touch

Simplify Media: Listen to your entire music collection on your iPhone

Simplify Media--a free desktop application for Windows or Mac OS X that lets you stream your digital music or your friends' from iTunes or Winamp (Simplify Media covered previously)--today released a new version of its software that is developed to run on the Apple iPhone or iPod Touch.

Rather than function as a conventional iPhone app, (i.e. a Web app built for Safari), the new program is standalone software that requires a "jailbroken" iPhone to work.

The ability to listen to your entire music collection or your friends' anywhere your iPhone or iPod Touch has … Read more

Cracking open the iPod Touch and more

News.com has been running hugely cool photo galleries excerpted from sister site TechRepublic--their "Cracking Open" series, where they dissect, gut, and then try to reconstruct your favorite electronics.

Latest entries include the iPod Touch--you won't believe how thin the components are--and the remote-control game, "Shocking Tanks."

Links: Cracking open the iPod touch and Cracking open "Shocking Tanks."

Teach an old dog new computer tricks

Should you buy your dog an iPhone for Christmas? In a recent study of animal cognition, dogs were able to use a touch-screen computer to answer questions and win a treat.

Read the full story at MSNBC.

A keyboard without the keys

How's this for weirdness: A keyboard with no keys. No, it's not an invention from Yuri Geller or any other spoon-bending psychics. It's a real product called the "OrbiTouch" that has been around for a few years but is enjoying some renewed attention, perhaps because navigation by way of the cliched Minority Report touch screen has yet to become a reality.

Rather than typing with the usual keys, it works with two domes that can be maneuvered into quadrants of letters, numbers, and symbols, according to Dvice. The magic orbs then can supposedly be slid … Read more

Hard drives join touch-screen bandwagon too

As if Apple and others aren't already turning everything into touch screens, now we have one popping up on one of the most unlikely of places: an external hard drive.

Perhaps indicated by a name that appears to be encrypted itself, Iotek's "ezSECU ez850" has a touch screen that serves as a digital combination lock with a secret code, according to OhGizmo. The Korean-made system, which supports only 2.5-inch SATA drives, is an alternative to fingerprint recognition and other security technologies used increasingly to protect external storage devices, even in the smallest forms. It's … Read more

Nokia's touch-screen idea--from 2006

Nokia will have touch-screen mobile phones in the future--that much we know from its announcement recently about S60 (Symbian Series60) handsets supporting touch-sensitive displays. What is less known, however, is that the Finnish giant had filed patent documents for such phones dating back to May 2006.

In the document discovered by Unwired View on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office site, Nokia envisioned a device with two screens to display different kinds of information depending on the angle at which the clamshell is opened. Control of the device is possible using either the buttons or the display.

(Source: Crave Asia) … Read more

Read free magazines on the iPhone or Touch

I've always loved e-books (I read 'em on my Palm), so I had more than a passing interest in Amazon's new Kindle gizmo (unboxed over at Crave). But $400?! Come on. And then I got to thinking: Man, Apple should really, really get into the e-book game. How cool would it be to flip pages by swiping a finger on the iPhone/iPod touch screen?

Until that glorious day arrives, Zinio Labs is offering free (for now) magazines for iPhone and iPod Touch users. The Zinio Mobile Newsstand includes titles like Car & Driver, Men's Health, and … Read more

Prizefight: Archos 605 WiFi vs iPod Touch

Already bored with today's turkey-themed revelry? Want to see what happens when we pit the most advanced iPod ever made against the underdog Archos 605 WiFi? We've been waiting for this gadget smackdown for a long time, and the results of CNET's official Archos 605 WiFi vs iPod Touch prizefight have just been published.

Will the iPod Touch's sex appeal carry it through to the finish line? Does Archos' bulky, feature-packed PVP stand a snow's chance in hell against the immensely popular iPod? You'll have to click through to find out.

The 'dead zone': iPhone screen fails

You would think the iPhone's touch screen--the hallmark of the whole dang thing--would last for more than five months. Well, think again.

After a particularly wet bike ride on Saturday here in the Bay Area, my iPhone got somewhat damp. (You know, the type of rain that soaks through a coat but doesn't ruin anything.) After the ride, I wanted to text people and noticed the top row of the text keyboard was not responding. I had to press, no squish, down to get a letter. And the cursor would flip out. And the screen looked bad when … Read more