Hanwha releases a new USB and HDMI connector for iPad/iPhone4

Hanwha released a new and well-built USB and HDMI converter for iPad and iPhone4. Cool!

Christie’s Launches New iPhone Application Allowing Optimized Access to Website

Christie’s, announces the availability of a new mobile application that extends the company’s online experience to a global audience of Apple mobile device users. Beginning July 15, Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users can enjoy optimized mobile access to Christie’s online features, including previews of all sales and lots, real-time sales results, and more. This free application will be made available to the one million plus unique visitors to Christies.com each month via http://www.christies.com/on-the-go/iphone, the company’s Facebook and Twitter audiences, and to visitors of the iTunes App Store.

Michael O’Neal, director of Digital Media at Christie’s comments: “The Christie’s app ensures our existing and potential buyers are always in touch and informed of our latest offerings, no matter where they may be. New advancements in mobile devices now allow for a very rich visual experience perfectly suited to viewing Christie’s broad array of offerings, including fine art, jewels, decorative objects, furniture, and fine and rare wines.

As our global audience grows increasingly reliant on mobile communication devices, Christie’s is leading the way as the first international fine art auction house to launch a mobile access strategy, so that our clients may select the communications medium best suited to their needs at any given moment. The Christie’s app ensures that our clients continue to enjoy the enhanced online services they’ve become accustomed to with Christies.com, as well as take advantage of new custom features that leverage the revolutionary unique features and functions of the iPhone and iPod Touch.”

The Christie’s App was developed in partnership with Kargo, a leading independent mobile media and technology partner that specializes in producing breakthrough entertainment and information applications. With the Christie’s app, buyers and sellers around the world can:

Browse any Christie’s auction, anywhere in the world: Search by Category, Location, or Area of Interest, so you can easily find items of interest while on the road, or with a client.

Get Real-time Auction Results: Even if you are not in the saleroom, you can still track sale results in real-time. The app receives results direct from the saleroom and refreshes the tally as each sale progresses, so that users have the latest news at their fingertips, as soon as the hammer falls.

View Sale Catalogues and Lot Details: Always have the latest sale catalogue at their fingertips, with flip-through access and detailed information about every individual lot in each sale, including dimensions, estimates, provenance, and detailed catalogue notes.

Zoom-In on Lots of Interest: Use the high-quality display and innovative Multi-Touch user interface of iPhone and iPod Touch to make viewing Christie’s catalogues easy. Users can zoom in and inspect any lot in detail, and rotate and re orient an image to best fit their screen.

Email A Lot to a Friend: See an item that is perfect for a client or a friend? Users can select any lot and instantly send a link to it by email, along with a personal note.

Find A Salesroom: When traveling, it’s easy to locate any of our 10 salesrooms around the globe with location-aware functionality and Google map links.

Submit Images for Appraisal: Interested in selling an item? The iPhone camera function makes it easy to take a picture of an object and submit it to our auction specialists for appraisal. Buyers and sellers alike can use the app to view all 80 collecting categories that Christie’s represents, including fine and decorative arts and design, jewelery, antiquities, furniture, books, watches, wine, musical instruments, and more.

Download Wallpaper Images: Make an artistic statement by downloading iconic images of fine arts, jewelery, collectibles, wine and more from Christie’s image library to use as their wallpaper.

As the first step in Christie’s broader mobile access strategy, the new app is an example of the company’s continuing commitment to leveraging best-in-class digital technologies to enrich the client experience. In addition to its mobile offering, Christie’s remains the only international fine art auction house to offer online bidding capability via Christie’s LIVE™, a real-time multi-media bidding application. In 2008, Christie’s LIVE™ generated $82 million in online sales and direct underbidding. Online sale registrations per sale grew 138% in 2008 and the percent share of all lots sold through remote bidding channels grew 33%.

Skype iPhone App Is Awsome

The official Skype iPhone application hit the iTunes Store last Tuesday and since then it’s seen an astonishing one million downloads to the popular Apple devices, which is nothing short of amazing. I think this is one of the fastest-downloaded iPhone apps ever.

Fragment x Incase Iphone Case

While the Iphone market is really soaring at the moment, with Apple’s mobile phone sales sky rocketing to #3 position in the entire market behind Nokia and Samsung with only one phone. It’s easy to understand why the people from Fragment may have decided to team up with the folks at Incase on a case for the iphone. Available in a matte rubber white, or a shiny black featuring the signature Fragment thunderbolt. Here is a preview of what may be a possible co-branded release, no official word as yet.

Leica D-Lux 4 “Titan” Limited Edition Camera

Limited to only 500 pieces, German camera manufacturer Leica, has announced the release of their D-Lux 4 model in a limited titan edition. Along with the titanized aluminum casing, the camera will feature a beautifully crafted black calf leather holdster. The 10 Megapixel D-Lux 4 features a CCD image sensor, Venus Engine IV image processor, F2.0 wide angle lens, Face Detection, Intelligent ISO and Mega OIS. A release is slated for January 2009.

2008 Release Unlock SIM

It will never cease to amaze us how quickly the iPhone Dev Team can bust open a new version of the iPhone Firmware. This time, around 48 hours after iPhone Firmware 2.2 hit, we already have a new version of QuickPwn and PwnageTool.

Before you go ahead and jailbreak your iPhone 3G, please make sure you fully understand the following caveat: If you use QuickPwn instead of PwnageTool, you may not be able to unlock your iPhone 3G once an unlocking tool is made available.

Second generation iPod Touch users are still playing the waiting game while the team concentrates on the all-important iPhone 3G unlock.

