Gizmodo:

“AirLock is an awesome use of Bluetooth: Whenever your iPhone leaves your Mac’s wireless range, the computer locks itself, and automagically unlocks when you (or rather, your iPhone) comes back. Neat-o. It’s $7.77.” [AirLock via Twitter via Daring Fireball]

This is freakin cool…

Gizmodo:

“I’ve been psyched for this ever since EA confirmed the multi-player mode supports four players over Bluetooth. The $10 app lets you invite Facebook friends, and choose guitar, bass, drums or vocals. 20 tracks are included, too…here’s the full listing:

There’s also a solo mode, of course. And additional tracks available to buy from artists like Foo Fighters, Devo, Smashing Pumpkins, and Leny Kravitz. Sweet!” [iTunes Store]

“Attack” – 30 Seconds To Mars
“Girls Not Grey” – AFI
“Move Along” – All American Rejects
“Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
“All The Small Things” – Blink-182
“Hanging on the Telephone” – Blondie
“Learn To Fly” – Foo Fighters
“Everlong” – Foo Fighters
“Bad to The Bone” – George Thorogood & the Destroyers
“Hymn 43″ – Jethro Tull
“Bad Reputation” – Joan Jett
“Simple Man” – Lynard Skynard
“Ace of Spades ‘08″ – Motorhead
“Debaser” – Pixies
“Ladybug” – Presidents of The United States of America
“Give It All” – Rise Against
“Lazy Eye” – Silversun Pick Ups
“Cherub Rock” – Smashing Pumpkins
“Take The Money and Run” – Steve Miller Band
“We Got The Beat” – The Go Go’s

Lifehacker:

“Firefox only (Windows/Mac/Linux): The Omnibar extension makes Firefox’s awesomebar act like Google Chrome’s omnibar, collapsing the address bar and search into one single text box.

We’ve mentioned Omnibar in passing in a couple of posts, namely our guide to turning Firefox into a Google Chrome clone and our post detailing how to use the Firefox 4.0 theme, but it’s a useful extension whether or not you’re trying to make Firefox look like another browser. You can still switch your default search engines, you can still use keyword bookmarking (my favorite Firefox feature), and the extension features special shortcuts for searching non-default engines (try your query with @y, for example, to search Yahoo).

Omnibar is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.“

Gizmodo:

Gizmodo:

“App concepts don’t get much simpler than this, or much cooler: Cyclopedia takes Wikipedia’s tens of thousands of geotagged entries, and overlays them onto a live, compass-oriented view of your surroundings.

If this sounds an awful lot like Wikitude, the AR Android app that just can’t seem to eek its way into the App Store, that’s because it is an awful lot like Wikitude—except with a more polished interface, and, well, iPhone support. (Sort of: non-3GSers need not apply). As with Wikitude, firing this thing up around a familiar location won’t really blow your mind, since Wikipedia’s geographic article density is still pretty low.

But if you’re visiting a new place—that is, a place Wikipedia editors care to write about—Cyclopedia ceases to be an AR tech demo, and with adjustable search radii, a top-down map mode and non-geocaches Wikipedia searching, actually starts to be useful. Available now in the App Store for $2; video demo at the source link.” [Chemical Wedding]

Lifehacker:

“Google Sync, released earlier this year, keeps your calendar and contacts synced between your mobile phone and Google account. Now they’ve added that great, final bit of ultimate sync support by pushing Gmail to your phone.

If you’re sporting an iPhone/iPod Touch, Windows Mobile phone, or Nokia S60 phone, you can now set up Google Sync to actively push your email to your device, ensuring you’re never stuck waiting around for an update to see what’s new or wondering if various work-around alternatives will follow through. From the Official Google Mobile Blog:

Sync works with your phone’s native email application, so there’s no additional software needed. Only interested in syncing your Gmail, but not your Calendar? Google Sync allows you to sync just your Contacts, Calendar, or Gmail, or any combination of the three.

Check out the full post at the link below to see how to get Google Sync if you’re not already a user and how to enable Gmail syncing if you’ve already got a Google Sync account.”

I love creative ideas like this….

iPhone Alley:

Snap ‘n Tap [App Store, $2.99] lets you interact with elements drawn on paper using a virtual, physics-enabled marble. Put simply, you can draw a maze on paper, snap a photo of it, and guide a virtual marble through it from start to finish. The size of the marble can be adjusted and the app even works with lined paper.

After several minutes of playing with the app, I must say I’m impressed. It’s not developed enough to be a game, but that’s not the developer’s purpose. The ability to have virtual objects interact with hand-drawn elements is just so cool. During one test I used a piece of paper with a coffee stain on it and the ball bumped into the stain. Awesome!

Lifehacker:

“Windows/Mac OS X: The biggest software announcement at today’s Apple event comes in the form of iTunes 9, the newest release of the popular desktop media player.

It’s a solid update containing a few features that we’d be really excited about if only they were just a little bit better (see Home Sharing, for example).

Worthwhile/notable features in the new release include:

• Home Sharing: You can now copy songs across authorized computers on your home network with the new Home Sharing feature. (You can even select a view to show only items that aren’t already in your library.) It’s nice to see iTunes add this feature, but it’s still a far cry from the full-on library sharing that we’ve been dying to see for years on home networks (and that we’ve done our best to accomplish on our own). You know, one library you can play, add to, and edit from any computer on your home network.

• Improved Syncing: When you’re syncing to your devices, iTunes 9 offers more fine-grained control for syncing music by genre or artist, straight from the Music tab of the sync dialog. It also boasts better syncing of Photos (using iPhoto’s Events and People identification) and Movies.
• 
  Better App Management: If you’re syncing apps to your device through iTunes, iTunes 9 adds the ability to organize your synced apps on your iPhone pages from your desktop. Photo via Gizmodo.
• 
  iTunes LP: Apple has introduced their new music format called iTunes LP. The new format intends to take digital music to a new world of multimedia integration, including videos, liner notes, credits, and more. Think of it sort of like the music version of DVDs with special features.
• 
  iTunes Extras: Well, if iTunes LP is sort of like a DVD with special features, iTunes Extras is exactly like it. Now when you buy a movie from the iTunes store, you also get some special features, including cast interviews, behind-the-scenes footage, photo galleries, etc.
• Genius Mixes: Using the Genius feature introduced in iTunes 8.1, Genius mixes plays songs from your library that it thinks go well together. This doesn’t seem like much of a tweak on what’s already there, though I will say that Genius recommendations have improved a lot since the feature was first launched.
• Ringtones: iTunes 9 now sells 30,000 ringtones for $1.29—though we’d suggest saving yourself the cash and just making your own (in Windows; in OS X).

iTunes 9 is a free download for Windows and Mac. It’s not available just yet from Apple’s servers… Update: iTunes 9 is now available.”

Gizmodo: