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Filed under: Macworld, Video, Podcasting

Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends!

Today on TUAW TV Live we’ll be talking about Macworld Expo 2010, the OWLE bubo, camera apps for the iPhone, and any other topics that happen to hit host Steve Sande’s fancy.

Some of the camera apps that we’ll be discussing include Lo-Mob, ColorSplash, CinemaFX, FocalLab, and Project365. All of these apps are in your friendly neighborhood App Store and should only make a slight dent in your wallet.

The video and chat tools are on the next page — just click the Read More link below to get in on the fun.

TUAWTUAW TV Live: Macworld 2010 post-Expo show, OWLE bubo, and more originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 17 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store

If the iPhone has a leading app genre, aside from gaming, I’d say the current surge of “check-in” apps is probably it. Sure, back when the App Store first opened up, Twitter apps were everywhere (and they’re still being made daily, it seems), but in terms of a genre that can only exist on a location-aware device like the iPhone, “check-in” apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, and so on, are making their mark right now. Here’s news on two such apps continuing to grow on the App Store skyline.

First up, Loopt [iTunes link] has announced a partnership with a company called Mobile Spinach to start trying to monetize this kind of app usage. Mobile Spinach delivers local ads, and Loopt says that it’ll be using their location-based social networking service to bring specials and deals to users from wherever they check-in from. Note that while Apple doesn’t necessarily want location-based advertising as the sole purpose of an app, it seems to be all right with location-based advertising as an extra feature like this. Loopt tells us at TUAW that it’s a great deal for the company, as it is “an easier and cost-effective way to do online/mobile advertising,” and that it means “Loopt users can get great free offers on everyday things they want in need just by walking around in the neighborhood.” It’ll be interesting to see just how useful this extra advertising can be.

After the link below, read about how MyTown finally got the success they’d been hoping for.

Elsewhere in check-in app news, PocketGamer has an interesting interview with Keith Lee of Booyah about their extremely popular MyTown check-in app. It’s been fascinating to follow these guys — they’re former Blizzard devs, and their first app called Booyah Society, had some good ideas but failed to impress. So they went back to the drawing board, and MyTown [iTunes link] (which I’ve been playing with lately) has definitely made a few steps forward. As Lee points out, they looked at how they could better validate what people were doing, and they also upped the “gaming” side of it — you can earn points and money and even buy the properties you check in from to create your own kind of social networking city. And then when other people check in from the properties that you “buy,” you earn “rent.”

Lee says they really pushed on iteration and what felt fun for the team — he says that they had a few different expectations for Booyah Society, but that the relative failure of that app helped them learn a lot about which directions to go with on MyTown. Lee also talks about monetization — the app currently has a partnership with Citysearch (so you can easily access news and information about the places you check-in from), but they’re just running in-app ads, not necessarily anything tied to location yet. The app also has some in-app purchases — Lee says that they wanted to design for both the occasionally “check-in” user as well as the social “spammer,” so there are a few ways that the game balances those two types of players out so everyone levels at a fair rate.

Very interesting stuff. With their pedigree, it’s not surprising that Booyah eventually hit gold with MyTown, but the way they did it is really fascinating. I think we’re only scratching the surface of these check-in apps, whether you like them or not. As they get more competitive and more popular, we’ll really start to see some major innovation happening.

TUAWLoopt teams with Mobile Spinach for check-in discounts, Booyah talks about MyTown originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 08 Feb 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, iPhone, iPod touch

Since the announcement that the iPad comes with a 1 GHz A4 chip developed and owned by Apple (thanks, no doubt, to their acquisition of chipmaker PA Semi), one thing’s been on a lot of people’s minds: when will this chip make it to the iPhone?

The iPhone 3GS runs on an 833 MHz Samsung chip, that, presumably to increase battery life, is underclocked to 600 MHz. While this is better than the original iPhone and iPhone 3G’s 620 MHz CPU (underclocked to about 412 Mhz), there’s still plenty of room for improvement. Analysts fully expect that improvement will come either from the A4 chip itself or a lower-powered variant of it designed for the iPhone’s smaller screen and battery.

