Crazy For Tech - Gadgets,Cell Phones,Cameras » iphone

The Peek Bites The Dust

ACMAir — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:33:27 +0000

You may remember the Peek , a device that showed up back in 2008 (so long ago, now!) offering nothing but email. That’s right, nothing but email in an age when smartphones were already becoming popular, and the iPhone was changing the way people thought about interacting with their data. In a way, it was genius: limiting the service and the device made it easy to explain and simple to use. It does email, period. An interesting tack, and one that kept them rolling for a few years, but alas, Peek is finally going to take the big sleep. Despite revising the hardware and switching up the pricing, the Peek couldn’t maintain relevance in the face of smartphones and tablets. There was always the question of whether it was a legitimate market at all, but I object to that objection. I think it’s a brilliant proposition, and one many people found useful. But you just can’t fight progress, and while phones and tablets got more capable, they also got easier to use. Ironically, it might have been trying to compete that made the Peek at last irrelevant. The people who liked it didn’t think of it as a less-capable smartphone, but as a single-purpose device, like a fork or a measuring tape. That value proposition, focus, is something we’re seeing in practice in single-purpose sites like Imgur and so on. But the philosophy of the mobile phone as Swiss army knife has taken over in the hardware field, so devices like the Peek got left behind. The Verge talked to the CEO , and he said that there are a few thousand devices lying around in warehouses, and he’d like to put them into the hands of interested hackers. The Peek 9 was a perfectly workable piece of hardware, though not particularly powerful, but perhaps it could be made into something interesting or useful by a little creative coding. Head over there for more info. Update : It should be noted that this isn’t the end for Peek the company , only Peek the service and line of devices. Peek Inc actually just closed a big funding round to fuel its work bringing smartphone-type software to low-cost mobile devices. We’ll report more on that as the story develops.

You Can Also Spy On Someone’s iPhone If You Kidnap Them And Lock Them In Your Basement

Achilles — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:23:54 +0000

Yesterday, Gizmodo ran a story about a supposed bug in iOS, specifically related to iMessage. The title: The Apple Bug That Let Us Spy on a Total Stranger’s iPhone . Essentially, Gizmodo got ahold of an iPhone that was receiving iMessages not intended for that phone. The fact that some of these messages were quasi-sexual in nature and that the phone belonged to a teenage boy made the story more salacious. But here’s the thing, fear mongering aside, this “bug” is something that is so convoluted that it’s almost not worth even addressing. Almost. Here’s what happened: a kid was having trouble with his iPhone. His mother took that iPhone to an Apple Store. When there, an Apple Store employee screwed up. Rather than following protocol and using a test SIM to debug the phone (Apple has test SIMs in their stores for this exact purpose), he oddly used his own SIM. This essentially turned the kid’s phone into the retail employee’s phone. The employee probably thought this was fine since it would only be temporary while he fixed the phone. The problem — which one has to assume he didn’t realize — is that even after you take the SIM out of the phone, the pairing leaves behind an imprint of that SIM. In this case, the iMessage account. iMessage has made a lot of headlines in the past few months as it’s Apple’s brilliant way of helping to destroy the rip-off that is SMS. One key element of iMessage is the ability to pin an Apple account to the service alongside your phone number. This needs to happen in order for users to take full advantage of iMessage. Because of this connection, Apple can automatically figure out whether to use standard SMS or iMessage within the iMessages app. And iMessages has a bonus: the ability to work with many devices at once, ensuring your messages stay in sync. These upsides — trying to make something that’s somewhat complicated as user-friendly as possible — lead to a downside like this. If you happen to be swapping SIM cards, you might transfer your iMessage credentials over to this other phone. But let’s be honest, how many people are going to do that? In the U.S., most people have no idea what a SIM card even is. And if they do, it doesn’t matter since most iPhones are locked. In other countries, SIMs are obviously popular, but this issue would involve you swapping SIMs with someone with an unlocked phone (and not wanting to set up your own iMessages account when you swap back). But none of that is even what happened here. In this case, an Apple retail employee simply made a mistake. Reached for comment, an Apple spokesperson acknowledged this: “This was an extremely rare situation that occurred when a retail employee did not follow the correct service procedure and used their personal SIM to help a customer who did not have a working SIM. This resulted in a temporary situation that has since been resolved by the employee.” The bigger issue here is if your phone is stolen. Ars Technica actually addressed this about a month ago. This is still an edge case (as the vast majority of phones aren’t stolen), but Apple should come up with a way to remotely disable iMessages on a per-device basis. The way to do it right now seems to be to disable your Apple account, which is unfortunate ( see: update ). Of course, having your phone stolen in the first place is unfortunate. And unless it’s remote-wiped immediately (which rarely happens), any crook can get access to things likely much worse than your iMessages. This is a downside of life and scumbags. Speaking of scumbags, it sure was nice of Gizmodo to run several of this Apple retail employee’s private messages and images along with the name that everyone knows him by. Part two of this story will probably involve kidnapping him, locking him in a basement, and liveblogging his emails — which were not secured because Apple doesn’t have a security feature to auto-lock and wipe phones when someone is hit over the head by a two-by-four. Update : Apple has pointed out the following things that can be done if your device is stolen to ensure the problems above don’t occur: Remote Wipe and then call your carrier/de-activate your SIM (de-register must be within 24 hours after Remote Wipe) or Activate a replacement phone with a replacement SIM using your same phone number or Change your Apple ID password (only works if you use an Apple ID with iMessage) [photo: flickr/ anonymous9000 ]

