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Filed under: iPhone, iPod touch, App Review

Failure is not an option: the official NASA iPhone app is here

There are a lot of space geeks out there. You know the type; they wake up in the early hours of the morning to watch launch coverage or live feeds from the International Space Station, they follow NASA astronauts on Twitter, and they're married to people in the space biz. Oh, wait -- that's me!

Yeah, I'm a bona-fide space geek and proud of it, so I was thrilled to hear that the official NASA iPhone app [iTunes Link] is now available free of charge. The app was created by the New Media Team at NASA Ames Research Center, and for their first app it's surprisingly robust, bug-free and full of features.

The front screen of the app provides a window into current and future NASA missions. Along the bottom of the display are buttons for missions, images, videos, and updates. The updates are fairly current -- there were 11 posts about various Earth and space missions today alone -- and often include links to videos.

I found that the app worked best when I was downloading the videos over Wi-Fi, so be sure to keep that in mind if you're trying to get watch a launch video while on 3G service. Check out the gallery below for screenshots from the app.

Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, Freeware, Leopard, iPhone, iPod touch

Celebrate "One Small Step" + 40 with free Carina astronomy apps

On July 20th, 1969, I was an 11 year-old nerd who loved space. Along with billions of other people in the rest of the developed world, I sat in rapt attention in front of the family TV set watching the ghostly figures of Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin taking the first steps on the moon.

Now I'm a nerdy 51 year-old who still loves space. This weekend, my wife and I are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the historic Apollo 11 moon landing by presenting an Apollo retrospective at the Lookout Mountain Nature Center near Denver. If you're in the Denver area, drop by at 7 PM on Saturday, July 18th to learn more about the incredible challenges that were surmounted by the U.S. space program to land men on the moon and return them safely to earth.

For the majority of you who aren't in the Denver area, there's another way you can celebrate on Monday, July 20th, 2009. On Monday, Carina Software will offer free download-only versions of their SkyGazer software for Mac OS X on the Carina website. iPhone and iPod touch owners won't be left out of the fun, as Carina's SkyVoyager app will be free on Monday from the App Store.

Be sure to pass along the information to your friends and join in the free fun on Monday!

[via The Mac Observer]

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Odds and ends, Other Events, Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store

CES expands iPod, iPhone exhibit space at next year's show


I'm lucky enough to be heading out to E3 next week, so I'll be puttering around the show looking for great iPhone apps and games to tell you all about, but it looks like CES might be the place to be for iPhone software in 2010: the show is going to expand the exhibit space for Apple's mobile platforms by 5x. We knew there was going to be a bigger iPhone/iPod related event there, but we didn't know it was going to be quite that big. Organizers say that the App Store's huge growth justifies the size of the event, but of course Apple's exit from Macworld (and that event's move to February, away from the Vegas CES show in January) didn't hurt either.

Don't look for any official iPhone or iPod setups at CES -- Apple says that trade shows aren't a huge part of their marketing plan any more. We can't really blame them; they already have their own events whenever they want, well-attended and well-covered by the press. But this show will probably be a nice opportunity for iPhone developers. There's a lot of apps out there, and every chance developers get to show off to the press will probably be welcome.

Filed under: Software, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch, App Review

Satellite watching with GoSatWatch for iPhone

Viewing earth-orbiting satellites, the Space Shuttle, and the International Space Station with the naked eye is a blast. I've been hooked on watching satellites since my folks pointed out Echo-1 to me when I was just 3 years old. Now I find myself looking skyward every time I'm under a dark sky, hoping to catch a glimpse of a tiny light speeding across my field of view.

If you're going to try to watch a satellite pass, it helps to know when the shiniest spacecraft are going to be zooming overhead. Amateur radio enthusiasts who want to make AMSAT or ARISS contacts need the same information. There's a cool new iPhone app called GoSatWatch (US$9.99, click opens iTunes) that makes looking for earth-orbiting spacecraft a piece of cake.

Once the app is loaded on your iPhone, all you need to do is tap the colorful icon to start the app, then do some initial setup. You should set up your location and allow the iPhone 3G's GPS receiver to determine your local latitude and longitude (iPhone and iPod touch users can enter that information in by hand if desired). More than one observing location can be pre-set in the app.

