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Holiday Gift Guide: iPad apps for the home
Welcome to TUAW's 2011 Holiday Gift Guide! We're here to help you choose the best gifts this holiday season, and once you've received your gifts we'll tell you what apps and accessories we think are best for your new Apple gear. Stay tuned every weekday from now until the end of the year for our picks and helpful guides and check our Gift Guide hub to see our guides as they become available. For even more holiday fun, check out sister site Engadget's gift guide. My iPad spends most of its time at home. I don't travel very often, and the 9.7-inch tablet is too large to throw in my bag while I run a quick errand. That's OK; the iPad may not trip the light fantastic, but it is my faithful companion at home. I, like many others, use the iPad while I'm cooking, watching television, or sitting on the couch. If you are gifting an iPad or want one for your coffee table, then you should check out my list of favorite iPad apps for the home. GoodPlayer (US$2.99) Good Player is a jack of all trades when it comes to video. It's a movie player, downloader and streaming media player which supports AVI, Xvid, Divx, DAT, VOB, FLV, WMV, MKV, MP4, RM, RMVB, AC3, HTTP, FTP, RTSP, MMS, SMB, MMSH, MMST, RTP, UPnP and UDP. I use it to stream media from my ReadyNAS, and it works exceptionally well. IMDB (Free) IMDB, the Internet Movie Database, is an excellent app for movie buffs. I use it all the time to look up actor information, cast lists, plot information and more. It covers old movies, current flicks and upcoming films. iBooks (Free) iBooks is an app from Apple that'll let you download and read eBooks from the iBookstore. It's perfect for reading on multiple devices as your bookmarks, notes, and last read page are synced wirelessly between all your iOS devices. Netflix (Free; service costs $8 per month) The Netflix app will let you stream movies and TV shows from Netflix's vast catalog. The UI was just redone, and the updated app looks even better than before. The app also tracks what you have watched and syncs this information between devices. I have an Otterbox case with a built-in stand and use Netflix all the time. Flipboard (Free) Flipboard is a magazine-style reader app that pulls content from your social networks and RSS feeds. It has a beautiful interface and is terrific for catching up on the news while sitting on the couch. Epicurious (Free) Epicurious is a cooking app that pulls its recipes from professional chefs and well-known cookbooks. The app has 30,000 recipes from Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Self, and other professional chefs and cookbooks. The app lets you save recipes to a favorites list and then add the ingredients to a shopping list when you're ready to get cooking. The app also has social media support so you can share your favorite recipes with Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Allrecipes (Free; $4.99 for the Pro version) Allrecipes is an online website that's filled with user-submitted and user-reviewed recipes. The iPad app taps into those recipes by letting you search for recipes by course, cooking method, or prep time. You can then filter the results by rating. If you're an Allrecipes member, you can buy the $5 pro version and sync your online recipes box to the iPad. It's an excellent, all-around app for finding new recipes. The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America ($49.99) The Professional Chef is a reference guide for anyone with a passion for cooking. The app provides information on ingredients and how to buy the best quality when shopping. There's also cooking guides and video tutorials that'll show the best way to prepare and cook your ingredients. The photographs are stunning and the videos are professionally made, which makes its high price justifiable. Bento ($4.99) Bento is a free-form database app that'll help you keep track of anything and everything. You can use Bento to create a home inventory, keep a list of books, track the progress of home improvement projects and more. The possibilities are endless. Shopping apps (Free) Many people use the iPad to shop from the comfort of their couch and retailers are noticing. Major retailers like Walmart and Target have iPad apps; even smaller online shops like Newegg have joined the iPad revolution. Houzz Interior Design Ideas (Free) Houzz is an Interior Design app that'll help you remodel your house. It has over 200,000 high resolution photos that are organized by style, room and location. You browser the photos and choose the styles that you like. When you're done, you can show your ideas to an interior designer and bring them to life. Zillow (Free) Zillow's for the homeowner who's looking to buy or sell a house. The iPad app lets you search for a region and browse all the houses and land that are on sale. You can view the listing details including the price, taxes, number of bedrooms, number of baths and so on. It's