mSpot Streaming Service

 

 

For those that have a iPhone or iPod Touch with a MiFi or Overdrive,  youo will be able to stream movies directly to your mobile device. As long as you have 3G or Wi-Fi coverage. mSpot has been around for about a year, but you had to do it in your browser and wasn’t available on many handsets. The price of the videos range from $1.99 to $4.99 depending on the movie. Some of the older movies are even listed as free which nice if you find a old movie to watch while waiting for a flight. Of course the library of movies is no where near Netflix’s movies but at least now if you find a movie you want to watch you can stream it. The quality is not to bad over 3G and you can pause the movie if you want to and come back to it later. You can even start watching a movie on your PC and continue it on your iPhone later if you want or vice versa. This is pretty nice feature . Looks like a promising app for now, until Netflix is available for the iPhone. The Netflix app works great on the iPad.

Vaja Case for ZuneHD

 

My wife surprised me with the Vaja case for my Zune HD. I was not expecting the case at all, or any case for that matter.  I was totally shocked to see how nice and well built the case is. It fits like a glove.

You can see how nice the fit is here with the edges align nice and straight.

You slide the Zune HD from the bottom as you see here in the above picture. It doesn’t add any bulk to the Zune HD at all. This makes it even a better case.

  Just the side view of the Zune HD in the Vaja case.

Also the stitching on the Vaja case is well done. Every looks very well done. This is the back of the case. Overall I really like the case Vaja makes. This should protect my Zune HD from getting scratched up in my pocket, and add some class to my Zune HD as well.

Penultimate for the iPad update…

 

I have been using the Penultimate app on my iPad for quite awhile. I like how well it inks, but had to make sure that I didn’t put or lean with my palm on the screen or I would get a lot of vectoring or scribbles. Well now Penultimate has updated to 1.1 and have added a feature called “Wrist Protection” and what that does is that you are able to rest your palm on the screen to ink. This is not 100% but it is working great for my needs and taking notes. This just makes this app, much better to use for me. Hopefully in the next update they can really perfect the Wrist Protection and this will be a great app for inkers. This might feel like if the iPad had a active digitizer. Now if they can also add where you can import pictures into the notebook to mark up or even PDF’s, this will be one great app. So for now I will continue to use Penultimate to write down notes. After I take notes, I email them back to myself so that I can have them to attach to either a ToDo or appointment in Outlook.

Could this be the new iPod Touch with 2MP Camera

 

Tinhte from Vietnam have posted some pictures and a video showing what looks like the iPod Touch. It does show “DVT-1” which means this is a testing type unit. It also could mean that the new iPod Touch will be very close to this iPod Touch, or maybe this could be what the Touch will be when released. From the picture it looks to be a 65GB iPod Touch, with a pair of 32GB Samsung Flash modules.

Here you can see the current iPod Touch with no camera and the leaked picture of the iPod Touch with Camera. They look pretty close and if you remember back when the 3G iPod Touch was released, some posted pictures of the iPod Touch opened up, showing that there is room for a camera in the same place this one is showing. Also watching the video it does show something about a microphone, so hopefully it does have one built in. This will make a nice Skype phone using a MiFi or other to tether. From the past Apple tends to release iPods in September, but maybe this will be announced June 7. Lately there has been a lot of leaks from Apple products including the iPhone 4G, and the Video of the new MacBook that was released from Apple.

New Patriot Inferno…SSD

 

 

Patriot memory is updating the Inferno line of SSD memory with capacities of 100GB and 200GB. They will come at a premium price, with starting price of $369 for the 100GB and $679 for the 200GB. They will be using the SandForce SF-1222 controller in order to reach an impressive data transfer speed of 285/275 Mbytes per second at max speeds. Not bad speeds if I say so myself. They will be available in the 2.5” format which will work for most laptops and Netbooks. The drives also use a Multi-level Cell Technology (MLC). SSD has been out for quite some time now but the higher end models still are pretty pricey. Hopefully prices for these high end SSD start to come down in price to what hard drives use to cost. In the meantime I will be using my WD 500GB hard drive in my Macbook and my MSI Wind.

