Third Rail Mobility announces new cases, battery at CES

Third Rail Mobility, a case/battery system that our own Mike Rose reviewed (and liked), announced revisions to their iPhone 4/4S case and battery systems at CES 2012. Now they are available in colors aside from black, allowing you to customize your iPhone and keep it charged. Soon their line will include green, red, pink, white, purple, and blue.

On the off chance you want to keep your black case but add an extra layer of protection or just accessorize a bit based on whatever outfit you're wearing today, you're also in luck: Third Rail has also announced a line of silicone "bumpers" that slip around your existing Third Rail case in assorted colors, letting you choose a color and yet still use your battery. And while they were at it, Third Rail Mobility also announced a new battery for their cases, a 2000 mAh capacity battery which will more than double the life of your iPhone 4 (1420 mAh) or iPhone 4S (1432 mAh).

Their cases are a twist on the battery case style we're all used to seeing: the battery snaps into the back of the case, so when you don't need a battery you have a nice trim case, but when you do need one, you just pop it on the back and you're ready to go. Another nice feature: You can attach multiple batteries together, so when one runs out, stack another one on top and keep going. Third Rail cases also have a power switch, so if you want to charge up at strategic intervals you have that option as well.

These updated versions of the Third Rail Case will be available in the spring.

Third Rail Mobility announces new cases, battery at CES originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Third Rail Mobility announces new cases, battery at CES originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Crapgadget CES 2012, round two: Mugtuk’s child-scaring hugging iPhone case

Crapgadget CES 2012, round two: Mugtuk's child-scaring hugging iPhone case originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 23:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jailbreak Dream Team Make More Progress On Untethered iOS 5.0.1 Jailbreak For iPhone 4S And iPad 2

Last week, in a post titled “Sandboxing difficulties” pod2G had announced that the iPhone Dev team, Chronic Dev team and iOS hacker planetbeing had joined him to figure out out a way to publicly release his untethered jailbreak for iPhone 4S and … Continue reading →

Daily Tip: How to set a custom mail signature on your iPhone

New to iPhone and wondering how to change your signature to something a little more custom and personal than “Sent from my iPhone?” Luckily, it’s easy to do and it can save you a lot of time when you are writing your emails. It also will reduce the chances of making contact detail errors. Here’s how.

1. Tap on the settings application on your home screen. 2. Tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars. 3. Scroll down to Signature. 4. Enter whatever details you would like.

Note: This signature will be on all your outgoing mail so make sure it’s appropriate for all your contents!

Tips of the day will range from beginner-level 101 to advanced-level ninjary. If you already know this tip, keep the link handy as a quick way to help a friend. If you have a tip of your own you’d like to suggest, add them to the comments or send them in to dailytips@tipb.com.

Visualized CES Edition: Behringer’s iNuke Boom speaker dock, a 10,000-watt altar for your iPod

Visualized CES Edition: Behringer's iNuke Boom speaker dock, a 10,000-watt altar for your iPod originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Airplay enabled speaker dock eyes (and ears)-on

LG wasn't very forthcoming with details when it announced its new AirpPlay speaker dock back in November, so here at CES 2012 we decided we'd stop by LG's booth to dig deeper and see it for ourselves. It looks like a foot square black rubik's cube, with glossy and matte exterior squares alternating around the outside, along with two mesh speaker grilles on the front corners. Up top is a dock that fits any iDevice and the power button, while a Smart Square screen resides on the front that'll have touch controls when the dock ships in Q2 or Q3 of this year. A 3.5mm input jack and a USB port are on the back, and we're pretty sure that the dongle plugged there is where the AirPlay chip currently resides, though it'll be baked in before it gets to market. It was hard to evaluate the thing's sound on the show floor, but with an 8-inch subwoofer inside, the low end came through loud and clear and overall it sounded good. Unfortunately, we can't tell you how much it'll cost when it becomes available, but we can give you the gallery of pics below. Enjoy.

LG Airplay enabled speaker dock eyes (and ears)-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Talking with Fitbit at CES 2012

Talking with Fitbit at CES 2012 about the Fitbit tracker we got a better overall feeling about how they work with iOS and what things you can track with their device.

Fitbit can help you keep on target with any physical goals by tracking such things as walking, yoga, or weight lifting as well as keep a log of what foods you eat, when you eat and more.

Check out the video above for the full details — it really is quite an amazing product, especially if you’ve got some new year’s resolutions to keep

No iPhone Live tonight… but we’ll have another Mobile Nations podcast later!

I’m still at CES 2012 with the rest of the Mobile Nations team, so there won’t be an iPhone or iPad Live tonight. However, to follow up on our CES Kickoff podcast from Monday night, we’ll be doing another special edition later this very evening.

We’ll also be making some big announcements about our iMore podcasts really soon, so stay tuned!