an excellent resource for anyone in the market for a new home. Landscaper's Companion for iPad - Gardening Reference Guide ($4.99) The Landscaper's Companion for iPad - Gardening Reference Guide is the definitive guide to plants, tress, shrubs and bushes. The plant guide contains sun requirements, water usage, and growth characteristics for over 8500 plants. There's also 9,000 pictures, so you can see what the plant will look like when it's fully grown. Photo Measures ($4.99) Photo Measures is an app that'll help you keep track of measurements around the house. It lets you take a picture of your house and mark it up with measurements. If you need a new curtain, just snap a photo of the window, write in the measurements and save the doc for future use. It's perfect for your own work around the house, and is handy for creating plans to bring to a contractor. Best Baby Monitor ($3.99) Best Baby Monitor lets you use two iOS devices as a video baby monitor. You can connect the two devices using WiFi or Bluetooth. One device stays in the room with the baby, and the other (most likely the iPad) is with you. You can listen to audio and watch full screen video of your child's room. If it's night, you can turn on the flash to get a better view of your child. Photo by flickr user bfishadow (cc)
Google, Facebook, Twitter and others speak out against the Stop Online Piracy Act
Earlier today, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (or SOPA) which, depending on who you ask, is either a means to stop piracy and copyright infringement on so-called "rogue" websites, or the most serious threat of internet censorship that we've seen in some time. In the latter camp are some of the biggest internet companies around, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn, Mozilla, Zynga and AOL (full disclosure: Engadget's parent company), who today made their stance clear by taking out a full-page ad in The New York Times. The ad itself is a letter sent by the nine companies to Congress, which states that while they support the stated goals of the bill and the related Protect IP Act, they believe that, as written, the bills "would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites." The companies further went on to say that they believe the measures also "pose a serious risk to our industry's continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation's cybersecurity." While they didn't all sign onto the letter, those companies also also joined by a host of others who have spoken out against the legislation, including Foursquare and Tumblr. The sole witness against the proposed measures at today's hearing, however, was Google's copyright policy counsel, Katherine Oyama -- you can find her testimony on Google's Public Policy Blog linked below.
Pix or it didn't happen: Calling for your SWG house screenies!
In exactly one month, the Star Wars Galaxies servers will be shut down forever, but that doesn't mean your creations have to be sunsetted along with them. MJ Guthrie, the co-author of our biweekly sandbox column, Some Assembly Required, is hoping to immortalize the niftiest player-decorated SWG houses, but she needs your help to do it. If you'd like to pitch in and make sure that SWG's amazing housing mechanics aren't lost to time, just email screenshots of your favorite homes and player-run cities to MJ (mj@massively.com). If you haven't got screenies, a waypoint or coordinates (and the planet and server name) will work just as well, assuming you've unlocked the building(s) for visitors. She's also open to taking a personal tour! The December 9th edition of the column will feature the highlights along with a gallery of all the submissions. As MJ herself posted: "Don't miss out on being a part of this housing extravaganza! Something so great deserves to be savored for a long, long time to come."
Ten things to do in Star Wars Galaxies before it's gone
When SOE announced that Star Wars Galaxies would be sunsetted by the end of the year, many players despaired. They gave up. They saw their long years (eight years!) of play turn to dust. But others looked on the impending closure as incentive to do all those things they'd been putting off, all the activities they just hadn't gotten around to. There hadn't been time. The game is too big for anyone to do it all. And that's precisely why Star Wars Galaxies is a legend among sandbox fans despite the NGE disaster. It's a living museum of great MMO ideas from the past, of player-driven economies, of open-world housing, of high-end, game-supported roleplay, of roaming in a game that lets you dictate the terms of your play. It's a rare relic you should see in the flesh, today, right now, before it's gone. You can pick up a weapon and fight in any MMO (excepting A Tale in the Desert, that is), but there are so many things you can do in Star Wars Galaxies that you can't do anywhere else with the same level of immersion. And I'm going to tell you which 10 you should do first... before it's too late.