ABC App Now Plays with 3G iPad's

With the recent release of the 3G iPad, many users are saying that watching video streaming with apps on the 3G iPad is pretty choppy or not clear enough. ABC app would not load and said that you must be connected to Wi-Fi to use the app. Well ABC released a update to the app and now supports the use of the 3G streaming to play. The update now supports for watching videos in either portrait or landscape mode. The video quality is good over 3G and not much difference compared to when watching with Wi-Fi. So they were able to keep the quality good, while reducing the bandwidth streaming when on 3G. The ABC app is one of the top downloaded apps at the iTunes Store, and it is nice to be able to watch some shows while traveling or around town when you have some free time to catch up on the shows that are availble. The latest ABC app is free at the iTunes Store.

iPad GPS and Archos 5 GPS...

I happen to be out and about today and brought along both the iPad and the Archos 5. I had upgraded my Archos 5 to the new firmware today so, good time to test it on the road and see how much more stable it was compare to the older firmware. So far it has made a big difference with this new firmware. It is much more stable and is working very nicely so far. Since I had both with me I thought that I about the GPS. I know that the iPad doesn't really have a hardware GPS and the A5 does. So I thought I would test both with Google maps. I reall thought that the A5 would be more accurate, since it does have a hardware GPS. Maybe the firmware has something to do with this, but I was really surprized that the iPad was so much closer in locating me.






As you can see the iPad and the Archos 5 location. I will still give the Archos 5 some more testing maybe just one of those things that didn't work correctly today. I plan on giving a test Monday on the way to work or maybe this weekend.

HP Buys Palm

HP announced that it's acquiring Palm for the small price of $1.2 billion, which works out to $5.70 per share of Palm common stock. The deal is planned to close by July 31. Current Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein is "expected to remain with the company," though no mention of what duty's he would be doing at Palm. This can be intersting, now that HP has purchased Palm. This could be a sign for the new HP Compaq Airlife 100 to run Palm WebOS kit in it. This would give the Airlife 100 a good consumer product, and will be able to compete with Android, iPhone OS, and other mobile OS. Got to keep a eye on this and who knows there might already porting the Palm WebOS on the Airlife 100.

Shutter Snitch for the iPad

There is a app called Shutter Snitch that shows coming soon to the iTunes store. This will let you transfer pictures from a Eye-Fi SD card to your iPad. This is great if you like to bring your iPad along to a picture shooting. You basically have the iPad setup in a section, and let your customers view the pictures right away. Also would be nice for those times you take pictures on vacation and just don't want to bring your cable or the iPad picture kit, you can just buy the Eye-Fi SD card and the app. You will receive warnings when shutter speed, aperture, and other doesn't fit your predefined rules. With the great screen on the iPad it will be a joy to see the pictures. Link to ShutterSnitch for the iPad.

Jorno Bluetooth Keyboard Coming Soon...

 

I ran into this website that shows that it will be releasing a portable keyboard that looks like the Think Outside BT keyboard in late Spring 2010. Also the StoweAway BT keyboard is no longer made so now many iPad users are out looking for a portable solution and this might just be the ticket. I still have my Think Outside BT keyboard that I have been using for several years. Here is the link to the Jorno.

“Coming Late Spring 2010
A modern, fold-up, Bluetooth keyboard for your Android,
Windows Mobile, or HID-profile-compatible device”

Pocket size. Folds up to the size of a deck of cards*
Laptop power. Turns your mobile device into a pocketsized laptop
Full size keys. For long-form typing, word processing, blogging,
emails, note taking
Bluetooth connectivity. So you can place the keyboard anywhere
you like. Also functions with your desktop or tablet computer
Cradle. To hold your phone in either portrait or landscape
Rigid when unfolded. So you can place the keyboard in your lap.