Android fans who use their devices for listening to music will be happy to find that Songbird’s developer has decided to release its highly-acclaimed music management application on the Android platform.
Coming from Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS, the developer decided to go with Android, as the first mobile platform forSongbird. Even though the currently available download is just a preview of the application, beta testers will be able to enjoy some of the features offered by the desktop version of the software. Songbird will probably have a hard time to make itself popular on the Android platform, as the market is already crowded with more than decent music apps such as MIUI and Winamp. For those out of the loop, Songbird allows users to keep their library in sync, build playlists, browse, search, as well as sort their music files. The application features add-ons which make downloading music files from specialized websites much faster and more reliable. Songbird comes with music and video player components and supports MP3, AAC, OGG, FLAC, WMA, WAV audio formats, as well as H.264, Windows Media Video, MPEG4 video formats. Android users will be able to download Songbird beta for free from Softpedia. The application is compatible with all phones that run Android 2.1-update1 or newer. Given the fact that Songbird is not available from the Android Market yet, users will have to enable the installing applications from unknown sources option, which can be found under Settings / Applications / Unknown Sources.
The beta version will need to be manually uninstalled when the developer releases a final version through the Android Market. Caution is advised because this step will wipe all previously stored, related data. However, before installing Songbird for Android, users should take note of the following known issues, which will be fixed when the final release is available: - When launching [the] app via Widget, if [the] drawer was open previously, it gets closed;- If you have an HTC Incredible, the wrong song may play when you have music on both the phone storage and the SD card; - On the HTC Incredible, stuff may be sorted oddly in the Artist, Albums and Songs views when you have music on both the phone storage and SD card.
We’ve seen a lot of inventive music videos this past year — interactive videos, crowdsourced videos, HTML5-based videos — but we hadn’t seen a 360-degree video, until now. Black Eyed Peas frontman Will.i.am just launched his digital media company, will.i.apps, and to kick off the app-travaganza he’s out with a Peas-branded app featuring a pretty immersive vid.
The app — titled BEP360 — is the first release from will.i.apps, a company Will.i.am founded with Edo Segal of Futurity Ventures. Like pre-existing services like Mobile Roadie, will.i.apps will help artists create mobile apps to best showcase their music and brand.
That’s the aim of BEP360 — to bring the fan into the Black Eyed Peas’s world. The app features a video for the band’s song “The Time (Dirty Bit)” the first single from new album, The Beginning, which allows the user to explore the world of the video (basically a party) by moving his or her phone around. IE, If you point your phone at the ceiling, you’ll see the ceiling of the party. It’s like Google Earth, with more scantily clad chicks.
The app also includes an augmented reality view, which brings the latest album cover to life; a photo session that lets you take pictures of the band members in a virtual, 360-degree “photo shoot”; a virtual map that displays comments and pictures posted by other fans (you can take snaps with the virtual band members in the AR view and share them out); the Peas’s Twitter feed; and a puzzle game.
Overall, the video is far and away the coolest aspect of the app, but, frankly, I wouldn’t shell out the $2.99 to download it if you’re not a pretty big Black Eyed Peas fan.
We’re far more interested to see what other apps will.i.apps creates for artists, seeing as how it’s a company founded by a working musician.
Apple will add NFC (near-field communication) capabilities to its next generation iPhone and iPad, claims Richard Doherty, director of the consulting firm Envisioneering Group.
NFC is a form of wireless data transfer over short (up to 4-inch) distances, which could be used to make purchases with a mobile device. If Apple ties the technology with customers’ iTunes account, making purchases might become as easy as swiping your phone over a specifically designed sticker or payment terminal.
According to Doherty, Apple is thinking of starting a mobile payment service as early as mid-2011, integrating it into iTunes and adding the familiar concept of loyalty credits and points into the service. Apple has already designed a prototype payment terminal, Doherty claims, which may be heavily subsidized or even given away to small businesses, jump starting the service.
At first glance, NFC may not seem like a big deal, but making payments simpler and easier makes a world of difference, which Apple already demonstrated with the success of its App Store. Turning the iPhone and the iPad into digital wallets opens up a myriad of possibilities that can potentially mean billions in revenue for Apple.
Potential owners of Google/Samsung Nexus S smartphone now have another (albeit purely aesthetic) reason to choose that device over Apple’s iPhone 4: It will probably be available in white color.