Shazam Player brings lyrics support and more to iOS

The iPhone's default Music app already has lyrics support built in, but you have to fetch the lyrics yourself; songs sold on the iTunes Store still don't include lyrics after all these years. Shazam, makers of the well-known app that will identify songs playing in your vicinity after sampling a few seconds of audio, has released a free music player app called Shazam Player for the iPhone and iPod touch that addresses this gap in a big way.

When first launched, Shazam Player will scan your entire music library to find songs compatible with its LyricPlay feature. Depending on how big your library is, this could take awhile; my iPhone 4S has close to 5000 songs on it (though for some reason Shazam Player only scanned 1600 or so), and it took about 5 minutes for the app to finish scanning my library for the first time.

Shazam's lyrics database doesn't appear to be especially comprehensive yet, or at least not for the kind of music I tend to listen to. Out of 4936 tracks, Shazam Player found only 374 compatible with LyricPlay.

For songs that support it, LyricPlay is pretty cool and mildly reminiscent of the kinetic typography music videos I've seen on YouTube. Lyrics scroll or fly onto the screen perfectly in time with the music. There are a variety of fonts and animation styles in LyricPlay, with some of them easier to read than others -- one particular style displays the currently playing snippet of lyrics at the bottom of the screen with all other lyrics jammed above it, which isn't particularly readable. Fortunately Shazam Player also includes Lyrics sheet, a more standard text-based view of lyrics for when LyricPlay wears out its welcome.

Shazam Player includes some other welcome features like links to YouTube videos of the currently selected song and tour dates for the band. Since it's integrated with your music library, you have full access to every song, artist, and playlist on your device. However, the app doesn't appear to support nested playlist folders, instead presenting all playlists in the same view; if you're like me and have many playlists, Shazam Player's playlist view could seem a bit disorganized.

Shazam Player has a nice UI, and the price is right -- since it's free, there's no reason not to check it out. But while LyricPlay and the other features are novel features, I'll most likely stick with the standard Music app on my iPhone; Shazam Player seems to lag and choke a bit on a music library as large as mine.

That having been said, I strongly hope that Shazam is working on a version of Shazam Player for the iPad. While I don't feel that Shazam Player is going to replace the Music app on my iPhone in daily usage, the Music app on the iPad is so terrible that something like Shazam Player would be a most welcome alternative.

Shazam Player brings lyrics support and more to iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Shazam Player brings lyrics support and more to iOS originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A quick look at the Magnus iPad stand from Ten One Design

A quick look at the Magnus iPad stand from Ten One Design and you’ll no doubt quickly realize that it’s a pretty minimal design, as it should be. The Magnus makes use of the iPads built-in magnets intended for Smart Covers to ensure your iPad stays in place. The hand finished Magnus is will be available soon from Ten One Design via their website, for now — check out the video from CES 2012.

Forthcoming TomTom iPhone app to feature enhanced social integration

Just when you thought navigation apps pretty much had all the features you thought you needed, TomTom has thrown some fresh ideas into the mix.

The company is at CES demonstrating an updated navigation app that uses social networks as a source for turn-by-turn directions.

"According to recent studies, the vast majority of iPhone users use Facebook on their iPhone," Corinne Vigreux, Managing Director Consumer at TomTom said. "By integrating Facebook features into our TomTom App we make navigating to places, events and seeing friends even easier."

The app, which will be delivered this quarter, uses Facebook places, events and friends as a source for destinations, and allows drivers to share their destinations and arrival time on Twitter, Facebook, email and SMS text.

The update will be free for current owners of the TomTom iPhone app. Some example screens are below:

Forthcoming TomTom iPhone app to feature enhanced social integration originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Forthcoming TomTom iPhone app to feature enhanced social integration originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CES 2012 iPhone and iPad booth lightning tour

Not at CES 2012 but wish you could check out all the cool iPhone and iPad accessories? We got you covered! Here’s a lightning fast tour of the main iPhone and iPad booths. Give us a couple minutes, we’ll give you the show. Ish.

Out of the sandbox, A5 jailbreak now one step closer

With the last update regarding the yet to be released iPhone 4S and iPad 2 jailbreak coming to us from pod2g, we learned that a “dream team” had been assembled to help tackle a sandboxing issue in the Apple A5, now the latest information is brought to everyone via Planetbeing where he took to Twitter to note:

And we’re out of the sandbox with @saurik’s invaluable help! (well, at least there’s a PoC) Turning out more complex than X-Gold 618.

That of course doesn’t put an iPhone 4S and iPad 2 jailbreak in our hands right away but it does bring us one step closer to it finally becoming a reality.

Apple Maintains Third Place Ranking with 11.6% of U.S. PC Shipments in 4Q 2011

Research firm Gartner today released its preliminary personal computer shipment data for the fourth quarter of 2011, offering up a picture of market performance during the quarter. With year-over-year unit growth of over 20%, Apple was the only one of the top five U.S. vendors to see an increase in shipments in an overall market that shrank by nearly 6%.


