BlueAnt’s V1 Voice Controlled Bluetooth Headset introduces the revolutionary BlueGenie Voice User Interface, letting you control most functions with the sound of your voice. Amazingly, the headset will actually talk back to you too!
Pushing one button activates the voice recognition technology and gives you control of all the functions of the V1, just by talking. If you need assistance, ask for it and the headset will verbally help you get the commands you want.
Comes with: Headset, eargels, foam tips, ‘Gooseneck” usb cable, USB adapter, USB Car charger, AC Power adapter.
Not sure if you’ve checked lately, but the App Store is ever-growing! So far more than 100 apps have been featured on the App Avalanche, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. Time to dive in for another app-stravaganza with iPhone App Avalanche 10!
A-Day just goes on and on. We’re not obsessed, mind you, but for reasons outlined before, from Google’s CEO being on the Apple board, to Google services being inextricably linked into the iPhone, to Location Based (Mobile) Services and the Cloud being the Next Big Thing, this launch matters to iPhone owners almost as much as Windows Mobile (whom they’re gunning to replace) and Palm OS 2.0 (whom they may render obsolete before launch).
Curious to know more? We are! In fact, Dieter’s Meta Live Blogging the even right now over at AndroidCentral.
UPDATED: Our take, post event:
It’s not white. What’s up with that? Google is the white screen with search box. How could it be so not white?
Gmail MONSTER! Push, all sorts of management features (finally drop the beta tag??). I’d be severely jealous if, you know, Gmail weren’t so flaky for me
Complete open source platform. Stallman must be in heaven!
SIM-locked to T-Mobile. Carriers — again — FTL!
WebKit browser — not full on Chrome. Wow, if anyone had told me KHTML would become so popular, I’d have thought that about as likely as a Unix box with multi-touch sitting in my pocket right now…
This is definitely a serious play by Google to take control of the mobile market, and the advertising money that will come with it.
And most importantly, it’s a great day to be a gadget lover!
A-Day continues! AndroidCentral will have continuing coverage of T-Mobile’s new GooglePhone throughout the day, but we here at TiPb are keeping our eyes peeled for those nuggets that collide (or will collide) with the iPhone.
Okay, so Google’s CEO is on Apple’s Board of Directors, but he recuses himself from meetings about the iPhone. Okay, so Android is technically positioned to compete not against the iPhone but against the wide-range of lower end, multi-form-factor Windows Mobile devices. Okay, so the Android Market isn’t a proprietary, walled gardened like the App Store, which may please the FSF but may also turn off some developers who prefer single device targets. But at least Android is leaving the iPhone’s bread and butter alone right, it’s iPod heritage powered by the #1 music store in the US, iTunes?
Eh… Not so much. VentureBeat (via Engadget) is now rumoring that Google may just have lined up cloud-competitor Amazon to provide not only music, but TV and Movies as well. aTunes much?
What’s especially attractive about Amazon MP3 is that, while the 3@$+@29! record labels (other than EMI) deliberately withhold high quality, DRM free music from iTunes in order to give other vendors a competitive advantage, Amazon gets the good stuff from pretty much all of them. (Albeit it only in the US, but that’s the whole world anyway, right Amazon?)
Will this be announced alongside the T-Mobile G1 today? We’ll soon see!
Today is “A Day”, the day T-Mobile announces Google’s Android mobile platform (see our brand new little sibling site, AndroidCentral, for all the details and coverage) to an anxiously anticipating world. Well… mostly anxiously anticipating.
Turns out some people aren’t as interested. Is it because Google’s latest forays into content, including YouTube and Wikipedia rival Knol, and platforms, including Android and Firefox rival Chrome (and gLinux OS on the horizon?), make them think “don’t be evil” is just a sinister plan to catch the world — and our privacy — off guard and unaware? Nope. We tend to like and trust Google. What then?
Same reason some people are less than thrilled with Windows Mobile. See, while supporting multiple hardware and handsets is “choice” for the consumer, that translates into “headache” for the developer. Make a game for the iPhone, and it plays the same on every iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G, and iPhone Touch on the planet. Make a game for a multi-device OS, and suddenly you have to worry: some don’t have keyboards, some have full Querty, some have T9, some don’t have touchscreens, some don’t have d-pads, some have 320×240, some have 480×800. Infinite combinations leads to infinite complication, and that’s before you even worry about bug fixing. And for some developers, including Steve Demeter who just cleared $250K from the iTunes App Store for his game, Trism, that’s a deal breaker:
“Do I want to be spending 6 months to write the game, and another 6 months making it compatible? If I had Trism available for Android, and there are 50 Android devices and every time one of them crashes (the users) contact me, do I want that?”
