Hey all. Labor day's always signaled the true end of summer to me, and this year, it marks many changes and breaks for the Giz team. Jason's taking a last minute vacation to some tropical destination, and I spent the day finding a ski cabin and getting ready for the upcoming snowboarding season. Jes
Bang bang, she shot me down Bang bang, I hit the ground Bang bang, that awful sound Bang bang, my baby shot me down.
Jump the gun to get a shiny close-up and obligatory NSFW money shot.
Ah, if only all weapons were like this! A world with no violence, STDs, or overpopulation! Too bad it's only a concept, but I don't care. Someone give Masayuki Takahashi, the designer, a Nobel Peace Prize now. [Nerdapproved]
I've been seeing the trailer for the upcoming [REC] remake zombie flick Quarantine quite a bit recently and, naturally, it has got me thinking about zombie killing. The basic must-have weapons have always been a shotgun, pistol, chainsaw, baseball bat and a crowbar—but if you want to go the extra mile when preparing for Armageddon, the following weapons and tools will let the undead horde know that you really mean business.
Taking inspiration as well as construction cues from the massive NES controller table built in May, SCAD Inc., which I will charitably call a garage-based novelty enlargement collective, set out to build a giant-sized SNES controller, complete with functioning buttons. A few months later the build is complete, and it looks, well, huge.
The angular, simply-shaped NES controller lent itself well to humongonization, but the rounded sides and shoulder buttons made the SNES a formidable challenge to accurately build at such a large scale. The SCAD guys sure as hell pulled it off though, getting everything from the curvature of the L and R buttons to the fonts used on the control labels almost perfectly right. The body of the controller is cut from wood, and the buttons are connected directly to the guts of a standard SNES controller, preserving the now hilariously small-looking cable and connector. Matt LaBoone, the primary builder of the project, says that videos (hopefully including some gameplay action) are forthcoming. For now check out the full log of the building process at the SCAD Inc. site. [SCAD Inc.]
Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently—the upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labor Day weekend. And with this week's apps, there's no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
The political applications, sadly, tend to swing pretty far to the side of app absurdity:
Obama/McCain Inauguration Countdown: Tick down the days to January 20 for the candidate of your choice, complete with rotating quotations and photos. Also useful for reminding yourself that the one and a half years of inane campaign coverage on TV will soon be over. Sadly, they're a buck.
BAC Calc: Ahh, but here's some utility for the weekend. A blood-alcohol-level calculator to quantify exactly how hammered you've gotten while getting riled up by McCain and Obama quotes with your buddies. Just enter your consumption, alochol volume of your booze, your weight and your gender. But remember kids, the law won't care if your iPhone says you're under the limit once you find yourself in the drunk tank. Free
Beer Bounce: And once all your friends go home on Monday night, there's no sense in stopping the party when you've got Beer Bounce, the first virtual quarters game for the iPhone. As you progress through the rounds, difficulty is increased by adding blurriness and staggering to the game. Nice touch! $3
Blofeld: While it has nothing to do with anything, really, Bond fans will have to love the concept behind Blofeld. It places an image of a feline pelt on your phone, and purrs when you stroke it, evil genius style. I can't believe this costs a dollar, but again, hats off to the concept, especially the icon.
Earthscape: And just when you thought the App Store was only filled with meaningless pap, there's Earthscape, which brings a great-looking Google Earth-style satellite image browser to your phone. It's a little laggy at times, and the image quality isn't as high as GMaps, but a great way to kill a few minutes if you're stuck in line somewhere. $5
This week's app coverage on Giz:
Tris, the free Tetris game, was pulled from the store (voluntarily) for copyright violations. Infinite sadness.
Our Question of the Day found that a typical Giz reader has spent between $1 and $10 on apps, but with many bigger spenders also responding. Go vote if you haven't yet.
A fairly harmless comic app Murderdrome was rejected from the store, and its creators want a rating system for apps to avoid censorship, which is a great idea.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good long weekend everybody.
Just a few days after the Dev Team released its jailbreak tool for the 2.0.2 firmware to Mac users, WinPwn 2.5 and the QuickPwn Tool for Mac have both appeared at about the same time, offering the ability to QuickPwn the latest iPhone and iPod Touch firmwares. In other words, not only can you jailbreak your iPhone or iPod and enjoy sweet, sweet Cydia and Installer action, but you also don't have to go through the irritating process of building a custom firmware and carrying out a lengthy restore in iTunes.
