This isn’t the first time Windows has been invited to the AirPlay party, but Thomas Pleasance’s AirPlay for Windows Media Center addin seems to already be one of the smoother combinations we’ve seen and it’s still in beta. Unsurprisingly, it does what the name says, so after installing Apple’s Bonjour service and the free client on your Media Center PC you should be able to stream video or pictures to it (there’s no support for music yet) from an iPad or iPhone with a simple click. The Digital Lifestyle has already gotten a quick hands-on with the app and got it working seamlessly as seen above, check that out for more details or hit the source link to download the necessary software to make it all work.

AirPlay for Windows Media Center does exactly what you’re thinking it does originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 24 May 2011 03:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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“In the PC world, with fewer ways of differentiating HP’s products from our competitors, we became number one; in the tablet world we’re going to become better than number one. We call it number one plus.”

A spokesman later confirmed that the device will launch in the UK with apps from the Guardian, Sky and Last.fm, but promised that “thousands” of other apps are on the way. The metrics might sound a bit optimistic, but the message is clear: HP thinks the TouchPad will annihilate the iPad and blow our minds to smithereens. We’ll just have to wait and see whether it’s as explosive as advertised.

HP thinks the TouchPad will be ‘better than number one,’ if that’s even possible originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 May 2011 03:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acoustic Research’s dock has the ability to dock your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch through the 30-pin proprietary Apple port. Once plugged in, your iOS device can play music through the docks’ two speakers. While connected to the dock, the device is also charged while playing music. If you’re using the dock to watch movies, it even has an easily rotated base that can hold your iPad in landscape mode.

It also comes with a 3.5mm audio input port for those times when you don’t have your iOS device with you or you have a non-iPod using friend who wants to share his/her music on your speakers. The ARS20i also functions as an alarm clock and a digital FM radio when used standalone. It is available now from Amazon for $77.74 (normal price $79.99).

Acoustic Research ARS20i: a dock for your iOS device, By Ubergizmo. Top Stories : Galaxy Tab 8.9 Preview, HTC Thunderbolt Review,

By Chris Scott Barr

Owning an arcade cabinet is one of those dreams that most every gamer has. Unfortunately there are some major hurdles involved with owning such a thing. First, if you want one with a good game (or multiple good games) you’re going to have to shell out a few hundred bucks. Then there’s the issue of space, and weight. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to move one, but arcade machines are really heavy. Well, if you already own an iPad, you can turn it into a miniature arcade cabinet.

That’s right, you can finally head over to ThinkGeek and pre-order your very own iCade. The April Fool’s gadget from last year is going to be shipping on May 11th. The price hasn’t changed from the earlier $100, so no worries about having to pay more. What’s even better is that Atari has already released their collection of 100 classic games, so there will be no shortage of games to play when yours arrives.

[ ThinkGeek ]

Max "Bunny" Sparber (left) and Coco Mault (right) are the Ultramods, who just recorded an album entirely on an iPad 2 using GarageBand. Photo courtesy of Max Sparber

Apple’s GarageBand app for iPad makes music creation so simple that a band produced an entire album with it in just two weeks.

The Ultramods, an independent punk duo, recently released its album Underwear Party. The band composed and recorded everything in the GarageBand iPad app including vocals, virtual lead guitar, bass guitar and drums.

For the drum beats, The Ultramods used GarageBand’s SmartDrum instrument, which enables you to compose a simple drum loop in a few seconds, without any knowledge of using a professional drum machine.

“I see [the GarageBand app] as an everything-combined-into-one package,” said Max “Bunny” Sparber, The Ultramods’ lead singer. “Both new musicians and professional musicians are going to be very surprised with what they can do with it.”

First released in 2004, Apple’s GarageBand is a simplified audio tool designed to make music production accessible to everyday customers, without the need for expensive professional hardware. 

Last month, Apple’s Steve Jobs introduced the iPad 2 with a new version of GarageBand remade for the iPad’s touchscreen interface. It’s one of several apps aimed at making the iPad 2 into a tool for creativity, not just for media consumption.

Some might say that GarageBand for iPad furthers Apple’s vision of making music creation accessible for the masses. Starting at $500, the iPad is more affordable than a Mac, and the $5 GarageBand app doesn’t require additional external instruments or hardware for recording music. All the necessary tools are available inside the app.

