That Siri gal is certainly making the rounds these days. When she’s not answering your questions on a 4S, she’s showing up on iPads and elder iPhones. Not one to play favorites, Siri’s now lending her considerable talents to an iPod touch. Two enterprising young hackers, euwars and rud0lf77, are the ones who put Siri on the iPod, and you can see the results of their labor in the video after the break. Of course, Apple’s servers still aren’t as friendly as the virtual voice assistant, so Siri’s latest cameo remains a silent one — but some Siri’s better than none, right?

Continue reading Siri shows up on an iPod Touch, no longer plays favorites in the iOS family

Siri shows up on an iPod Touch, no longer plays favorites in the iOS family originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Oct 2011 19:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony Ericsson is currently rolling out the upgrade to Gingerbread 2.3.4 across its entire 2011 Xperia smartphone portfolio. This software upgrade will be available through a phased roll out in select markets. Beyond Gingerbread 2.3.4, we plan to upgrade our 2011 Xperia smartphone portfolio to the next Android platform made available to us.

The company went on to say that all official software announcements will be posted on its blog, so we’ll let you know as soon as we have more details.

Sony Ericsson bringing Ice Cream Sandwich to Xperia handsets? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Audyssey’s Lower East Side Audio Dock Air: square to be cool

Audyssey’s Lower East Side Audio Dock Air: square to be cool originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 09:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Instapaper, the internet equivalent of a bookmark, has been given a top-to-toe makeover for its latest outing on the iPad. Fear not, your reading materials remain easy to read (and ad-free), but version 4 has now been smoothed over with a thick layer of tablet gloss. Navigation is all done through a bar on the left, and remains available for prodding as you read through your article selection. The upgrade also adds a subscription option for searching all your previous reads, as well as better social skills, with the ability to pick up and store articles and posts shared by your Twitter buddies — ensuring that you’ll probably never run out of reading material again.

Instapaper gets iPad refresh: more friends, more reading originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 03:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mention music apps and our minds immediately conjure up images of a certain Icelandic songstress’ interactive iPad album. Well, folks the high-art bleeps and bloops don’t have to belong to the aurally experimental, as you, too, can make synthy music to doze off to. Fans of Moog’s synthesizers looking to mobilize the analog noise art now have a 99

Kids lacking the imagination to bring their own toys to life now have the option of letting a games console do it for them. Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure has teleported into stores, boxed with three toy figures and a ‘portal device‘ that brings them to life in-game. The bundle totals up at $70, and Activision is billing it as the “first true cross-platform game”, with the toys playing nice across Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, 3DS and iOS versions. The statuettes, which connect to the portal peripheral through embedded RFID tags, also store game data across platforms. The business plan presumably involves groups of kids investing in Spyro’s latest yarn and swapping characters amongst themselves, while holding onto their own precious in-game achievements. If your little brother has trouble trading with friends who couldn’t care less about the antics of lava-belching monsters, they can always can stump up an extra $8 for new figures. Click ‘Read more’ for some explanatory cartoon violence.

Continue reading Spyro figurines bridge the console divide, bring flame-grilled peace to the world

Spyro figurines bridge the console divide, bring flame-grilled peace to the world originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 12:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Over in the UK, Virgin Media has given a lucky few (3,500 or so) access to a pilot update for their TiVo DVRs that adds many of the features we’d heard were on the way, plus some extras. Word out of Crawley and Cambridge is that multiroom streaming is enabled, there’s faster performance and an official community post mentions compatibility with TiVo’s iOS apps, BBC iPlayer integration and music streaming from Spotify. A wider rollout is expected before Christmas, for a full list of changes check out the links below.

Virgin Media’s TiVos get updated with Spotify, iOS app support and more originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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First Seattle, then London, now the Big Apple — Amazon’s delivery lockers are starting to pop up all over. As we’ve explained before, the lockers are basically giant, automated PO boxes, designated exclusively for Amazon purchases. If you choose to add a locker location to your address book (go check your account settings to see if the option is available to you yet), your package will be crammed into one of these kiosks and you’ll be given a code to unlock a particular slot at the location of your choice. So far there are eight scattered around Manhattan in Rite Aides, D’Agostinos and Gristedes. We haven’t wandered out of our secret lair to get photographic evidence of the drop off locations yet (we prefer to have our Amazon purchases left at the gate under the watchful eye of a turret), but we think the screen shot we took is proof enough that we’re not pulling your leg. Still, if you’re afraid the UPS guy might swing by while you’re still in your jammies this seems like a pretty nice solution.

Amazon lockers come to NYC, no more getting caught by UPS in your PJs originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 Oct 2011 01:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What once was there now is gone. Earlier today, Google Voice was just two clicks away in the iOS App Store. Now, all that remains is a page cache (at the source link below) and versions of the app that were already installed on iPhones and iPod touches. Vincent Paquet, Senior Product Manager for Google Voice confirmed that the app had been pulled, explaining “our last update of this week had a bug that caused the app to crash at sign in. We removed it so it did not affect additional users until the fix gets published.” We’ve been using the most recent version — 1.3.0.1771 — on an iPhone 4 running iOS 5 without issue, but recent reviews cite the reported crashing, so it’s definitely affecting at least some users. We don’t have an ETA for when you can expect the app to return, so if you don’t already have it installed, you’ll need to hang tight for the time being. The service should function normally otherwise, assuming your phone number has already been registered, though you won’t be able to begin new text threads or make outgoing calls using your Google Voice number.

Google Voice pulled from App Store following iOS 5 crash originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Oct 2011 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week was packed with news on the mobile front, so it was easy to miss a few stories here and there. Here’s some of the other stuff that happened in the wide world of wireless for the week of October 10, 2011:

• US Cellular launched the BlackBerry Curve 9350 this week, and is now available for free (after rebate) with new activations, and $50 with upgrades. [Unwired View]
• That wasn’t the only smartphone added to US Cellular’s lineup this week: the HTC Hero S has also finally made it into loving hands. [US Cellular]
• O2 unveiled the Samsung Galaxy Ace, a Gingerbread device with an 800MHz CPU and 5MP camera, in purple this week. [EuroDroid]
• MetroPCS debuted a couple new basic feature phones, the Kyocera Presto and LG Beacon. The former is a candybar with the standard numberpad, while the latter is a 2.8-inch touch screen device with a full slide-out QWERTY. The two phones retail for $30 and $70, respectively. [CNet]
• Research in Motion may be planning to launch an all-white BlackBerry Bold 9900, according to a few shots taken in Dubai. [Electronista]
• Motorola Mobility is sponsoring the NFL internationally in the UK, and is launching an extensive marketing campaign to highlight it. [Motorola]
• We’ve heard about the LG myTouch and myTouch Q a few times so far, but this is the first time we’ve seen the two devices in the wild. [TmoNews]
• Nokia’s announced the winner and runners-up of its ringtone contest. Sadly, the Great Marvelous didn’t make the cut. [SlashGear]
• Samsung announced a new group messaging service called “ChatON.” Sammy’s definitely not the first to come out with a group messaging service, but it does offer the functionality across the board — iOS, Android and Windows are all present and accounted for. [TheNextWeb]

Mobile Miscellany: week of October 10, 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 15 Oct 2011 11:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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