On Gear Live: Samsung S95C: The OLED TV You Can’t Afford (to Ignore!)

Geometry Wars Touch

Want to pick up a great game for 99 cents that’s universal (meaning, for one price you get an iPhone version and iPad version!)? For a limited time, Geometry Wars Touch is availble for a penny shy of a buck on the App Store. If you’ve played this one on the , then you know how great Geometry Wars is. For a dollar, you can’t really go wrong here.

Read More | Geometry Wars Touch

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Twitter push notificationsIf you’ve been waiting for push notifications to become a part of Twitter for iPhone, it looks like that day is finally coming. Twitter is currently testing push notifications in anticipation of rolling it out to the masses in their next update, which should be available when iOS 4.1 gets released next week.


Netflix iPhone streaming

Well, it took them a couple months longer than expected, but as of today, the iOS Netflix app now supports the iPhone and iPod touch. When it first launched, the app was made available only for users, with the promise that it would be coming to the iPhone and iPod touch during the iOS 4 Apple event. Well, now it’s here, so hit the link for the download. While the app is free, you do need a Netflix account to view the content, naturally.

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Facebook iPhone 3.2

We all knew it was coming, but Facebook has finally released their location check-in methodology with the release of their Facebook for iPhone 3.2 app. The new ‘Places’ feature let’s you check-in Foursquare/Gowalla-style into venues that are around you. You can also track the locations of your friends as well, to see what others in your social graph are up to. One seemingly annoying feature is that Places even allows you to check other people in with you, and that is on for every account by default. Of course, you can manually turn that feature off, but shouldn’t that be the default option?

Also new in 3.2 for phones running is background uploading of photo and video content, so you can start an upload and jump out of the app to something else while things continue. All iOS version also pick up new in-app privacy management features as well.

We’ve been trying to test out all the new hotness, but just about every area we go into on the new app results in some sort of error message. We’ll keep trying.

Read More | Facebook 3.2 for iPhone

Hey, all you -owning parents out there, if you are looking for a children’s storybook that does more than just read aloud to your kids, you’ve gotta check out Bartleby’s Book of Buttons Vol. 1: The Far Away Island. What makes this different enough to warrant our excitement? Well, we’ve been playing with it since it’s been in beta, and it’s just fun for kids…and to be honest, even fun for an adult to go through once or twice. It’s a case study for how you can take books, and do them differently on the iPad, providing a fun, interactive experience for kids and parents to share together. Each chapter of the book is a puzzle that follows the story, but to get to the next chapter, you must first solve the puzzle. Each puzzle that you solve “unlocks” that chapter in the table of contents, so you can skip to any unlocked chapter from the beginning.

The puzzles aren’t hard, but for a little child it might take them a minute or two of playing with the page to figure it out, which is great to see. We’ve got a Bartleby Book of Buttons gallery that shows you a page from each chapter, to give you an idea of what we mean. But seriously, if you have a child between the ages of, say, 5-10, we don’t see how you can go wrong. Bartleby’s Book of Buttons Vol. 1 is available now on the App Store for $4.99.

Read More | Bartleby's Book of Buttons Vol. 1

OmniFocus for iPad

The good folks over at The Omni Group make what many consider to be the definitive GTD and task management app out there in . We use it with great regularity on the Mac desktop, and snapped it up immediately as soon as OmniFocus for iPhone was released. When the iPad launched, the one app that we knew we wanted was a native OmniFocus client. The Omni Group said they’d release it when it was done, opting to go feature complete rather than releasing a bare bones version and updating it incrementally with new features. Well, today OmniFocus for iPad launched, and we’ve gotta say, it’s impressive.

Like OmniFocus on iPhone, the app is location-aware, meaning that you can have it tell you what tasks on your list can be completed nearby, wherever you are. New to the app are a new streamlined task review mode, a Map feature, task forcasting, and more. Here’s the main feature list:

  • Quick Entry for fast, easy task capture
  • Task inbox where items can be stored for future processing
  • Detailed task options like start and due dates, repeating schedules, and audio note and photo attachments
  • Organize tasks into projects and folders, with as much hierarchy as is needed
  • Categorize and view tasks by contexts, or work modes (ie, “Phone” for all phone call-related to-dos)
  • Subtasks, for breaking large tasks into manageable steps
  • Built-in search for locating any task in your database
  • Cloud sync: synchronize with OmniFocus for Mac and OmniFocus for iPhone
  • Location-based contexts: the Map makes it easy to generate and view tasks based on current or assigned locations
  • Forecasts: see a weekly or daily view of all due tasks
  • Built-in reviewing that helps you stay current on all your projects

The app sells for $39.99, so it definitely isn’t an impulse buy. However, if you are looking for an app that will keep you on top of everything in your work and home life, and sync between iPad, iPhone, and Mac desktop, we can’t recommend OmniFocus enough. It’s available now in the App Store.