Continue readingSatellite watching with GoSatWatch for iPhone

Filed under: iPod Family, Odds and ends, Internet Tools, iPhone

Three web apps for space cadets with iPhones

If you're a space freak, then you'll want to have a look at these three super-cool web apps for your iPhone or iPod Touch.

iSkyGaze tells you where to find various objects in the sky, depending on your location and the time of day. Sure, it'll show you where to look to see the sun and moon, but iSkyGaze also helps you spot things in deep space, like the Orion Nebula. This cool app even tells you how far away the object is, and the best time to see it.

Want to know how the sky looked on any given date from the past 10 years? Starry Night Mobile will tell you. It can also predict what your overhead view will be 10 years into the future. Just enter a zip code, landmark, or address and let the app do the calculating for you.

If checking out satellites or the International Space Station as it passes overhead is more your thing, then you'll love LookUp. Once you enter your location, the app will tell the precise time various orbiting objects will zoom by, complete with exact elevation stats and how much time you'll have to see it before it dips below the horizon.

Oh, and here's a bonus app for all you werewolves.

Filed under: Macworld, Rumors, Video, Internet Tools, .Mac

Rumor: Apple to increase .Mac, iDisk storage to 30GB at Macworld


MacDailyNews uncovered a digg post that contains some interesting video 'proof' that Apple could soon update the storage size of their .Mac and iDisk storage space to a whopping 30GB. Granted, we all know how easily stuff like this can be faked these days, but the video demonstrates mounting a user's iDisk both through Mac OS X and then using the Apple's iDisk Utility on Windows (via Parallels). When the iDisk is mounted on Windows, its total capacity is reported as a surprising 30GB, significantly greater than the standard 1GB (upgradeable to 2 and 4GB for extra yearly fees) it currently includes.

Considering the surmounting criticism .Mac is falling under these days, this massive boost in size - and of course the obvious speculation of the new features that would accompany it - could be a significant boon to .Mac membership and sales.

At the least, you might want to make sure you print out a Keynote Bingo card with a .Mac slot, as I think *some* sort of update, per our predictions, is a shoe-in for Tuesday's Keynote.

Filed under: iPod Family, Widget Watch

Widget Watch: iPodage song calculator

Remember that iPod storage calculator iLounge released? It seems Christian Chladek, maker of such other widgets as the Morse Code Translator, was inspired to provide an iPod calculator in widget form. iPodage allows you to pick your iPod model and adjust all the vital settings to do some quick and dirty math on just how many tunes you can cram into your pocket for the road. For bonus points, the widget can even shrink out of your way should you need to reclaim some Dashboard space.

iPodage is donationware and available from Christian's site.

Filed under: iPod Family, Software, Odds and ends, Internet Tools

iLounge unveils iPod Storage Calculator

Apple offers their own advertising-friendly estimation of how many songs each model of iPod can hold, but those numbers are based on fairly unrealistic standards of 128Kbps AAC songs that are a mere 4 minutes long. Toss in a few tracks from Phish or Beethoven's 5th, and you can easily hurl this song estimation into the realm of 'anyone's guess.'

Enter iLounge's iPod Storage Calculator, a handy little web tool (what, no widget?) that lets everyone from newbies to demanding audiophiles perform some quick calculations to figure out just how many songs, even at varying bitrates, their iPod can hold.
As a matter of fact, the only thing about this calculator that makes it iPod-specific is the handy pull-down menu offering one-click access to every storage capacity the iPod has ever packed; in other words - anyone can use this tool to get an idea of how many songs they can bring along.

Thanks Josh

Filed under: Software, Internet Tools

Microsoft announces "Live Drive" 2GB iDisk-like storage

Continuing their new Live platform push, Microsoft has announced an iDisk-like service dubbed Live Drive. This bagillionth addition to the Live product family will boast 2GB of online storage, accessibly via any computer with a web browser (read: IE or possibly Firefox - if enough people bug them for it), which can also live on a Windows Vista computer as a virtual drive.

