Resident Evil 4 Coming To The iPhone in July

We know, we were shocked too! Well, maybe not shocked, considering that Resident Evil 4 popped up on the Japanese App Store before it was pulled right down. The game will return (legitimately this time) to Japan by month’s end.

If you’re nowhere near the Land of the Rising Sun, fear not! Capcom says the game will roll out to the rest of the world soon after.

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Very Cool Mini-Speakers For Your iPod

Japan-based Elecom today announced the Soundblack [JP], an iPod dock connector/speaker for use with a number of iPod models (iPod 5G, iPod touch 1/2G), iPod classic and iPod nano 1/2/3/4G). The 0.04W mini system doesn’t support the iPhone though.

The Soundblock will be available from the middle of July exclusively in Japan, but Geek Stuff 4 U already accepts preorders from people living outside this country (price: $42+shipping). Users are able to choose between 10 colors.

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The Einstein Sound Master Photon Ball iPod Dock - Wow!

If you’re on the lookout for a dock, this one definitely has a little bit of that mad scientist appeal that would definitely keep life interesting.  The colors within the ball on it will actually move about along with the beat of the music.  Which would give a cool lighting effect while you’re listening to your favorite songs.  While you’re becoming entranced with the shining bright lights, your iPod gets to sit on the dock and charge up.

Not only can it charge and be played through the dock, but you can also hook it up to your computer to have it synced with your computer.  The dock also has a clock on it, which has an alarm that allows for you to wake up to the music directly from your iPod.  If you’ve had enough of your iPod, you can switch modes and listen to the AM/FM radio instead.

It actually claims that it will work with any iPod, that can hook up to a dock, so yours should work with this.  You can purchase it for $34.99.

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LG HB954TBW Blu-Ray Player Includes iPod Dock

Sometimes the most ingenious technological advances are really the most obvious. Case in point, the LG HB954TBW Blu-ray 5.1 Home Theater Combo.

I am assuming that it is called a Combo because this Blu-Ray player has a unique feature of a slide-out iPod dock. This feature really is obvious, really. Does anyone know if this is the first Blu-Ray player to offer such a painfully obvious feature? I would have thought that an iPod dock would have been a standard in all DVD players by now.

Unfortunately, my sources don’t have much information about the HB954TBW other than that. Most of them have said that it accepts all iPod models, but it is sketchy about whether or not it will accept the iPhone.

However, the real question is whether or not this will play video content from the iPod on the player. The next question would be what quality the video would be?

According to my source, the LG HB954TBW was on display at CES. However, I remember visiting the LG booth, and I don’t remember seeing it there at all. Well, it did take up a lot of conference space.

We do know one thing: the price. It should be about $1,000, and it will only be sold in Korea.

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Silent Scope Announced for iPhone, iPod Touch

Silent Scope, an on-rails shooter series that made a name for itself in the arcade based on gorgeous graphics and a gigantic rifle peripheral, is coming to a platform that supports neither: Apple’s iPhone.

A remake of the first game in the series, the iPhone port tasks gamers with defeating "terrorists to save the American First Family, including the President of the United States, who have been abducted by terrorists in Chicago" using a high-powered sniper rifle.

In place of the aforementioned faux rifle attached to an arcade cabinet (seen at right), iPhone players will maneuver the game’s signature scope-emulating, circle and crosshairs around the touchscreen using their fingers.

No price or release date is offered in this morning’s announcement, though Konami promises that Silent Scope will hit the iPhone "soon."

Image courtesy Konami

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Boxee Remote Makes Typing Easier on Your TV - iPhone/iTouch

iPhone/iPod touch only: Boxee makes it lot easier to control its open-source media center on your TV with Boxee Remote, an official App Store release that makes typing and clicking a breeze from 10 feet away.

The free app, available now through the App Store, is basically the same as the jailbreak app released last summer. “Buttons” mode gives you a standard up/down/left/right button array, with the Boxee logo as a play/pause selector. “Gesture” gives you a more mouse-like control over your Boxee menus. For those using Boxee with an Apple TV, or otherwise lacking an easily-acccessible keyboard for their TV-connected Boxee setups, the app makes typing out movie, TV, and music data much less painful than manually entering text through an on-screen display, and offers a big, always-connected remote to tap through the media center’s menus with.

The Boxee Remote app is a free download from the iTunes Store, requires an iPhone or iPod touch running at least the 2.2 software.

