Sure, Google Voice and Slingbox on iPhone might give carriers the willies, but at midnight tonight (ET) you can tune into a live feed of British techno duo Underworld’s concert in Oakland, California. Being touted as the first-ever live event streamed to the iPhone — and if not, it’s certainly the highest profile — the feed utilizes iPhone OS 3.0’s HTTP streaming capabilities and plays via Quicktime. Simply point your iPhone’s browser to either one of the two streams linked below to join in on the fun tonight. Assuming your local carrier’s service (hello there, AT&T) doesn’t cave in under the strain, that is.

[Via PC World and NewTeeVee]

Read – Akamai stream
Read – Underworld live

Filed under: Cellphones

UK group Underworld streaming footage of tonight’s concert live to iPhone originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Aug 2009 19:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Take this rumor with a fairly large grain of salt and please hold your “bag of hurt” comments until the end. Boy Genius claims he’s got it on word from a “pretty reliable source” that the next big iTunes revision will include better organization options for your iPhone / iPod touch apps, something vague concerning integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm, and… Blu-ray support. To be fair, the HD disc format wars are all but over at this point, and the most recent Final Cut Pro actually lets you burn video directly to a third-party BD drive, only to have to play the discs on another, non-Mac device. This is all pretty sketch at the moment, and we doubt the boys in Cupertino will be showing their hands until just after the eleventh hour — let’s not forget, also, that iTunes is also available for Windows which does have other third-party Blu-ray playback software. In possibly related whispers, AppleInsider has offered some none-too-descriptive hints at possible iMac refresh with some improvements catering to the “semi-professional audio / video crowd.” Between this and talk about a tablet, we can’t wait for the next Apple press conference, if only to subside all the rumors for a few months.

Update: Our resident HD expert Ben Drawbaugh has chimed in on the matter, hypothesizing that this might be referring to support for Managed Copy, a digitized (and DRM restricted) copy of the film that you would save onto your local hard drive. But in that scenario, it still doesn’t behoove Apple to add that to iTunes unless it was looking to put Blu-ray drives on its own machines, which makes this (still very faint) rumor all the more interesting.

Read – Apple iTunes 9 details, Blu-ray, app organization
Read – Apple’s next iMacs rumored with compelling new features

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Blu-ray support coming with iTunes 9? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Take this rumor with a fairly large grain of salt and please hold your “bag of hurt” comments until the end. Boy Genius claims he’s got it on word from a “pretty reliable source” that the next big iTunes revision will include better organization options for your iPhone / iPod touch apps, something vague concerning integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Last.fm, and… Blu-ray support. To be fair, the HD disc format wars are all but over at this point, and the most recent Final Cut Pro actually lets you burn video directly to a third-party BD drive, only to have to play the discs on another, non-Mac device. This is all pretty sketch at the moment, and we doubt the boys in Cupertino will be showing their hands until just after the eleventh hour — let’s not forget, also, that iTunes is also available for Windows which does have other third-party Blu-ray playback software. In possibly related whispers, AppleInsider has offered some none-too-descriptive hints at possible iMac refresh with some improvements catering to the “semi-professional audio / video crowd.” Between this and talk about a tablet, we can’t wait for the next Apple press conference, if only to subside all the rumors for a few months.

Update: Our resident HD expert Ben Drawbaugh has chimed in on the matter, hypothesizing that this might be referring to support for Managed Copy, a digitized (and DRM restricted) copy of the film that you would save onto your local hard drive. But in that scenario, it still doesn’t behoove Apple to add that to iTunes unless it was looking to put Blu-ray drives on its own machines, which makes this (still very faint) rumor all the more interesting.

Read – Apple iTunes 9 details, Blu-ray, app organization
Read – Apple’s next iMacs rumored with compelling new features

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Blu-ray support coming with iTunes 9? originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Aug 2009 14:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday’s story about Apple censoring the Ninjawords dictionary seems to have made some waves in Cupertino — none other than Phil Schiller followed up with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber to provide Apple’s perspective on the situation. According to Phil, Apple’s objection to Ninjawords was that by using the free Wiktionary.org dictionary, it “provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries,” and that the App Store reviewer initially suggested the developer resubmit when iPhone OS 3.0 was launched with parental controls. Since 3.0 hadn’t been released yet, the developer censored some of the words in an effort to get onto the store early, and that’s how Ninjawords ended up both censored and rated 17+. Sure, okay, except that Gruber points out that the App Store reviewer flagged some pretty generic swear words, not the smack-your-momma vulgarities Phil claims are the issue. Still, the larger message remains the same — the App Store review process is maddeningly inconsistent and in dire need of reform — and on that note Phil says Apple intends to “learn and quickly improve,” so it sounds like there’s hope yet. Check the read link for more of Phil’s response, it’s an interesting read.

Filed under: Cellphones

Phil Schiller says Apple didn’t censor a dictionary originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday’s story about Apple censoring the Ninjawords dictionary seems to have made some waves in Cupertino — none other than Phil Schiller followed up with Daring Fireball’s John Gruber to provide Apple’s perspective on the situation. According to Phil, Apple’s objection to Ninjawords was that by using the free Wiktionary.org dictionary, it “provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries,” and that the App Store reviewer initially suggested the developer resubmit when iPhone OS 3.0 was launched with parental controls. Since 3.0 hadn’t been released yet, the developer censored some of the words in an effort to get onto the store early, and that’s how Ninjawords ended up both censored and rated 17+. Sure, okay, except that Gruber points out that the App Store reviewer flagged some pretty generic swear words, not the smack-your-momma vulgarities Phil claims are the issue. Still, the larger message remains the same — the App Store review process is maddeningly inconsistent and in dire need of reform — and on that note Phil says Apple intends to “learn and quickly improve,” so it sounds like there’s hope yet. Check the read link for more of Phil’s response, it’s an interesting read.