The GarageBand app packs a virtual keyboard, lead guitar, bass guitar and drum, and up to eight tracks of layered instruments can be recorded to create a song. GarageBand also includes “Smart” instruments that automatically generate drum loops and guitar or piano chords so that even people without musical training can pick up an iPad and create a song.

Sparber said he was excited about the dramatically lowered cost of music production thanks to the iPad and GarageBand. Furthermore, there are no additional costs to upload and sell an album on the internet, Sparber said.

“Making an album even a year ago costs thousands of dollars,” Sparber said. “This is a huge transformation. It’s part of the ongoing democratization where the tools have become inexpensive, and that’s a very exciting prospect.”

The Ultramods are selling their album for $10, and the band provided a free MP3 track for Wired.com readers to sample.

See Also:

• Garage Band: Apogee’s Jam Connects Your Guitar to Your iPad …
• GarageBand Kicks Out the Jams
• GarageBand.com Leaves Door Open

From TheLoop

In this week’s podcast, Brian X. Chen and Dylan Tweney discuss the Verizon iPhone, AT&T’s new tethering and hot-spot features, and News Corp.’s new iPad newspaper.

First up is our review of the Verizon iPhone, which really does have better coverage based on our tests. Suddenly, the iPhone is a phone, Brian says — although when you can get a signal, the AT&T iPhone has much faster data download and upload speeds.

We talk about the Verizon iPhone’s hot-spot feature: For an extra $20 per month, you can share your wireless connection with up to five devices via Wi-Fi. That compares to AT&T’s tethering option, which costs the same amount but only lets you connect one other device.

AT&T now offers a hot-spot feature too, but on an HTC 4G smartphone coming later this month. It has also improved its tethering plan by adding an extra 2GB of data.

We talk about News Corp.’s new iPad-only newspaper, The Daily. It will cost $1 per week or $40 per year. While the content is promising, the app is a little sluggish, and we have some doubts about the business model.

Finally, we talk about how the internet is running out of space. The last IPv4 addresses were handed out this week, and over the next few years, we may see slowdowns and glitches as companies start transitioning to a different version of the internet’s basic protocol.

—

You can listen to the audio-only version of the show here:

Gadget Lab audio podcast #102
http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0102.mp3

Or download the OGG version of Gadget Lab podcast #102.

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, subscribe to the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Editor’s note: This article is the first in a series of profiles about hit apps and the successful app programmers behind them.

Every day from morning to night, Maria Popova hunts for digital gold on the web.

Some of her finds: A neuroscientist explains how brains feel emotion. A lost, unpublished Dr. Seuss manuscript resurfaces. An infographic breaks down the economics of the hamburger.

Under the Twitter handle @brainpicker, Popova shares every nugget she can find with her 37,000 followers. But as interesting as all this content may be, her Twitter.com profile, like everyone else’s, is little more than a pile of plain links and text.

And this is why the Flipboard app for iPad is a godsend for readers, and why we’re excited that Wednesday’s new software update adds several new features. It grabs photos, text or video from links in a Twitter stream like Popova’s and stitches them into a magazine-like layout with neatly arranged panes, lots of white space and beautiful typography.

So when looking at Popova’s Twitter feed on Flipboard, you see part of the burger infographic she mentions, alongside an excerpt from the interview with the neuroscientist and a clip of the lost Dr. Seuss book. Swiping your finger across the iPad screen flips to another page of her content (left goes back chronologically and right takes you forward).

When you launch Flipboard, the main screen displays a grid of nine large tiles, each one representing a section (see picture at top of the post). The Facebook tile loads a Flipboard-ized version of your friends’ status updates; tapping the general Twitter tile shows content from people you follow in the same magazine fashion. You can also add sections for specific Twitter feeds you’d like to read (like @wired), and it’ll do its magic.

The new version of Flipboard that just went live in the App Store adds the ability to magazine-ify content from your Flickr stream, Google feeds and Facebook groups.

It’s all extremely easy to set up; you’ll be flipping around in minutes.

The end result is a visually rich magazine that’s alive — breathing with content posted by people you care about on the internet. (Hell, Flipboard looks so good you’ll start appreciating photos and comments from people you don’t care much about, too.)