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You Can Also Spy On Someone’s iPhone If You Kidnap Them And Lock Them In Your Basement

Hey, Bromasters, Take Your Kenu Highline On The Slopes When You Shred

user — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:01:43 +0000

So you want to take a photo of you and your buds on the slopes or at the bar or at A&F or whatever and you know, just know you’re going drop that shnitz on the floor. So what do you need? A freakin’ Kevlar cord, Mr. Brojangles. That’s what you need. So this is the Kenu Highline. It’s basically a locking connector, a coiled cable, and a little loop. You lock your iPhone to the cable, attach the loop to your jacket, and go totally nuts. Attach it to anything. Your jacket. Your bropurse. Your 7 Jeans with the big, tribal stitching. Anything, Brosephus, but they clearly want to grab the snow sports folks because the entire website is dedicated to shreddin’, ski-liftin’, and hittin’ the apres ski brodeo. It’s only $20, so it’s not that expensive and if it saves you chipping your phone on the floor of the ski lodge while you and your broposse roll up to the bar for some Coors then that’s like money in the bank, brosephine, money in the bank. Product Page

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Hey, Bromasters, Take Your Kenu Highline On The Slopes When You Shred

Sony Rolls Out A Trio Of New Cyber-Shot Point And Shoots

vertical8 — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 09:00:01 +0000

In the market for a new point and shoot? Didn’t think so. Why don’t you take a gander at the new Sony shooters anyway? You’ve basically got two models worth looking at. First is the rather expensive TX200V: It’s expensive for a reason, though. They’ve made it look as much like an iPhone as possible, flat glass on both sides. Unlike the iPhone, however, this thing is waterproof down to 5m. It’s got a 5x non-protruding zoom, for which they provide no F numbers, so it can’t be very fast — though the camera’s back-illuminated 18-megapixel sensor makes up for that a bit. It’ll shoot 1080/60p of a sort. On the back is a 3.3″ OLED touchscreen of the “Xtra Fine™” variety, which I presume is a higher resolution than the previous 3.3″ OLED they put on a camera. Should be nice, high contrast, and decent resolution. There are no buttons on the thing except power, shutter, and a zoom rocker. Looks like a fun little camera, though for my money I’d want something with a brighter, bigger lens. This thing will set you back Next you have the WX70 and the WX50: They share the same internals, but are different on the outside. The WX50 has normal controls: switches and dials and all that, and a 2.7″ normal LCD. The WX70 is like the TX200V, all touchscreen on the back, and with just power, zoom, and shutter controls on the top. The screen is 640×480 and 3″, which should be nice and sharp. The lens for both is a 5x zoom, F/2.6-6.3. Nothing special, but F/2.6 isn’t bad for a compact wide-angle. Inside they both have the same 16-megapixel back-illuminated sensor, which will shoot 1080/60i, though if it has a progressive mode (the press release doesn’t say) I’d recommend that. Anyone shooting interlaced in 2012 should have their camera confiscated. I wish somebody would tell Sony that. The WX50 will cost around $200, and the WX70 will be $30 more. If the touchscreen works well (can’t tell until there’s a hands-on), the extra $30 will be well-spent. So which is the best? Obviously the expensive, waterproof one, though for $500 you can get a better camera these days as far as lens and sensor are concerned. And you can get waterproof ones for under $150. Hell, I got a waterproof smartphone for $80 on Craigslist. So although it’s nice, it doesn’t strike me as a bargain. Meanwhile, the WX70 is pretty fancy for $230, and with the BSI sensor and F/2.6 you should be able to get most shots without bumping the ISO too high. I’d go with that over the more traditional WX50 and the nice but expensive TX200V. And there you have it!

