iPhone Apps We Like: QuickVoice Voice Recorder Is Great For Field Journos [IPhone Apps]

If you're covering an event and already carrying a huge gear bag with a laptop, camera, emergency Cliff bars and all the rest, QuickVoice is a welcome replacement for a standalone digital voice recorder. We like QuickVoice as a late addition to our favorites for its pause feature, which allows you to start and stop recordings without creating a whole new clip.

The only hitch is you can't email the clips out from the phone, but how often do you actually need to keep your quick audio notes? Just break out the headphones, transcribe, delete. Done. [Ed. Note: I love emailing the clips from my Olympus digital voice recorder so I can email them to India and have them transcribed overnight.] Quality and range won't match a dedicated recorder, but definitely get the job done—I was able to hear my voice well enough to transcribe talking quietly from the other side of a 12-foot room. There are a couple other voice recorders in the store, but at $1.99 we're liking QuickVoice. [QuickVoice, Our Favorite Apps, App Review Marathon]

Question of the Day: Do You Feel Naked Without Your Cellphone? [Question Of The Day]

It seems like a distant memory now, but there was a time I could walk out of my house without a cellphone and never give it a second thought. As the years have gone by I have found myself growing increasingly attached to my phone. To be perfectly honest, I would rather not be bothered with phone calls and emails when I'm out—so why the hell do I bring my damn phone with me when I'm riding on a mountain bike trail? Seriously, it's unhealthy. So, I have to ask—are you like me? Do you feel naked without your cellphone?

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iriver's Spinn hits the FCC, means nothing

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Sure, it doesn't look like much thanks to the FCC's staunch aversion to photo glam, but that's iriver's Spinn PMP, a product which had us at a full, rigid swoon back at CES. While this would generally be good news, the model approved features a DAB radio and DMB television tuner -- in other words, it's not intended for US consumption. The user manual also confirms a FM radio, Mini SD slot, Bluetooth, D-Click System interface, 27 hours of audio and 5 hours of video, and support for SWF (Flash), TXT, MP3, WMA, OGG, JPG, AVI, MWV file formats. With FCC approval out of the way, the rumored UK August release date is presumably in the bag.

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Zune Guy Buys iPod classic, Hell Freezes, Apocalypse Nears! [Breaking]

No, we are not kidding: the infamous Zune Guy, that dude who got three Zune tattoos, and then decided to get rid of them, says now that he avoided buying a Zune last time he was at Best Buy and got an iPod classic 80GB. He openly admitted it in the Zune Scene forums.

And low and behold, it's a black iPod classic 80gb. When I was in Best Buy I looked around at the other players, and they sold no Creatives in the store, so the only choices were iPods, Zunes, Insignas, Samsung and Sony. So when looking at which had everything available in store (I despise UPS) I went with the iPod. I more than likely will regret this decision but I will let you all know down the road. I do like the weight and feel of the device thus far.

At least he's looking at the alternative, but at this rate he's going to end up with a lot of scars. I wonder how many iPod owners would change to Zune to see. Are you an iPod owner? Would you do it? [Zune Scene]

aTV Media Center Hack for Apple TV is Back, Now With GUI Installer and Support For USB Drives [Apple TV]

After disappearing for a while due to a fair use scuff-up, the aTV software that helps turn the Apple TV into the media center it should have been is now back and freshly updated. Big new features are a GUI installer for loading the hack onto a USB stick, eliminating the messy command line work that used to be required, and support for external USB devices for connecting a bigger hard drive or NAS for more storage, on top of everything else this nifty unofficial upgrade does for your Apple TV.

Mplayer codecs mean you can handle just about every file format you can find (including uncompressed VIDEO_TS rips). Other add-ons include the Sapphire media organizer, a WebKit browser, game emulators, the ability to FTP into your box to avoid iTunes and more, all without blocking any of the out-of-the-box functions. Not bad at all for $60. [aTV via 43 Folders]

AMD denies report it plans to sell off manufacturing operations

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

While it may not all be his doing, newly-minted AMD CEO Dirk Meyer seems to be at the center of more than a bit of confusion in his first few days on the job. First, he detailed AMD's plans to take on Intel's Atom processor this fall, which was apparently news to AMD's Chief Marketing Officer, and now AMD is denying a report that AMD is set to spin off its manufacturing operations into a separate company, which arose out of an interview Meyer gave to the Austin American-Statesman. In it, Meyer reportedly said that AMD was "just months away" from spinning off its fabrication business, which would let it concentrate on designing, marketing and selling chips, and allow it to compete more effectively against its two big rivals: Intel and NVIDIA. As eWEEK reports, however, an AMD spokesperson now says that Meyer was referring simply to "how the company manufactures its wafers," which could possibly be a reference to the company's planned shift to a 45-nanometer manufacturing process. That's quite a difference, and we're guessing we'll be hearing yet more "clarification" on the matter before all is said and done.

Read - Austin American-Statesman, "New AMD chief sees clear path to recovery"
Read - eWEEK, "AMD Denies Fab Sell-Off"

[Thanks, Chris]

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