iUseThis.com’s new iPhone app ratings pages let you browse for software based on other user’s recommendations. It’s basically a Digg for iPhone apps. It offers new releases, new apps, top apps and reviews. Just started, the site is building up steam and users. When last I checked, it still had fewer than 200 apps listed. But given the growth of the iPhone application space, this site shows early promise should it manage to attract a large enough user base. Pop on by and see whether it suits your needs.

[Via Chockenberry]

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Electronista reports on a patent filing for an iPhone/iPod touch dock that could grant you to both charge and play video in landscape mode, simultaneously. The patent was filed on September 5, 2007 — near the time of the iPod touch debut. The so-called “dock” looks more like the tiny holder that ships with the iPod touch, with the exception of a dock connector plugged in.

Apple does, however, file patents that it might not ever use — as do most other companies. What do you think? Could this be a new dock design, or is it the patent for the included iPod touch stand?

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DJ MoCAP, master of time and white space, has developed a camera-based controller for the TRAKTOR Scratch DJ System. Just sketch the deck onto a piece of white paper and turn any high contrast surface into a mixing table. There seems to be a bit of latency but overall the system looks fairly responsive. Why? Why not, we state. Video demonstration after the break.

[Thanks, Brian]

Continue reading Video: Camera-based concept turns any surface into a DJ deck

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Many iPhone users have expressed negative feelings toward the default Marker Felt font used in the Notes application. Personally, I dislike it enough that I used a manual hack on my previously jailbroken phone to get some Helvetica relief, but since I haven’t felt the need to jailbreak since the 2.0 upgrade, I’ve been living with Marker Felt for now. We got a tip today, though, that offers a quasi-solution for those willing to deal with a little extra hassle.

A quick Google search reveals that we’re not the first to discover this, but we thought it was worth sharing. If you’re interested in trying it, go into the International keyboard settings in the General section of your iPhone or iPod touch Settings and choose any of the Chinese keyboards in addition to your current keyboard.

Now, go into an existing note or create a new one in the Notes application. Switch the keyboard to the Chinese keyboard using the globe icon to the left of the spacebar and enter a single character. Backspace it and switch back to your native keyboard. Presto, the note should be free of Marker Felt. Saving the note will reveal that the title in the list has also undergone the same font change, and future edits will maintain it.

Adding new notes will require this tiny tweak each time, so it’s not an all-around solution to the lack of font selection in Notes. If you’re really, truly bothered by Marker Felt, however, it’s a step in the right direction.

Thanks David!

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While there’s plenty of folks out there focused on making lithium-ion batteries safer and longer-lasting, there’s also thankfully some dedicated to making ‘em cheaper, which is especially welcome when we’re speaking about the costly batteries powering vehicles. Among those in the latter camp is University of Texas at Austin professor Arumugam Manthiram, who has devised a method of using microwaves to heat a concoction of commercially available chemicals, which ultimately results in the Rorschach test of rod-shaped particles of lithium iron phosphate pictured above. While the use of lithium iron phosphate instead of the more commonly used lithium cobalt oxide apparently cuts back on the total amount of energy the batteries can store, it is apparently particularly well-suited to delivering big bursts of power, which should make the batteries ideal for use in hybrid automobiles. What’s more, while the actual cost of the materials may not be much cheaper than other solutions, the sheer speed at which Manthiram’s process works could allow for higher production rates from the same amount of equipment, which should result in cheaper batteries by the time they roll off the assembly line.

[Via Daily Tech]

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Josh Anon’s $9.99 FlipBook [App Store link] offers a well-designed animation building tool. Like other flip book drawing products, it lets you create movement frame by frame. What makes FlipBook stand out from the crowd of iPhone drawing tools is its fine attention to interface details and the addition of the flipbook.tv sharing site for the animations you create.

Read on for TUAW’s take on this new AppStore offering, and see the gallery below for some screenshots of the delightful interface.

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Continue reading TUAW Hands on with FlipBook for iPhone

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Hitachi’s StarBoard FX 77 Duo multi-touch white board seemed impressive enough when the company announced it late last year, but if you’ve been waiting to see one in action before you transported your classroom into the future, Hitachi has now got you covered with a couple of demonstration videos. In this case, Hitachi has paired the rig up with its CP-A100 short-throw projector for maximum showoffiness, although it seems you can use it with any projector of your choosing. That, of course, also means that there’s no electronics in the board itself, with the necessary cameras and other electronics contained in the sensor bar at the top — which, as our presenter helpfully informs us, could come in handy if you want to drill a hole through it. Head on past the break for the full show.

Continue reading Hitachi Starboard FX 77 Duo white board gets demoed on video

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Usually the terms “enthusiast cooling equipment” and “sexy, sexy” don’t go hand in hand, but Thermaltake has here an exception that proves the rule. This here V1 CPU, which retails for $60, can handle a nice assortment of Core 2 and Athlon processors, but we’d rather just set it up on a table somewhere and stare at the pretty lights. That’s a red dot design award well earned.

[Via Boing Boing Gadgets]

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I have a confession: I like playing games on my iPhone. But I also like listening to my own music. Like chocolate and peanut butter these are two things that should go together. The only problem is that many iPhone games have their own (generally lame) music that stops the iPod app from playing.

So for the sake of myself, and others like me, I thought it would be good to get a list of iPhone / iPod touch games which grant you to play while listening to your own music. Unfortunately, I don’t have the budget to buy all of the hundreds of games on the iTunes Store for research purposes, so I thought I’d throw it out to the readers. I’ll get us started with a couple of my favorites: Enigmo and Moonlight Mahjong Lite (both iTunes links).

What games allow you to play while listening to your own music?

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Make no mistake, microscopes have been getting increasingly smaller for years, but a team of CalTech researchers have leapfrogged previous efforts by creating one minuscule enough to fit on a cellphone. The microscopic optofluidic microscope could one day be used in third-world nations to “analyze blood samples for malaria or check water supplies for giardia and other pathogens,” and given that it could theoretically be mass produced for around $10, cost shouldn’t be too much of a hindrance. Changhuei Yang, credited for developing the chip, is currently chatting it up with biotech companies in order to get this to the market, but there’s no word yet on any takers.

[Via Physorg]

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