If you thought LinkedIn had cornered the market when it comes to employment social networks, think again!
New iOS app Jobr hopes to make careers by letting you “Swipe, Chat, & Discover Your Dream Job!” Instead of searching for positions online, sending in resumes, and then waiting for someone to call you back (or not), the app brings together job applicants and hiring managers in more of an informal social network-type environment.
If video killed the radio star, then the iPod helped kill the cassette tape.
Although perhaps not permanently enough.
According to new reports, Sony has developed a new magnetic tape capable of holding 148GB of data per square inch — meaning that if spooled into a cartridge, each tape would boast an astonishing 185TB worth of storage. To put that into context, it’s the equivalent of 3,700 dual-layer 50GB Blu-rays.
There have been many wearables and quantified-health applications over the past few years, but most have steered clear of proclaiming themselves medical devices. Some of the rumors about the iWatch (such as the fact that it will be able to listen to the sound blood makes as it flows through arteries, and use this to predict heart attacks) may sound a bit too good to be true. But the number of biosensor and biomedical engineers Apple has snapped up recently makes us think the iWatch could be a device that crosses over firmly into the "medical monitoring" category.
According to one recent report, a reason for the long delay before launch is that Apple is awaiting certification from the Food and Drug Administration to get the iWatch approved as medical equipment. Given Apple's recent announcement of the Health app for iOS 8 to collect and show data on calorie consumption, sleep activity, blood oxygen levels and more, plus the conspicuous absence of a health-tracking fitness band in Apple's last iPhone 5s ad, the idea that the iWatch will be geared toward health seems as close to a foregone conclusion as you get for a device that hasn't even been officially announced yet.
Are you sitting down? Because this news may shock you.
With the iWatch reportedly set to arrive later this year, noted original thinkers Microsoft recently published a patent related to its own dive into the Wonderful World of Wearables™.
Amazingly enough, Microsoft’s plans suggest the company is planning to take on the previously uncharted waters of fitness tracking — with a somewhat familiar-sounding device capable of keeping tabs on the wearer’s pulse, displaying the number of calories burns during a workout, and measuring distance traveled.
Telltale Games has released the first in-game screenshots of its upcoming Borderlands spinoff, Tales from the Borderlands, and do they ever look pretty!
A mash-up of first-person shooter and adventure game, Cult of Mac last shared details on Tales from the Borderlands earlier this year, when we reported on an announced panel with its creators taking place at SXSW.
What is known about the game is that it takes place after the events of Borderlands 2, and also from the point of view of two characters: Hyperion employee Rhys and con-artist named Fiona.
Like other Telltale games it will be an episodic release, with individual episodes setting you back $4.99 each, or less if you choose to buy a season pass. How you act in individual episodes of the game will influence how the overarching story plays out, while loot collected in the game will also reportedly be available in “other areas of the Borderlands franchise.”
What Amazon taketh away, Amazon also giveth.
One week after enraging comic nerds everywhere by removing the option to purchase titles within its ComiXology iOS app, Amazon has made it easier than ever purchase products thanks to a snazzy new Twitter feature.
From this point on — provided you live in either the U.S. or UK — whenever a customer discovers a tweet from their favorite artist, brand, friend, etc. featuring an Amazon product link, they can simply add “#AmazonCart” to their reply and that product is added to their Amazon.com Shopping Cart. (UK customers must add #AmazonBasket instead.)
Want a wacky stat to start your Monday? According to a new poll by YouGov, iPhone owners are the most likely smartphone users to send “sexts.”
Apparently, more than 30% of iPhone users have sent explicit messages at some point, compared to 21% of Blackberry users, and 17% of people with a Samsung device.
Apple has donated $500K to the anti-poverty initiative SF Gives, according to people close to the matter.
Launched in March this year, SF Gives is the joint venture of Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff and Daniel Lurie, CEO of the nonprofit Tipping Point. Their goal is to get 20 businesses to contribute $500,000 each to fund local charitable programs.
Of course, when you’ve got more money in the bank than the gross domestic product of the whole of Luxembourg, giving $500K to charity isn’t exactly breaking the bank. But it’s interesting because it shows a public commitment to charity in line with Tim Cook’s vision for Apple as a philanthropic “force for good” in the world.
Have you ever dreamed of swiping up instead of across on your smartphone to unlock it — a whole new way of doing things that is totally unlike the iPhone standard?
No, this isn’t a leaked memo from Samsung’s R&D department, but rather a new tweak available to jailbreakers free of charge in the Cydia Store, optimized for iOS 7 and ARM64-devices.
