Alex Heath - page 22

Last month, sales of the Nest Protect smoke alarm were suddenly halted after the Google-owned company discovered a malfunction with one of the product’s key features. By design, a simple wave of the hand under the device was able to manually turn off an accidental alarm.

Nest discovered that the feature could be triggered by accident, which could result in some seriously dangerous scenarios. Now Nest is recalling all 444,000 of its smart smoke alarms with plans to have the device back on the market in a few weeks.

Your Facebook app is about get a lot smarter at knowing what you’re listening to and watching on TV.

In an upcoming update in the App Store, Facebook will add the ability to automatically tag music and TV shows within a status update. The Shazam-like feature will have to be manually enabled by the user, and links to songs and shows will be attached to statuses in the News Feed. Facebook hopes the feature encourages people to share more, while it’s sure to cause some users to worry about sharing too much.

There have been a lot of remixes of the iconic iPhone ringtone over the years, and this one may be the best. The guitar solo at the end is an unexpected twist.

The remixer goes by the name MetroGnome, and his YouTube account features countless remixes of popular songs. He’s got some original stuff on iTunes, and it’s pretty standard electronic music.

You can download the above track yourself and turn it your own ringtone if you want to be that kinda guy at the party. It’s not free, but I recommend Ringer in the Mac App Store.

Verizon’s upcoming Voice over LTE standard, or VoLTE (terrible acronym), will finally fix the biggest problem so many people have had with Verizon for years.

VoLTE will bring enhanced call audio calling over LTE, which also means that you’ll finally be able to talk and surf the web simultaneously.

Today Apple made some upgrades to its web-based version of the iWork suite that are more suited for those working in large teams. The number of people that can collaborate on a single document has been doubled to 100, and the maximum storage size for files and docs has also been increased.

What if we lived in a world where you could pay for your food by sharing it on Instagram? Some would call it hell on earth because of how our Instagram feeds are already overwhelmed with such pictures, but that kind of attitude could be starting to change.

A new pop-up diner in Soho, London called The Picture House is letting its customers pay for their meals in exchange for posting a pic of it on Instagram with the hashtag “BirdsEyeInspirations.”

Joel Thomas Zimmerman, aka Deadmau5, is undoubtedly one of the most popular EDM artists/DJs on the planet. He’s apparently so famous that he has his own subscription service with an iPhone app that came out a few days ago.

The self-titled app is the one-stop shop for everything Deadmau5, and it costs £2.99 per month.

Apple and Google are bringing out the white flags. A landmark decision has been reached between the two Silicon Valley giants to drop their patent lawsuits against each other, specifically with regards to Google’s Motorola Mobility.

Google has bought Quest Visual, the company behind the popular Word Lens translation app.

Apple’s most recent iPhone 5s ad featured Word Lens, and rightfully so; it’s one of the most magical tools you’ll ever use on a smartphone. The app works by instantly translating text in different languages seen through the iPhone’s camera. It’s an astounding piece of technology, and it will now be incorporated into Google Translate.

The good news is that now is the best time to download Word Lens, because its creators have made all of its language packs free for a limited time.

A former iPhone owner is suing Apple in San Jose court over Apple’s Message app not delivering texts to Android phones. The issue has plagued iMessage since its inception, but it is just recently starting to get attention.

A metallic back for what appears to be a larger ‘iPad Pro’ has been posted on the Chinese forum Weibo. The part looks to be for an unreleased 12.9-inch model, and the same person has also shared images of an iPhone 6 dummy that matches previous leaks.

Almost from the start, iPad users have begged and pleaded with Apple to add a missing feature: split-screen multitasking.

Split-screen multitasking is the ability to run two or more apps simultaneously, side by side, just like you can on a desktop computer. But iOS, of course, is the antithesis of traditional multitasking. You can have only one app on the screen at a time.

That may be about to change. Apple is rumored to be adding multitasking to the iPad in iOS 8, which is expected to be shown to developers at next month’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference.

With split screen multitasking, you could write a paper in Pages on the left while researching in Safari on the right. You may even be able to drag and drop items between the two apps, like photos or chunks of text.

For some, this would be nirvana. Better multitasking would turbocharge the iPad, especially for work, right?.

Microsoft loves to crow about the Surface 2 tablet’s ability to multitask, which in Redmond’s eyes makes the tablet appear more suited for work than watching cat videos. Some iPad users have been lobbying for it for years. The feature has been the subject of plenty UI mockups, design videos, and jailbreak tweaks.

My iPad Air is jailbroken, and for the last week I’ve been using a new jailbreak tweak called OS Experience, which allows me to have split-screen multitasking.

I’ve tried using it as part of my daily workflow. And what I found was surprising.

