets you scope out TV listings and remotely program your FiOS set-top box to record TV shows. Yay synergy. Snag it here.
Slacker Radio on BlackBerry Storm: Whether you want it or not, Slacker Radio is getting pushed by Verizon to your BlackBerry Storm.
Pandora 1.1: The latest version of Pandora for BlackBerry now streams in stereo AAC+. Update here.
Tweeteev: Supposedly coming out any day now, tweetev is one of the flashier BlackBerry Twitter apps we’ve seen—up there with TweetGenius. It looks fairly full-featured too: Trends, search, multiple account support and plenty of pop. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s actually “disruptive,” but you can sign up to be pinged when it’s out here.
WordPress for BlackBerryI don’t know who the smarmy European prick narrating their intro video is or who picked the ridiculous elevator music playing behind him, but it’s only forgiveable since we’ve finally got an official WordPress for BlackBerry. It looks pretty hideous on older BlackBerrys (the 8700 version makes me want to barf) but feature-wise, it seems fairly solid in terms of actually putting crap up on your blog. It’s a beta, so if it breaks on you, don’t expect to wag your finger too hard. Grab it here.
Bolt Browser Beta 3: While we wait for Skyfire for BlackBerry to go all public, in the meantime we’ve got the WebKit-powered Bolt browser, which has hit beta 3. Besides adding in basics that were missing before, like copy and paste, direct text entry and the ability to kil images for faster loading, you can do stuff like upload to YouTube and Photobucket now. Oh, and it’s faster. Download it here. (Image via BlackBerry Cool)
More BlackBerry App Coverage:
• BlackBerry OS 5.0 Gets Tabbed Browsing
• NYC Exit Strategy: The Other NYC Subway App You Need
• Google Voice on BlackBerry
• MyBlackBerry Social Network Gives BlackBerry, App World Users a Place to Whine About BlackBerry, App World
• BlackBerry’s Getting a Music Store in September
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this month, give us a heads up or let us know in the comments. Have a good week!
Need Medicinal Cannabis? There’s an App For That [App Store]
From the strange world of approved and rejected Apple App Store apps comes word today that Apple has approved a medicinal Cannabis location app for the iPhone and iPod touch.
And good on them, I say. Medicinal Cannabis use works, alleviates pain, and allows people who need some serious stress relief—say, from cancer—to get that relief and feel great doing it.
The app is based on Ajnag.com, which has existed for a while as a legitimate medicinal Cannabis location site on the Web. In fact, once you download the app to your iPhone, you have a veritable smorgasbord of legal Cannbis services at your fingertips:
Once you have received your medical cannabis recommendation from a qualified physician, you will need to locate an organization that can provide you with medical cannabis. Access the Cannabis application again. Press locate. The nearest medical cannabis collectives, cooperatives or facilities will appear with little green dots on a map of your current or selected location. Get real-time door-to-door directions. Add the locations’ details to your iPhone contact list.
If the unfortunate happens, and you find yourself in legal trouble over your medicinal herb, pull out your cannabis application once again. Pin point local attorneys who specialize in marijuana-related offenses.
And one more thing… If you need medicinal marijuana and don’t live in one of them wonderfully progressive hippie states, like California, there’s an app for that too. This one:
Not living in a medical cannabis state? The only way to make cannabis change is to take action. Your new iPhone application will locate the nearest cannabis-reform group so you can get involved.
If you’re suffering, and get approval from a doctor, get some herb. This $3 app will help you keep tabs on where to get more when it’s all out. Ed note: And yes, my newly promoted commenter friend, you might have to be high to pay three bucks for such an app. But, if you’re new to an area… [ajnag.com - Thanks, Cheryl]
The Week In iPhone Apps: Augmented Everything [IPhone Apps]
In a very special late night edition of your weekly iPhone apptacular: Apps that make things that are already good—FM radio, video games, shopping, spouses, the city you live in—a little bit better.
Priceless Picks: Don’t let the advertising-crap-app appearance of Priceless Picks turn you off—this free download, branded all over with Mastercard, is great. It combines loads of data collected from a number of sources, including user submissions and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk army, to give wide-ranging recommendations for things to do, eat, drink or experience wherever you happen to be. There are other apps that do similar things, yes, but the dataset on this one already seems strong, the scope—not just restaurants, not just a particular company’s establishments—is healthy, and the 3D map presentation is fantastically cool, and surprisingly smooth.
Griffin iFM Radio Browser: A lot of people will download this assuming it’s a streaming radio app—it’s something else entirely, and actually quite exciting: iFM polls your location to come up with a list of local terrestrial radio stations, providing you with access to song titles, album art, artist info and purchase links for whatever’s playing on your FM station of choice. Think of it as augmented radio.
It’s also one of the earliest examples of accessory integration for OS 3.0, featuring a software interface for Griffin’s Navigate inline iPod remote, which has a built-in radio. Free. (The app, not the accessory. Sorry.)
Snore Patrol: Leave this app running overnight and it’ll provide a decibel readout of whatever weird nostril/sinus/lung business goes down in the duration. The idea is to present a snoring partner with graphical proof of their terrible flaw, which will in turn guilt them into doing something about it. It’s funny, but the pink interface and lady-oriented marketing is disheartening. Women snore too! MUST WE MEN SUFFER IN SILENCE? Your gynocentric passive aggressiveness: Free.