Read More | OmniFocus for iPad

mobiscope

Ever feel the prying urge to know what’s going on inside your home when you leave your teenage son all alone for the weekend? Or just to check up on that sketchy baby sitter that you suspect is engaged in the larceny of your video game collection? How about just to watch public accessible surveillance cameras around the world for your own kicks? Whatever your fancy, Mobiscope wants to give it you. In real time. On your smartphone.

While the home surveillance technology is not new by any means, Mobiscope gives wannabe spies on a budget a great way to start. All that you need to begin your snoop-tastic adventure is a simple web camera, and the Mobiscope app installed on your smartphone.

If one camera isn’t enough, you can access up to four well placed camera feeds at one time! The mobile app allows you to check up in real time what is going on in your home, or someone else’s (hey, no judgement here!). Spying can be hard, and Mobiscope knows this. That’s why the app lends you the ability to send an alert to your smart device when motion is detected so you don’t miss a beat! What’s more, the video feed can be recorded and viewed in real time with sound on the desktop edition, and on BlackBerry.

This app will run iPhone users just $9.99, while Windows, Palm, Android, and BlackBerry users will have to fork over $19.95. If spying is the name of your game, then you will definitely want to equip yourself with this little stealthy on-the-go gem.

Read More | Mobiscope App

Ratio cooking for iPhone and iPod touch

We’ve been playing with the Ratio app for a bit, and we must say, we’re impressed. If you are into cooking, or if you want to get into cooking, this is one of those apps that comes out and sets you free from recipes and having to follow them perfectly. The app is $5, and here’s what you can expect from it:

  • The 32 critical ratios that form the backbone of the culinary arts, with instructions: doughs, batters, meat preparations, custards, sauces (pasta dough and pizza dough, sponge cake and pancakes, fritters and crepes, stocks and sauces, crème caramel and chocolate sauce.
  • A calculator that figures out how much of each ingredient you need, no matter how many or how few people you want to serve.
  • An ounces-to-grams converter (ratios work no matter what unit you choose to use!).
  • Delicious variations for recipes on all the ratios, ideas for the creation of new dishes according to your tastes.
  • An easy way to store your own recipes and notes that you’ve created from the basic ratios.
  • Quick fun ways to share what your cooking with your fellow cooks, on Facebook and on Twitter.
  • Ratios is also a great way to understand and tweak your own recipes, to help you make your pancakes even fluffier, your pizza dough crisper, your crème brulee richer.

Definitely nice to have in the palm of your hand, and the app is already optimized for .

Read More | Ratio

Calcbot

If you are looking for a simple, stylish, and highly functional calculator app for the iPhone and , we think you should check out Calcbot. You have an interface that is very appealing and fluid, and you can swipe to pull up a register of your work, and can even pull results from the register into equations. The best part, though, is that Calcbot is a universal app (which means you buy it once, and you get both the iPhone and the iPad version) that costs just $0.99. Seriously, a buck for a great iPhone and great iPad app? Don’t mind if we do.

Read More | Calcbot

Fring Video Chat

Hey, don’t look now, but if you’ve been wanting to use your front camera to do video calling outside of FaceTime (and on 3G,) the newly updated Fring app is where you’ll wanna look. They updated so that you can do a video chat with any Skype user or anyone else running Fring, and you can do it over Wi-Fi or 3G. Now the cool thing here is that you can do video chats with people who are sitting at their computers connected to Skype, this isn’t just iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 like FaceTime currently is. The call quality will vary depending on your connection, but still, its another video calling option, and the app is free. You can download Fring now from the App Store.

Oh, and please don’t drive while video calling. That can lead to all sorts of trouble.


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