Foursquare is reinventing itself, and a new app called Swarm is the first piece of the puzzle.

Launched today in the App Store, Swarm is a tool for finding friends based on their general location and check-ins. While Apple’s Find My Friends pinpoints you exactly on a map, Swarm takes a different, more friendly approach.

Facebook is fine-tuning not only how you share stuff, but what content you see after you share.

That’s the goal of an update to its iOS app that is designed to cut down on accidental oversharing by giving users a preview of their posts before they go live. It could be something you don’t want the whole Facebook world seeing, like the embarrassing TV show you’re currently watching.

In a related experiment, some users of the main Facebook app are also seeing additional content suggestions from Facebook after posting.

The most addicting game to ever hit the App Store will make its triumphant return in August. Flappy Bird creator Dong Nguyen tells CNBC that he has a new version in the works, but this time it won’t be as addictive.

Apple stores around the world are considered shining examples of exquisite design in the cutting-edge world of retail. Steve Jobs was famously picky about every detail that went into the stores, all the way down to the type of wood grain used for the tables.

An Apple reseller’s new store in Poznań, Poland, takes a unique approach to design by incorporating materials used in actual fruit stands. The result is decidedly retro, and actually pretty cool.

If you listen to the CultCast, you know how much our own Leander Kahney loves Sonos. It’s actually kind of scary.

You don’t have to feel as strongly as Leander about Sonos to appreciate the major update to its remote app that’s available today in the App Store.

Beats Music is in an interesting spot as a new service, mainly because we don’t know when (or if) it will be swallowed by Apple.

After it was revealed last week that Apple plans to buy Beats for billions, the company’s fledgling music subscription service has received a new level of attention. But that doesn’t mean its growth has been healthy.

According to a leaked royalties report, Beats Music only had around 111,000 subscribers as of last month.

Those are incredibly low numbers for a startup with a lot of funding, aggressive advertising, and a juicy promotion in place with AT&T. But to Apple, stagnant growth isn’t an issue. It’s about what Beats Music can do for iTunes.

The second charity auction to offer a sit-down with Tim Cook has closed, and $330K has been raised by the winning bid for the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights.

The winner, who’s identity has not been disclosed, will get to have lunch with Cook at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. Another perk was added by Cook before the auction closed, but even that failed to garner as much interest as the previous auction.

Weather apps are a dime a dozen, but what do you use when you want to know the exact temperature where you are right now? That’s the question that drove app company Robocat to make Thermodo, a small thermometer that plugs directly into a smartphone’s headphone jack.

What makes Thermodo incredibly unique is the overwhelming amount of support it received on Kickstarter last year. The project raised over 10 times its original goal of $35,000. People clearly loved the idea of a portable thermometer for the iPhone, as over $336,000 has been pledged by backers.

Now that Thermodo is shipping and out in the wild, does it live up to the all the hype?

Apple’s biggest acquisition ever is all the tech world can talk about, and Apple hasn’t even confirmed the news yet.

Last week it was reported that Apple has plans to acquire Beats Electronics for $3.2 billion. Shortly after the news broke, Beats co-founder and legendary producer Dr. Dre called himself the “first billionaire in hip-hop.”

Now Dre and music industry tycoon Jimmy Iovine are rumored to appear onstage at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference next month. What exactly the future holds for Apple and Beats remains unclear, but here are five things to know about the monumental deal:

Square has been at the forefront of mobile payments for years now, thanks largely to the popularity of its white card reader that’s used by merchants everywhere.

Now the company is debuting a brand new app called Square Order, and it does away with the need for a cash register completely. The introduction of Square Order also means the death of Square Wallet, a failed experiment that Order hopes to correct.

I’m constantly checking out new photography apps for the iPhone, and like many out there, my favorite remains VSCO Cam. There’s a new contender on the scene that was released this week, and it’s definitely worth trying if you like experimenting beyond VSCO’s filters.

A new video app from the Hipstamatic team also just came out in the App Store, and it has some of the best filters for mobile video I’ve come across.

Remember Facebook Poke? It’s become nothing more than a faint memory since its introduction in December 2012. But for some reason the iPhone app has stayed on the App Store until now.

Today Facebook decided to do some spring cleaning in the App Store by pulling not only the Poke app, but Facebook Camera as well.

What would it look like if Apple let you work in multiple apps side by side on the iPad? Apple’s competitors like to poke fun at the iPad’s lack of desktop-class multitasking. But plenty of people are using the iPad to get work done, which begs the age-old question: is less really more?

Imagine OS X’s Mission Control ported to the iPad, and you’ve got the jailbreak tweak OS Experience. It’s an ambitious idea that is executed with surprising finesse.