Last month Apple acquired Nuance Tech, a speech recognition company. Now it seems like all the Apple fanboys are talking about the speech recognition on their iPhones and how cool that will be.
Well once such Apple fanboy has developed a speech recognition concept on what it might look like on an iOS device.
Im a huge fan of the team over at Hype Machine, they have had an amazing product for a very long time now and finally they are getting noticed. Hype Machine have just launched their first iPhone application called Hype Machine Radio. Hype Machine iPhone app allows users to turn any music blog into a radio station.
The application pulls in the music from all the blogs tracked by Hype Machine and then allows users to browse and personalize their own stations.
The app costs $2.99 in the US and £1.79 in the UK.
I wish more companies would start to think about ways to use all the checkin information collected on Foursquare. Heat Tracker is a great example of this in practice, as it allows users to find place near them that have a crowd before you get there.
Look for places that are “Heating Up” or “On Fire” (which reminds me of NBA Jam). Heat Tracker lets you see who is in a certain venue or even how many males compared to females.
Now you will never be in a bar alone again! Download Heat Tracker here.
7digital has just updated their Android application and is now an iTunes competitor.
The full features include:
The 7digital Android app is available to users in 16 countries: UK, US, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden and Norway.
Feedly has just launched yet another news reader for the iPad. I get the feeling that we already have too many news readers on the iPad, so do we need yet another one? Well I think we do!
Feedly sat down with Robert Scoble and run through their new feed reader for the iPad, which is built around HTML5.
Get it on iTunes now.
Here is a great new iPhone application from Black Arc Studios. The application is called Thor’s Hammer and it lets the user wield the almighty power of the god of thunder. The application has over 30 different special effects and Im sure it would be a fun buy for kids.
Thor’s Hammer’s key effects include:
You can check out more information on the application here or download the app here ($0.99).
Here are some great Angry Birds 3 Walkthrough videos. Angry Birds is easily the most popular game to come out on the iOS platform and they are now growing onto other platforms. Here are the best walkthrough videos to show you how to win at Angry Birds 3.
Amazon.com seems to have finally succeeded in breaking into the “cloud” market with their new “Amazon Cloud Drive.” It touts a default of 5GB of online storage for free, unlimited access from any computer and, of course, reassures customers they will never have to worry about losing their files again. Their claim is, “Anything digital, securely stored, available anywhere.” But is it really as great as they claim? I decided to dig deeper and find out.
I received an email from Amazon when the cloud drive was launched and was given $2.00 in credit towards mp3 purchases. Intrigued by this new development (and the free music credits), I ventured to their website to check it out. I quickly found a song I wanted and clicked the buy button. It asked if I wanted to save the music to my cloud drive. “Simple enough,” I thought. Then I wouldn’t have to download it – I could just stream it. I immediately went to my new cloud drive, selected my new song (which was available immediately) and pressed play. It buffered up the song and played but I discovered it was also downloading to my computer as well. Bummer.
Next I decided to try uploading some music. I clicked “Upload to your Cloud Drive” and was prompted to download the “Amazon MP3 Uploader.” Wait a minute – so I have to use proprietary software to upload music? “That’s a bit inconvenient,” I thought, but I downloaded it anyway. After installing the software, it decided it had to scan my entire hard drive for music, which was a long and tedious process. Once it finally loaded, it told me I had X playlists and X songs not in my cloud drive and asked if I wanted to upload it all now. I declined (as it would have been way more than 5GB of space) and chose a few albums to upload. What I found was that it killed my internet speed and I saw no way to limit the upload rate. Frustrated after about 20 minutes of sluggish internet, I killed the uploader until that night when it could run and not bother me.
In the meantime, I checked out the Android mp3 player from Amazon, wondering if it too would have to download my music before playing it. I discovered that while it can play the song through buffered memory, it still has to download; so listening while downloading isn’t a good option as the song often plays faster than it downloads (unless you’re using Wi-Fi). So once again I’m stuck waiting.
Ultimately, I was able to get the music I wanted uploaded and then downloaded again (to my phone). Now that I have done so, I can simply open the Amazon cloud player and quickly hear what I want (slightly faster than searching my hard drive and includes better filtering options). So was the hassle worth it?
Pros:
Cons:
Overall, I would say Amazon has a potentially great thing going on here. If they simply added the ability to stream without downloading, I would give the Amazon Cloud Player and Drive 5/5 stars. As it is now, and considering their hefty fees for storage in excess of 5GB, I give it 3.5/5 stars. It’s a great concept, but could use a few tweaks to make it the best.
We Are Hunted has just launched a new iPad application they have been developing with the use of the Echo Nest API. The new application is called Music Hunter and it is a great showcase that allows users to navigation through new and popular music and then directs them to purchasing tracks via iTunes and 7Digital.
Music Hunter is available in the app store for £1.19, but is it really worth it? I don’t think so! The application looks great, but it lacks pupose. Users will need to pay for an application that doesn’t even allow them to listen to full tracks. Users can only listen to 30 second previews of tracks. It seems as though We Are Hunted are just trying to produce applications that will allow them to take a revenue share from iTunes downloads! Why would I pay for Music Hunter when I can get Aweditorium for free that allows me to stream full tracks as much as I want?
Are you looking for an all-around brilliant news application for the iPad? Introducing News.me! News.me is a collaboration between betaworks and the New York Times, which brings together the pleasure of reading news online with the portability of the iPad.
News.me also has some great social features that have been missing from other news iPad applications. News.me provides streams, so you can see what the people you follow are talking about on Twitter, while being able to filter and even see how many times an article has been read and shared.
The app charges a subscription fee to cover the costs of licensing content from publishers. Weekly subscriptions are $0.99 and a yearly subscription is only $34.99.
You can download News.me here.