Squash the Street : If the economy’s got you down, and you’re vaguely upset about some fatcats on Wall Street, or at your banks, or something, why not direct a little bit of your pent-up aggression and/or depression into your iPhone? That’s what Squash the Street is for: Pure, possibly misguided venting. Neat 3D-ish graphics give this ultra-timely voodoo doll a bit of longevity. A dollar.
Cyclops: Barcode scanning apps are a no-brainer for modern smartphones: just snap a picture of a product’s label, and they’ll pull down a plethora of information. That’s exactly what Cyclops does. It’s not the first, but it’s the first designed around the iPhone 3GS’s new camera, which has good enough macro skills to make such an app truly useful. Free. [Via TUAW]
iMetal: There are many rules by which app developers live, some written, some not. One of the most powerful is the mandate that no hardware feature on any version of the iPhone shall go unused, or perhaps more accurately, unexploited. The iPhone 3GS utilizes a magnetometer for its compass, meaning that it can detect when certain metals are nearby, and that someone could theoretically make an app that acts as a sort of makeshift metal detector. And since nothing stays theoretical for more than a week in the App Store, someone has: it’s called iMetal, and it’ll tell you when you’re iPhone is next to a giant piece or iron, or hovering somewhere near a neodymium magnet. As an actual metal detector, it’s basically useless; as a party trick, it’s pretty neat. A dollar.
The Typography Manual: To most, this app will seem esoteric, or at worst, plain boring. To type nerds, however, this is like kerned, serifed manna from heaven. As its name implies, it’s something of a typography primer and history lesson, but on top of that, it’s a visual glossary, a collection of clever type tools, a directory of keyboard combinations for special symbols, and quite a bit more. Five dollars.
World of Warcraft Mobile Armory: Anyone who doesn’t play WoW won’t know what this is, and doesn’t need to. Anyone who does can download it for free.
This Week’s App News On Giz:
• Portal Gets Played On an iPhone, Sort Of
• Comcast’s iPhone App Does More Than TV Listings
• Google Now Finds Stuff Nearby Using Your Location in Mobile Safari
• Pizza Hut’s iPhone App Makes Pizza Ordering Easier, More Gimmicky
• iPhone Server Farm Puts Old Models To Good Use
• TwitVid for iPhone 3GS: Guess What It Does?
• TomTom’s GPS-Enhancing Car Adapter Should Work With The iPod Touch
• Worms For iPhone: Same Game, Worse Controls
• TuneWiki for iPhone Is Now Fully Armed and Operational
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.
Palm WebOS Mojo SDK Sadly Impotent: Badass Games Are Impossible [Palm Pre]
iPhone developer Craig Hunter confirms some of our fears about Palm’s entirely web-language based Mojo SDK for WebOS—it’s weak sauce, with pitiful access to the Pre’s powerful hardware.
Hunter mentions two pain points in particular that are deathblow to gaming and other sophisticated applications that require significant graphical juice (granted, Palm was more or less open from the start that games wouldn’t be a priority at first). Developers can’t use OpenGL ES to the tap the Pre’s graphics hardware. For an idea of what a big deal OpenGL access is, see our posts spanking over everything the iPhone 3GS can do with OpenGL 2.0 that the original iPhone and 3G can’t. Basically, anything requiring hardware graphics acceleration is screwed if it goes through the Mojo SDK, since they can’t use OpenGL at all. (There are, of course, unofficial paths.)
Update: Another iPhone dev, Stephen Stroughton Smith, points out that the reason there’s no OpenGL support is because the Pre doesn’t an OpenGL graphics driver, so the entire OS uses software-based drawing and animation, despite the potent graphics chip inside.
The other gimpage, which is somewhat inexplicable, is that Palm limits polling of accelerometer data to 4Hz, or 4 samples a second—Hunter says you need at least 20Hz for “smooth inputs” and 50-100Hz for apps like his own gMeter iPhone app, which measures stuff like velocity and acceleration. So it’s nearly useless.
Palm actually shoots itself in the foot two ways with a weak SDK. First, it limits developers who choose to make apps for the platform. Second, it pushes away devs who might be interested, like Hunter, who points out the very real opportunity Palm has to lure programmers away from the massively overcrowded App Store with the promise of a virgin ecosystem.
And we’ve still got a couple of months before Palm’s App Catalog really opens. Which, even granting Palm’s moving along quicker than Apple did after the original iPhone, they should be jumping at every possible advantage they can get to grow their ecosystem if they want to really claw their way into a mobile space that’s not just increasingly crowded, but one where Apple’s shadow seems to grow a little bit longer everyday. [Craig Hunter via Groober]
SweetFM Is How You Should Listen to Last.FM [Music]
Supposedly, kids are streaming music instead of stealing it nowadays. With apps like SweetFM’s Last.FM client, now open source and free (it used to be $30), I could almost see why.
What’s great about SweetFM is that you can control it with an Apple Remote or the Mac’s media keys, it has unlimited song skipping, you can export tracks to iTunes playlists, see the next 4 tracks coming down the pipe and pull down album art from Amazon or Last.FM. It’s actually something of an interesting argument for native apps over web apps, even for actual web services—I like its user interface way better than the running Last.FM in my browser, and I feel like I have way more power at my fingertips.
To the point about streaming vs. file sharing, services like Last.fm, Pandora and Slacker have gotten to the point that it’s easier and faster to find new music using them than poring over torrent sites. Or something like that. SweetFM is slicker, anyway. Do you guys actually download less now? [Chocomoko via TUAW]
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