Jay Hathaway
Seattle - http://jayhathaway.com
Download Squad blogger
Filed under: Video, Mobile, Android
Watch Ustream over wi-fi or 3G on your Android device
by Jay Hathaway Nov 26th 2009
Android users have been able to broadcast video to Ustream.tv for a couple of months now, but there was no way to watch Ustream shows on your Android phone until now. Ustream Viewer has just hit the Android Market, allowing for free, unlimited on-the-go viewing of the popular video site. Ustream Viewer will work over either wi-fi or 3G. The iPhone version of Ustream Viewer has been around since early this year, but Android still has the advantage, because Broadcaster is Android-only. It's not that the 3GS can't stream video, it's that Apple has been rejecting streaming apps. Mark this one down under "Droid Does," I suppose.
[via TechCrunch]
Pie Guy shows off the power of iPhone web apps
Neven Mrgan, a developer at Panic, as well as the co-creator of the popular Birdfeed Twitter client, has just released a fascinating new iPhone game. It's called Pie Guy, and the gameplay is reminiscent of classic Pac Mac games. You won't find Pie Guy in the App Store, though, because it's a web app. You can even add it to your home screen and play it offline. The game is fairly fun, but the more exciting part is what it suggests about the future of web apps on the iPhone.
All those problems with the App Store approval process don't apply to web apps, so it's worth seeing how far developers can push web apps. They're not an alternative to every iPhone app, as John Gruber points out at Daring Fireball, because web apps don't have access to a lot of the iPhone's hardware functions (accelerometer, camera, etc.).
On top of that, the Cocoa Touch framework makes native apps not only faster than web apps, but easier to write. Despite all that, Pie Guy makes a good case for expanding our ideas of what a web app can be.
Filed under: Audio, Web services
MOG announces All Access music subscription service
Up until now, MOG has existed as sort of a music blog network and news source, but starting on December 2nd, it's also going to be Napster-like music subscription service. MOG All Access will be a $5/mo subscription service that provides unlimited access to MOG's music library.The MOG music service offers personal playlists, but it also incorporates elements from existing music services. You can get other users' recommendations, a la Microsoft's Zune Social, and there's also an automated recommendation service, somewhat like Pandora.
MOG's advantage seems to be that you can create artist radio stations that play only the artist you want, without similar artists thrown in. You can also skip to any song in the queue, which isn't possible in Pandora or Last.fm. Sounds pretty good for 5 bucks a month. Check out the demo video after the jump to decide for yourself.
Mozilla's Thunderbird 3 email client gets a release candidate
Thunderbird 3, the next version of Mozilla's email client, is almost ready for final release. Although it's almost a year behind schedule, the release candidate rolled out on Tuesday for all operating systems, and it delivers several significant new features, including tabs, better search, and Gmail-style archiving.
Since Thunderbird is a Mozilla product, plug-ins are another big selling point. Version 3 has a new add-on manager for themes and extensions. You can also now set up smart folders, for automated sorting of your messages. Thunderbird also integrates with Vista Search in Windows Vista and with Spotlight in OS X.
The final release of Thunderbird 3 should follow shortly after this release candidate. Going forward, Mozilla hopes to shorten Thunderbird's development cycle significantly, so maybe we won't see another year wait for the next major update.
[via CNET]
Filed under: Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux
Handbrake 0.94 transcodes DVDs even faster
by Jay Hathaway Nov 25th 2009
Handbrake, the insanely great multi-platform video transcoder - or "dvd ripper," if you're really being honest - just got its first update in almost a year. The biggest new change is 64-bit support, which means a 10% jump in encoding speed. According to our sister site, TUAW, Mac users don't even need to be running Snow Leopard to get the 64-bit advantage: it also works on OS X 10.5 on 64-bit capable machines.
If you're a fan of the AVI or xVid formats, you're out of luck with this release of Handbrake. These formats have been dropped in favor of pushing H.264. The good news is that you should now be able to rip DVDs in real time, or darn close. There's also a time-saving Live Preview option, so you can check the quality of your rips without waiting until they finish.
[via TUAW]
Behance introduces Action Method productivity app for iPhone
Behance is one of my favorite sources of creative inspiration and productivity tips. Their Action Method is a neat way to keep track of your to-do items. I'm pretty sure most of their profits come from selling paper products, but there's also a web version of Action Method, and a new Action Method iPhone app that plugs into it.
You don't really have to subscribe to the methodology to use the ...Greasemonkey script fixes Twitter's new retweets
Are you one of the many, many people who seem to be up in arms about Twitter's implementation of retweets? A neat little Greasemonkey script called Retweet Avatars might go a long way toward making you feel better about the new system. Instead of showing the original poster's icon, it shows your retweeting friend's icon, with a much smaller inset for the original tweeter.
This two-icon system ...Roku launches Channel Store, bringing web content to your TV
If you've ever considered buying a Roku, the set-top streaming video box for your TV, you've got at least 10 new reasons today. Roku just launched its Channel Store, featuring 10 free content sources. You may have heard of some of them before: Flickr and Facebook Photos are available, as well as music from Pandora, and web shows from heavy hitters like Revision3 and Leo Laporte's TWiT.TV. On the ...Facebook users approve new privacy policy
Facebook made a promise earlier this year to listen to user input about any changes to its terms of service and privacy policy, and so far they've followed through. Facebook opened up a comment period on an update to the privacy policy earlier this month, and now the users have spoken and approved the changes. During the process, the Facebook Site Governance fan page doubled its membership, ...Spotify music service comes to Nokia phones, North American users still screwed
I admit it, European Download Squad readers: I'm jealous of you. My friends in London and Paris are swapping Spotify playlists like crazy, and we Americans and our brothers to the north still don't have access to this awesome music service. Heck, it doesn't even take a fancy phone to use Spotify in Europe anymore: it's just arrived on Nokia's Symbian phones.
This is a huge move for Spotify, ...
So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game.
The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...