You can download the new WinPwn at this direct link, and pick up a torrent for QuicPwn Tool for Mac here. [WinPwn and Dev Team - Thanks, Estevan and Jason]
When I complained on Twitter about a 2 hour iPhone sync, Giz reader Brandon Lusk told me I was lucky. He had a much longer sync, sometimes over 6 hours. I called bullshit. And so, he provided me with two videos, time-lapsed; this one is over 8 hours. That's a full night of sleep. That's a full day of high school. That's longer than it takes to fly cross country, or drive from SF to Los Angeles. After seeing this video, I stopped complaining and tried to figure out what caused Brandon's problem with him.
To troubleshoot the problem, he restored his phone from scratch, but even after reinstalling 7.7.1 iTunes and 2.0.2 firmware in his never-jailbreaked iPhone 3G, the sync is unbearably long. We even tried syncing on an Air and an iMac and used another cable. The only outstanding set of data Brandon had is that he loads 74 apps to his phone. And he says that by adding apps one at a time, his sync/backup time slowly goes up—so it's not a single buggy app ruining the process.
Now, I'm sure Brandon's case is an exceptionally complicated problem. He still has an iTunes error message pop up when he syncs, for example. And even when we both load up 50 apps on our phones, his sync is much longer at 4 hours. This is clearly not a normal example, but that doesn't mean it's not real, and it doesn't mean it isn't related to the big problem many have been suffering from since firmware 2.00 hit. Maybe Brandon can be our poster boy for the eternal sync/backup problem. Or, until Apple fixes it, we can watch this video every time we complain about the iPhone's sync times and we can feel like it could have been worse. Like 8 hours' worth of worse. But damn if that video doesn't make you happy when it's finally done with the transfer.
The song in the video is Foreplay/Long Time, by Boston, FWIW. [Brandon's blog, Foreplay/Long Time Amazon, iTunes]
His setup:
Both machines running 10.5.4 and iTunes 7.7.1 (but again, this started on 7.7) Air is a day 1 1.6GHZ, 80GB and the iMac is a 2.8GHZ 4GB RAM 320GB HDD
When I started, I had
997.1 MB of music (163 songs, all .m4a files, except 27 .m4p) 5 playlists 93.6 MB of photos 27 ringtones No movies or TV shows 47 MB video (all video podcasts) Contacts, calendar synced to MobileMe 3 other IMAP email accounts 74 apps (a lot, I know, but certainly not as many as you could possibly have)
The sync added
No music No playlists No photos No ringtones No movies or TV shows 3.5 GB of video (99 podcasts, and this part only took about 10 minutes, as you can see in the video) 6 app updates (2 of which were not installed because of an error) No new apps
The backup folder produced this time weighs in at 9,771 items and 848.1 GB
My observations: It doesn't matter if the app updates error or not, my last sync was 6:49 with 4 app updates, all of which were successful. Since 2.0, backup and sync has been very long, but not to this extent. Usually 1.5 - 2 hours. It started getting this bad about a month ago, right before iTunes 7.7.1 came out, an app crashed mid install via Wi-Fi app store, crashing the phone to the Apple logo but not booting all the way. When it crashed like that, I put it in DFU mode and restored from backup, immediately had the same problem. Back to DFU mode and restored with fresh firmware—instead of crashing daily, it did it every few days, requiring DFU mode and fresh download of firmware. Did a complete wipe from within the phone, installed fresh firmware again, and started from scratch. New iTunes installation (removing support files first, empty trash, reboot, then reinstall) new firmware download. Since then, no more Apple logo of death, and very few app crashes in general, but still excruciating backup/sync times. If I skip the backup (I'm inclined to do that these days, since they are usually corrupted, even with a fresh copy on the desktop) it still takes at least 2-3 hours to sync.
It's been such a long time I think I should be goin', yeah And time doesn't wait for me, it keeps on rollin' Sail on, on a distant highway I've got to keep on chasin' a dream I've gotta be on my way Wish there was something I could say.
Well I'm takin' my time, I'm just movin' along You'll forget about me after I've been gone And I take what I find, I don't want no more It's just outside of your front door.
It's been such a long time. It's been such a long time.
Well I get so lonely when I am without you But in my mind, deep in my mind, I can't forget about you Good times, and faces that remind me I'm tryin' to forget your name and leave it all behind me You're comin' back to find me.
