8 Musical iPad Apps for the Digital Maestro
Peter Meyers is a digital book producer and the author of Best iPad Apps (O’Reilly Media). He’s covered the intersection of writing and technology for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired and blogs at anewkindofbook.com.Early iPad critics were sure about one thing: This gadget was going to be for consuming, not creating. iPadders, the argument went, will spend all their time feas
Gwyneth Paltrow Covers Cee-Lo’s “F**K You” on “Glee”… Stop It, Hollywood
video Cee-Lo’s “F**ck You” started off as the unofficial song of the summer, and now it’s become the choice karaoke hit for decidedly tame Hollywood stars. Yup, first William Shatner covered the catchy jam, and now Gwyneth Paltrow gives us her own interpretation — on Glee, no less.On next week’s Glee — a wildly popular I-don’t-know-if-I’m-a-parody-or-not musical dramedy — Paltrow will appear as substitu
The Future of the Hotel Industry and Social Media
The Future of Social Media Series is supported by Gist. Gist provides a full view of the contacts in your professional network by creating a rich business profile for each one that includes the most news, status updates, and work details. See how it works here.Unlike many modern industries, most of what a hotel does needs to happen offline. It’s hard to deliver room service or make beds with a cl
Top 3 Stories in Social Media and Tech This Morning
This series is brought to you by HTC EVO 4G, America’s first 4G phone. Only from Sprint. The “First to Know” series keeps you in the know on what’s happening now in the world of social media and technology.Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on three particular stories of in
Glee Karaoke for iOS Keeps It Rocking in the Free World
video Just in time for the second season of the hit TV show Glee, Smule has updated its über-successful iOS app. The app, now known as Glee Karaoke [iTunes link], brings back all the same features of the original and adds a layer of competition to the mix.We were big fans of the original app, and we’re happy to report that version 2.0 is just as much fun. The big, new feature is that users can compete w
Our Favorite YouTube Videos This Week: The Dancing Edition
video Yes, I know that at present your face is likely stuck to your keyboard, but weekend is bass-booming right around the corner, and I don’t know about you, but for me that means only one thing: Dancing! It’s also the theme of this week’s YouTube roundup.Doesn’t matter if you shake it, work it, roll it, or twirk it (whatever the hell that is), there’s really no excuse to avoid busting a move this week
Startup Battlefield Round 3: The Final Disruption
We’re down to the final five companies at the TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield: Betterment, Movieclips, Publish2, Soluto, and UJAM. This afternoon these companies are all making their last appeals to a panel of expert judges, explaining how they disrupt their respective markets. My live notes from the session are below. The judges: John Borthwick Ron Conway Marissa Mayer Sam Schwartz Quin
Gadget Deals of the Day
Get your spending cap on because today's dealz features a fantastic bargain on a 12-month subscription to Xbox Live, a nice discount on one of HP's most portable offerings, and a free version of the new and catchy Yeasayer single. Top Deals: • 14" HP dv4 Core i5 Laptop for $649.99 plus free shipping (normally $740 - use this form). • Xbox Live 12-Month Gold Subscription Card for $34.99 plus free
Gadget Deals of the Day
Get some amazing deals in the midst of all the iPad fury. There's a nice Core i7 laptop, an unbelievable price on one of the best games of the last decade, and a free version of Terminator Salvation. Go nuts! Top Deals: • 16" ASUS N61JQ-X1 Intel Core i7-720QM Quad-Core Laptop for $999.99 (normally $1299). • Psychonauts (PC) for $2 download (normally $9.99). • Terminator Salvation Download for $0.
The 40 Best Branded iPhone Music Apps of 2009
Music apps are a huge category of apps, and 2009 was a huge year for music apps. Music Ally sums up the year's biggest music apps for us here. 2009 was the year of the App Store, as Apple passed the two-billion downloads milestone for its store. The year also saw labels and artists jumping onto the bandwagon with their own branded iPhone apps. The most successful, like Smule's I Am T-Pain (picture
Japan Gadget Gifts for the Geek Who Wishes He Was Lost in Translation
Japan is a land of gadgets that are both marvelous and mystifying. If you can't go to the home of weird gadgets, why not bring some of the weird gadgets home to you? Here is a list of Japanese gadget gifts that will give you culture shock worse than Bill Murray in a Tokyo karaoke bar. BTW, if you hate the gallery format as much as the you hate Japan-only gadgets, click here. Bandai Tokyo Diorama S
Like Karaoke? You’ll Go (Lady) Gaga Over iOKi’s iPhone App
video Karaoke fans will soon get the chance to turn their iPhones into full-fledged karaoke machines, thanks to an upcoming new application called iOKi. This is no wannabe karaoke app either — music sensation Lady Gaga has partnered with iOKi to launch her own fully Gaga-ized version of the app featuring some of her most popular songs, which will make its debut alongside the upcoming release of her ne
Karaoke Startup PureSolo Gets A Boost With Idol-like Deal
PureSolo, a UK startup which has developed an online music store which lets people record and share their own versions of well-known tracks, will this week launch a special service with hit UK TV show The X Factor, the American Idol-like show. The branded version for the official website will let fans record themselves singing to all those cheesy tracks the show’s contestants are forced to sing fo
MySpace Music Rolls Out A Sleek, More Interactive Homepage
MySpace may not be the leader in the social networking space anymore, but its free music streaming site, MySpace Music, has been growing fast. Which is why it’s not surprising that the social network is continuing to improve on this popular product. Today, it appears that MySpace Music has launched a new version of its homepage with UI redesign and several new features (we’ve confirmed with the c
Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Liveblog
We are at the Hotel Catalonia Plaza, here in Barcelona, listening to Steve Ballmer sing the virtues of the new Windows Mobile 6.5. Update: It's over. The new user interface looks great. 4:02 PM: OK, it's wrap. Windows Mobile 6.5 looks nice, people. The UI is very nice. I'm off to get some food and wine. I'm sure it will look even better in 10 minutes. 4:01 PM: Steve is replying, but you can tell h
The 10 Best Android Apps of 2008
Following only two months behind iPhone 2.0 (but at a significant installed-base disadvantage), Android still has a long way to go. But there is definitely some early potential. Here are our favorite apps of the year. I still think Android, and its openness toward developers, can do some magical things and give iPhone a run for its money. But as we stated before, a lot needs to happen first—Andro
Holiday Games: The GigaOM Gift Guide
The holidays and Black Friday are rapidly approaching. If you’re looking for video games to give your friends and loved ones, here’s a cheat sheet of must-have titles, categorized by giftee: for the hardcore gamers you know, for your family, and of course, for your high-tech industry colleagues:10 For High-Tech Execs (And Other Grown-Up Gamers) Age of Empires: Mythologies Available Platforms: Ni
Logitech Wireless Vantage Mic, So Your 'Fans' Can't Hang Themselves
For when cords limit your artistic freedom (or screeching Rock Band karaoke), Logitech has announced a wireless version of their Vantage microphone (old model pictured here). Syncing via 2.4GHz frequencies, the Vantage can connect to PC, Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 through a USB dongle that holds (but doesn't charge) the mic when not in use. Operating for 20 hours from distances of 30 feet, the wireless
TuneWiki Audio For Google Android Looks Very Impressive
This is TuneWiki, the music playback app that shows Karaoke-like lyrics and album art on almost all the music on your phone. It's been officially ported to Android and looks very, very impressive. They've added features like searching YouTube for videos of your tracks, plus searching their database for certain song lyrics if you only remember part of a song. There's also the built-in Google Maps A
RC LED Solar Spotlight Enhances Your Backyard Karaoke
Solar powered spotlights seem like a pretty smart idea for areas of the country that have enough light. Think Geek tested it with a south-facing balcony and it was able to get enough sun power to shine both lights at full power for eight hours. That's pretty impressive, seeing as it's unlikely that you'd be in the dark for eight hours unless you were burying a body in your backyard. What's even be
Japan’s super-advanced mobile web: Too unique to serve as a global blueprint?
Over one billion cell phones have been sold worldwide in the last year, but in the US or Europe, the mobile Internet is still catching on relatively slowly. There even was a heated debate in the blogosphere just recently whether the mobile web has a future at all. However, this has never been a question in one specific region of the world: In Japan, since 2006 more people have been accessing the
TuneWiki: Android’s iPhone-Like Media Player That May Become The Platform’s Standard
video Israeli startup TuneWiki has come a long way. Soon after the iPhone’s launch, the company released an application that allowed users to view highly-accurate lyrics synced karaoke style to any song stored in their music library. But because there was no App Store at the time, TuneWiki was limited to users with jailbroken (hacked) iPhones. Despite this, the application has racked up over 1.2 mill
Microsoft E3 Liveblog
We're here in LA and livebloging the Microsoft presser today at 10:30 PDT. Mark Wilson and I will be covering the hell out of the hardware announcements, but if you're interested in the new game announcements, Kotaku will be the place to go. What announcements will there be? A motion-controlled interface? A karaoke controller? We'll find out soon. The liveblog will be here, in this post, so bookma
Premier European Singing Community RedKaraoke Launches in U.S.
Things have been quiet on the online karaoke front for some time now. Online karaoke is great. It’s like watching all the train wrecks from the first couple weeks of American Idol, sans the stage and pithy British insults. There have been several attempts in the online karaoke scene over the years, and we’re proud to report a newcomer. RedKaraoke, the most popular European karaoke site, is laun
TuneWiki’s iPhone-Like Media Player for Android
video The race is on for software supremacy on Google’s Android platform, as developers compete to develop the applications that will eventually come preloaded on branded phones. Today TuneWiki, one of the most popular third-party developers for the iPhone, has announced a media player for Android that will feature an iPhone-esque interface, support for synching with iTunes, and the karaoke-like lyric
Pioneer MEP-7000 and SEP-C1 Software Is Digital DJ Dream, Purists' Nightmare
Rather like some of my Swedish girlfriends, Pioneer is going after mobile DJs and bars with their new MEP-7000 player and matching SEP-C1 controller. The MEP-7000 allows to play anything except vinyl (which will probably cause a Macbook-Air-sized conflict), including MP3, WAV, AIFF and AAC files, from any source, including hard drives, CD, DVD, USB keys and computers. It can also work alongside so
Thinkware kicks out 7-inch i-navi ES 100 navigator
Filed under: GPS Go on, prepare yourself for a letdown, because as totally sexy as Thinkware's i-navi ES 100 is, there's not much chance it'll end up on American soil. Nevertheless, those in South Korea can look forward to checking out its expansive 7-inch 800 x 600 resolution touchscreen, DMB TV tuner, 500MHz processor, picture-in-picture support, integrated media player and AV input. You'll also