Early impressions of the iPad’s speed from people who have actually handled one are that the device is far faster than any iPhone or iPod touch released so far, with applications opening “instantly,” and provides far smoother graphics performance. With Apple now designing and implementing its own “system on a chip” CPU for the iPad, it seems very likely this will be one of many iPad features that will trickle down to Apple’s smaller mobile devices. Once the iPad actually finds its way to consumers (and teardown sites), we’ll have a much better idea of what Apple’s A4 chip is capable of. As for the next-gen iPhone’s CPU, I’m placing my bets on an A4 variant rather than the full iPad CPU, with an operational speed in the neighborhood of 800 – 850 MHz — more than twice the speed of the iPhone 3G.

TUAWiPad CPU may find its way into next-gen iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 29 Jan 2010 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The opening of Twitter’s API transformed the service from an interesting web site into the communications plumbing that serves homepages, newsrooms, and smartphones all over the world.

With the release of its own API, Foursquare is banking that it can do the same. Developers are now able to tap into the location-based service’s rich data supply and build their own applications.

Location-based apps are hot right now. More developers building on Foursquare’s platform only fortifies it in the location-based battle with Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and others.

Several Foursquare apps that were announced alongside the API release are now officially available for use. Here’s a look at the first wave.

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1. Foursquare for Palm Pre/Pixi

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A couple of developers (with some help from Palm) whipped up a WebOS version of Foursquare just in time for the new year. Hopefully the Foursquare team can now return to developing features for the service and let eager programmers build apps themselves. If you’re on a Pre or Pixi, you can get Foursquare here.

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2. Foursquare for Android

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This one has a similar story to the above, only Android-style. Built by Joe LaPenna, Chris Brummel, Brad Root, Darrel Herbst & Micah Craig, it’s not only slick and lightweight, but it’s also open-source. If you’re reading this on your Android phone, you can grab the app right here. If not, you can grab it from the Market or get the source code here.

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3. SocialGreat

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While not an app you download, SocialGreat grabs checkin data from Foursquare, couples it with Twitter & BrightKite geodata, and shows you what places in your neighborhood are hot spots. It’s cool and well-designed, but right now all it shows is that the most popular spots are, unsurprisingly, airports and train terminals –- places where people congregate, but not necessarily for social reasons. However, it’s certain to start filtering out stuff like that, and whereas Foursquare’s app itself now has trending places nearby, SocialGreat could be a good way to find out about that last-minute party or tech meetup.

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4. MobZombies

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Mobzombies: The First Wave from wcrtr on Vimeo.

If you’re into mindless gaming (literally), you’ll love MobZombies for the iPhone. Basically it turns real human checkin activity on Foursquare into zombie hordes you have to avoid or defeat by either using your touchscreen, or, as the app puts it, “moving your body as a joystick” to trigger your phone’s movement controls. It costs $2.99 in the app store, and will probably encourage you to exercise more than any other app in your collection, assuming you like cartoon gore and 1980s video game graphics.

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5. Yipit

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Why not find out about specials at your favorite places? This handy application imports your usual haunts from Foursquare and then keeps tabs on deals at those venues for you. Unfortunately it’s only available in New York right now, but it definitely works — after I signed up, it told me about a great deal at the sushi bar below my apartment. Guess where I’m going tonight.

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6. Foursquare WordPress Widget

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Right now it’s pretty simple, but nothing’s stopping you from customizing the look and feel on your own blog. Check out the plugin homepage here and start publishing a feed of your checkins on your blog.

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7. ul.timate.info Firefox Add-on

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While only useful if you’re on the move with your computer or on someone else’s desktop, this add-on lets you check in and enjoy all the features of Foursquare without needing a smartphone.

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8. Last Night’s Checkins

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This is an interesting idea. Basically, this app helps you keep a Foursquare diary. Every day it e-mails you a list of your previous night’s checkins, and then you fill in information about each experience. Perfect for those of you with fascinating exploits that you feel you must share with the rest of us (or for those of you that have trouble remembering what you did last night).