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Sony Rolls Out A Trio Of New Cyber-Shot Point And Shoots

Fanhattan Adds A Personalized News Feed To The Mix, Lets You Read While You Watch

admin — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:59:43 +0000

We’ve been following the Fanhattan iPhone/iPad app from the very beginning , when it was exclusively available for the iPad and only had a handful of content partners. But the app has come along way in a short time — migrating to the iPhone and adding new content — and the company is today announcing an update that offers up way more functionality and content, though it may not be the kind of content you’d expect. If you don’t already know, Fanhattan is an app that lets you discover new TV shows and movies that are available to watch on the iPad/iPhone. It features a Smart Filter which makes narrowing down content super easy and the app itself is quite beautiful, but today an entirely new layer is being thrown into the mix: news. To start, Fanhattan is integrating a news feed into the app thanks to dozens of new content partnerships between Fanhattan and your favorite news sources (full list below). With news feed integration, you’ll now be able to “Be A Fan” of certain shows or movies, and as a result see all the news on that particular movie/show and its stars from over 60 sources. Fanhattan already offers up Rotten Tomatoes reviews and actor bios, but bringing news sources into the equation should make it that much harder for Fanhattan users to veer outside of the app. If you’re already a Fanhattan user, the update should show up right about now on your device. Otherwise, head on over to the App Store and check out what Fanhattan version 1.2 has to offer. New content partners: BBC Billboard Celebuzz CNN E! Online Entertainment Tonight Entertainment Weekly Entertainment Wise Glam.com Hollywood Reporter ivillage KCAL Los Angeles KTLA-TV, Los Angeles McClatchy-Tribune News Service Metal Underground MSN Entertainment MSNBC MTV.com New York Daily News New York Post NYT Music People PopMatters Popsugar Reuters Rolling Stone The Guardian The Huffington Post The Los Angeles Times The New York Times The Seattle Times The Wall Street Journal TIME Magazine TMZ USA Today Variety VH1 Washington Post

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Fanhattan Adds A Personalized News Feed To The Mix, Lets You Read While You Watch

What Happens When Apps Go On Sale?: Revenue Up 22% On iPhone, 29% On Android

Administrator — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:56:42 +0000

In a new research report from Distimo , the app store analytics provider examined two different ways that allow mobile developers to get a bump in both their download numbers and revenue. One way, which is within the developers’ control, is putting the app on sale. Within the first day, iPhone developers see an average increase of 41% in revenue using this method, and see revenue increases of 22% by the sale’s end. Android apps, however, rose just 7% on day one, but closed out the sale with higher percentage gains than either iPhone or iPad. The second method Distimo looked into is getting the app featured in the app store. This is up to the app store’s operator, like Google or Apple, of course. (We’ll examine Distimo’s findings on featured apps in a subsequent post). When a developer decides to put an application on sale, there’s a delicate balance that has to be achieved. The sale price has to be low enough to encourage more downloads, obviously, but it also needs to be low enough that it encourages enough download volume to make up for the lost revenue. To examine what happens during when apps go on sale, Distimo examined the 100 top grossing apps in the iPhone App Atore, iPad App Store and Android Market. On the first day of the sale, the average revenue increase by +41% in the iPhone App Store, and by 15 days in, was up by +22%. On the iPad App Store, the day one effect was even greater: up +52% on day one and up +19% by day 15. But the boost in the Android Market was the largest of all, although this couldn’t immediately be seen. By day one, revenue was just +7% on average, but by day 15, it was up +29%. These are percentage increases, though – not dollar amounts. Keep in mind, too, that these gains are averages . Not all developers were so lucky. In looking closer at the numbers, Distimo found that 44% of iPhone apps lost revenue during the sale, with 23% seeing a decline in revenue by more than 20%. This is why the sale price setting is key to maximizing the gains. For example, a discount of a dollar on a $7.99 app lowers the revenue, but a discount of $3 increased revenue by 131%. In general, the tipping point occurred when the app’s price was cut in half or the app was offered in Tier 1 ($0.99) or Tier 2 ($1.99). The graph below shows what happens when prices were cut by 40%, 50%, 60%, 70% or 80%. The conclusion here is that it can pay to put an app on sale, but to actually earn more revenue, you have to make a significant price cut. This all begs the question, then: what price should a developer ask? There isn’t a simple ratio to use. The right price depends a lot on what kind of application it is, where it’s sold, what category it falls into and its overall complexity. Simple apps that are easy to make (and copy) are priced lower. You can see the variations by revenue, category and app store here: Since this is a lot of info to take in, we’ll look at Distimo’s findings related to apps being featured in the app store in a separate post. You can find the full report here .

