Play HD MKV 720p Smoothly on iPhone and iPad (iOS) Natively Using XBMC

Playing high quality video on your iPhone/iPad like MKVs in 720p format has never been possible using standard App Store apps. This is because Apple have not allowed App Store apps to access hardware acceleration on their devices unless the video being played is in an MP4 format. This is despite the fact that most MKV files these days simply contain muxed MP4 files. Apps with decent performance like AVPlayer can only produce a slideshow with desynced audio, something I've written about in a previous article.

However, the fact remains that high quality videos are most commonly shared through the internet in the MKV format, especially high definition video. However, a solution has come through Jailbreaking the iPhone/iPad, which allows video playing applications like XBMC to access hardware acceleration. XBMC on the iPhone/iPad plays high bit-rate MKVs in 720p perfectly smoothly. Not only this, but there is an elegant solution to load files onto the iPhone/iPad through iTunes which does NOT require the fiddly operation of OpenSSH.

Video is of an iPad 1 running 720p MKV files on both AVPlayerHD and XBMC.

Jailbreak is required for this hack, here is a a way of searching for the latest guide to Jailbreaking.

How To Share Google Calendar on iPhone, Blackberry and Android

Smartphones offer hyperaccessibility to shared information - they are as powerful as computers, they always-on our persons and they are always connected to a data network. With the right settings, we can instantly share huge amounts of information automatically thereby making communication powerful and seamless.

My wife often asks me to pick up something from the shops before I get home from work. She has a few options to communicate this information with me whilst I am away:

A) She can call/text SMS/email the shopping list. This would efficiently deliver the information to me. However, if she wanted to add or remove items from the shopping list, she would have to send another call/text SMS/email with the additions or changes, resulting in multiple and fragmented copies of the same shopping list information.

B) She can add the shopping list as a task in her Google Calendar (which is shared with my calendar). This will instantly show up as a notification in my own calendar on my smartphone. Furthermore, she can edit the task to add or remove items from the shopping, and this information will be instantly updated on my smartphone.

iPhone and iPad Review Of AVPlayer - The Native iOS MKV Solution

Ever since I made a switch to the iPhone, I've been looking for a solution that would allow me to play the video content that I viewed the most on my device. The iPhone only natively supports MP4 videos encoded to a specific resolution. If I wanted to view any other common third party format, for example, AVI, DIVX or MKV, I would have to convert videos to iPhone MP4 - a time consuming process that often results in errors and audio sync issues.

Up until a few months ago, there were no real solutions to watching an unconverted MKV on your iOS device. The recently released VLC for iOS (now withdrawn from iTunes due to licensing issues) could open a large number of video formats, but was like a slideshow when playing higher bitrate MKV videos. Thankfully, AVPlayer, available for iPhone/iPod Touch and in an HD version for iPad, has much better performance when it comes to playback of MKVs and high bitrate videos as of version 1.3.

The performance of MKVs is much smoother on AVPlayer than on VLC:

Pleco OCR Review: A Chinese Real Time Dictionary

Pleco is a well crafted Chinese to English and English to Chinese dictionary for iOS devices. The basic free app performs the function of a Chinese dictionary very well. However, the software is unique on the App Store because it is very customisable and allows the purchase of 'Add-ons' to add more features to the dictionary and the sheer number of these in-app purchases that are available is extremely impressive. The most interesting and unique of these features is the Pleco OCR, which allows the use of the iPhone camera to recognise Chinese characters and find related dictionary terms instantly and in real-time.




The OCR module can be found in the 'Add-ons' section of the Pleco app. The module itself costs £8.99 (or £7.99 with the opt-in educational discount) or for $14.99/£12.99.

Review: Kensington Ultra Portable Battery Pack (aka The Most Useful Accessory You Will Ever Own)

The Kensington Ultra Portable Battery Pack is a battery pack that can be used to charge anything that can be charged via USB. The small pack itself is a 1800mAh battery that can be charged from a computer or mains socket with the included via a mini USB jack, and can accept any USB cable to output charge to any other device. Coming in cheapest at £14.99 from Amazon.co.uk, it's the best value and most versatile of battery packs when compared to batteries like the £63.55 Mophie JuicePack Air, and it deserves a permanent space in your bag for emergencies.

Losing power in your phone is extremely frustrating. With modern gadgets like the iPhone barely lasting 8 hours of charge with frequent use, it's very likely that most of us will be caught out with low battery whilst we are out after work and without a power plug or USB socket in sight. With so many processor intensive distractions like media and games, smartphones will probably run out of power right when you need it most - when want to make a phone call at the end of the day. In this respect, the Kensington Ultra Portable Battery Pack does a great job of charging devices like the iPhone 3GS for 90-110% of its battery.

The fastest rising cause of heart problems in smartphone users.

The Kensington Ultra Portable Battery Pack is also extremely versatile, since it can be used to charge a whole host of devices. It's saved my life once when my TomTom would not charge from the car's power socket, since it accepts the mini USB jack from the battery. It can charge any proprietary power socket as long as it can be charged via USB, including devices such as my Archos 605 or my Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable (of which universal integrated charge cables for these devices are invaluable).

I have way too much stuff.

Guide To GPS Stalking Using iPhone, BlackBerry and Android

For whatever reason, you might want to keep tabs on exactly where your wife/husand/girlfriend/boyfriend/teenage daughter, etc. have been all night (for their own "safety"). In the past, you had to rely on them to telling you the "truth" about where really were.

Thankfully we can bypass all of this guesswork if they happen to own either an iPhone, BlackBerry or Android device, which all contain GPS chips. These devices are capable of pinpointing and broadcasting exact locations at all times over the air. It's actually very simple process to view a smartphone's location just by configuring a few free apps.

Remember, always consult the owner before you make any changes to their device. And as always, with great power comes great responsibility.

WWSD
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