Apple's U.S. Market Share Trend: 1Q06-4Q11 (Gartner)
Apple's share dipped from 12.9% in the third quarter, which is routinely the company's strongest quarter due to a heavy presence in education. But the performance marks a distinct improvement over Apple's 9.0% share in the year-ago quarter and continues a long-term trend of increasing market share.


Gartner's Preliminary U.S. PC Vendor Unit Shipment Estimates for 4Q11 (Thousands of Units)
As usual, Gartner did not cover Apple's worldwide market share for the quarter, as the company does not rank among the top five vendors on a worldwide basis. PC shipments shrank 1.4% year-over-year on a worldwide basis, with strong growth from Lenovo and Asus being offset by declines from HP and Acer.


Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Sony's 'Music Unlimited' Service Headed to iPhone and iPod Touch
• UMichigan Professor Uses iPads to Remake the Chalkboard
• Infinity Field HD First App to Include Multiplayer Joypad Support
• CES 2012: BulletTrain eXpress Enclosure for Magic Trackpad and Apple Keyboard
• CES 2012: Behringer's $30,000 iNuke Boom Speaker on Display

Hands on with Mugtuk Monsters at CES 2012

Mugtuck Monsters is an adorable iPhone app filled with 3 adorable little monsters that your children can interact with by touching their face and tickling them, poking them, and even rocking them to sleep. The app is cute in itself, but Mugtuck also offers a cuddly little iPhone case turning the monster into a stuffed animal.

We got our hands on them at CES 2012.

There was a time when Mugtuks were common. Alert children spotted them in hollow logs or beneath rocks. But their kind soon became scarce. Sightings decreased. Interaction dwindled. But no longer. Today there are so many we can’t manage them all! That’s why we’re presenting these monsters—Maggie, Bubba, Tim, and Charlie Belle—to you for adoption.

• Free for iPhone – App Store link

Griffin demonstrates Studio Connect with Midi control

Griffin is here at CES 2012 demonstrating their new Studio Connect peripheral. If you’re a musician looking to take recording on the go, the studio connect aims to bring you this with Midi control. The iPad dock adds extra audio inputs and adds Midi connections.

Once you’re done you can upload your content to GarageBand or whatever suite you choose. We got a hands on here at CES and while the product lives up to what it says it’ll do, it’s a bit bulky to carry around form a convenience point of view.

mophie discusses their development process and future products at CES 2012

In the sea of iPhone accessories that is CES 2012, we made sure we took the time to stop by and talk to the good folks from Mophie – makers of such products like the mophie juicepack air and mophie juicepak plus that we reviewed recently.

They walked us through some of their development processes, expectations for battery technology in the future and some ideas of what they’re looking forward to coming out of CES 2012. They have some ‘disruptive’ products upcoming but weren’t fully ready to discuss those as of yet — plenty to look forward to in 2012 from mophie.

Belkin talks new iPhone cases at CES 2012

We’re here at CES 2012 talking to Belkin about iPhone cases. This time around they’ve aimed to differentiate cases for white and black iPhone users. Their new lines expected in April are focused specifically on the color differences. Certain cases will compliment the black variant while others will look better on white models.

Outside of expanding selection from a color and form factor aspect, they’ve been experimenting with new types of plastic that allow them to make cases even thinner and lighter. Not only are their new lines thinner and lighter but certain plastics can be used to create very realistic textures such as wood. While actual wood cases are on the market currently, plastic tends to allow your device to breathe better and not overheat, especially while charging.

Hands on with Guitar Apprentice for iPad at CES 2012

Guitar Apprentice for iPad is a new guitar learning tool. Your iPad fits into the hardware accessory to allow you to strum and learn guitar. We got a closer look at CES 2012.

Guitar Apprentice will be available in July 2012 for $99.

Snappy5 adds instant camera access to the iPhone [jailbreak]

Snappy5 for iOS 5 is a new jailbreak mod in Cydia that brings instant access to the iPhone camera no matter what you’re doing.

Never miss a photo opportunity again!

It is a camera application that launches quickly, without having to exit your currently running application. This is a free upgrade, but it is not compatible with 3.x and 4.x iOS versions.

Although Apple does include camera access from the iPhone lock screen in iOS 5, the app still technically needs to be launched before you’ll be able to snap a photo. As such, it still takes a measurable amount of time to launch the camera.

Snappy5 rids this issue by implementing a mobile substrate extension tie-in, which gives near-instant access to the camera no matter where you are. Another great feature is snap on launch, which takes a photo the moment Snappy5 is called up. If you’re in an app, at your home screen, or have your iPhone locked – you won’t have to worry about missing that special moment with Snappy5.

If you run into any trouble you can always jump into our Jailbreak and Unlock forums or post it in the comments!

• $.99 — Cydia Store Link