Sure, some developers won’t care. Freedom alone will make the effort worthwhile to them. But these are the developers already coding for Windows Mobile (or LinMo). But for others? The App Store, with all its problems (and they’re still many), maintains a value prop that’s going to be incredibly tough to beat.
Real working app? Proof of concept? Science fiction? All of the above? Don’t care. Want it now. This amazing demo shows an App that uses the iPhone’s camera to record and display visual tagging information in real time, right in front of you. Drool.
Want to see more? Check out their long (18 minute) presentation from Techcrunch 50. Amazing stuff.
The iPhone Map App, which leverages Google’s mapping services, became location aware with 1.1.3, and GPS enabled with the iPhone 3G and 2.0.
Basically, it superimposes a blue circle around the area it believes you’re located. More confident the belief, smaller the circle. GPS lock, and a blue dot shows up. Only problem? Sometimes there’s not dot and Google’s lack of confidence results in a pretty huge circle. Well, last week Google’s blog announced some improvements:
With today’s launch, your location estimate will be centered closer to your true location, and we have also improved the calculation of just how good our estimate is. When we originally launched the “blue circle” on Google Maps for mobile, the circle usually stayed the same size no matter if you were in downtown Manhattan or rural Iowa. Now, the next time you’re using Google Maps in downtown Manhattan, expect to see a much smaller circle that’s also far more accurate. Conversely, when you’re in a lightly populated area like rural Iowa, expect to see a much larger circle which also happens to be centered closer to your true location.
The best news? No update required. Anything tapping the Google force for location — including the iPhone, benefits automatically! Enjoy!
TiPb loves answering your emails, but we also love sharing our answers with the community in hopes that more people will benefit, and even better answers will present themselves (hey, that’s why we have them forums!). For today’s debut TiPb Answers, reader Ryan asks:
I’ve installed some apps on my phone from itunes, one being facebook mobile. What concerns me is that once i’ve entered my user/pw the first time it is never required again and anyone who simply “slides” the phone unlocked will have full access. I assume this is true for email as well (although I haven’t set that up yet.)
My question is, is there any way to passcode a particular icon on the iphone? Or put a security lock on it?
If you currently own a iPhone 3G and are lucky enough to be paying $15 for the MEdia Net Unlimited data plan, your luck is about to change. And not for the better. AT&T is currently on the hunt for you, and you will soon join the rest of us in coughing up another $15 a month of your hard earned money for the the $30 iPhone 3G data plan.
You chould be receiving the following email anytime now:
Our service records indicate that you are using an iPhone 3G with a data plan designed for other devices. To avoid unexpected data overage charges and enable Visual Voicemail, please contact your telecom manager, or an AT&T representative at 1-800-331-0500.
Thank you for choosing wireless from AT&T. We appreciate your business.
So there you have it folks, everyone will soon be on a level playing field. Have any of our loyal readers received the email above from AT&T yet?
Good news? Looks like there really is a new “Home” option for iPhone activation in the US. Bad news? Looks like it has nothing to do with the iPhone being sold unlocked. Apple Insider, who broke the rumor, updates as follows:
In order to service these customers, a special home pre-qualification web site has been set up so that users can find if they are qualified by AT&T for a phone unit subsidy. Users can set up their account at home so that everything is ready to go when they make their iPhone 3G purchase at a retail store. The new “Home” option that retail employees are seeing on their EasyPay terminals is designed to allow them to use this home pre-qualification step to accelerate the transaction of a new iPhone 3G. That also indicates there is no impending potential for unlocked iPhone 3G sales in the US, although this is expected at some point.
Apple Insider is also sticking to the 32GB SKU, but maybe only after the holidays (though presumably that means short term, not, you know, any point after the holidays and into future months/years…)
Magic 8-Ball?
Unlocked iPhones in the US? Very Doubtful
32GB iPhone in the *near* future? It is certain
Interesting! Can’t wait to see how this one pans out!
BlueAnt’s V1 Voice Controlled Bluetooth Headset introduces the revolutionary BlueGenie Voice User Interface, letting you control most functions with the sound of your voice. Amazingly, the headset will actually talk back to you too!
