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Nike's dalliances with technology should be familiar to our readers by now, with the crowning jewel of course being the Nike+ run-tracking software that pairs a shoe-mounted sensor with your iPhone or iPod. Well, it was. The gargantuan sportswear company is moving with the times and throwing the hardware away with the introduction of its all-new Nike+ GPS application. No longer restricting our running shoe choice is groovy, but the app itself has the even loftier aim of simultaneously acting as your fitness guru, motivator and record keeper. And all it asks in return is access to the accelerometer and GPS modules in your iOS 4-equipped iPhone or iPod touch. So, let's see how this baby runs, shall we?

Continue reading App review: Nike+ GPS

App review: Nike+ GPS originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I admit it. I've always thought that the Nike+ shoe sensor thing was kind of lame. Even though I actually do own the right shoes, I never thought it worth while to pick up the optional pedometer sensor just so I could take advantage of the built-in iPhone feature.

I know that there are people out there who really loved using the Nike+ features on their iPhone but I've much preferred using other tracking apps and skipping the shoe tie-in.

Now, several years after GPS debuted on the iPhone 3G, Nike has finally made the move to shoe-less positioning. For $1.99, you can pick up a copy of Nike+ GPS. The reviews on the iTunes site have been generally positive, but it's clear that this is a slick yet limited application.

Continue reading Run app updates: News on the Nike+, Runkeeper, and Runmeter fronts

Run app updates: News on the Nike+, Runkeeper, and Runmeter fronts originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Run app updates: News on the Nike+, Runkeeper, and Runmeter fronts originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Business Insider has compiled a list of the 10 best free iPhone apps for business and the 20 best iPad apps for business travelers. The lists are pretty comprehensive, and just because you don't fly around from one meeting to the next doesn't mean you need not check them out.

From Todo and Evernote for the iPad (which has been extensively covered here on TUAW) to Yelp and Bump for the iPhone, there are some real gems to help you stay ahead of the game.

If you've got a shiny new iPad or iPhone, but you're struggling to sift the good from the bad on the App Store, this is a great place to start.

Business Insider even points out that, if you put the apps to good use, maybe you can claim the paid ones back on expenses. That's good thinking!

Best apps for road warriors and business users originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Best apps for road warriors and business users originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether you fancy yourself the second coming of Pavarotti or just the best vocalist in your own shower, the truth isn't always pleasant to the ear: not everyone can sing. Everyone, however, can learn to sing better -- and that's the point of Voice Tutor, a sharp app from the experienced vocal coaches at IMPACK and Kimad Productions. For US$4.99, it lets your iPhone or iPod touch provide a full menu of workouts, fixes, and expert tools for polishing your voice and fixing the issues that may hamper your rock and roll nights.

There's one important point about this app that may not be immediately obvious, and it's the source of some sour notes in the App Store reviews: it does not record your singing performances or do any direct analysis. This misperception isn't helped by the microphone-themed graphics in the app, unfortunately.

The initial diagnostic pass on your personal vocal issues is done by manually comparing your sung scales by ear to four sample recordings from the app; it may help to have a trusted friend or straight-faced spouse listen to you and the samples to give an objective assessment. You self-assign a category of practice to your specific situation; whether you sing with tension, breathiness, cracking, or with a connected and smooth tone, there's a full set of exercises for you. A screencast of the app in action is watchable here.

I consider myself a reasonably solid amateur singer, with musical improv training and performance experience (not to mention plenty of karaoke), so I was pleased to come up as "connected" on the diagnostic pass in Voice Tutor -- I had my children help classify me. The training philosophy of the app centers around mastering the "break," the transition between chest voice and head voice that tends to divide vocalists into the traditional SATB parts. In Voice Tutor's world, you work toward a "connected" voice to maintain a smooth and relaxed vocal style regardless of whether you're singing from your chest or head voice.

Each vocal challenge area includes special workouts to help address the problems or issues you may have when singing, with almost 200 individual program segments in the Vocal Focus part of the tool. Once you graduate from your training session, you can head into the Give Me a Workout section anytime you need to warm up or "clear the pipes" before an audition or performance. The app's final section, Riff n' Run, is designed to give more experienced vocalists the tools they need to handle more complex phrasing and develop an individual style fingerprint.

Even in a relatively brief pass with Voice Tutor, I can already feel the exercises and instructional content gently nudging my voice in a better direction; the workouts made me stretch without straining, and I noticed some rough spots starting to come around. It's not pretending to be a substitute for a qualified vocal coach and a tireless accompanist, but consider how much musical instruction is squeezed into the app and how often you might need a warm-up or workout on the go -- at five bucks, you can have it for a song.

Voice Tutor puts vocal exercises in your pocket originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Voice Tutor puts vocal exercises in your pocket originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our eyes were drawn to an FCC filing this morning from a California start-up by the name of Zelfy; a quick glance at Zelfy's site reveals that they're in "stealth mode," but the picture of a woman using an iPhone to control her TV should give you an idea of what these guys are up to. Indeed, digging through the filing shows a product called "Peel" whose central component, the "Peel Fruit," is a small, battery-powered sphere of an IR blaster that connects to your home network router. Next, you download the Peel app onto the iPhone (or iPod touch) of your choice and control the Fruit over WiFi. The filing reveals little in the way of UI or functionality, but the product's tagline is "every remote and TV guide now on your phone," so we would assume that you'll have access to your cable provider's lineup and schedule from the app. More on this one just as soon as Zelfy decides to emerge from stealth mode, we suppose.

