PumpOne has announced a partnership with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s new brand, Aloft hotels – portable personal trainers for road warriors. The service is designed for tech-savvy aloft hotel guests.
Aloft hotels is Starwood’s eighth hotel lifestyle brand and it opens doors to guests this summer. All Aloft hotels feature recharge — a 650 square foot fitness facility with equipment from Life Fitness.
PumpOne provides customizable workout programs for use with image and video-ready handheld devices such as the iPod, iPhone, Blackberry, Treo and others.
"Our guests tell us that fitness is a priority and that while traveling, it can be challenging to stay on track" said Robin Korman, Vice President of Marketing for aloft hotels. "PumpOne is the ideal fitness partner, with technology at the foundation of their workouts."
The aloft hotels / PumpOne partnership features "a-workout" PumpOne’s downloadable fitness programs which is complimentary to guests. It also includes healthy menu items from aloft hotel’s grab-and-gourmet pantry, refuel; and exclusive entertainment content for SPG TV, the aloft in-room TV channel.
In addition to content already available from PumpOne, the fitness company will develop 21 customized workouts, three workouts for each of seven fitness programs from cross training to yoga.
Chinese developer called “iPhone Cake” developed handwriting recognition for iPhone using HWPen for Latin and Chinese alphabets.
Specifically used for jailbroken iPhones, the application adds an additional button to the keyboard screen, which you could just tap and write on the screen with your fingers. Since the application integrates with native text input of the iPhone, HWPen is available anywhere you normally would use your keyboard. It also works with the auto-complete function of iPhone, so you could start typing a word and hitting the spacebar to choose between spelling suggestions.
The HWPen tries to work with whole words but it usually works better if you have entered one letter at a time. The software is still in beta development but based on the comments at the product page, it causes the iPhone to freeze up, requiring a restart. Another very common problem is that every time you use it, it defaults back to Chinese, meaning you have to press extra buttons in each use.
Download HWPen today using Installer.app. Go to “Sources”, click on “Edit” and “Add” a new source:
http://iphonecake.com/src/new
Refresh your sources and look for HWPen in the iPhoneCake packages category. Install the software and restart the iPhone. Then you can start using it.
When it comes to gadgets I’m always looking for the smallest gear I can find that has the most impact or features. However, when it comes to speakers, usually smaller means sacrificing sound quality, bass and volume. Is it too much to ask to have a speaker system that’s small enough to fit in my laptop bag, yet loud enough or clear enough to enjoy from across the room? JBL doesn’t think so.
I was doing a seminar one day and one of my colleagues had the JBL On Tour Speaker System. I couldn’t believe how small it was, yet it was delivering enough sound for a room of about 100 people to enjoy. So I made a mental note and said to myself, the next time I need to take some speakers on the road with me, I’m going to have to try these out. That day came! I took the JBL On Tour Speaker System with me to California last week. I drove it with an iPod nano and the sound was better than I expected. It was certainly loud enough and clear enough. However, I’m a fan of bass and the bass just wasn’t as good as I would have hoped. Don’t get me wrong, very few if any small speakers have enough bass to satisfy me, so there wasn’t a whole lot of disappointment here. Other than that, this speaker system more than fit the bill for what I was looking for.
How small is small?
When you’re not using the speaker, it folds down to about half the size. VERY COMPACT to say the least. Although it’s not battery powered, the supplied power adapter is small enough that it fits into the sleeve with the speaker. Although I used it with an iPod, there is no iPod dock connector. So no iPod charging or line out audio. I simply connected the supplied cable to the headphone jack of the iPod nano. If you’re looking for an iPod only speaker, then you should probably look elsewhere. I got this speaker because it would not only work with an iPod, but also with my laptop.
It also works on batteries. I didn’t try it yet, but the On Tour works with 4 AAA batteries and is rated to play for 24 hours on a fresh set.
Dimensions Width: 7" (175mm) x Depth: 3.5" (88mm) x Height: 1.4" (35mm)
Weight 12 oz (350g)
The Bottom Line
If you need a SMALL travel speaker system for your presentations and personal enjoyment, you can’t go wrong with the JBL On Tour Speaker System. Amazon has it for $53.62.
iPhone users can add more function to the iPhone’s list of expandable features. Your iPhone can now be used as a drum machine. Dubbed “Drummer,” the new application from MooTheCow leverages the spectacularly flexible multi-touch display to sample up to 15 different sounds into a (hopefully) harmonious piece of music.
Drummer application comes pre-configured with rock, dance, jazz and electro drum kits and allows the user to expand upon the drum-kits with customized sounds. And, owing to the power of the multi-touch display, the drum pad can support up to 5 simultaneous button presses, which means that the user can play 5 different sounds simultaneously. Drummer also allows you to play your own beat along with songs stored in your iTunes library.
You’ll need to jailbreak your iPhone before you can install Drummer, so get to it. Then add the “http://www.touchrepo.com/repo.xml” application repository to your “Sources” list.
One of my favorite Adobe people, Julieanne Kost has her own show (The Complete Picture) on Adobe TV showing tips in Photoshop and Lightroom.
You may have seen the announcement last week that Adobe has released the FREE Adobe Media Player. This Flash based player allows you to watch all kinds of streaming content from the internet right on your Mac or PC. You can also build your own favorites list. Well that’s cool, but what you may have missed in the announcement is in addition to the Adobe Media Player, Adobe also rolled out Adobe TV. This is content that is produced by Adobe evangelists, solution engineers, product managers, product specialists and partners. This content is PACKED with useful tips on all of Adobe’s creative tools which of course includes the Adobe Creative Suite line. As a mater of fact episodes of my very own (insanely popular) Adobe Creative Suite Podcast are there for your viewing pleasure.
Adobe TV features four channels, each targeting a specific audience: Photographers, Designers, Video Professionals, and Developers. Each channel features programming from Adobe evangelists, leading trainers, subject matter experts, and luminaries who pull in the crowds at industry events around the world. More than 200 videos are currently available on Adobe TV, with programming that mixes how-to information, case studies, personality-driven shows, and workflow deep-dives. The first set of videos offers secrets about Photoshop® software, podcasts and design tips for Creative Suite, techniques for Photoshop Lightroom®, tips on Adobe Flash® Professional software for beginners, approaches to taming the Web, and information about video and audio production.
How do I get the Adobe Media Player?
Well that’s easy, just download it from this link.
How do I get content from Adobe TV?
There are a couple of ways. You can do searches right in the Adobe Media Player (AMP) or you can go right to the Adobe TV page and watch the content in your browser. It is Flash based after all.
PumpOne has announced a partnership with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide’s new brand, Aloft hotels – portable personal trainers for road warriors. The service is designed for tech-savvy aloft hotel guests.