Evoz Baby Monitor lets you spy on your kid from anywhere your iPhone gets a signal
Worried that your bundle of joy might get up to no good during your weekly Hatha class? Not with this monolith by his bedside, he won't. It's called the Evoz Baby Monitor and it takes its job very seriously. All you have to do is place this WiFi-enabled device next to Junior's crib, download Evoz' app on your iPhone and the monitor will automatically provide you with alerts (via text, e-mail or phone call) whenever your kid cries. Once you sync this watchdog with your phone, you can even use it to remotely listen in on your prince, just in case he utters his first words while you're out on the links. Best of all, the system isn't restricted to a fixed range and promises to work in any area where you've got cellular coverage -- whether that be in the backyard, at the gym, or at Child Protective Services. Evoz won't start shipping the Baby Monitor until October 4th, but gravely concerned parents can pre-order one now for $120, at the source link below. Otherwise, just crawl past the break for more information, in the full PR.
Breakfast Topic: Where does your character live?
This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the AOL guest writer program that brings your words to WoW Insider's pages. Most people spend their afk time these days in Orgrimmar or Stormwind. Before that, it was Dalaran, and before that, it was Shattrath. It wasn't always like this, and for some of us, it never has been. For example, in vanilla WoW, my home was Ratchet. Despite the guards, I felt the town belonged to the Horde, and my friends and I made any alliance in Ratchet KoS. Naturally, we weren't welcomed in Booty Bay when we hit STV, but that's another story. In The Burning Crusade, it was Halaa. Come Hellfire Peninsula or Azerothian tsunami, I was in Nagrand watching for that place to go hot. In Wrath, if you asked my guildies where I was, they'd tell you I was in Wintergrasp, sitting on the steps talking to passersby. It's not that there's anything wrong with my computer (anymore), but I like world PvP. I like being able to escape trade chat spam without turning it off (because sometimes, people actually use it for trade). But mostly, I like feeling like part of the game world is under my protection. Do you have an in-game home, and how did you choose it? Are you the secret spouse of an NPC in Dustwallow Marsh? Do you AFK in Exodar because you know no one else will bother you there? Or are you one of the last protectors of Astranaar after weeks of watching it get overrun by Horde in vanilla WoW?
Inhabitat's Week in Green: sun-powered homes, retro robots and a solar laptop chipset
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. This week Inhabitat shined a light on the future of high-tech architecture as we brought you 20 stunning sun-powered homes that are getting ready to battle it out in this year's Solar Decathlon - including Team New York's prefab Roof Pod, Canada's TRTL solar shell house, and China's Y Container home. We also brought you exclusive photos of the recently unveiled 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, while the Empire State Building soared to new heights as it achieved LEED Gold certification. In other NYC news, we covered an underground park in the Big Apple which is to be illuminated entirely by fiber optics. Vincent Callebaut also unveiled plans for an incredible self-sufficient skyscraper for Taiwan, and we learned that scientists are planning to build a fake volcano for climate change research. It was also a hot week for energy-generating tech as Intel unveiled a solar laptop chipset that can be powered by a desk lamp and MIT developed a tiny kinetic generator that can produce 100 times more power than previous devices of its kind. Meanwhile, Google invested in the power of pig poop and researchers rolled out a new inexpensive, powerful, and lightweight jelly battery that could one day power laptops and electric vehicles. Energy infrastructure also got a boost as a UK competition showcased six designs for next-generation power pylons, and New Mexico announced plans to build an entire city for the sole purpose of testing green technologies. In other news, this week we spotted several pulse-pounding electric vehicles: a streamlined carbon fiber jet ski and an incredible mirrored motorcycle. We also went back to the future with a look at Nike's new pair of LED studded kicks, and we spotted a slick set of retro robots made from salvaged materials. Finally, we shared a bevy of tips for living a more sustainable lifestyle -- check out these seven gadgets that can improve your health and five ways to green your home entertainment system.