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What Happens When Apps Go On Sale?: Revenue Up 22% On iPhone, 29% On Android

NewsFlash For iOS Proves That An Anti-UX Can Be A Great UX

kram412 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 20:55:59 +0000

Our industry lauds cutting-edge UX. Look no further than the exceptional work of Path. One either swoons over it, or one is blind. But what if that sends a wrong signal? Don’t get me wrong, I feel very strongly about the importance of UX , but since I’ve played around with NewsFlash, a feature-stripped free news app for iOS (iTunes link), I’ve asked myself whether more often than not users work for the UX, instead of the other way around. NewsFlash puts the ‘dead simple’ in ‘dead simple’… Swipe-scroll for a category, tap one, and boom, you get a feed of relevant news items. Swipe-scroll past the categories and you get to languages. Tap, and boom, same category, different language. Included are all the standard news categories, such as Sports, Business, Politics and Tech. And the app has built-in support for these six languages: English, German, Italian, Japanese, French and Hebrew. News sources change from language-to-language. For English, NewsFlash sources from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The LA Times, Reuters, AP and more. Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the app fetches the news items really quickly. Definitely one of the more responsive apps I’ve ever seen. Remember the point I made earlier about working for the UX? Well, try NewsFlash, then try Flipboard for iPhone. Sure, they’re different experiences so we’re not talking about an apples-to-apples comparison. That said, it takes user effort (the flipping) to go through news items. Fun at first, but I find it exhaustive to use (speaking only about the iPhone version, the iPad version is a home run). NewsFlash’s UX is the complete opposite. One could argue it even looks outdated. And yet, it does exactly what it’s supposed to in the easiest way possible, meaning, with neither bells nor whistles. So if you’re a news junkie and want the UX to work for you instead of the other way around, NewsFlash is certainly worth a visit to the App Store.

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NewsFlash For iOS Proves That An Anti-UX Can Be A Great UX

Kaiser Permanente Takes Millions Of Medical Records Mobile With New Android App

vertical8 — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:29:01 +0000

We’ve recently written about some exciting new ideas and technology that will transform medicine in 2012 , how mobile technology is playing a role in this transformation , and lauded investor Vinod Khosla addressed the question of whether or not algorithms (and technology) will replace doctors. Younger, smaller companies have flexibility, and can often have a greater impact on innovation and evolution of industries than giant corporations that have been around for decades. When we talk about innovation and technology touching the health industry, it’s hard not to mention electronic medical records (EMRs). As recently as 2009, The New England Journal of Medicine found that only 1.5 percent of U.S. hospitals have a comprehensive electronic medical health system. Practice Fusion, a venture-backed startup we’ve covered recently , has become one of the biggest providers of EMRs in the country, with 25 million digitized to date. While the free web-based system for physicians is making some great progress in this area, and is catalyzing change, it has to be tempered by the prior statistic — there’s still a long way to go. That’s why it’s such great news for the industry, when older, giant corporations — the big kahunas — jump on the bandwagon and show they’re willing to help push their industries forward. Founded in 1945, California-based Kaiser Permanente is one of the largest not-for-profit managed care consortiums and health plan providers in the country, with 9 million members, nearly 170K employees, 15K physicians, 35 medical centers, and 430+ medical offices under its fold. Yesterday, the health care organization announced the release of a free Android app and mobile-optimized website through which its millions of members can access their own medical information on the go. This means that Kaiser Permanente patients can get full access to the company’s health record system and all that comes with it, which they already could do through kp.org, from their mobile devices. In 2011, Kaiser more than 68 million lab test results available online to their patients, and through the Android app and mobile web app, patients can now get 24/7 access to lab results, diagnostic information, direct and secure email access to doctors, schedule appointments, and order prescription refills. The company plans to release an app for iOS in the next few months, but in the meantime, non-Android users can get access to the same set of secure tools through its new mobile-optimized website through their devices’ browsers. What’s more, the apps also make it possible for family members and other care providers to get access on behalf of patients and accomplish the same tasks that they could at kp.org. This is great for people who are traveling and need to receive care from non-Kaiser Permanente providers. The company’s data on how people are accessing its site is very telling, too, as it validates the notion that mobile technology has become an essential part of healthcare, as Kaiser told us that 14 percent of visits to its website now derive from mobile devices, a 46 percent growth since January 2011. The health plan provider has previously released mobile apps for the iPhone, one that helps patients locate KP facilities and another app that encourages people to walk and pursue healthy activities, and while both are great tools, neither have the implications that giving broad access to EMRs does through Android, and soon iOS. Kaiser Permanente has made some great strides in HealthIT, and is set on pushing forward in mobile technology as well. If the other big health plan and healthcare providers follow suit, this can have an enormous effect on the health industry and patient care. It’s already further validation of the importance of EMRs. You can find the Android app here .

