The iCarCharger is actually a two-in-one charger that features a USB cable that can be used to charge other devices, or a second iPod. Retailing at around 30 dollars, it’s an interesting an useful bargain which hopefully lives up to Monster’s reputation regarding quality.

As for the headphones, in my opinion they look gorgeous. The design screams robust quality, like most of Monster’s products do. While I have a pair of Shures, I definitely want to try these out. The design reminds me a little of the V-Moda Vibes I used to own, which was another pair of robust and pretty nice headphones.

Noel Lee, Head Monster, says that “at Monster, we believe life is too short to listen to bad headphones, and our design approach is that they should be able to reproduce the same real music experience that comes from a great pair of full size. Jamz headphones are engineered specifically to provide this big speaker experience in a compact in-ear headphone – without the cost usually associated with such a high-quality option. Our trio of high-performance Jamz headphones deliver the full dynamics, range, and emotional impact of today’s music, whether it’s hip hop, jazz, vocals, classical, or rock.”

Needless to say, I believe in Monster. I’m looking forward to seeing reviews of their new products, especially the headphones. More announcements and products can be found on their Events page.

Happy New Year, everyone!

No need anymore, Photoshop.com is now available for the iPhone!

Cropping
Cropping is made smart, taking good advantage of the touchscreen, placing a grid over the picture with possibility to move or change size of the cropped area. Rotate and flip are also available as sub categories.

Effects
Some effects I could live without, some are cool. The application is not technically as advanced as Adobe’s heavy desktop software which I notice most in this area where I feel some effects could have been replaced, such as the “rainbow”. It takes a long time to use compared to others and is not very useful. Being a free application, it is still more than I expected fom Adobe in the first place, however.

Exposure and other manual settings
By dragging your fingertip from left to right you are cleverly using the “slider” that is not really visible in this mobile version other than displaying the % or other value that are being applied upon release. Before dragging your finger over the screen, you start off with a suggested value that many times is quite alright for optimization to begin with.

Conclusion
As a former employee of Adobe, one could say that I would know what to expect. This time I got the opposite, admittedly. I was waiting an expensive, extensive app with questionable interface and user friendliness. I ended up with an easy, free and userfriendly although limited application, but still in the field of adding something new to the market. It makes me glad to say Adobe“Adobe is still up for surprices.

There seems to be a new player on the in-ear headphones market. Personally, I love in ear-headphones and I’ve been looking forward to something new and exciting for a while now. This market definitely has a lot of oldies…

The good old Shure has been with us since the beginning and offer us clarity and quality at all kinds of price levels. I myself am absolutely in love with my Shure E2C. Then we have Bose, where in my opinion you pay a lot for the design (which is nice) but you also get quite good sound from.

The ones I’m talking about now are Monster Turbine Pro – Designed By Audio Fanatics, For Audio Fanatics. We all know Monster as a company delivering high-end cables for most uses with absolutely unmatched performance. Now they’re releasing these fairly high-end headphones and I’m thrilled!

The details are on their web site but I can tell you that they retail at around $250, are nicely designed, available in two versions and have what they call a “rugged construction” that can withstand most uses. Monster wants to bring you to a higher level of music listening, something I’ve experienced with my Shures in the past but I know it can go even further.

The press statement says, and I quote “Turbine Pros were engineered to deliver bass so deep, it’s like a subwoofer in your ears, plus reproduce the clarity, detail and dynamic range of the finest studio monitors or audiophile reference loudspeakers.” This statement is a bit over-the-top perhaps but with Monster’s reputation regarding quality, I’m very tempted to trust them.

Conclusion, a new player on the market. Personally, I can’t wait to try these out so if someone from Monster is reading this, send me a review pair, please! For more information about them, go to the link below. Right now I’m just waiting to get some reviews of these babies because they sound interesting to say the last.

Go Monster!

Monster
http://www.monstercable.com

Monster Turbine Pro
http://www.monstercable.com/productdisplay.asp?pin=5466

• Well. I tried out the 3.0 software on my iPhone 3G. While many people found the battery time even worse, especially on 3Gs, I have to say I haven’t noticed. Did not use spotlight yet as no need to, but overall it runs smoother. Copy/paste function was used quite frequently indeed.
• Rumors has it that Facebook is about to release a new version for 3.0 software version.
• Now iPhone 3GS users can also jailbreak by using Purplera1n. The iPhone devteam choose not to release their version of jailbreak for various reasons that can be found here.
• Next up. Porn was available in Appstore the other day. Did anyone notice (use) before they censored it?
• Talking about censorship, did you know that Apple computers are currently free from censorship in China?

