Waking up on time is so important – you don’t need me to tell you that, though. It’s likely you use a set tone or a panicky spouse to help you rouse from your slumber, mind, rather than a sound you actually want to hear.
EnSight Media’s latest app Radio Alarm Clock helps to make waking up as enjoyable or bearable as possible, though, offering several radio stations and tones to choose from. Manchul Ko, CMO of Ensight Media, spoke to us about how his company’s app stands out in a crowded market, how easy it is to use, and why it shows how the sound of smooth jazz is popular (almost) worldwide.
Accessibility is essential in an app like Radio Alarm Clock, but fortunately it’s as simple to use as you might hope.
“You can listen to just the radio function if you like, but if you want to use the app’s other features, just tap on the alarm feature and Sleep timer,” Ko says. ”
Simply touch ‘CH+’ and choose your favourite channel – you can either select the channel by country, pick from SHOUTcast channels, or search for channels directly and save them as Favourites.” According to Ko, not only is Radio Alarm Clock easy to use, but it’s also one of the more enjoyable alarm clock apps you can download.
“For heavy sleepers, it’s great that they can wake up with a smile using our app. I mean, the iPhone’s default alarm sounds are not friendly, at all,” he explains. ” For light sleepers, it’s good that our sleep timer feature will put them to sleep easily by their listening to nature sounds or radio stations or MP3s.”
What really helps separate Radio Alarm Clock from the many similar apps out there on the App Store, though, is its presentation – its design charmingly harks back to the early 20th century.
“Users of the app are touched by its unique retro UI & UX design, since nowadays everyone is really focused on a purely digitalized world,” Ko explains. ” One example of this retro design is visible when the app streams the radio channel, for the app displays a ‘Channel Streaming’ animation – the user might really think that it actually searches the channel by itself.”
Intriguing presentation and ease of use are present and correct, then, but there are also tons of different stations to explore. Ko says a few favourite stations have emerged.
“Through the SHOUTcast channels, French Kiss FM and Absolutely Smooth Jazz are popular,” he says. “In their respective regions, the BBC, Europe 1, France Info, Japan-A-Radio, and K-Pop channels are also widely used.”
Developing Radio Alarm Clock was harder than you might expect, however, and integrating the radio channels into the app was certainly being the biggest challenge.
“Our biggest difficulty was supporting the various streaming formats and overcoming the technical issues and guidelines,” Ko says.
In terms of updates, Ko tells us there are no concrete plans in place. “It is hard to guarantee specific features at this moment, but we will try to focus on social options that will help you interact with other Radio Alarm Clock users who listen to the same radio channels.”
You can download Radio Alarm Clock for iPhone now – it is currently free to download [iTunes link].
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During Apple’s music event, the company introduced the new iPhone 5, 7th gen iPod nano and iPod touch 5G (fifth generation). Following the announcement of all these products, they went on to introduce a new product called EarPods, replacing the older headphones shipping with the iPhone 4S and fourth gen iPod touch 4G.
The Cupertino company noted that they have already shipped 600 million of the older headphones and expect EarPods to be a success. EarPods are an entirely redesigned headphone solution for Apple’s iOS products, bringing better sound quality and better technology to the headphones shipping with the current lineup of Apple products.
Apple designed the EarPods by studying the geometry of a user’s ear, and spent over 3 years developing a pair that would give the same sound quality as in-ear headphones without creating a seal on the user’s ear. EarPods have a directed speaker that deposit sound directly into the user’s ear canal instead of emitting sound in one general direction like the older headphones.
The new headphones also feature a series of ports, one located on the back of the headphones and one on the bottom to create airflow within speaker, allowing it to emit crystal clear sound. EarPods will ship with the new iPhone 5 on September 21st, and with the new 7th generation iPod nano and 5th gen iPod touch 5G in October. Apple is also selling the EarPods individually for $29, now available online and in retail stores.
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Wake Smarter puts that fancy bedside alarm clock to shame. It has an amazing variety of choices on how you would like your alarm to behave. There are options for the usual alarm sounds, repeats, snooze-ability, and custom labels. But Wake Smarter goes WAY beyond that.
As an alarm clock it has a daytime display with gorgeous background photos or textures to choose from, and it has a much simpler nighttime display with a black background a red numerals that are easy on the eyes in the dark. The fun begins once you set an alarm. You have the ability to set the alarm to the minute and choose which days of the week it applies to. But then you get to add actions to that alarm. Actions such as having a custom message read to you, or the weather, or the news headlines, or your day’s calendar events, or your Facebook or Twitter news. Even the alarm audio allows you to choose from some unique sounds or a radio station or one of your iTunes playlists. And you can have more that one action on your alarm, so if you can’t choose you can focus on which action you want to have first. You can even control the length of the snooze feature and set it between 1-60 minutes.
There is a sleep timer too that is just as customizable. You can control the length, up to two hours, and set the audio mode to radio, playlist, or choose from about a dozen sleep sounds. The sleep timer needs to be set manually, but the audio will stop as scheduled and not interfere with any of the alarms that are set.
