AirPlay Hack Streams Non-iTunes Video Between Mac, Apple TV

Apple’s AirPlay streaming feature enables the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad to stream video and audio to the Apple TV 2. But why stop there?

Wired.com’s friend Erica Sadun has been hard at work hacking away at AirPlay to expand its powers. About a week ago she released AirPlayer, a Mac app to stream video from the the Apple TV to the Mac. And just recently she released AirFlick to do the reverse: stream video from the Mac to the Apple TV. No jailbreaking required.

If you own a Mac and the new Apple TV, you need the AirFlick hack, because it makes AirPlay way more useful. You already can stream video from the Mac to the Apple TV, but you’re limited to iTunes-compatible videos (.H264-encoded MP4). AirFlick adds support for a multitude of video formats that you wouldn’t be able to stream normally (such as AVI, MKV, FLV, WMV and RMVB).

The AirFlick and AirPlayer hacks are in very early development stages, so be warned: Some features might be buggy. They’re free downloads, though, so give it a whirl. See the video above for a quick tutorial.

AirPlay utilities [Erica Sadun]

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Rumor: iPad 2 Has Bigger Speaker, Flat Back, Smaller Body

Artist's rendering of rumored iPad 2 speaker grille

Today’s iPad rumor comes courtesy of Japanese blog MacOtakara. According to “sources in China,” the iPad 2 will be smaller, flatter and have a bigger, beefier speaker.

Even MacOtakara is skeptical of the rumors, but – true or not – they sound plausible. The new iPad will shave 3mm off the screen’s bezel, making for a smaller tablet but with the same sized display, dropping the overall dimensions from 242.8mm to 239mm (height) and 189.7mm to 186mm (width).

The back of the iPad will be flatter than the current model, leading to less wobbling when poking at the screen whilst the iPad lays on a table.

Most interesting of all is a new speaker, a bigger, louder unit which crawls around the curve at the back of the iPad. The image above is a rendering by Taiyo Fujii for MacOtakara, showing what it might look like, interior metal gauze and all.

This larger speaker fits perfectly with the leaked iPad 2 case design, which has a large cutout that wraps around the rear in just this spot. In fact, when I saw that case design earlier this month, I immediately assumed it was for a bigger speaker.

Finally, and labelled as “unreliable” by MacOtakara, the new iPad will have two cameras, one front-firing and one rear-facing. The rear cam will be the same as the one in the iPhone 4. These units are, according to the source, already in production, and will ship in January.

This January date is like more likely to mean shipping to Apple, not shipping to customers. Establishing January as the launch date for new iPads would kill all iPad Christmas purchases in future.

Equipped with large speakers ‘iPad (2nd generation)’ is released in January 2011? [MacOtakara]

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Credit-Card Sized Camera Has Too Many Features to Be True

Iain Sinclair’s Poco Pro is a tiny, credit card-sized (although not credit-card thickness) camera. Despite its pocket friendly design, it manages to pack in a rather ridiculous number of features, especially given its projected £200 ($307) price-tag.

The sensor is a way-too-large 14 megapixels, which will also capture 1080p video. The blurb on the site says that the camera has “excellent low light performance and can outperform much larger and bulky rivals.” I remain skeptical.

Round the back you’ll find a 2.4-inch AMOLED screen, with touch buttons arrayed around its edges, much like the four buttons on many Android phones. The buttons also give haptic feedback when pressed. See what I mean about feature overload?

Amazingly, this little slip of a camera also manages to squeeze in a mechanical shutter, the kind found in SLRs. This gives it the potential to have almost no shutter lag – the delay between pressing the button and taking the picture.

The Poco Pro doubles as an MP3 player, too, with a jack socket and built-in speaker, and media is stored on a microSD card, which might slow things down a little.

Want more? Sure. How about direct uploads to YouTube or Flickr (when connected to a computer, I assume, as there is no other connectivity). Or two LED flashes, not one, on either side of the lens. One thing you don’t get, though, is a zoom.

It seems hard to believe that a camera could have all this and also be well made for just $300. And to be honest, we’ll probably all forget about it before it finally ships in June next year, or possibly never ships, confined to the insides of a CAD application for the rest of its days.

Pico Pro product page [Iain Sinclair via Oh Gizmo]

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Solar Vox, a Portable Sun-Powered Charging Station

The Solar Vox, from Detroit-based designers  Eric Strebel and Jim Nogarian, is a USB charger powered by the sun. The project has been launched on Kickstarter, the place where potential customers can pledge their cash for startups, in exchange for getting one of the first products off the line.

