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First Look: TIME Mobile, a slick magazine for your iPhone / iPod touch
Instead of sifting through the piles of TIME magazines at your doctor's office, where you don't know who's healthy or unhealthy hands have touched the pages, you now have another option to browse through TIME content on your iPhone. The recently launched TIME Mobile [iTunes link] app provides a better browsing experience and more content than the mobile version of magazine's website. In addition, the app brings with it support for video, which is lacking on the mobile version of TIME's site and not supported for the iPhone on the full version of the site because the videos are encoded in Flash. TIME Mobile also brings a new approach for browsing articles. Like Cover Flow view in the iPhone and iTunes, TIME Mobile's "Image Flow" provides some eye candy in front of the meat and potatoes of the article content. One thing absent in the app is support for offline reading, a useful feature for situations where data connectivity is lacking, such as on an airplane. The USA Today app [iTunes link], which is in the same app genre as TIME Mobile, supports offline reading by tapping on the update button on each section. Perhaps such a feature could be added to TIME Mobile as a paid-for feature, or as for free to those who subscribe to the paper version of the magazine. Update: TIME's app team tells us that offline reading is built-in as part of the app, but for some reason I could not get it to work consistently; we're following up with them to figure out why it's wonky. Powered by Polar, a mobile publishing provider that also powers BusinessWeek [iTunes link] and CNNMoney [iTunes link] iPhone apps as well as a host of other apps on a variety of mobile platforms, TIME Mobile is available as a free download in the App Store.
iPhone is #3 on Time's gadgets list
Apple has long been a darling of Time Magazine's tech writers. Just take a look at the history The iPhone is 2007's Gadget of the Year The iPhone is 2007's Invention of the Year The MacBook Pro was Gadget of the Week back in 2006 Several appearances on the cover Heck, even the Nike+ iPod kit was nominated for Gadget of the Year in 2006. This year, the iPhone is listed at number 3 on Time's year-end list, "The Top 10 Everything." I guess it was due for a slip (not that 3rd place on a list counting "everything" is bad!). Second place went to the Mitsubishi LaserVue 65-inch HDTV, while the Optoma Pico PK-101 sits at the top spot.The Pico, a pocket-sized projector for the iPod, first caught our attention in November. Optoma has priced it at $399US and suggested a shipping date of early next year.So what accounted for the iPhone's slip? Time claims an email experience inferior to that on a Blackberry as well as average performance as a cell phone. [Via MacNN]
Peek's email device tops voting for Time's gadget of the year, not that it matters
We're not going to jump up on our "new media" pedestal and claim that Time Magazine is irrelevant or anything, but man, stick to what you know. Time's gadget of the year list includes some commendable choices to be certain -- but seriously, not a single industry re-defining netbook, multi-million selling iPhone 3G, or 1080p-capable EOS 5D Mark II DSLR in a top 10 list of 2008 gadgets? Puhlease. Seems that voting is still open -- while you can't change the list you can certainly have your say as to whether Peek's eMail-only handheld should be voted above T-Mobile's Android-powered G1 (by a margin of more than 5 to 1) as the best gadget of 2008.[Thanks, Horatio]
Blogger offers iPhone "Invention of the Year" perspective
In a year that gave us the prosthetic X-Finger for amputees, the pollution-reducing Diesel Exhaust Purification System, and hurricane-safety ImpactShield, is the iPhone really worthy of its Time magazine Invention of the Year honors? That's the question raised by iPhone Matter's Gregory Ng. Ng points out that although the iPhone is pretty and we love it to pieces, that other extremely worthy advances were overlooked by Time. His post raises a good question although I think of Time's "of the year" awards more as an entertainment/ lifestyle feature than as real news.
Jobs, Ive nominated for Time's "most influential"
Steve Jobs and Jonathan Ive have been identified as candidates for the next Time 100 Poll, which is a list of the nation's most influential business people. Both Steve and Jonathan have appeared in Time before (Steve made the cover five times), and Steve has made previous Time 100 lists. Magazine covers, national recognition, a billion-dollar company...just another day at the office.[Via MacNN]
Time Magazine 'Person of the Year' cover redux, courtesy of that iSight trick
As you may know, Time Magazine recently declared you as the person of the year. While this is a mighty nice gesture on their part, Dan Wood has created a redux of the cover for iSight-enabled Mac users that truly resembles you as Time's award-winning person of the year. He's using that slick iSight trick that can turn on your iSight camera and place its feed on a web page, but remember: it isn't a security flaw, it's an actual feature. The trick doesn't send any video from your iSight over the web, it simply plays that video back through your web browser locally.As a side note: do any Mac users out there have a non-iSight webcam they can try this trick with? It would be interesting to see if it works only with Apple's camera or if everyone else can play along. That way, users with some kind of webcam have an easier way of adding themselves to Flickr's personoftheyear tag.[via Ranchero's blog]
God is a Mac user
This week's TIME Magazine features an interesting Essay on page 103. Evan Eisenberg checks God's email. If you click the pic above you can see the full-sized image I scanned in, which offers even more insight into God's computing habits. I knew the big guy was a Mac user!God uses Mail.app, obviously, to stay in touch. He listens to iTunes for inspiration, and keeps Google Earth open to keep an eye on his Creation. Safari is God's browser of choice and he's apparently a football fan (Go Saints!). Looking at the exposed areas of God's desktop we see that he digs George Burns (but Windows Media Player??) and keeps tabs on election results. We're not sure about the rest of God's hardware, but his display is Apple Cinema all the way. What surprises me most is that God uses Quark! As Erica said, when we got the tip, "This would certainly explain why the demographic skewed 'old' in that survey." Indeed!Thanks, Keenan!
