A few months ago when the Tidy Tilt was just an idea on Kickstarter, everyone thought it would be a neat little Smart Cover for iPhone. I got mine a few days ago, and I have to say, it pretty much is. Today I’ll be taking a look at the fabled iPhone Smart Cover.

One of the things that really pops about the Tidy Tilt is the design. The “snakeskin” like texture just doesn’t fit with the design of the product in my opinion. The original texture used in the prototype of Tidy Tilt resembled what is used in the iPad smart cover, and I think it would have worked quite nicely, although I’m not a product designer and it just might not have worked out on such a small scale.

That being said, the Tidy Tilt is pretty much flawless. It works for standing your phone up, and for keeping your headphones tidy. I wish the magnets could be a bit stronger, as sometimes the cover sometimes can’t attach quite right, but it’s strong enough to do the job most of the time.

The Tidy Tilt also includes a small opening for the camera, which so far has worked out with no issues.

Overall, the Tidy Tilt is an excellent accessory for your iPhone. Great for planes, tables, and whatever else you need to stand your iPhone on. Right now Tidy Tilt is iPhone only, and is up for pre-order on the Tidy Tilt site for $30. It’s not perfect, but Tidy Tilt is the only product like it on the market right now.

Minecraft is one of the most popular PC games of today, and with more features being added every day, it’s no wonder people still spend hours upon upon hours playing it.

A side project of one of Minecraft’s web developer, stats.minecraft.net shows you Minecraft connections to the login servers in real time. It traces the positions taken from user to server, and displays it on a world map. Props to Mollstam for this one, things like this show the dedication from Minecraft’s team.

[Source]

Those are my predictions for Apple’s 2012 WWDC event. The conference is happening from June 11th through June 15th 2012. Do you want to get a ticket? Too late, tickets sold out two hours prior to the announcement. If you have anything you would like to add on, leave a comment below!

Image Source: MacRumors

franchise is “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2.” An IGN reader received a poster hinting a release date of November 13th, 2012. This is also on Target’s pre-order card. To see a teaser of the game, tune in to the NBA playoffs game on May 1st on TNT. On the poster, it also hints consoles. It shows that it will be released for the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3. No other word about the Wii, but I would expect it to also launch on the Microsoft PC. The teaser tagline that was released on the poster said, “The enemy could be anywhere, and it could be anyone.” This game is expected to bigger, multiplayer wise, and is using the Quadrator drone element to make gameplay enhanced.Gins are expected to have much more detail and more customization. Some weapons might require less effort for aiming. Three new multiplayer modes in the game are called: “Escort,” “Split-Spawn,” and “Equalizer.” We still do not quite enough about the game modes. What do you think? Will you buy this game?

Source: GamenGuide

Image Source: Xbox Marketplace

Update: There’s now an official video of Black Ops 2. There’s a lot going on in the video, so pay attention.

Google announced plans in 2010 to bring super-high-speed Internet access to select communities in the United States and in 2011 picked Kansas City to start. Google has said it hopes to spur innovation among cable companies and Internet service providers by demonstrating what’s possible with Internet speeds 100 times faster than the U.S. average. The project could also bring dramatic changes for Hollywood, both because of piracy and Google’s possible experiments with new ways to distribute content legally.

Google has already strung more than 100 miles of fiber-optic cable along utility poles in Kansas City, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo., and expects to connect its first homes in the next few months, says Google Fiber spokeswoman Jenna Wandres.

Its test network of about 850 homes in a faculty neighborhood near Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., already provides amazing download speeds of 922 Mbps and upload speeds of 883 Mbps. At those speeds, Web surfers or pirates can download a DVD in under a minute or a high-definition Blu-ray in five. This compares with the U.S. average Internet speed of about 5 Mbps and ranks 26th globally.

“A Google spokeswoman said “we’re standing by hopefully having service in the first half of 2012” to some neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kan. Google has gained approval in both Missouri and Kansas to sell a cable-like television service.”

In December of last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that Google was in discussions with Walt Disney, Time Warner, and Discovery Communications about offering their content via Google Fiber. In short, by creating its own pipe, Google can play with new ways to allocate bandwidth between Internet and TV services and see what what is adopted by customers.

“Google Fiber will definitely be a disruptive force,” said Mitch Singer, the chief digital strategy officer for Sony Pictures. “The studios know that if we stick our heads in the sand, we will fail, pure and simple.”

The upcoming Xbox 360 Kinect release of ‘NBA Baller Beats’ adds a real basketball experience to to an upcoming action game that is due this fall. It’s the first announced title to use the Kinect motion-sensing controller to follow an object beyond the player’s own body.

Majesco says, “you are pretend playing. You are moving your arms and doing different gestures,” says Majesco senior product manager Tony Chien. Here, “you are not pretending to dribble a basketball, you actually have to dribble a basketball.”

Players bounce the ball to the beat of the music; your visual cue is a line of basketballs that flows on a musical trail — think Guitar Hero or Rock Band. The icon player prepares you for an upcoming basketball move you need to perform, also in time with the music. That may be a crossover from one hand to the other, a dribble between the legs, a pass fake or shot fake. Players learn to use left and right hands and look up while dribbling, skills used on the real basketball court.

NBA Baller Beats is the latest advance for Kinect, which has sold 18 million units worldwide since November 2010.

Alarm clocks suck. You all know the feeling of waking up to that horrible buzzing sound everyday, but the Day Maker hopes to change this by making your day.

But what makes this different from all the other alarm docks out there you ask? Unlike other docks, to wake you up, your iPhone is popped out of the dock like toast out of a toaster to wake you up. It then plays music and displays the time like any other dock out there. My favorite part is that you can actually push the iPhone back into the dock to act as a snooze function.

Kickstart the Day Maker on Kickstarter right now for $100 (currently $25 off for early backers). [Source] [Image]

Drive is something to be excited about. Now, depending on your Google account you are either already in, or on the “wait list.” My personal email was put on the wait list while my YouTube email was ready to go. The new service eliminates Google Docs and merges it. You can download the client on your Mac, PC, and Android phones. iOS devices are going to have to wait a little bit longer. The service has a fantastic variety of pricing plans. In fact, this is what makes so competitive to services like Amazon Cloud, iCloud, and Dropbox. After you sign up, you get 5Gb of free storage, 10GB of Gmail storage, and 1GB of Picasa Web Albums storage. The other pricing plans include:

25GB for $2.49 a month
100GB for $4.99 a month
200GB for $9.99 a month
400GB for $19.99 a month
1 TB for $49.99 a month
2 TB for $99.99 a month
4 TB for $199.99 a month
8 TB for $399.99 a month
16 TB for 799.99 a month

Source: Google Drive

Splashtop is currently free in the App Store, however, you’ll need to make an in app purchase of $4.99 to remove the 10-minute time restraint. After you install Splashtop on your device and Splashtop streamer on your computer it’s smooth sailing. After you open up the app and set up your computers, you’ll find a screen like this.

When you tap on your computer the app will attempt to your computer and in a few seconds, you’ll be at your desktop! (Note: all screenshots were taken with an iPad).

One of the great things about Windows or Mac access on an iPad is the presence of Flash. Now you can stream your favorite episodes of House on Hulu or Star Trek on Amazon Prime over your Wi-Fi network!

While using your computer, the Splashtop controls can be simply accessed by a 3 finger tap on the screen. It brings up the four-icon menu seen directly above. The first icon changes picture modes. The default mode is the high res mode while the smooth mode displays a more smooth picture at a lower resolution.

Pressing the second icon will transfer sound from you computer’s speakers to your iPad instantly. If it’s not working, double tap the home button and swipe right and make sure your iPad isn’t muted. The third icon brings up screen resolution controls, and the fourth brings up the iPad’s keyboard.

In my opinion, the coolest thing about Splashtop is its ability to steam games. Currently games cannot be streamed in fullscreen mode, however if you simply change the game option to windowed, or windowed maximized, you’re good to go. I tested out three different games, all completely different genres, to see how usable they are with Splashtop.

The first game I tested was Star Trek Online, an MMO set in the Star Trek universe. All the touch controls work well but when it comes to WASD, Splashtop is useless. In just a few seconds my shields were down and a warp core breach was imminent, putting my wonderful Galaxy class starship to it’s death. I would NOT recommend playing an MMO with Splashtop. It’s great for streaming it though!

The next game I tested was Skyrim. Skyrim is completely unusable with Splashtop but it looks great if you are controlling the game with an auxiliary controller from your PC and streaming it to an iPad.

The final game I tested was Starcraft II, an RTS to fully round out the genres. I am pleased to say that SC2 is pretty much playable with touch controls. SC2 utilizes only the mouse right and left buttons, and WASD to move the screen which Splashtop is also capable of handling. I wouldn’t recommend jumping into a normal game, but some of the less intensive custom games will work fine. Squadron Tower Defense is my personal favorite. The custom game is pretty laid back and requires a minimal amount of macro-management, considering it’s a tower defense game.

Cons

Overall Splashtop is a well-designed and intuitive app. However, like anything, it does have a few minor shortcomings.

My biggest complaint with the app is that it still doesn’t have iPad 3rd generation retina support. Yes, I know those on wireless G may not be able to stream that resolution, but those with wireless N, like myself, should be able to. Wouldn’t it be awesome to stream your computer via wireless to a screen with 1080p+ resolution?! I think so! Currently, on a retina iPad, with the app running at 1024×768, everything looks a bit pixelated and colors look a little washed out, but that all should be able to be fixed in an update.

Another thing that I’d really like to see eventually is USB support. I know that currently you would have to jailbreak to do such a thing, but wouldn’t it be great if Apple added more USB support in a future update? With USB 3.0 coming out in full swing, or thunderbolt for that matter, in the future it would be possible to do this!

The only other thing I’d like to see on the app is game support, a control interface which makes it possible to play games. With more consistent and smoother streaming, it should be possible to stream games. The developers also need to fix the windowed mode barrier. I see no reason with the iPad’s new graphics that a game cannot be streamed in fullscreen.

The Verdict

Overall Splashtop is an awesome app. I’d recommend this app as a must for anyone with an iPad and it certainly earns a solid 4.5/5.