The Solar Vox consists of a solar panel and a pair of rechargeable AA batteries, housed in a box shaped like a tiny air-hockey table. This odd design, a rather 1980s-style vision of the future, has a purpose: the case can be tilted to fully soak up the sunbeams. The odd angles let you prop the box at 0, 30, 70 and 90-degrees.

Once charged, you hook up your cellphone or other portable device and pop it into the inner chamber. This keeps things tidy, and protects the phone from the sun.

Eric and Jim plan to have the first units ready in the first quarter of 2011. To sign up and get one when they’re done, you’ll need to pledge $100.

Solar Vox product page [Kickstarter via Core77]

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Podcast Predictions: Tablets, High-Powered Processors and 3-D to Dominate CES

This week Brian X. Chen and I get all giddy and excited about the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, aka CES.

CES is a weeklong preview of what kinds of gadgets you’ll see in 2011. We’ll be there from January 4-9, blogging right here on Gadget Lab.

Tablets are likely to big at CES this year, just as they were in 2010. But in 2011, we think manufacturers’ promises might even come true.

LG, MSI, Motorola and Toshiba are all rumored to be releasing tablets. HP, which acquired Palm earlier this year, is also planning to release a webOS-based tablet in the coming year — but we’re not expecting to see it at CES.

Intel and AMD are both working on next-generation processors, including Intel’s “Sandy Bridge” CPUs and AMD’s “Fusion” line of chips that combine CPU capabilities and graphics processing in a single package. What’s that mean for you? Lower power, longer-lasting netbooks and tablets.

Look for dual-core smartphones to boost the processing power in your pocket, largely on the basis of Nvidia’s Tegra processor.

There will be lots of 3-D televisions at the show, but what we’re more excited about is the advent of more 3-D cameras and camcorders, like one that Fujifilm introduced in 2010. If you could actually make your own 3-D pictures and movies easily, you might have a reason to buy 3-D displays like the Nintendo 3DS or — who knows? — any one of the increasing number of 3-D TVs.

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

Or listen to the audio: Gadget Lab audio podcast #98 (.mp3 or .ogg)

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Hands-On With Camera+ 2 for iPhone

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Our favorite iPhone camera app just got a boatload of new features after its four-month exile from the App Store.

Previously pulled by Apple because it included an inoffensive hidden feature, Camera+ returned to the App Store on Tuesday night with new controls, more image-editing effects, improved performance and several other additions.

Most notably, there’s a new slider bar that allows you to adjust the intensity of each effect applied to a photo, giving you more control over the end result.

There are also some neat new filters like a Nostalgia filter for a more old-school look and a depth-of-field effect to give your photo an artsy touch. (See the photos above for examples.)

I’ve had some time to test the update, and the biggest improvement is speed. Camera+ now loads much faster than it used to, which is useful for capturing those serendipitous moments, and the time to process photos has decreased significantly.

The app’s maker Tap Tap Tap has a full post on all 53 new features.

It’s a free upgrade for those who already own the app. For new buyers, Camera+ is $1 in the App Store.

Download Link [iTunes]

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Rumor: Microsoft Working on New Windows Mobile? WTF

Microsoft plans to introduce a special version of Windows for low-power mobile devices like tablets at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show, according to multiple reports.

The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg claim to have both heard that Microsoft will discuss a version of Windows that supports mobile ARM chips and other low-power processors. The Journal adds that the new Windows OS isn’t expected to be available for two years.

My instant reaction to these reports: WTF?

Microsoft already has a new version of Windows designed for mobile devices: Windows Phone 7. The company hired new executives, spent million of dollars on development facilities, rethought its entire mobile strategy and took an entire year to whip up a touch-friendly mobile OS from scratch.

In terms of power and features, Windows Phone 7 hasn’t caught up with Android or iOS yet, but it’s a solid start. It’s certainly more fit for tabletization than the desktop Windows. There are many reasons why a Windows 7– based tablet makes no sense.

Windows Phone 7 is also light-years ahead of Microsoft’s previous mobile OS, Windows Mobile, to say nothing of Windows CE, Microsoft’s first mobile OS, which lives on as an “embedded” OS powering hospital devices, manufacturing equipment, point-of-sale devices, and the like.

So why in the world would Microsoft throw more money and talent at a new mobile version of Windows when it’s already made great progress on a newer, better one?