If only the web could be this much fun on its own. In fact, a superior browsing experience is exactly what gave rise to Flipboard.

“One of our first thought experiments was, how would you re-imagine a web browser?” said Evan Doll, an ex-Apple engineer and co-founder of Flipboard.

“We love magazines,” he added. “There’s something great in terms of the graphic design, typography and emphasis on the visual side. And there’s also the fact you have editorial — someone filtering down the new stuff, telling you what’s important, interesting and worthwhile. Both those things we wanted to try to marry with social.”

The wedding is generating a lot of buzz. Apple last week named Flipboard as the best iPad app of the year. That same week, the startup announced partnerships with major media outlets including The Washington Post, Bon Appetit and the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Flipboard team is only a year old, and it has already received $10 million in funding from stars like Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and actor Ashton Kutcher.

That’s a good thing, but it also means that Flipboard is going to have to make money — not easy for an app that’s free in the iTunes App Store.

Doll says the team is still hatching a plan to rake in cash, which could involve embedding advertisements into Flipboard pages or splitting micropayments with content creators. And it’s not just creators, but also prolific content sharers like Popova that Flipboard would like to help earn money.

“She should be able to do that as her full-time job,” Doll said of Popova. “She’s a one-woman magazine.”

Flipboard download link [iTunes]

Price: Free

Category: Media

Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

We were undeniably excited about Netflix coming to the iPhone and iPad, but according to CEO Reed Hastings — who spoke on the subject during a Web 2.0 Summit panel discussion — that move has actually had little impact on the company’s business. In his mind, these results indicate that consumers just aren’t interested in streaming long-form video on mobile devices and instead prefer the experience on bigger screens. To support his conclusion, Hastings cited how Netflix integration on the Xbox 360, PS3, and Mac significantly grew its subscriber base. While we personally disagree with his judgment on mobile and grant him honorary captain obvious credentials for his bigger screen preference remarks, we’ll still entertain the possibility that Hastings may know somethings we don’t. That’s not to say the phrase correlation does not imply causation isn’t tickling the back our throat though. But what about you, reader? Are you taking advantage of the little red app on your Apple portable devices or even on your new Windows Phone 7 handset? Hit the poll to tell us what’s up.

View Poll

Netflix CEO says consumers just aren’t interested in long-form video on portable devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the year of the tablets as electronics makers rush to get one of the hottest gadgets of the year into the hands of users. Acer is the latest to announce it will launch a new line of tablets.

The devices will be introduced in New York on November 23 and will be priced ranging from $300 to $700, according to a Dow Jones Newswires report.

Acer tablets will join a crowded and extremely competitive market. Since the launch of the Apple iPad in April, most major electronics makers have announced their own devices to take on the iPad. So far, Apple has sold more than 4.3 million iPads.

In June, Dell launched a 5-inch tablet called Streak, while Samsung recently debuted a 7-inch device called the Galaxy Tab. Meanwhile, BlackBerry maker Research in Motion’s tablet Playbook is expected to hit stores next year.

Separately, T-Mobile has said it will offer the Samsung Galaxy Tab for $400 (after a rebate) and with a two-year service agreement. It is similar to Sprint’s pricing for the device. Verizon has said it will sell the Galaxy Tab for $600 without a contract.

Acer might try to ink a similar deal but it will have to do more in terms of product features to stand out. Acer hasn’t said if the new tablets will be based on Windows or Android OS.

But one thing’s likely–Acer is going to find it hard to see the same kind of success in the tablet market that it has with netbooks.

See Also:

• Tablet Catalogs Rethink Casual Page-Flipping
• Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet
• Why India’s $35 Tablet May Be Just a Dream
• Build Your Own Tablet for $400
• How the Tablet Will Change the World

Photo: Acer Aspire in slate form (arabani/Flickr)

N-3D DEMO from aircord on Vimeo.

Tonight seems to be the night for 3D. A design team released a proof of concept video showing how it’s possible to use an iPad to project a 3D image to the naked eye. It requires some special hardware, but it’s still pretty damn amazing. Check out the video after the jump.

Currently, viewers can move around and view an image as if it was an object literally floating in space. Of course, right now it’s just a proof of concept, but if the team at Aircord Labs can pull it off, this has the chance to be an amazing bit of technology.

[via Gizmodo]