DS taking Time's Gadget of the Year race by storm
In the spirit of races today, we were surprised to see our favorite system included in a long list of fancy gizmos featured in Time Magazine's Gadget of the Year contest. The DS has some pretty tough competition -- Apple MacBook Pro, Palm Trio 700w. Last we checked, the DS was winning with a whopping 59% with the next in line only carrying 27% of the votes. So, we encourage you to vote for your favorite gadget (meaning the DS of course). Wouldn't want the Nintendo mafia knocking on your door .... [Via Joystiq]
DS Lite leading in Time's Gadget of the Year race
You cast your vote today? 'Cause DS Lite could really use your support. Or at least, that's what we thought.The lil' guy appeared out of its league in Time's Gadget of the Year race, but [at the time of this writing] DS Lite is leading the online ballot with 44% of the vote -- 27 percentage points ahead of Apple's MacBook Pro. What looked to be a kindly nod at the Nintendo folks for shaking up the industry, has turned into a virtual landslide. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't vote -- each one counts. So gets to clickin'!
Time Magazine's love affair with Apple continues
There are some serious Mac-heads at Time Magazine. The MacBook is their current "Gadget of the Week," and author Wilson Rothman had this to say in his article:"You get a computer that runs both Mac OS X and Windows XP today, and even appears to meet the minimum requirements for Vista once it gets here. Dell and HP should be very worried indeed."For those of you who complain about the integrated video ram, remember: This is the entry level machine, and will do the things most people are after (internet, mail, music, photos, etc.) very well. It should be a big seller.
TIME gets hands-on with the Nintendo Wii
We knew we should have taken that call from Miyamoto the other day, but our loss was TIME magazine's gain, because the Mario and Zelda creator was looking for someone to, wouldn't you know it, take the upcoming Wii for a little spin. TIME's five page article is so full of interesting deets that we barely have room to scratch the surface here, but suffice it to say that Lev Grossman not only reports on his hands-on experiences with a number of games, he's also able to get inside Nintendo's head, if you will, and tease out a bit of the methodology behind what some hardcore gamers perceive as the company's madness (Wii? those controllers? Nintendogs?). As for the actual gaming, Grossman got to play some tennis (the sensors even allow you to add spin), slay some dragons (brandishing the controller like a sword in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess), and bring those wacky Warioware minigames into the third dimension (think: fishing, weight lifting, cooking, etc.). Geez, this thing sounds like so much fun that we may just skip the Sony keynote this afternoon and see if the folks from Nintendo will let us play with their goodies.
Rob Prado on the Time 100
Blizzard VP Rob Pardo has made it to TIME Magazine's yearly list of 100 people who are transforming the world around us. Pardo, they say "didn't invent this kind of game... he merely perfected it." It's interesting to see that World of Warcraft has developed such a high profile with those outside the gaming industry - enough to have Rob Pardo on TIME's 100. Of course, with 6 million players and counting, how could this game not have an impact? From my perspective (from the inside looking out), it's hard to see World of Warcraft transforming the world around us - but what do you think?[Via Joystiq]
MacBook Pro is Time's Gadget of the Week
Time Magazine's love affair with Apple continues (Tiger was Gadget of the Week, iPod shuffle was Gadget of the Week, G5 iMac was Gadget of the Week, Intel iMac was Gadget of the Week, Steve in Time's Top 100) as they name the MacBook Pro the Gadget of the Week. Wilson Rothman writes:"It's easy to talk specs and features, but the MacBook's strengths come to light while in use...It's not easy to watch the highest-definition QuickTime movie trailers on a G4 PowerBook, and on many Centrino-based Windows notebooks, it can look pretty choppy, too. But on the MacBook Pro, 1080p movie trailers are smooth running."For some odd reason, however, there's still a little voice in my head telling me to wait on purchasing one of these things. Or maybe it's my Powerbook sending me subliminal messages.Thanks, Pieter!
Intel iMac is Time's Gadget of the Week
Back in November, Time Magazine chose the G5 iMac as their Gadget of the Week. Today, the Intel-powered iMac has received the same recognition. From the article:"The first thing you notice about Apple's new iMac — running the Intel Core Duo chipset rather than an older PowerPC chip — is that it's almost identical to the iMac that the company introduced in October. The second thing you notice, though, is that it is noticeably faster. It only takes around 30 seconds to restart the entire system."Makes you want to run out and buy one, doesn't it? Time seems to have a sort of love affair with Apple, having put Steve Jobs on the cover a few times. It's a short article, but worth reading.[Via MacNN]