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9. BlackBook

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For anyone that already reads BlackBook Magazine’s nightlife guides, this app will sync your BlackBook and Foursquare accounts in perfect harmony, delivering you deals and juicy information based on your location.

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10. Where Do You Go

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Built by NYU students, Where Do You Go generates a snazzy heat map of your Foursquare activity around your city. Try it yourself.

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BONUS: Peek Maps

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For all six of you who own a Twitter Peek, Peek Maps can show off your Foursquare activity alongside your tweet locations in an embeddable widget.

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Coming Soon

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Layar Reality Browser: This one is actually in a work-in-progress beta right now, and you can open it on your mobile phone here. It adds a Foursquare layer to the augmented reality browser functionality in the existing Layar app. Basically, you point your camera at a building, and it tells you who’s there, who’s the mayor, and what tips were left behind. Keep an eye out for the official release –- this one should be pretty cool.

FourTap allows you to check into Foursquare using a London subway Oystercard. It’s not done yet, but when it is, it could make Foursquare significantly easier to use. Check out the video.

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More Foursquare resources from Mashable:

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- 6 Foursquare Apps We’d Love to See
– 6 Tips for Getting the Most out of Foursquare
– Foursquare vs. Gowalla: Location-Based Throwdown
– The Twitter of 2010: Foursquare as Next Year’s Breakout Hit
– Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010

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Reviews: Android, Brightkite, Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter, Vimeo

Tags: android, Firefox, foursquare, foursquare api, foursquare apps, iphone, List, Lists, Mobile 2.0, palm, trending, twitter

Netflix teamed up with The New York Times to produce this interactive map of the most popular movies in 12 major U.S. cities.

The map ranks the most rented movie and TV rentals for each zip code, so you can see whether the folks in your neighborhood have the same tastes as you do.

You can also see a color-coded overlay of every city for each of Netflix’s top 100 most-rented films in 2009. Do you want to know which New York borough appreciated Slumdog Millionaire the most? Looks like it’s bigger in Brooklyn than in lower Manhattan. The sharp divisions for some items — like the austere and thoughtful TV series Mad Men — are very telling, but Brad Pitt’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is red hot just about everywhere.

You can make some interesting anecdotal deductions using the map. For example, noted film critic Roger Ebert tweeted that you could make educated guesses about a community’s opinion on homosexuality based on where Milk ranks. Hardly scientific, but it’s interesting to think about. You can probably find a correlation between number of teen girls in a neighborhood and how popular Twilight is, though you’ll unfortunately need a different map tell you who’s Team Edward and who’s Team Jacob.

Tags: blu-ray, dvd, Film, Map, Movies, netflix

Fostering a sense of local community in the age of the Internet and globalization is no easy task.

A new venture called BlockChalk from the former product lead of del.ici.ous Stephen Hood and Dave Baggeroer of Stanford’s Institute of Design, is trying to tackle that problem. BlockChalk is a service that lets people use their phones to text messages for others in the neighborhood without compromising their privacy. You can leave opinions about local businesses, set up deals with other neighbors or even report a lost cat. Hood says it’s already in 10,000 neighborhoods and 6,600 cities.

Today they’ve launched an iPhone app so you can keep track of short notes or the latest “chalks” in your neighborhood. The company already has a HTML5 web app that works with the iPhone and Android-based phones and an app for the Palm Pre and Pixi.

The criticism that the pair have for existing location-based services is that they work for early adopters who have lower expectations of privacy, but they may not be so readily accepted by more guarded users. Anonymity, of course, raises other issues. How do you seed a social networking service without real or tangible relationships built-in? How can people be engaged if there’s no context for the others they’re interacting with? That said, there are anonymous community sites that have thrived, like Craigslist.