Another great feature of Wake Smarter is the voice control. On the main clock face screen, there is a microphone icon. When tapped, Wake Smarter understands a limited number of voice commands such as “time,” “date,” “weather,” or “Facebook.” Wake Smarter will then read out what you’ve asked for. The text-to-speech function does quite well with difficult words and it’s quite understandable. There is even some level of customization of volume, pitch, and speed for the voice to make it suit your ear.
With all these options and features, navigating has the potential to be a problem, but not so with Wake Smarter. The main clock screen has just three icons to interact with. And even the full-featured Settings screen has only four main icons to find what you’re looking for. They are clearly marked and easily understood as to what they control. You shouldn’t find yourself getting lost in complex menu structures here.
Wake Smarter is a fantastic alarm clock app. It comes with it’s own set of sounds and backgrounds. The features and options include something for everyone. But the voice control and text-to-speech feature sets this clock app apart and make it worth the $2.99 price tag.
[rating: 5/5]What we like:
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Zio Ball is a bit of pinball, a bit of a maze, a bit of Cut the Rope, and more difficult than a first glance would indicate. The challenge is to place magnetic spots that pull or push your ball toward the escape hatch.
Zio Ball is easy to understand and has few controls to master. You are given an obstacle course with a ball placed in it and magnetic spots to position in relation to the course to move the ball to the escape hatch. The red magnets pull the ball and the blue magnets push it. But getting these magnets placed so they have just the right amount of influence on the ball is the tricky part. Beyond placing the magnets, the only other control is turning them on or off. That allows you to drop the ball at strategic times to send it rolling in a useful direction.
Placing the magnets in just the right locations to move the ball through the course isn’t easy. Just a nudge one way or the other can leave the ball motionless or jammed between the magnet and the course. And coordinating the push and pull of the magnets with the timing of the on/off switch can take several attempts to get right. And refraining from trying to swing or tilt the ball using the accelerometer is hard to overcome.
The industrial look of the game suits the task perfectly. The setting of the courses resembles a tunnel or an engineering deck. There are controls for music and sounds, but I couldn’t hear anything. There’s also a control for vibration, which did work and provided feedback when the magnets were interacting with the ball.
While simple in concept and controls, Zio Ball offers a surprising level of difficulty. There are plenty of levels and courses to keep the challenge going. Zio Ball takes a bit more concentration and puzzle solving skill than many games. And if it starts to get easy, there’s always the challenge of beating your best time.
[rating: 4.5/5]What we like:
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Over the past year, Apple added a number of new applications to its App Store and ported over some of its existing Mac applications over to the iOS platform, such as iPhoto, GarageBand, and iMovie. Late Tuesday, Apple posted updates for all of the following apps: iPhoto, GarageBand, iMovie, and Cards.
iPhoto received a minor update for bug fixes and enhancements, as well as a minor UI tweak, adding a button to allow users to send out journals uploaded to iCloud. This would allow users to share the journal with one click. Cards, a rather simple Apple app, allows users to amake and send physical cards, straight from the app and integrates into Apple’s iOS ecosystem with the use of iTunes gift cards and such.
Any noticeable changes for the Cards app is currently unknown. iMovie received a minor fix allowing users to add their own personal movie soundtracks to a project, as well as minor stability improvements. GarageBand received the most stability improvements, fixing a bug that crashed the app when users tried to upload songs to iCloud or attempted to connect to SoundCloud.
These stability and UI improvements will likely continue over the course of several months, and as iPad and iPhone generations pass, until the mobile app operates very similar to that of the desktop.
{via CNET}
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One of the most eagerly anticipated games has finally made its way to the iPhone and iPad. But while the wait is finally over it may not be what some players of the massively successful franchise want.
Burnouts first journey onto iOS is in the from of the mini game, Burnout Crash, that has already made it onto the PlayStation and XBox Arcade. So instead of a full-on 3D crash-fest of mangled metal, you have the pleasure of playing God, (or should that be the Devil), in a crashtastic onslaught of exploding cars, trucks and every other type of vehicle you can think of.
The 2D top-down view looks great, across a massive 18 different junctions the detail pops of the screen and the whole environment is interactive so not only can you destroy the vehicles but also blow up the surrounding buildings, parked cars and pretty much anything that burns.
Each of the 18 junctions have three different game modes so you’ll have plenty of opportunity to hone your skills and have plenty to keep coming back for as each of the have 5 stars to be collected based on high scores and other side-goals such as performing special moves or destroying certain items.
The 3 modes are Rush Hour, Pile Up and Road Block and while they all take place on the same junctions they require slightly different techniques to succeed. Rush Hour puts you up against the clock to destroy as much as you can while Pile Up tasks you to crash as many vehicles as possible and then keep them blazing. Road Block meanwhile is as simple as blocking any vehicles from driving off the screen, lose 5 and it’s game over.
All of the modes provide special vehicles too that offer a variety of challenges. Stop a Pizza delivery truck and you get to spin the lotto wheel a win a bonus item while stopping the bank truck will rain down bags of money on you.
Like all great games Burnout Crash is easy to learn but difficult to master. Controls aid this as all that’s required is a swipe to move your car or truck while a tap of your vehicle will cause it to explode once the burnout bar is maximized of course.