Zelfy Peel might be the iPhone remote you've been looking for originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Neal Stephenson's Mongoliad project has launched -- you can go browse the website right now and read through the offerings available. As Cory Doctorow posts, the project is a series of episodic stories and materials portraying a universe put together by Stephenson and a few other author friends. The idea seems to be that you pay a subscription fee ($5.99 for six months, or $9.99 for a year), and then get access to whatever fiction content is being posted at that time, as well as a giant online Wikipedia-style database of the universe's background. There's not much about the story itself, but Doctorow calls it "epic, a swashbuckling swordplay novel with the sweep, charm and verve of the major Stephenson epics, such as System of the World." That right there sounds interesting enough to pay six bucks and see what's going on.

Unless, that is, you want to actually wait for it on the iPhone. Originally, this was announced as a project that would make its way to mobile devices (like the iPhone), but it looks like we'll have to wait for that. The main page of the project says that they'll "soon be taking subscriptions for app delivery to some of the most popular mobile devices," so I'll probably wait on paying any money until that service comes up -- don't want to pay twice. But we'll keep an eye out for it and let you know when it's available.

Mongoliad project has launched, apps still coming soon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Mongoliad project has launched, apps still coming soon originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are a lot of weird texting applications for the iPhone, and some of them are pretty hinky in terms of design or function. But Texto is probably the best looking SMS app I've seen -- it doesn't do any weird non-SMS text messaging or have all kinds of neon graphics running around. All it does is hook up with your iPhone's standard texting service to let you get quick shortcuts to your most commonly used people and messages. Thanks to LA traffic, I'm often running just a little late for meetings, and with Texto, I can just tap a few buttons to send an "I'll be there soon" to my friends and colleagues rather than trying to type the whole thing out as I frantically drive across town.

The app's only 99 cents, but I'll admit it's not for everybody. If you don't text a whole lot already, you probably don't need a whole other app to handle your most frequently-sent messages. And obviously, sending a pre-written message is a little impersonal. Your significant other might realize you're blowing them off the fifth time you send a "Sorry, I'm busy, call you soon," message to them. There's one other caveat: you can only use this one in iOS 4.0, due to the way it interacts with the SMS app.

For the right user, Texto can be really helpful, and it's got the bonus of having a great and simple interface that's free of ads and clutter.

TUAW's Daily App: Texto SMS Favorites originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

TUAW's Daily App: Texto SMS Favorites originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Sep 2010 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The careful readers at Engadget have noticed that Apple cut a few corners (so to speak) on its website documentation for the latest iPod touch. There's no ear speaker or phone service on the device, obviously, but nevertheless Apple's iPod touch display units show that the Phone app is still sitting down there in the lower left corner. Searching in Spotlight, according to another screenshot, will bring up the text messaging app, and there's one more little mistake (look in the Travel folder to see if you can spot it).

Apple has since updated the images on its website, but it's good to know that not even Apple's copywriters get their hands on the devices before we do. They apparently have to Photoshop it all together, and then preorder and wait for their devices just like us common folk.

Apple photoshops iPhone into iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Apple photoshops iPhone into iPod touch originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I just went through the case program for my brand new iPhone 4, but I'm still poking around to see if there's one worth buying that I might also pick up in addition to the free one. Like, for example, this awesome audio cassette case from a company called Fred and Friends. It looks like an old plastic audiocassette, but it's actually made of silicone, and it even comes with a little tape box (oh man, I had so many of those back in the day) that flips around into a video stand.

Very, very cool. It's not available yet, but the case is supposed to ship in October for US$20. Yes, if you have an iPhone 4, you've already got a free case from Apple, but man, something this cool might just be worth the extra money anyway.

[via Unpluggd]

iPhone 4 case turns your iPhone into an audio tape originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

iPhone 4 case turns your iPhone into an audio tape originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At long last, we have (unofficial) launch dates for the iPhone 4 in Korea and Taiwan.

In Korea, pre-orders began last month despite the lack of an official launch date. According to MacNN, distributor KT Corporation has announced that the iPhone 4 will hit store shelves on September 10th. KT's official site is a bit confusing, though; a news post says "October" in the headline and simply "September" in the body of the post. But that could be a translation error.

Meanwhile, Taiwan channels are reporting that the iPhone 4 will go on sale in that country on September 15th. Demand has been huge in Taiwan, where eager customers have reportedly placed 150,000 pre-orders since August.

We'll let you know when we hear anything official. If you're in Korea or Taiwan and find any compelling news on the subject, please let us know. Above is a TV ad that ran prior to the iPhone 3G's release in Korea.

Unofficial iPhone launch dates for Korea, Taiwan originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Unofficial iPhone launch dates for Korea, Taiwan originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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