BlackBerry maker will launch a tablet with similar dimensions as the iPad, but with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities only. To connect to the Web, the device has to be paired with a mobile phone.

Originally posted at Circuit Breaker

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It’s a major time-killer to sift through your three dozen open tabs, looking for a needle in a tab-stack. So it’s a good thing that Mozilla has given tabs some long-overdue love in the second Firefox 4 beta with App Tabs.

Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, App Tabs are perfect for Web apps. The feature makes your must-use tabs easy to find and makes it harder to close them. Check out this tutorial to see how to use them and how they compare with the similar feature from Google Chrome, Pin Tab.

Comedian Michael Showalter featured on today's episode of The 404 Podcast!

(Credit:
Sarah Tew)

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We had a longer show title in mind when we asked Michael to help us think of …

Originally posted at The 404 Podcast

Shooting panoramic photos with a mobile phone can be difficult. Often times it requires doing all the work in a software app when you get back from wherever you are, as well as trying to make sure that the phone’s camera does not change its white balance or exposure between shots.

Occipital, the creators of the popular RedLaser scanning app (which wassold to eBay last month) have a new iPhone app debuting on Friday called 360 Panorama, which is attempting to change that. For $2.99, users can simply move their phone from left to right to capture a photo panorama. The end result is a single, panoramic photo that requires zero post-processing.

To use the app, users just hold their iPhone and move from side to side, capturing the area around them.

(Credit:
Screenshots by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

Behind the scenes the app is actually using the iPhone’s video camera, which means that users will need a 3GS or the newer iPhone 4 to use it. The app also takes advantage of the iPhone 4’s gyroscope hardware to help judge how quickly you’re rotating, so it can figure out what needs to be captured and where you’ve already been. As it records imagery, it stitches together an image based on your movement, which you can see and track to make any angle corrections. Some modern day point and shoot cameras like Sony’s Cyber-shot DSC-W370 are able to do the same thing, though with a larger end result.

Size and distortions are ultimately the two things that limit this app from being as useful as proper photo stitching software. The images it spits out are quite small when compared with the still shots your camera takes. You can see this in the two sample photos I’ve embedded below (click on each to see it in full size):

A demo shot taken in downtown San Francisco. Normally this would take several shots, but 360 Panorama is able to capture it all at once.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

And a full 360 of an interior:

A 360 degree shot taken from inside CNET. (click to see in its original size)

(Credit:
Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)

The larger problem is the distortion, which Occipital co-founder Vikas Reddy told me is made worse in indoor situations. His team is working on ways to make it better in a future release, but in the meantime shooting outdoors provides for a much smoother and less jaggy experience. Being in the urban jungle of downtown San Francisco, I wasn’t able to fully test how well it would work on something like rolling hills or a forest, but as you can see from the shots above it does a fine job until you hit perfectly straight lines where the software is forced to make a stitch by guesswork.

These issues aside, 360 Panorama is an incredibly neat, and genuinely useful app. It may have no business taking over the job of a good crisp, and low distortion still image, but if you want to quickly capture an incredible amount of detail of the world around you, it’s tough to beat.

If you want to see how it works while using it, you can see it in the company’s demo video below:

iPhone users can also check out OutmanTech’s Video Panorama app ($1.99) and Boinx’s You Gotta See This ($1.99), both of which work with the same basic principle.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

Normally $29, iSkysoft DVD to iPhone converter (which also supports other formats) is free until Aug. 9.

(Credit:
Screenshot by Rick Broida)

Have you heard the news? A recent court ruling says it’s not illegal to rip your own DVDs, as long as you’re not violating copyright law (i.e. sharing or selling the DRM-freed content).

So let the ripping begin! All you need is the right software. From now until Aug. 9, you can get iSkysoft DVD to iPhone Converter for free. Available for both Windows and Mac, it’s regularly $29.

Don’t let the name fool you: although the utility includes presets for all iPhone models (from the original on up to the iPhone 4), it also supports generic MOV, MP4, and other output formats–meaning you can just as easily rip  videos for your iPad, iPod, Zune, Sony PSP, or whatever.

DVD to iPhone Converter looks and operates like most other rippers I’ve tried. It’s easy to configure, and the episode of “Burn Notice” I test-converted came through with flying colors. (Love that show.)

To get this fab freebie, head to iSkysoft’s Facebook page, click Like, then enter your name and e-mail address in the appropriate box (Windows or Mac). Click Get keycode and you should get a registration e-mail almost immediately. Mine arrived in under a minute.

Not a bad deal, eh? If you’ve been wanting to watch your DVDs on your iPhone but had concerns about the legality, now you can rest easy–and get the job done for free. 

Bonus deal: Speaking of Zunes, Best Buy outlet store Cowboom has the refurbished 16GB Zune HD for $99.99 shipped–the lowest price I’ve ever seen for a Zune HD. Better hurry, though–the deal is available today only.

Originally posted at iPhone Atlas