As reported on The Verge. By Chris Welch Can an app make your TV look better? According to THX, the answer to that question is yes. Today the company is releasing THX Tune-Up, a calibration app for iOS it claims can help you get the best performance from your home theater setup. Tune-Up arrives just in time for the rush of HDTVs being sold ahead of this weekend’s Super Bowl, and there’s good reason for new…
AS reported on Engadget. By Sarah Silbert Yandex, the Russian search giant, has just launched its first product for the US market: a voice-controlled social search app called Wonder. Available on iOS, the app pulls data from your Facebook, Foursquare, Instagram and Twitter accounts to answer questions like “What music do my friends listen to?” Essentially, it’s a mobile version of Facebook’s new Graph Search, which also uses data from your social network contacts to answer questions. Wonder uses…
As reported on TechCrunch. by KIM-MAI CUTLER FitStar, a fitness app startup backed by Floodgate and Google Ventures that uses the iPad to transform home video workouts, just announced its first creation. In it, Atlanta Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez becomes a user’s personal trainer, leading them through about 60 different video exercises. The idea is that the iPad is much better suited toward helping people achieve their fitness goals. Unlike DVDs and videos, which are passive, the…
As reported on LifeHacker. by Melanie Pinola Bokeh adds a unique look to photos with creamy out-of focus highlights. If you want to get the best Bokeh effects, The Slanted Lens offers this lighting lesson with three basic rules. The Slanted Lens experimented with different aperture settings and subject/background placements to find these three principles for getting the most Bokeh: 1. Get as close to the subject as you can 2. Keep the background with the…
As reported on Polygon. By Arthur Gies Halo 4 gets what made Halo: Combat Evolved special. The original Halo wasn’t just about great combat or multiplayer, though it set the standard for those things in shooters for the better part of a decade. There was also a sense of wonder and discovery that Halo‘s sequels often struggled to find again. They were bigger, yes, and they had more of everything Halo had, but that was also sort of the problem. They were charting known…
As reported on LifeHacker. by Adam Dachis We’re happily using Google Maps on our iPhones, but find it frustrating that using Siri to find a route with anything other than Apple’s default app requires a bit of work. Software blog Addictive Tips found a clever workaround: you only need to say “via transit” after your request and Siri will offer other routing options. A simple, but not entirely hands-free, way of making Siri display Google Maps directions…
As reported on LifeHacker. by Whitson Gordon Chrome/Firefox: Ever start to watch a long YouTube video, only to come back later and completely lose your place? Video Resumer is a simple extension that will remember where you stopped and pick up those videos where you left off. Video Resumer takes almost no setup. Just install the plugin to Chrome or Firefox and start watching videos. If you stop one in the middle then leave the page,…
As reported on LifeHacker. by Alan Henry Dear Lifehacker, I just got a new phone, and I went to go download an app that I’d previously purchased, only to find that it was no longer available! I paid the developer good money, but it looks like they’ve taken the app down for some reason. So I can’t install the app, and I can’t get a refund. What can I do? Sincerely, Buyer’s Remorse Dear Buyer’s Remorse,…
As reported on TechCrunch. by FREDERIC LARDINOIS Education is quickly moving online, but we haven’t seen all that many studies that actually look into the effectiveness of these new forms of online learning. To see how its program performed, the language learning serviceDuolingo, founded by CAPTCHA inventor Luis von Ahn, commissioned a study (PDF)into the effectiveness of its program. The result, which even surprised von Ahn: it only takes a Duolingo user 34 hours to learn the equivalent…
As reported on TechCrunch. by RYAN LAWLER The latest entrant into the mobile video segment is Montaj, a new app launching next week which seeks to be a kind of “Instagram for Video.” Montaj was founded by Demir Gjokaj and Dan Long, a couple of New York-based entrepreneurs who had originally been focused on making a more engaging travel site. Key to that experience would be video, but they had to tackle the video problem first. The…