WikiHouse promises printable homes, work for the world's idle CNC routers
If you want something done right, do it yourself. That includes building a house, but that's a project out of reach for many DIYers. Enter WikiHouse, a community for open-source home designs. There you can mix and match architectural plans using Google SketchUp; once you've settled on your dream home, just print to your waiting CNC router and start building. That's the idea, anyway: the site's still under construction, with the designers planning to debut the first WikiHouse in September during South Korea's Gwangju Design Biennale 2011. Sure, it certainly won't be as flashy as Electronic House's Home of the Year, where wall-mounted iPads control the shower temperature, or Sharp's prototype zero-emission house, with its 180-inch LCD. But does suggest a new, DIY way of thinking about the "home of the future."
What are the implications of a real-dollar auction house?
It was just revealed that Diablo 3 will feature a dual-currency auction house for in-game gold and for real currency, allowing players to spend real money for Diablo 3 items. Blizzard will not sell those items directly but rather will facilitate auctions between players. Players will receive real currency for their sales, and Blizzard will take a cut off the sales of real-currency items. Blizzard is entering some pretty crazy territory with the Diablo 3 auction house, and the implications may be even more huge for the massively multiplayer market than for the Diablo multiplayer experience. One of WoW's biggest issues that currently plagues Blizzard (as well as the MMO genre in general) is the existence of a gray market in which companies sell in-game currency to willing buyers against the game's terms of service. Many free-to-play MMOs and online games combat this market by selling their own currencies for use in-game, making the currency non-tradeable, or selling items in a microtransaction marketplace. Blizzard has not yet made a free-to-play MMO where these concepts could come to any kind of fruition, and WoW's virtual goods store is very limited in scope and price point.
Electronic House crowns iOS-equipped dwelling 2011 Home of the Year
Electronic House just announced its pick for 2011 Home of the Year, and from the look of things, this iOS-enabled abode has the stuff to put your robotic butler out of work. The mammoth craftsman's interiors, designed by OCD poster boy Jeff Lewis, were automated by HD Media Systems using the Savant app. Everything from lighting to shower temperature are controlled using wall-mounted iPads or a series of unencumbered iOS devices. A pre-programmed "party button" immediately adjusts lighting and temperature, and bumps music to the 15 different Sonance in-ceiling speaker zones while displaying a slideshow on monitors dispersed throughout the house. Among the extravagant extras at work here are a switch in the master closet for flipping on the iron in the laundry room, a chandelier that flickers when it's time to switch out the toilet paper, and a virtual butler that warns of impending visitors. Looks to us like Rosie the Robot's days are numbered. Check out the source link for more automated overkill from this year's runners up.
Kohler's Numi $6,400 high-tech toilet does most of the dirty work for you (video)
We've seen some pretty fancy cans in our time, but perhaps none as tricked out as Kohler's latest $6,400 john. The Numi does just about everything for you, aside from the stuff that, well, only you can do. Looking something akin to a fancy pop-top waste bin, Numi comes complete with a self-opening and closing lid so you never have to touch the toilet seat; a self-cleaning bidet with adjustable controls for temperature and water pressure; heating elements to keep your toes and tush toasty; an illuminated panel for nighttime rendezvous; a built-in speaker system that connects to a remote docking station to ensure only you know exactly what you're doing in there; and a deodorizing element that sucks air from the bowl through a charcoal filter. Of course, no connected appliance would be complete without a touchscreen, and the Numi's no exception; it has a touch panel remote that you can use to set to your specifications. Now, that's what we call a porcelain throne. Check out the ridiculously lavish promo video after the break.
Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr. calls out iPad as a job-killer
In March, Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr. (D-IL) pushed his idea to amend the Constitution to guarantee an iPad, Kindle or Nook for every school child in the United States. In the intervening month, something must have happened to change Rep. Jackson's mind about Apple's tablet device. According to a report from Real Clear Politics, Representative Jackson is now blaming the tablet device for "eliminating thousands of American jobs." He pins the closing of Borders and a decline in book sales at Barnes & Noble on the iPad and similar tablet devices. On the House floor on Friday, in remarks about the seeming inability of the current Congress to focus on America's unemployment problem, the congressman stated the following: "A few short weeks ago I came to the House floor after having purchased an iPad and said that I happened to believe, Mr. Speaker, that at some point in time this new device, which is now probably responsible for eliminating thousands of American jobs. Now Borders is closing stores because, why do you need to go to Borders anymore? Why do you need to go to Barnes & Noble? Buy an iPad and download your newspaper, download your book, download your magazine." As he continued his remarks, he noted (correctly) that the iPad is manufactured in China, not in the US. What say you American people, do you think the iPad is killing jobs in the US, or is the honorable gentleman off track? [Via MacDailyNews]
House of Representatives votes to block FCC's net neutrality rules
Well, it looks like Republicans in the House of Representatives weren't about to let this one slip past a possible government shutdown -- they just passed a measure that seeks to block the FCC's net neutrality rules by a largely party line vote of 240 to 179. That follows a House subcommittee vote last month but, as then, the bill still faces an uphill battle in the Senate and with the President, who's expected to veto any such legislation if it somehow got to his desk. Not surprisingly, the rhetoric from both sides is only increasing following this latest development, with Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman saying the Republican bill would "end the internet as we know it," while Republican Rep. Fred Upton argues that "the internet is not broken and this bill will assure that the FCC does not break it."
Microsoft asks state lawmakers to make domestic companies pay for foreign firms' software piracy
Microsoft's pirated software police have been going after companies abroad for years, but getting those far-away folks into US courtrooms isn't easy. What is easy, however, is suing the folks in your own back yard -- which is why Microsoft is lobbying to get laws passed in several states that'll put US businesses on the hook for the pirating ways of their foreign suppliers. For example, if a manufacturer uses pirated software in the "manufacture, distribution, marketing, or sales" of products sold in Washington, Microsoft could sue the vendor of those products and get an injunction to stop the goods from being sold. So Washington widget retailers would be liable for the piracy of their foreign widget manufacturers, even if the illicit act was merely creating the sales invoice on a counterfeit copy of Word. The Washington state Senate and House have already approved different versions of the bill, and the legislature is in the process of merging the two together for final approval. Louisiana passed a similar law last year, and analogous bills have been proposed in Oregon and several other states as well. Numerous companies -- including Dell, IBM, Intel, and HP -- oppose the laws, as they see them giving Microsoft the power to not only drag them into court, but also futz with their supply chains. (There's bound to be some counterfeit software being used in Shenzhen, right?) As Microsoft's latest anti-piracy scheme unfolds, there should be plenty more legislative action to come. Evidently the crew in Redmond doesn't see piracy as a problem to be fixed by lowering prices.
Lost Pages of Taborea: What just happened?
There are always plenty of memories to make and share with others, as MMOs tend to be never-ending playgrounds for us to romp around in. And after recalling major events for Runes of Magic's second birthday, I've been stuck in fond-memory mode. Two years of playing RoM is a lot of time to build up memories, too. I've gone through many a server, guild and character since I started, and I've both made memories with friends and remembered events the game itself created. Sometimes a developer forgets to turn off a light switch, a new bug appears, or a new patch brings unintended changes. I remember a handful of times some pretty interesting things have happened. Mysterious statues popping up, bosses appearing in houses, and other anomalies await after the break.