In the last few months car navigation systems have seen a variety of enhancements, from aerial photography to 3D city modeling to live traffic data and internet connectivity. None, however, have done live video. The Travel Pilot N700 has a small camera stuck on the back of the windshield-mounted unit that feeds live video on which navigation instructions are superimposed. The unit also features voice control, live traffic info, WLAN and Bluetooth connectivity and the ability to read and warn of traffic signs with the integrated camera. The price is expected to be about $740, but the N700 is exclusive to Europe, for now. Video demo after the jump. [Motor Authority via Navigadget]
The Gadget: Sony Eriscsson's TM506 is the first phone to be sold by T-Mobile that supports its still-rolling-out HSDPA network on the 1700/2100 MHz band.
The Price: Still not official, but T-Mobile says it will be less than $100 with contract when it drops in early September.
The Verdict: Solid, everyman 3G for the masses.
If you didn't know it going in, you might not even realize the TM506 was 3G-capable. There's no big "3G" connection icon like on the iPhone, and nary a mention in the phone's settings. And most surprisingly, the phone ships only with T-Mo and Sony Eric's shitty t-zones browser—which is only a few steps past WAP.
So the first thing anyone with this phone should do is grab Opera Mini—and after doing so, all of the Google apps for Maps and Gmail (the built-in email client is equally miserable). It's smart in many ways to downplay the phone's HSDPA capabilities, since T-Mobile's rollout is still in progress. But the lack of a solid browser built-in is puzzling.
And here's the kicker—at the moment, this thing is lightning fast. I tested it in several locations in NYC, one of T-Mobile's first 3G cities, and we're talking near Wi-Fi speeds on T-Mobile's 1700/2100 MHz HSDPA network. I got a crazy average of 5037kbps using DSL Reports' smartphone speed test, where the iPhone 3G, in the same location at the same time, managed an average of 545kbps. Now before you get too excited, keep in mind that T-Mobile's 3G network is practically empty at the moment—when more 3G subscribers start piling on, speeds will certainly come down to the 600-1000kbps range that T-Mobile says will be the norm. But for now, 3G T-Mobilers will be living the sweet life. Pages load almost instantly with Opera Mini—it's awesome. And when you tether to your laptop (which T-Mobile is fine with)—it's still blazing, which is a great bonus.
Rounding out the rest of the package is everything you'd expect on a mid-range Sony Ericsson piece—A-GPS, 2MP camera with video recording, Bluetooth 2.0, Memory Stick Micro slot, a barebones media player, and all the rest in a light but solid feeling flip form factor (but I could do without the green). In the end, it's not for smartphone people, or worth leaving another network for, but if you're already on T-Mobile and it's time for an upgrade, you could do a lot worse for your money.
And until the network starts to fill up, you'll be putting your iPhone-toting friends to shame.
UPDATE: To clarify some confusion in the comments, all previous phones with 3G support sold by T-Mobile (Nokia 6263, Samsung t639, Samsung t819, Nokia 3555) are UMTS only, which means they'll only get speeds of around 200-300kbps says the T-Mo folks. The TM506 is the first high-speed HSDPA phone for the new network, which should get between 600-1000kbps.
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Bang bang, she shot me down
I've been seeing the trailer for the upcoming [REC] remake zombie flick Quarantine quite a bit recently and, naturally, it has got me thinking about zombie killing. The basic must-have weapons have always been a shotgun, pistol, chainsaw, baseball bat and a crowbar—but if you want to go the extra mile when preparing for Armageddon, the following weapons and tools will let the undead horde know that you really mean business.
Taking inspiration as well as construction cues from the 
Always a microcosm of the greater world, the App Store this week focused on two things us Americans have been thinking about a lot recently—the upcoming election, and tossing back a few this Labor Day weekend. And with this week's apps, there's no reason for your iPhone to be left out.
Just a few days after the Dev Team released its 
"Acclaimed camera manufacturer Canon is proud to introduce the world's smallest person."
In the last few months car navigation systems have seen a variety of enhancements, from 
The Gadget: Sony Eriscsson's TM506 is the first phone to be sold by T-Mobile that supports its 
And here's the kicker—at the moment, this thing is lightning fast. I tested it in several locations in NYC, one of T-Mobile's first 3G cities, and we're talking near Wi-Fi speeds on T-Mobile's 1700/2100 MHz HSDPA network. I got a crazy average of 5037kbps using DSL Reports'