Filed under: Cellphones

Phil Schiller says Apple didn’t censor a dictionary originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The folks over at CNET got a quick look at a recent build of the Zune HD, and the player seems to be getting rather close to a final product. Among praise for the hardware, video playback and a quite refined music player and music discovery experience, they found the Zune HD’s browser to be particularly excellent. It’s been built by the IE team, which bodes well for prospective Windows Mobile 6.5 users, and it’s apparently very comparable to the iPhone in features and speed. There’s pinch to zoom, accelerometer-based reorientation, and a good onscreen keyboard — no Flash, but from the pain it’s inflicting on the Android browsing experience, perhaps that’s a good thing.

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Zune HD’s browser previewed, sounds just as sexy as the hardware originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As brilliant as the $99 subsidized iPhone 3G strategy might seem on paper, the fact remains that the 3G now is a 13 month-old device — the better part of a lifetime by smartphone standards — and it stands to reason that Apple wouldn’t be interested in consuming manufacturing capacity indefinitely with outdated equipment, especially since that game plan cuts into economies of scale on the 3GS’ chipset and superior camera hardware. The solution? Let iPhone 3G inventory cool down for a few months — $99 is a nice, round number after all that’s plenty low enough to move units — and when the carnage is over, phase it out in favor of a new lower-cost 3GS. That’s sure to leave new 3G owners fuming, but newly leaked screens out of Rogers seem to indicate that’s exactly how this is likely going to go down: add a black 8GB 3GS into the mix that can serve as the company’s new entry-level device below the 3GS in two colors, likely for $100 less than the 16GB model. There’s no word on when this might happen, but Apple’s likely to host its usual Fall event to roll out new iPods (and more?), so this could serve as an interesting — if not ultimately predictable — footnote.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Apple phasing out iPhone 3G in favor of 8GB 3GS? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been messing around with Kodak’s latest pocket camcorder, the Zi8, and find the shooter to be an interesting hybrid. With a flip-out USB plug, HDMI out and an easily accessible SD card slot, this is clearly a “premium” mix of features for the class, but the $180 pricetag keeps the device firmly grounded in Walmart-friendly reality. Other odd perks like a line-in jack and 1080p have us scratching our heads — but in a good way. Overall, we’d feel pretty comfortable saying the footage is about the best you can obtain at this pricepoint. Colors are great, the image stabilization isn’t a gimmick (sorry, Flip), and if you squint hard enough you can almost believe the 1080p is 1080p. Still, the camera is hampered by its cheap approach to processing and compressing the footage it’s taking in — despite its limitations, we’d say the iPhone 3GS is besting most cheap pocket camcorders on this front, motion just looks much more fluid. But don’t take our word for it, check out a couple of video samples after the break.

Continue reading Kodak Zi8 impressions: surprising functionality, but it’s still a pocket camcorder

Filed under: Digital Cameras, HDTV

Kodak Zi8 impressions: surprising functionality, but it’s still a pocket camcorder originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Seeing the gold build of Windows Mobile 6.5 in action was pretty nifty, but Inquirer’s recent video actually managed to unveil a few juicy tidbits about version 7 as well — a platform that’s shaping up to be that massive, ground-up rewrite of WinMo we’ve all been hoping for for years (as far as we can tell). The lack of multitouch is a sore point for some in 6.5 — not just because of the goodness of the multitouch gestures themselves, but because it’s indicative of a broader failure on Microsoft’s part to recognize that touch-based mobile UIs have been wholly reinvented since the days of Windows Mobile 2003. Redmond looks to be cognizant of that, though with a mention in the video that 7 will “exploit the hardware” and “introduce multitouch,” going on to say that it’ll be able to go toe-to-toe with “competitor devices” — ostensibly a reference to some combination of webOS, Android, and the iPhone. The video also mentions that 6.5 will end up being a “breadth play” while 7 branches out into the premium end of the market — at least to start — and over time, 7 will become Microsoft’s mainstream mobile platform as future versions are released. In other words, Microsoft looks like it could be setting itself up for a two-version cadence going forward — one for the unwashed masses, one for the gadget fiends. You know which category we fall into — and we suspect we know yours, dear readers.

[Via Unwired View]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Windows Mobile 7 to be a premium, multitouch beast of a platform originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 03 Aug 2009 16:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn’t want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back — so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We’ll be handing out a new gadget every day to lucky readers until we run out of stuff or companies stop sending things. Today we’ve got a 16GB iPhone 3G on offer, courtesy of Rapid Repair! Read the rules below (no skimming — we’re omniscient and can tell when you’ve skimmed) and get commenting! Hooray for free stuff!

Big thanks to Rapid Repair for providing the gear!

The rules:

• Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share your proposal for “fixing” the world economy, that’d be sweet too.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. Winner will receive one (1) 16GB iPhone 3G.
• If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
• Entries can be submitted until Saturday, August 1, at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

Filed under: Announcements

Engadget’s recession antidote: win a 16GB iPhone 3G from Rapid Repair! originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 01 Aug 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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