I like the well-informed Mary Jo Foley’s skeptical interpretation of the news. She thinks that Microsoft will announce a new version of Windows Embedded Compact, a trimmed-down version of Windows CE made especially for enterprise devices. That OS, which is currently in beta, already runs on ARM, and might make a suitable platform for Windows-powered tablets, especially the kind attached to your UPS driver’s barcode scanner.

Among other points, Foley notes that the timing is right, and that Microsoft announced tablet partners earlier this year who are already in the business of making Windows Embedded Compact devices.

That outcome would make a lot more sense to me, and if Foley’s right, Microsoft’s “tablet” news won’t be as exciting for the average gadget geek aching for a Microsoft-powered iPad competitor (unless you have a urinary tract disorder).

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Photo: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks up the goods at CES 2010.
Jon Snyder/Wired.com

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Stash-Bag is a Travel-Friendly Gadget-Tidy

The Fluent Stash bag from Nau is all kinds of useful. It’s a purpose-made travel organizer rather than a take-everywhere bag, but this specialization means that, like an overbred dog, it’s very good for its single purpose.

It’s a felt-flapped three way carrier, folding out to reveal three “stash” pockets plus a zippered mesh compartment for cables. Between these pockets are stitched a pair of long, thin channels, perfect for stowing a pencil.

The pockets snap shut thanks to press-stud closures, and the clasp that holds the lid down doubles as a hook for hanging in a hotel-room, or from the back of an airplane seat, and the design means you can also hook a strip of the fabric itself around a shower-curtain rail.

The bag can also be used for toiletries but let’s face it: If you’re reading Gadget Lab, then it’s likely that you’ll be carrying far more cables and electronics than jars of face cream.

Finally, the felt is stiff enough to keep the bag freestanding should you fold it correctly. It looks very handy, and much better than my current, and not dissimilar solution. I use a rubbery plastic bag that has a hook on top and a ziplock closure. The problem? My underwear came in it, and I still didn’t remove the label.

Fluent Stash bag [Nau via Uncrate]

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IOne Chip is All-in-One Android Phone and Camera

See that wafer of silicon above? That’s the chip that will turn Android phones into video and photo powerhouses, and cameras into mobile studios. The iOne system-on-chip, from Amabarella, is both image processor and Android CPU, and is designed to bring internet connectivity to cameras.

Inside, there is a Dual-core 1-GHz ARM CortexTM A9 CPU for running Android, and any apps that may run on top of it. For video and photography there is another 533-MHz ARM-11 chip which can support 3D graphics, process 5-megapixel images at 30fps, and decode 1080p video. And you also get the full suite of connections any modern cellphone deserves: WiFi (802.11n), GPS, Bluetooth, FM radio and mobile TV.

The specs are certainly impressive, but we’re more excited to see what people will do with it. A kick-ass camera-phone would of course be nice, but what about a proper camera with phone-like functions. You could live-stream video, send photos straight to Flickr and, best of all, if you didn’t like the crappy interface that [insert camera manufacturer here] has saddled you with this week, then you could just download a new one.

Amabarella release iOne image processing chip for hybrid cameras [Press Release]

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Bespoke Innovations Makes Beautiful, Custom Prosthetic Legs

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Why should amputees have to wear the same, boring prosthetics as one other, day after day? It turns out that they don’t, if they buy a new leg from Bespoke Innovations.

Above you see a few of the custom-built designs from the San-Francisco company. Bespoke tailor-makes fairings: The actual mechanics of the prosthetics are standard, but the outside can be made to look like anything you like. Like to ride a Harley? Then why not get a matching chrome calf? Leather? Hardwood? You got it.

Scott Summit, the designer at Bespoke, explains that in single amputees, the remaining leg is scanned and mirrored to give the correct geometry for the peg leg. For double amputees, a donor is found of the same size and shape, and their legs are scanned.

And why not? After all, we change our spectacles to match our clothes, and now you can choose a leg based on its look instead of just buying a standard, ugly titanium rod.

If this interests you, and you have seven minutes to spare while you sip a coffee, it’s worth watching Core77’s interview with Summit (embedded below). He has a very nice take on why these one-off pieces are so rewarding to design, and goes into some detail on the manufacturing process, which uses additive manufacturing, a species of 3-D printing.

Interview with Scott Summit of Bespoke Innovations, creator of kick-ass prosthetics

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[Core77]

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