Runes of Magic celebrates its second birthday
Happy birthday, Runes of Magic! Two years have gone by, and you're growing up so fast. Anniversary celebrations are already underway in RoM. If your account has been lying dormant, you may want to wake it up, join the festivities, and get some free goodies while you're at it. For me, these two years flew by. It doesn't seem all that long ago that I wrote a look back at the first year of RoM. In two years, RoM has seen three major updates, and a fourth is just around the corner. The first two chapters made it into the first year, and although Chapter 4 didn't quite make it into this article, chapter 3 brought a whopping amount of content and features. If your extra ginger beer isn't cutting it anymore and you're feeling brave, move on up by grabbing a bottle of Blenhiem's old #5 and join me for a look back at the last year of RoM.
House subcommittee votes to block FCC's net neutrality rules
They may face an uphill battle given the numbers in the Senate (not to mention a Democratic President), but it doesn't look like the House Republicans will be softening their opposition to the FCC's new net neutrality rules anytime soon. Following a full vote on an amendment to a spending bill in the House of Representatives last month (which just died in the Senate yesterday), the House Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology has now passed a new measure that, if it ultimately adopted, would completely overturn the FCC's new rules. The measure now heads to the Energy and Commerce Committee but, as before, it's unlikely that anything will change in the Senate even it ultimately passes in the full House -- that certainly won't stop opponents of the rules from trying, though.
Congressional Mac maven is new majority leader
Just a few days ago we told you how the U.S. Senate rules had been opened up to allow Macs into Senate offices with official permission. Well, it turns out that Macs are quite popular in the House as well. Our example: the newly named House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA). In the picture above, he is at his iMac-equipped desk calling President Obama about the confirmation of Rep. John Boehner as House Speaker. A close look will also reveal Cantor's iPad in the black Apple case. According to his staff, the Congressman has had an iPad since the day it was released, and uses it quite a lot to read his hometown newspaper, the Richmond Times Dispatch (via the paper's app). Congressman Cantor has been a Mac user for many years, while his office is split between Macs and PCs based on the preference of the staff member. With a loosening of the restrictions on Macs on the Senate side, and the increasing popularity of the iPad as a quick way to catch up on the news and deal with email, I'd look for more and more Apple products showing up on Capitol Hill -- even in such previously off-limits areas as the House floor. Check the gallery below for some more pictures of Congressman Cantor using his favorite computer and tablet. Thanks to the congressman's staff for the pictures and detail for our story. %Gallery-113311%
DIY Star-Trek style air powered sliding doors are something from the future that you can have at home right now
So, we don't mind a small home renovation project every now and then, and this is one we're seriously considering. Instructables has posted a step-by-step guide on installing sliding doors which are powered by an air compressor, and which look super cool. As you'll see in the video which is after the break, it's a pretty simple idea, which requires a pretty fair amount of work, but the results are very impressive. The sliding doors are controlled by a panel switch and have a key which can lock them open or shut, and the door also boasts a vent above it for air ventilation after operation. Yes, we actually want one of these.
Massively tours EverQuest's House of Thule expansion
The House of Thule. Not to be confused with the Summer Cottage of Thule, or the Awkwardly-Small-Yet-Expensive Inner City Apartment of Thule. Thule's house is a scary place, and it's a place that all denizens of Norrath shall soon be intimately familiar with. Sony Online Entertainment recently gave us a deep tour of its 17th EverQuest expansion, and it's the first time I've set foot in pre-EQII Norrath in years. Luckily I can report that Sony isn't letting EverQuest lie on its laurels. While this next expansion may not sound like much (it's just a house... or is it?), it's packed with enough content to send me through a two-and-a-half hour long developer tour. Plus, I should mention that I only got to see about half of the new zones, and none of the new raids. But why should we stand outside of this lovely home when there's so much madness hidden within? Come, journey with me, and lose all sense of what is reality.
