LEGO is a toy as old as time. The iPhone is a toy that every kid wants. If you combine them together, you have 'Life of George'. It's a LEGO game with companion iPhone app that every man, woman and child would want to play. More »

Jawbone's fitness-obsessed wristband appears to be closing in on the retail finish line. The Up pairs with what appears to be an iOS app, (no news on whether an Android version is in the pipeline), and will pile on the guilt about your disgustingly sedentary lifestyle. You can have the luxury of feeling like a weight loss reality show contestant by scheduling "get up and move" reminders when you've succumbed to watching back-to-back mediocre sitcoms with a Doritos family bag chaser. There's also a sleep tracker and a challenge tab to plot your amazing weight loss journey (or descent to an early demise) against friends and family. It'll monitor what you eat, and even tell you which foods "help you feel your best." (We think it's cake.) No word on price or arrival date just yet, so you'll just have to put up with Autom until we hear more.

[Thanks, Luke]

Jawbone's Up wristband warms up at AT&T store, wants you faster, stronger originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Oct 2011 16:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Since its sudden demise, the internet has been abuzz with people trying to get the Android OS onto the HP TouchPad. A Chinese developer by the name of Chompers has just released a very rough, but publicly available download of his hack. More »

There are quite a few iOS productivity apps with handwriting recognition functionality available, for example Notes Plus, iWriteWords for kids, or (indirectly) Evernote. But recognizing handwritten text isn’t trivial, which is why a new app called 7notes (iPad: free, $8.99 premium/iPhone: free, $4.99 premium) focuses almost entirely on this problem – and does the job really well.

The app works the same way on the iPhone and iPad (after giving both versions a spin, I’d recommend to download the iPad app if you can). Just use your finger or a stylus pen (recommended) to jot down notes, let 7notes do its magic and convert the handwritten text to digital fonts if needed (or mix handwritten and digital notes). All notes can be “decorated” and combined with images or web pages, too.

There is a whole array of extra functions, for example auto scroll, different font sizes, line colors, a “predictive engine” autosuggesting words in sentences, a self-learning dictionary, automatic saving of all notes, etc. etc. It’s also possible to pull up the iPad’s or iPhone’s virtual keyboard if needed.

The founders of 7notes maker 7knowledge/Metamoji claim they have over 30 years of experience in the language and document processing software business, and it shows. The app’s main selling point is the quality of the handwriting recognition: most of the time (and after practicing for a while), the app was amazingly accurate in identifying the words I was writing with my finger.

Here are two examples showing my handwriting. The app recognized words like “Serkan” or “Techcrunch”, too (iPad version/click to enlarge):

Users can print and email notes, save them in the iPad’s or iPhone’s photo album, post them to Facebook and Twitter or send them to other applications like Dropbox or Evernote.

I’d suggest to give the free version of 7notes a try first even though only the paid app offers handwriting to digital conversion (and again, you need a bit of practice to get good results):
7notes iPhone version (free/$4.99 premium)
7notes HD iPad version (free/$8.99 premium)

The Invisibility app is indeed magical. It takes a mediocre camera on your iPad 2 and turns it into something incredible. More »

When it comes to app development for mobile devices, cross-platform implementation is the new hot thing. Developers have long struggled with fragmentation across operating systems, when they want to just be able to create one app and blast it out on every platform imaginable. Businesses like Heroku and Appcelerator, and gaming versions like Game Closure (and many others) collectively make creating, hosting, and deploying games a more manageable endeavor. But today, a startup is launching that hopes to make development of mobile apps even easier.

Palo Alto-based Particle Code is building a platform that enables mobile developers to write mobile apps and games once, deploy both HTML5 and native apps across platforms and devices — all from within a single codebase. Particle Code is built on the Eclipse IDE, an environment and suite of tools for Java developers, and supports development in a wide array of languages including Java, C# and ActionScript3. This means millions of additional programmers can now enter mobile app development in a way that is scalable to reach a whole bunch of devices. And, as a potentially interesting aside, here’s TIOBE’s ranking of the most popular programming languages this month.

Today’s data-driven app environment requires developers to iterate on content quickly, and pushing updates across a number of platforms is, just as it sounds, not so easy. So Particle Code helps developers iterate quickly and push changes cross-platform seeing as the app is written in one codebase. And yet it still produces native apps on every device. The secret is translating code on the source code level, rather than wrapping JavaScript in native extensions. So what started off as a Java or AS3 project, can end up as a native C# app on Windows Phone, for example.

Particle Code CEO Galia Benartzi tells me that Particle’s platform originated as part of Mytopia, a cross-platform publisher for networked casual games, that was acquired by 888 Holdings in June 2010. The Particle Code founding team (which includes CTO Yotam Shacham and Chief Architect Yudi Levi) retained rights to the cross-platform tech behind Mytopia after its acquisition, and used it to deliver the Particle SDK.

Benartzi said that Mytopia debuted at TC50 in 2008, at which point Ev Williams and Tim O’Reilly, who were both on the judging panel, told the founders they should focus either on games or a more general app development platform. At the time, the team decided to focus on games, but since Mytopia’s acquisition in 2010, they’re going one step further.

In the last year, HTML5 has taken some significant strides forward thanks to assistance from Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, and more, and is gaining momentum as an alternative to native apps. But it’s still not there yet. While it contains the promise of unification, it’s still a work in progress that still hasn’t gained full browser support.