Lawrence clearly invites the audience of developers to continue the journey to a fulfilled web browser with the words “Opera provides the platform and you provide the applications—what you create is limited only by your imagination.”

The purpose that is given is to empower the user whom has previously been suppressed by third parties such as large corporations that we according to Opera no longer will need. Third party companies are described in a way that lead my thoughts to a clog in an artery, or simply something that is slowing us down. Confirmed by these words on Operas website:

“How much control over our words, photos, and identities are we giving up by using someone else’s site for our personal information? How dependent have we become?”

Furthermore, Lawrence criticises social networking as Flickr, Myspace and Facebook in the same spirit. I agree fully to the fact that corporations waste huge amounts of time when forcing users to read agreement forms and contracts. If counting all the hours, days or years you spend on reading these agreements, you will realize Opera unite can be a time saver simply by the fact that you only need yourself and your own user agreement for the same experience. Facebook eg. is a service that also use the information you enter in the actual community to personalize advertisements, which is also something one would be able to live without. (Talking of that, I got targeted lesbian dating websites only because I entered that I am interested in women. Never said that interest was in a relationship kind of way. They just assumed. Plus, I am not single.)

Conclusion. Opera is fascinating. I like the concept “KEEPING THE WEB OPEN FOR EVERYONE” which is what Opera is now taking a step closer to. In these days when file sharing is a current commonly discussed and infected matter, it will be great with new opportunities.

For an instructional video, check this out:

However, this morning I read about some tests being made concluding that Apple really kept their promises. In Fortune, you can read that the battery lasted over 8 hours of light web browsing or almost 5 hours of heavy downloading.

Many people are bothered that they are now unable to change the battery and will have to pay $120 for an Apple technician to change the battery. The reason behind the scenes is that this saves space for the battery so it can be made larger plus the battery volume is developed to be more efficient with lithium polymer technology.

There is a 5 year warranty or like they say, 1000 recharges. I don’t count the times I recharge my battery but the average lifetime of a notebook battery was set to 300 recharges. 1000 recharges and 8 hours of battery time?

Sounds good to me.

During the week that passed, I heard about Baby shaker which is an application with a purpose to shake the iPhone to get a baby to stop crying. Fox news have linked to a video where you can view how the application works. Needless to say, Apple apologized for the inconvenience and the application has now been removed from Appstore. More surprising is the company behind development of the application, Silkaloft. In their website they are commenting that their application was lacking in taste but also point out that the main responsibility was Apples. They also encourage to spend money on some other applications with a top 10 list.

2. Shazam

Have you ever been in a cafe hearing a great song and later being bothered that you don’t have a clue about who the artist were or what the song was called? Well now there is an application for you! Shazam is its name and what it does is to tag music anywhere, so the phone listens to the music and sends data in few easy steps and then voila, you get the name of song/artist. This handy app enables you to tag musical memories and even share them with others. View how it works here.

3. Wordpress

Have you missed the chance to blog from your iPhone? Well that can change now. Wordpress for iPhone was from the beginning very unstable and crashed now and then especially when using photos, but after updating it works smoother and is a great accomplishment I have to say. A lot more can be added, but I am eager to see what the next updates will bring.

4. Around me

When in a new place, many times you wish to find a decent restaurant, a cafe or maybe a supermarket. This application does that, measuring distance to the attractions in question then linking contact details available. It makes life just a little bit more comfortable.

5. Evernote

You surely heard of GTD systems before. This one syncs your notes online and is available to iPhone as well as to your desktop. It works like Delicious, but with other stuff than bookmarks. Notes can be photo, voice or text. And you can access them either from your phone or computer. Isn’t that awesome?

Macworld expo passed with the first keynote in a long time without Steve. Somewhat surpriced that the DMG was to be removed actually. Face recognition in iPhoto not as big of a surprise as I recognize the technology from other software. The new Macbook Pro which was discussed can also be viewed here.

Last week I tried to download and listen to some podcasts as they are now available from iTunes (in my iPhone). It worked smooth, except the part that means having to be connected to a network other than 3G every time when downloading files larger than somewhere around 10MB.

Having an iPhone is almost like having a dog. In the aspect that if you meet someone else with one (dog) you often feel a sense of common interest so strongly that it breaks the ice and you start do discuss this evident common interest. Even people that is lacking one (dog) tend to soften up and enjoy your company just a little more simply because you have one (dog). I have even been approached on the metro by people just because. I think I felt obliged to point out that iPhone is a toy but also a tool to socialize, no matter how contradicting it may sound.