We say probably because all we have now are a couple of images of the white version of the device, showing that Samsung has once again opted for a black front and a white back combination instead of making the Nexus S uniformly white.
Still, if you’re adamant about having a powerful, white, touchscreen smartphone, the Nexus S might be your best bet, as the white iPhone 4 has been as elusive as the Yeti and, last we heard, it won’t hit the stores before spring 2011. There’s no word on when the white Nexus S might appear in stores, but we’re hoping it’ll be sooner than that.
Tired of dealing with wires to charge your mobile device? The Energizer Inductive Charger lets you place your iPhone or Blackberry on its shiny black surface, where it immediately begins charging wirelessly.
Energizer’s $89 inductive charging station has been available for a few months, and the company’s been working on the various sleeves that must be placed on devices so they can work with it. So far, there’s a sleeve for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, a replacement door for the BlackBerry Curve 8900, and now, Energizer’s finally finished its iPhone 4 sleeve and sent it to us for review.
The charging station is a wedge-shaped piece of piano-black plastic that’s a little larger than a paperback book. It has two spots where you can place your mobile devices for wireless charging, and can accommodate both at once. There’s a USB port in the back to connect an additional device, letting you charge a total of three at the same time.
This inductive charger is compatible with the Qi (pronounced “chee”) wireless charging standard adopted by theWireless Power Consortium. Qi shows great promise — in fact, we’re so impressed, we named it one of the 8 Gadgets to Watch in 2011. The consortium members include Samsung, Panasonic, Sony, HTC, Verizon, Duracell, Energizer, Black & Decker and a few others — but notably missing so far is Apple. The idea is for all the products made by consortium members to be interoperable with each other.
Here’s a diagram showing how it works:
Does it work? Yes, and it seems like magic. The Qi system uses an electromagnetic field to transfer energy instead of wires. When I plugged my iPhone 4 into its sleeve, all I needed to do was place it onto one of the targets on the charger, and its blue light began to glow, indicating that charging had begun. I like the way each of the two lights turn off, indicating the associated device is fully charged. When all are fully charged, the charging station goes into its energy-saving standby mode.
The plan for the Qi system is to build this wireless capability into devices, eliminating the need for an external sleeve, or in the case of the BlackBerry Curve 8900, a replacement door. Energizer says that according to iSuppli, there could be 234.9 million units with built-in wireless charging by 2014.
Whether that happens or not, for now, we have samples of the iPhone 4 sleeve and the BlackBerry Curve 8900 replacement door, and both are relatively unobtrusive. We also have the sleeve for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, and it’s slightly bulkier, more like a case than a 3/4 sleeve like that of the iPhone 4. See the gallery below for pictures of all.
The iPhone 4′s sleeve is nowhere near as bulky as even the thinnest add-on external battery extenders such as the Mophie Juice Pack Plus. It’s thin, light at 1.6 oz, and only makes the 5.1 oz iPhone feel only slightly larger and heavier. In the case of the BlackBerry, look at the gallery below you’ll see that the door only adds a tolerable amount of depth to the current handset.
Using the charger in these sleeves couldn’t be easier. The iPhone 4 sleeve has a snug fit, so you won’t be leaving it in your pocket as you pull out your phone. The target area where you place the device on the charger is big enough so that it’s easy to get the device to start charging, even if you don’t place it exactly on the circular graphic.
There’s an added advantage to that sleeve — if you’re one who holds your iPhone with a finger underneath, covering up its tiny speaker, the sleeve redirects the speaker’s sound toward the front. It does the inverse for the iPhone 4′s microphone, directing its sound from the front rather than the bottom. I couldn’t tell a difference with the microphone, but I noticed the speaker sounds better with the sleeve on, an unexpected benefit.
So is it worth it? Are we so lazy that we can’t bother to plug in our phones to charge them? Probably. Maybe it’s not laziness, but the desire for convenience that makes wireless charging so appealing. I found myself much more likely to lay my iPhone onto this charger than to plug it in. And, it’s good to know this charger will still be able to accommodate any device that’s compliant with the Qi standard in the coming years. That’s when this will really pay off — when many devices have this wireless charging capability built in, and no sleeves required. Until then, even with the sleeves, I enjoyed using the system and highly recommend it.
Here’s a video showing how easy it is to charge your device by just placing it on the inductive charging station:
Android fans who use their devices for listening to music will be happy to find that Songbird’s developer has decided to release its highly-acclaimed music management application on the Android platform. 
