TuneWear has released a new product in its line of iPhone and iPod accessories, the TuneSonic Crystal with Mic and Control earphones. The earphones feature 9mm neodymium drivers claimed to produce clear sound, while magnetic shielding and a rubberized guard on the Y-connector provide additional protection. The design integrates a single Crystallized Swarovski Elements rhinestone on the back of each earpiece….

Canon has announced a firmware update for its full-frame EOS 5D Mark II camera. Version 2.0.3 offers several changes to the video frame rate, adding a 24p mode and bringing the 30p speed down to 29.97 to comply with television production standards….

Filed under: Apple Corporate, Apple Financial, Apple

Last week in this post and last night during the talkcast, we mentioned that Apple’s shareholders had passed on a sustainability proposal during last week’s meeting (the first time in recent memory that Apple didn’t go for stricter environmental standards), but apparently the shareholders weren’t just against the proposal. At least one of them was openly heckling Al Gore about his work with the environment. Shelton Ehrlich (who apparently has a reputation among Apple shareholders as a conspiracy believer) stood up and called Gore a “laughingstock,” railing against Gore’s re-election to the board of directors. Good times — we’re sure Gore is used to dealing with controversies like that, but we wouldn’t have expected it at the Apple shareholder meeting.

Still, that hasn’t dissuaded him from working with the company — according to an SEC filing, he also picked up another 10,000 stock options from Apple, netting him more than $227k according to Apple’s current stock price. Good deal. At least one of Apple’s shareholders isn’t too happy with Gore’s work for the environment, but the relationship between Gore and Apple seems like it’s here to stay for a while.

TUAWAl Gore taunted at shareholders’ meeting, gets 10k more options anyway originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Gaming, Software, Freeware, iPhone, App Store

Two major league games have hit the App Store already this week, one of them for the surprise price of free. Ubisoft has released the multiplayer version of their Assassin’s Creed II game on the App Store, and it’s available for free for the first 48 hours. The game’s a top-down multiplayer game that has you walking around the world of the console version, both targeting other players and being targeted yourself. All the reports say it’s definitely worth a try, and if you can catch it before they raise the price back up (sounds like Ubisoft is trying to find a place for their releases), you should.

And as expected, Rayman 2 is also out on the App Store — it’s a port of the 3D Playstation platformer that was actually a Ubisoft property, but as you can see from the trailer above, this one’s been ported by Gameloft. As with most iPhone platformers, the game uses virtual controls, but Touch Arcade says they work just fine. The save system is the biggest issue — your iPhone is not the best platform for playing games for long stretches of time, and any game that kicks you back out to a menu if you happen to step away for a second will cause frustration eventually. Still, it sounds like a solid platformer port, and there are certainly fans of those out there. The game is $6.99 on the App Store right now.

TUAWAssassin’s Creed II multiplayer, Rayman 2 out now on the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The European Commission has initiated part of its new roaming regulations for cellular providers based in countries of the EU. As of Monday, carriers are now required to introduce cut-off mechanisms designed to protect against “bill shock” when subscribers utilize data services while traveling throughout countries in Europe….

Filed under: Gaming, Freeware, Internet, Apple, iPhone, sxsw

Happy March! The super hip and trendy South-by-Southwest music and tech festival is coming up this month, and like many tech conventions these days, AT&T is working on a plan to keep their network up and running as thousands of iPhones descend on Austin, Texas to send around voice, texts, and data.

GigaOM has a little insight into how they’re planning to do it this year, and if you’re interested in the nuts-and-bolts of keeping a cell phone network up and running (or at least trying to — this is AT&T, after all), it’s worth a read. They’re beefing up the cell towers in the city’s vicinity, setting up a whole new system around the convention center itself, and putting money into the backend as well, to try and increase bandwidth coming into the region. I don’t know if they’ve done anything like this before (I can’t really judge with Macworld — while my iPhone worked fine most of the time, I still only have a 1G, and I was using Sprint MiFi on my Macbook most of the time), but it sounds like a pretty comprehensive setup.

Of course, the other reason AT&T is pushing to get ready for SXSW is that the convention has become sort of an unofficial testing ground for the next big social apps. A few years ago, Twitter made its first big push around SXSW, and last year, Foursquare was the app to use (which has since spawned a brand new genre of app, the “check-in” network). So what’s going to be the app pushing data through the AT&T network this year? The buzz so far is around Twitter’s coming ad platform, though it’s hard to think that an ad platform could be a killer app. My money’s on some sort of location-based social game — while Foursquare has gaming elements, I think an app like MyTown could take the concept even farther, and we still haven’t really seen an actual GPS-based RPG or MMO break out. Even those of us who aren’t at SXSW this year will be paying attention to what people are doing on their iPhones there, because odds are good that the app that clicks with attendees there will be what we’re all playing with in a few months.

TUAWAT&T plans for SXSW 2010 originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Mon, 01 Mar 2010 20:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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