There are 7 cars and trucks to unlock and each one offer a slightly different balance of power and control, switching between these vehicles can offer different opportunities to grab all 5 stars on each level and you will often find yourself heading back to earlier levels with better cars to grab all the available stars.
While causing all of this mayhem you are blasted with a cacophony sound and a great set of songs from the 80’s. I certainly recommend playing this game with headphones in to get the best sound experience and so that you don’t annoy anyone sitting around you!
Unfortunately the multi-player option that they provide in the form of Autolog, is a little disappointing. It certainly works and you can send challenges to your friends but no ability to play against other players in real time is a real disappointment. And while GameCenter integration is included there are no leaderboards, just 20 achievements to be unlocked.
That being said, I do keep coming back to Burnout Crash to unlock more levels and to go back and gain more stars, it could just be so much better if the social aspects of the game worked better.
Burnout Crash is a universal game and is available in the App Store, despite its shortcomings it’s still a recommended purchase.
[rating: 4.5/5]What we like
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Although the large over ear headphones seem to be all the rage again thanks specifically to a few big name endorsements I’ve never been a fan of the bulk of them, especially wearing them out and about. So I’ve always stuck to the inner-ear type and predominantly I’ve been happy with the ones supplied with all my iOS from Apple.
These standard earphones have always sufficed, but there is definitely a point at which if you spend a little more money you get a lot more quality, the question remains whether it’s worth it or not. So for the last week I’ve been listening to my music, podcasts and audiobooks using the Etymotic mc3 earphones with my iPhone 4S.
As Apple and other companies have proved design and packaging are half the battle in making any device a success and Etymotic have taken that approach too with their elegant packaging and beautiful accessories.
The whole package contains the earphones with built-in mic, 4 sets of different eartips, spare filters, wire clip and a pouch to keep it all in.
The eartips were the first thing that drew my attention due to their distinct and different shapes. The earphones come pre-installed with a set on and I have to admit I was a little disappointed with how they felt and, because they didn’t fit perfectly, how they sounded too.
So my next task was to fit another pair of eartips to see if they would fit better and while the grey industrial style eartips certainly didn’t look that special they fitted snuggly and securely and when I turned on the music I could tell that I had chosen the right ones.
I have worn them for a little over two weeks now and not only are they comfortable but they produce great sound for both spoken work, podcasts and audiobooks and music and because they have in-line controls and a built in mic they are ideal for the iPhone as you can take calls and use Siri while wearing them.
This is only half of what you are getting when you invest in a set of Etmotic earphones as you also get their iPhone App “Awareness!” which you can download for free from the App Store and then enable all the features with the code you are provided with when you register your earphones.
The Awareness! App takes the listening experience to a whole new level although it does take a little while to get used to it. With the multitasking app turned on your earphones become environment aware, with the mic listening to your surroundings and acting on what it hears.
This can range from stopping what you are listening to completely, lowering the volume or feeding the sound that it hears through to your earphones. As I said this can seem a little odd at first but once you have used it a few times it makes listening to audio an even better experience, especially when you are out and about and need to be aware of your surroundings.
The addition of this app takes what are a great pair of earphones to a wonderful pair of headphones and for this reviewer I will never skimp on earphones again.
You can even upgrade to what Etymotic call ‘Rock Star status’ by teaming up with a local hearing specialist to have a pair of personalized custom fit earmolds. I haven’t done this but at for an additional $100 this could be a serious option especially if you have to wear earphones for many hours at a time.
[rating: 5/5]What we like:
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Apart from the lack of 3G and GPS in Apple’s Wi-Fi only iPad 2, the rest of its internals are identical to those packed into its 3G-capable counterpart, so you’ll be surprised to find that iLounge have discovered differences in the quality of audio recorded by each device. The Wi-Fi only iPad 2 achieves higher quality audio recordings, and it’s believed that it’s the differences in materials of the two tablet models that makes the difference.
In both models of the iPad 2, the microphone is housed at the top of the device near the FaceTime camera. On the Wi-Fi only device, the housing around the microphone is aluminum, and is said to offer “markedly cleaner audio than that of the 3G,” which has its microphone embedded within the plastic antenna strip. Audio recorded on this device is said to sound “slightly muffled and echo-prone.”
iLounge noted in their report:
“Curiously, we found the GSM 3G model’s audio to be slightly preferable to that of the CDMA model, which seemed to suffer the issues more severely. The problem is particularly evident when the iPad’s screen is facing the user, as is the case when using FaceTime and a great many other apps.”
On the first-generation iPad, the microphone is located close the headphone jack and housed in aluminum in both the 3G and Wi-Fi models, so the quality of audio recording is identical on both devices.
Although iLounge claims that this is a “particularly evident” problem for the 3G iPad, it’s hard to establish at this time whether it’s enough of an issue to avoid this model for the time being. It’s possible that Apple will modify the iPad 2’s design mid-production if this proves to be a significant problem, however, if you’re an early adopter, you may be stuck with it.
[via AppleInsider] ]]> https://touchreviews.net/wifi-ipad-2-records-sound-3g-model/feed/ 0