So, the Particle Code team has created a flexible environment that gives developers the chance to do both, create native and web applications, and harness the best of both worlds.

The key to Particle’s platform, she said, is that it allows coders to translate their code on the source code level, bringing app performance closer to what it would be with native code. If you were to include wrappers, you might see memory drain on your device, slower animations, poorer latency, etc., so Particle removes this obstacle by allowing developers to create native apps alongside web apps. The choice, grasshopper, is yours.

The startup originally funded its operations through cash received from its Mytopia exit, but it also raised $3 million in June of last year from Benhamou Global Ventures. It is looking to raise more cash in the near future, and expand upon its current team of 14.

CrunchBase InformationParticle CodeInformation provided by CrunchBase

Safari Books Online (SBO) has announced the availability of Safari To Go, its second-generation iPad app (first launched in November 2010) that offers access to SBO's extensive library of books and videos. This free application lets users mark favorites, save books for offline reading, search by topic and more.

Speaking of SBO's library, it's extensive. You'll find thousands of books and videos from over 40 publishers, like Apress, Cisco Press, FT Press* and O'Reilly. Most titles focus on technology as well as professional development and working with digital media.

Note that the app will perform best on a Wi-Fi network. The developers note that a future update will increase 3G support.

The app is free and available now. E-book junkies with a technology bent will want to add this one to their lineup.

*Full disclosure: I have a book available from Safari Books Online via FT Press.

Safari Books Online takes Safari to Go to the iPad originally appeared on TUAW on Wed, 11 May 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Two-factor authentication is a good way to add a strong, additional layer of security to your online accounts. While it's certainly important to use with something like your Google account (which recently added support), a password manager like LastPass is an even better place to batten down the hatches this way.

LastPass users who have a premium account should definitely check out Sesame, a program for Windows, Mac, and Linux which creates one-time use passwords for two-factor authentication. Simply enable two-factor authentication in your LastPass settings, launch Sesame, and select the account for which you need to generate a password.

You do need a $12 per year premium account to utilize Sesame, but the increased security two-factor authentication provides certainly seems worth one measly dollar per month to us.

You'll find LastPass Sesame on the company's download page -- just click through to your OS of choice. To see Sesame in action, check the video after the break!Continue reading LastPass Sesame enables two-factor authentication for your password vault
LastPass Sesame enables two-factor authentication for your password vault originally appeared on Download Squad on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 11:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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MacUpdate has got an excellent Mac apps bundle offer going on right now. You can get Parallels, the great virtualization application, 1Password for all your password safekeeping, and nine other apps for just $49.99. The total that this group of apps normally sells for is $381.
If I didn’t already own Parallels and 1Password I’d grab this bundle with about zero seconds hesitation. The bundle also includes apps and games like Civilization IV, TechTool Pro 5.0.7, MacDVDRipper Pro, A Better Finder Rename 8, App Tamer, and Divvy.
The bundle offer will conclude either in 14 days or when it reaches 10,000 buyers. Check it out here for more details or to make your purchase:
https://www.mupromo.com/
Spotted Via: 9to5Mac

It's always a pleasure when Adobe posts something to their Labs page for users to try, but it's even better when it's a release-candidate for one of their best pieces of software. Today it's version 3.4 RC of Lightroom, which is code for a completely free copy of the latest Adobe Lightroom.

The RC, which is available at Adobe Labs right now, is mainly a giant bug-fix for the still-young Lightroom 3.3 -- but it also adds RAW support for a handful of newer cameras, along with profiles for several new Leica, Nikon and Canon lenses as well. So, if it's new features that you're hoping for, this isn't going to blow your mind or anything.

On the other hand, if you're one of the many folks out there who would love to have one of the nicest RAW-processing image-development apps on the market, but don't have $299 USD lying around to buy it, then this is your day! Downloading the RC is as easy -- and free -- as downloading a Flash beta.

EDIT: As some of you pointed out, it turns out the RC may not technically be free for ever. Vague wording on the details page says that the RC will expire at the end of May. That could mean that it will stop working, or that the download will vanish, but I've used several previous RCs for Lightroom that never stopped working -- which in retrospect could have been attributable to a mixture of my loaded hosts file and Little Snitch.
Adobe Lightroom 3.4 RC now available at Adobe Labs (get Lightroom for free) originally appeared on Download Squad on Sun, 13 Mar 2011 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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What do your iPad smudges say about you? Or more specifically, about whatever app you were just poking around in? Design Language News decided to find out: More »

Google released a Google Translate Web app for iPhone users back in 2008, but now the Apple crowd has a native Google Translate iPhone app. Available in the App Store now, the free Google Translate app includes speak-to-translate for 15 languages, a full screen mode, and the ability to listen to translations in 23 languages.

The iPhone app doesn't have Android's on-the-fly "conversation mode," but it does allow you to quickly zoom up the text size of your translation, so you can easily show it to the person you're trying to communicate with. The ability to play back your translations using the voice synthesizers Google first introduced in the desktop version of Google Translate is also cool. Sure, Google Translate for iPhone is a long time coming, but it's a nice step up from the Web app.

Gallery: Google Translate for iPhone screenshots
Google Translate for iPhone now in App Store originally appeared on Download Squad on Tue, 08 Feb 2011 14:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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