MacNN, where we found this, didn't have many more details as to whether Live Drive will mimic any other .Mac functionality, such as application and data syncing, and we can't seem to get in with Firefox or Safari so that's all you get for now. Ultimately, with services like Live Drive and AOL's upcoming 5GB of free online storage via Xdrive, the virtual storage market is definitely heating up. Let's just hope it hasn't gotten too hot in the kitchen for .Mac.

Filed under: Software, Productivity, Internet Tools

Mark/Space releases Missing Sync for Windows Mobile 2.5


Mark/Space, purveyors of the Missing Sync line of software which allows all kinds of non-iSync compatible devices shake hands with your Mac, has released Missing Sync for Windows Mobile version 2.5. This update includes support for a wide array of Windows Mobile 5 devices. This update also includes improvements to syncing with Address Book, iCal and Microsoft Entourage 2004.

I helped test out the alpha a couple of months ago, back when I temporarily lost my senses and *gulp* actually owned a Windows Mobile 5 device (the Cingular 8125, if you're interested). While I ditched the device because I couldn't stand the Windows Mobile OS (or: 'regained my senses'), I must say: the syncing worked well, and I would realistically recommend this app for anyone who wants or needs to make a Windows Mobile device work with their Mac.

Missing Sync for Windows Mobile 2.5 is a free upgrade for owners of version 2.0, and a $20 upgrade for owners of version 1.x. A fresh licenses costs $40.

View a graphical chart of file and folder sizes with Disk Inventory X


Disk Inventory X takes a unique approach to helping you analyze your disk space usage by visualizing it as a graphical chart. You can see a breakdown of which types of files are hogging the most space, and clicking on a graphical portion will display the file's location in your Mac's system. Let's hear it for the use of color, shapes and sizes in helping Mac users clean up their hard drives; those Britney Spears MP3 duplicates and abandoned BitTorrent downloads aren't going to trash themselves.

Disk Inventory X is donationware and available from derlien.com.

Filed under: Multimedia, Video, Odds and ends, Xserve, Apple

Macs to show off planet Earth

apple used in space imagerySpaceDaily has a story out of Australia about a company called AstroVision using Apple's technology to provide real-time, full-color, high-res images and video of planet Earth in all her glory. Apparently AstroVision (which has nothing to do with the dog from the Jetsons) has been working with Apple Australia for a while on this project, which will create a supercomputer from Xserves, and using Xgrid and QuickTime, provide those beautiful images we all love to digg. According to the article, Apple Australia will provide:
  • construction of a state of the art High Performance Computing (HPC) environment using Apple's Unix-based Xserves and Xgrid computing software
  • expertise in design and development of HPCs for parallel computing
  • QuickTime, the global digital media standard
  • an architecture for online distribution of multimedia content
  • the research and design for the development of new consumer electronics products and product channels.

Filed under: iLife, Software, Internet Tools

iWeb Optimizer - easily shrink oversized images

iWeb Optimizer is a simple Automator app that allows you to easily compress PNG images inside your iWeb site into JPG files, but it maintains the same file name so it doesn't break any of your links or images. Simply drag and drop the site folder that iWeb creates (be it in your iDisk or an exported directory you specified) onto iWeb Optimizer and let it work its magic. The handy little utility will also parse all your subdirectories, making sure no PNG is safe from a little JPG compression.

iWeb Optimizer is free and available from Automator World.

Filed under: iPod Family, Odds and ends

iPod homage seen from space

Sometimes even his Steveness is guilty of having too much time on his hands. Apparently, Mr. Jobs won an abandoned mineral mine in Australia in a game of poker (or so the digg post says). So what does Steve do with the land? Why, construct the world's largest homage to the iPod, of course!

The site can be seen from space (Google Maps link) and still looks to be a work in progress - but wow. I wonder if this is Apple's attempt at putting little white music players in the hands of little green men.

Tip of the Day

Use Spotlight as a reference tool. Type any word in the Spotlight box and one of the top entries will be a definition. Click on it, and it will bring up the dictionary application to check the word in either the dictionary, thesaurus, Apple database, or Wikipedia.


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