XLarge x Takashi Murakami Watch

Looks like XLarge is hooking up with renown Japanese artist Takashi Murakami on a watch made by Citizen. The piece features a futuristic animated design, much like Murakami’s cartoony renditions while his artwork is the centerpiece showcased on the backing.

Nokia E63

Nokia’s just announced a new E-Series handset, the E63 that bears more than a passing resemblance with the E71. Nokia explained that the E63 fits the typical Eseries mould, offering Wi-Fi connectivity, easy access to corporate mail, calendar and business contacts, as well as the QWERTY keyboard that is offered with the Nokia E71. The E63 will also offer a personal mode with a different home screen picture, personal email, and shortcuts to blogs and web sites. Users can switch from a view of corporate mail, appointments, and intranet data to the personal mode with a single key press, according to the firm. The handset will also include Files on Ovi, a service allowing users to access their PC remotely even when their computer is offline. Nokia said that 1GB of online file storage would be given to all users for free.

The E63 will be up against the all-singing, all-dancing BlackBerry Storm, with one of the oldest marketing gimmicks as its only advantage, price. The phone will be offered in dark red and marine blue, at an estimated price of approx $244. The phone will begin shipping in the coming weeks.

My New Favorites iPhone Apps

The all-conquering iPhone is a pretty impressive gadget out of the box – but it’s the fantastic App Store that really keeps the honeymoon going, giving users access to literally thousands of downloadable third-party applications. From the sublime to the ridiculous, they’re only a few taps away – and a large number of them are free. Useful? Sometimes. Perfect? Rarely. Addictive? Hell yes, show me an iPhone user that hasn’t thumbed through the app store late at night and I’ll show you somebody who should have bought a Nokia. Here’s a few of our favorite freebies – and a couple of things we want to know why we can’t have!

1. AroundMe Where’s the nearest bank? This is a fantastic app that takes your GPS location and shows you what’s nearby, from banks, bars and coffee shops, to petrol stations, hotels, parking garages and hospitals – ranked by proximity. Once you decide on a business, you’re presented with full contact details, a map and route details if you want them. We’re not sure where AroundMe takes its data from, but it does an excellent job, only limited by the database. A must-have app.

2. Thumbtacts One of the many criticisms of the iPhone is that its computer-like interface can make it a bit clunky to use as a phone. Finding and calling a contact, for example, can be a frustrating exercise if you’ve only got one hand free. But hey, who buys a phone to make calls these days anyway right? Thumbtacts offers a creative solution by breaking the contact list down into a series of simple thumb-clickable options that quickly and accurately find the number you’re after. Hard to explain but easy to use, Thumbtacts is almost always a quicker way to find and call contacts than the standard contacts list. Nice one!

3. Midomi This one’s great for its show-off value… sing, hum or play a tune into the Midomi screen and it’ll identify the song, play a preview and take you through to the iTunes store to buy it if you want. Accuracy is a bit variable, and don’t expect to find anything too obscure in the database, but in general it works better than you’d expect. The “wow” factor wears off a bit once you realize how the system works, but the price is right and it’s niftier than Shazam, its main competitor.

4. Facebook A cut-down version of facebook on your phone – can be frustrating when you can’t see your events or save photos, but provides a much nicer interface for the small screen than the main full-featured Facebook page in Safari. A solid bus-stop timekiller but how much nicer would it be if you could see your events and send them straight to the iCal calendar? We live in hope.

5. Labyrinth LE A gaming platform with no buttons poses quite a challenge for game developers – a lot of iPhone games require a finger on the screen at all times, and suffer for it. Labyrinth, however, uses the platform to great advantage, even if gameplay is very simple. Tilt the phone to roll the ball into the goal slot, avoiding the holes along the way. Where it makes up points is in the fantastic audio, which makes your expensive phone feel like a real fifty-cent wooden box. Amazing what technology can do!

6. Free Translator Like many iPhone apps, this is simply an interface to an online service you could just as easily access via Safari. But Free Translator proves its worth in simplicity and speed. Choose a source language, choose a target language, and type in your word or phrase. The app uses Google’s translation tools, so it’s just as accurate and with all the usual foibles. Annoyingly, the keyboard autocorrect tries to correct all your foreign words into English, but this would happen if you were using Google Translate online anyway. Still a very handy application, particularly when traveling.

7. Cube Runner Another game that uses the iPhone’s accelerometers to great effect, Cube runner simply asks you to tilt the phone to steer yourself through a maze of cubes. On the harder settings it’s vaguely reminiscent of the feeling of splitting through freeway traffic on a motorcycle – so this sneaks onto the list by virtue of the fact that many of us here at Gizmag are bike heads.

8. GPS Tracker Does exactly what it says on the tin; it takes regular GPS readings and uploads them to a Web server so you can look back at a plotted map of your trip. It also functions as a laggy but passable GPS speedometer. Works very well but chews battery too fast to be much chop for longer trips without a power cable – and spends a lot of time communicating with the server too, which could mean trouble if you’re on a stingy data plan. You can change the accuracy and frequency of GPS readings, but would be handy to be able to touch the screen to set a new waypoint so you could simply upload a marker every time you turned a corner or something. Still a very nifty app.

One thing that I really miss in my iPhone is “cut and paste” – com’on Apple!

iPhone 1-Seg TV Tuner comes around

TV buffs who own iPhone can become mobile potatoes as opposed to the couch variety because Softbank has just come out with a new external 1-Seg TV tuner that features a larger battery. It simply plugs into the iPhone’s port to offer portable TV on the go. The bulky design won’t deter the TV addicts, but it will definitely spoil the slim, sexy looks of the iPhone.