Scosche Inline Control Adapter Kit for new iPod Shuffle

If you’ve read up on the new Shuffle at all, then you’ve probably heard the bad news.  They removed all of the buttons from the shuffle itself and put them on the earbuds.  That makes it so that you can only wear Apple’s earbuds.  That’s not good news, since not everyone’s ear is shaped the same and some of us have expensive earbuds we prefer to use.  There have been a couple vendors create a pair of earbuds specifically for the shuffle, but they’re expensive and likely you already have earbuds you prefer.  Well now Scosche has created a solution.

Their adapater will allow for you to plug any set of earbuds into your shuffle.  It also makes it so that you can plug your shuffle into an aux input.  All around making the new Shuffle a lot more usable than many of us had predicted it would be.  Sadly there isn’t a ton of info on the adapter just yet, since it is such a new product.  However, hopefully soon they will start releasing when these will become available and how much they will cost you.

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iTunes Gift-Card Algorithm Hacked

According to a spate of recent reports, iTunes gift cards are selling for a song on Chinese Web sites, with $200 cards retailing for as little as $2.60. The illegal bargains are apparently the work of Chinese hackers who have successfully penetrated the iTunes gift-card system.

The card sharks were first reported by Outdustry, a music-industry consultancy that follows developments in China and other emerging markets. The biggest outlet for illegal cards is Taobao, a consumer-to-consumer shopping site that at any given time has thousands of iTunes cards for sale.

Stolen Vouchers

According to Outdustry’s report, no physical cards actually change hands. Instead, hackers use key generators to create gift-voucher codes. Once payment is sent through the Taobao site, a seller uses the built-in IM system to transmit the voucher code. Once the purchaser enters the voucher code in his or her iTunes Store account, the face value of the code is credited to the account and can be used to purchase iTunes products.

The practice is, of course, illegal, and anyone who uses a hacker-generated gift code runs the risk of not only finding the credit wiped out, but potentially more serious consequences ranging from the shutdown of their iTunes account (for violation of terms of service) to prosecution for theft.

In the interim, Michael Gartenberg, vice president of Interpret, says Apple will take steps to cut off the flow of fake vouchers.

“Look,” Gartenberg said, “it’s generally true that anything that can be hacked will be hacked. But there’s plenty that Apple can do to protect the value of its iTunes content. The first thing will be to change or reconfigure the algorithm so that the hacker key generator no longer works.”

Gartenberg said that while the hack is undoubtedly annoying to Apple, in the longer run it’s little more than an interesting blip…

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iTunes 8.1 Now Available

With the iTunes 8.1 update, you can now sync with the new iPod shuffle, take iTunes DJ requests from friends, rip CDs at iTunes Plus quality and use Genius with movies and TV shows. There are other features, like bugfixes and stability updates, but you can read up on that yourself. [Apple via MacRumors]

iTunes 8.1 is now faster and more responsive. You will enjoy noticeable improvements when working with large libraries, browsing the iTunes Store, preparing to sync with iPod or iPhone, and optimizing photos for syncing.

In addition, iTunes 8.1 provides many other improvements and bug fixes, including:

• Supports syncing with iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
• Allows friends to request songs for iTunes DJ.
• Adds Genius sidebar for your Movies and TV Shows.
• Improves performance when downloading iTunes Plus songs.
• Provides AutoFill for manually managed iPods.
• Allows CDs to be imported at the same sound quality as iTunes Plus.
• Includes many accessibility improvements.
• Allows iTunes U and the iTunes Store to be disabled separately using Parental Controls.

The Good and the Bad of the New iPod Shuffle

In case you haven’t heard, the new iPod Shuffle is out. The boys at Apple have given the Shuffle a makeover, and it is both good and bad.

The good news is that it now has 4GB worth of memory on it. It is also smaller, measuring just 1.8 inches tall and 0.7 inches wide.

Another new feature is the VoiceOver, which will tell the user the name of the current track and also when it is time to recharge the battery. The VoiceOver feature allows the user to operate multiple playlists, as they can be navigated as the player announces their names.

All the buttons have been taken off of it, and placed conveniently on the headphones. Even though Apple thought this was going to be the good news, many tech blogs everywhere have been criticizing this feature as extremely bad news.

After all, the user cannot use just any earbuds anymore. It doesn’t look like there will be any newer models of these earbuds any time soon. When they do, it will probably be at exorbitant prices.

The new iPod Shuffle is available for the same price of the original, for about $79.99. I believe the iPod Shuffle is available in many colors, but the new is only in silver or black.

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