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Kaiser Permanente Takes Millions Of Medical Records Mobile With New Android App

Apple Talks Retail: 110 Million People Visited Apple Stores In Q1

vertical8 — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:35:26 +0000

I’m not a huge fan of schlepping around needlessly when I can do most of my shopping from the comfort of my chair, but Apple fans don’t seem to have much trouble going to their local Apple store when the urge strikes. According to their recent earnings call, 110 million people went to an Apple store in Q1, which breaks down to roughly 22,000 customers per Apple store per week. It looks as though those stores have been pretty busy to boot, as $6.1 billion of Apple’s insane quarterly revenue came courtesy of their retail stores. In case you were interested, that breaks down to just over $17 million coming each of the company’s 358 retail stores. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer also noted that in-store iPhone sales have doubled, and sales of the iPad were up “significantly.” Not too shabby, especially moves from players like Amazon have people foreseeing the demise of brick-and-mortar retail as we know it. Apple pegged the continued success of their retail operations on endeavors like in-store pickup and their relatively new EasyPay system , which allows customers to effectively ring themselves out for products without having to flag down employees. Of course, Apple didn’t hit their record-breaking sales figures by selling at Apple stores alone — CEO Tim Cook notes that Apple has around “130,000 points of sale in the world” for the iPhone and that they’re continually adding new points of distribution. Think big box electronics retailers, carrier stores, and the like. With the company’s popularity in China, CEO Tim Cook also had little to mention on expansion on that front, but noted that Apple would continue to “look at how to grow” that particular market.

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Apple Talks Retail: 110 Million People Visited Apple Stores In Q1

Rising Telecommuter Numbers Worldwide Form A Notable Trend

Administrator — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:32:24 +0000

A new poll of over 11,000 workers worldwide by Ipsos and Reuters shows that telecommuting is an increasingly popular choice, especially in non-Western countries. This will come as no surprise to many, but the numbers are higher than some might have guessed. Over 30 percent of workers in India, Mexico, and Indonesia claimed to telecommute regularly, and one in ten overall work from home every day. It’s tempting to call any work that can be done via telecommute “knowledge work” or the like, but there isn’t enough of that to create these kinds of numbers. The internet has been so incredibly enabling in so many different ways that to limit it to such a narrow category is shortsighted. Many are doing web design or creating product themselves, certainly, but many are also managing entire “virtual” businesses, handling email chains with the Chinese manufacturers on one end and the Singapore design guys on the other, or keeping track of orders and customer queries via an online clearing house. There is very little that can be done in an office that must be done in an office, and worldwide in developing markets the cost savings of that fact are being welcomed with open arms. Interestingly, it is in already-productive countries like Germany, Sweden, and Japan that telecommuting is viewed with suspicion. On one hand it is surprising: these highly wired and progressive countries are welcoming of technology in so many forms that it seems unlike them to reject it in this one. But part of their success is in their social infrastructure: cities, factories, offices, large companies in business for decades or even centuries. Telecommuting makes labor unit-based and decentralizes, preventing the kind of top-down regulation that they feel (and are certainly justified in feeling) has contributed so much to their prosperity. The personal benefits and professional problems with telecommuting were not ignored: 65 percent of those polled felt that telecommuting allowed them to be more productive because they have more control over their work life. But 62 percent found it “socially isolating” and worried that lack of face time at the office would lessen their chances of promotion. As a telecommuter myself, I am concerned more with the lack of infrastructure in place to deal with significant numbers of critical telecommuting employees. Just try to record a Skype video conversation between a three or four people, or give a presentation to 100 off-site employees and 200 on-site ones. There are solutions, of course, but many are expensive and industrial-size, requiring special equipment and software from Cisco or another enterprise enabler. Companies like Boeing may have settled the global collaboration problem, but what about a 12-person operation spread across Europe and Canada that makes camera accessories? Just as services have enabled one relatively tech-naive person to become an online business (and continue to do so), new services over the next few years will have to focus on repairing the natural loss that occurs when your employees are never physically near each other. The numbers, as shown by the huge numbers in emerging markets, are huge and getting bigger, and the big money in established countries is still waiting for the right moment to jump in. Collaboration tools and startups have been big at Disrupt and other showcases, and for good reason. The next ten years of global productivity are going to be driven by them.

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Rising Telecommuter Numbers Worldwide Form A Notable Trend