We’ve seen other attempts at building information services for local communities. EveryBlock, which was acquired by MSNBC, just launched a ‘Notify Your Neighbors’ function yesterday to let regular people share updates about what’s happening on their block. ‘Neighborhoods’ was another early Facebook application launched in 2007 that had an intriguing concept because it was tied to real identities and places through the social network. But it only has a little over 8,000 monthly active users. Then, of course, there’s the grand-daddy of them all, Craigslist, which does have a mobile web site.

The pair say they’re looking for seed funding for the project.

Filed under: Tips and tricks, Odds and ends, Security

I better be careful next time I walk out of my Apple Store here in Santa Monica — apparently burglars are targeting Apple Store customers here in the Los Angeles area. Over 100 customers have apparently been targeted after leaving the store and keeping a computer or other purchase in their car. The thieves wait for customers to walk away from Apple Store bags in their car, either at home or at another store, and then they break in and take them. For some reason, no computers have yet been returned, either, which makes cops think that they’re possibly being “shipped out of the country or fenced right away.” But of course that would require an organized ring, and police aren’t even sure these are all related yet.

How to prevent this from happening to you? Don’t leave an expensive computer unattended in your car (duh), or just make the Apple Store the last stop on your list. I’ve made a few pricey purchases while driving around out here (most recently, I picked up a PS3), and no matter what the neighborhood, I didn’t feel safe about leaving it unattended. Even when I’m just carrying my iPod around, I always lock it out of sight in the glovebox before parking the car. As with all of these types of situations, a little bit of care goes a long way.

TUAWBurglars going after LA Apple Store customers originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Netbook sales have been on a solid upward tick for about as long as the product category has existed, so it shouldn’t come as much surprise that research firm DisplaySearch is now forecasting that shipments will exceed a hefty 33.3 million units by year’s end, which translates to a full 103% jump in growth over the previous year. What is somewhat surprising, however, is that the firm is also predicting that growth will slow considerably in 2010 (down to “just” 20%) as more and more laptops with ultra-low voltage processors dip under the $500 mark. Of course, 20% growth still means that netbook shipments should be in the neighborhood of 40 million for 2010, and DisplaySearch even estimates that growth will hold steady at about 20% for 2011, so we wouldn’t be so quick to put them on deathwatch just yet.

DisplaySearch says netbook sales will slow as ULV laptops get cheaper originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 29 Dec 2009 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The suddenly-booming e-book market means things are starting to heat up for Taiwan-based Prime View International — the company has formally completed its acquisition of E Ink and plans to increase display production up to fourfold next year, and it’s licensing daylight-viewable LCD tech to LG for somewhere in the neighborhood of $30m. Whether that means we’ll be seeing new devices based on E Ink and next-gen LCD screens or just more sales of existing devices remains to be seen, but we’re obviously hoping for new gear — good thing CES is right around the corner.

Prime View International set to expand E Ink production; LG licenses daylight-viewable LCD tech originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 28 Dec 2009 13:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The cells of the human body contain a variety of molecular motors, which perform functions like twirling the cilia in our airways, moving proteins and vesicles around, and driving muscle contractions. A protein called myosin is one of the more common motors, with humans having a number of myosin genes. A study that will appear this week in PNAS suggests that it’s also possible to tweak the myosin produced from one of these genes in a way that gives it different properties.

The gene in question is Myo-1b, and the tweaking occurs by a process called splicing. After the DNA for the gene is transcribed into RNA, the transcript undergoes an editing process called splicing to produce a mature, protein-coding messenger RNA. The splicing process is flexible—a transcript can undergo alternate splicing, which links different parts of the transcript to create variant forms of the protein. That’s the case with Myo-1b, which has at least three different splice forms that encode proteins of slightly different lengths.

The researchers looked at the behavior of these different motors and found that they’re very sensitive to the amount of force required to pull its cargo along. The alternate forms of the protein can sense differences in force in the neighborhood of a single picoNewton, and this influences how long they’ll continue to pull their cargo. It’s a nice demonstration of how, even using a single gene, cells are able to fine-tune their collection of proteins to meet their needs. Using optical tweezers to register the piconewtons of force that these motors generate is also pretty technologically impressive.

What is a “Brief” post?”