Called SlideUP2Unlock, the tweak more or less does what it says on the tin: getting rid of the Lock screen camera shortcut in favor of allowing you to use upwards swipe gestures to unlock your iPhone.
I think it’s safe to say that no one was clamoring for a Metal Slug tower defense game. Don’t get me wrong: I love Metal Slug and have since the Neo Geo days. But despite the number of entries in the series now being firmly in the double digits, I don’t think anyone was calling for a shake-up of the formula. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
With Metal Slug Defense, developers SNK Playmore have indeed “fixed it.” In some ways, this is no surprise. We live in an age where game franchises are constantly expanding into new genres: where Angry Birds aren’t content to simply be aggrieved avians in their original incarnation, but must also spread their wings into genres like kart racing and turn-based RPGs. But what’s more surprising about Metal Slug Defense is that, by changing the concept of the game, SNK haven’t “broke it” at all.
In fact, they’ve made something of a gem.
For the second time in around one month, a major flaw has been found in popular open-source security software. The hole, which exists in the login tools OAuth and OpenID, affects many websites including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, LinkedIn, Yahoo, GitHub and others.
The flaw was discovered by Wang Jing, a Ph.D student at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. Jing notes that the serious “Covert Redirect” flaw can act as a login popup based on an affected site’s domain. Exploited by an attacker, affected sites may result in users losing control of their login information and personal data — including email addresses, birth dates, and contact lists.
Two coders who’ve never met sat in their respective man caves 1,400 miles apart making a game that proves once and for all that whiz-bang graphics aren’t necessary when it comes to building a hit.
Called A Dark Room, their “minimalist text adventure” has stormed the App Store — averaging 10,000 downloads a day (at $0.99 a pop) and currently holding the No. 1 position for paid iPhone games (see our review here).
Here’s how Michael Townsend and Amir Rajan created an indie iOS game with no graphics that became the most unlikely success of the year.
When I was about 11, my best friend was a guy called James Brzezicki, who used to spend hours drawing out super-detailed level designs for platform video games. I copied him, although mine were never as good.
The real problem, though, was that when the drawings were finished we had no way of turning them into actual games. Neither of us was able to code, and the idea that it might be possible to create a video game approaching the quality of, say, Super Mario World was pretty unimaginable stuff.
Thankfully, technology has moved on a lot in the past couple of decades. Proof of this is the launch of a new iPad app called Pixel Press Floors, which lets you create side-scrolling platform games using nothing more than a few basic school supplies.
Of all the many,many, many manga takes on Steve Jobs we’ve inexplicably seen in recent years, this one is by far the weirdest.
Depicting Apple’s late founder as, um, an attractive young lady with a come-hither stare, the gender-switched CEO is gracing T-shirts across Japan.
Originally created as the central character of Chocolate Apple, an unusual manga biography tribute from the illustrator of IS <Infinite Stratos> and the Xenosaga series, the mascot now seems to have taken on a life of his/her own, as a fashionista of sorts.
Somehow I suspect that when Apple began considering entering the wearables market, this was the last thing on anyone’s mind.
Apple has launched a new section of its iOS App Store, offering a roundup of the past month’s best mobile apps as selected by an Apple editorial team.
The “Best of April” selection is split into two categories: “Great Games” and “Amazing Apps.” These include titles such as Monument Valley, Fantastical for iPad, Duolingo, and Hitman GO.
Since the glory days of Neo-Geo, I’ve been a massive fan of Metal Slug: the run and gun series of video games that sees you blast the living heck out of everything from enemy soldiers to undead zombies and giant crab monsters.
Now a new iOS game set in the Metal Slug universe, called Metal Slug Defense, has been released — and it actually looks pretty good.
Unlike recent abominations like RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile, which are the nostalgic equivalent of being forced to burn your favorite childhood toy while your first girlfriend points and laughs at you, this game has taken the superb pixel art, animations and manic destruction that fans loved about the Metal Slug series and turned it into an entertaining iPhone experience.
In a blatant attempt to steal Apple’s thunder, Samsung has announced a conference to take place on May 28 — promising to kick start “a new conversation around health.”
Why is this stepping on Apple’s toes?
Because the very next week is Apple’s eagerly-anticipated Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) — where Apple is expected to introduce the first stages of its new health-tracking family of innovations, beginning with the Healthbook feature for iOS 8, and likely to later expand to include the iWatch.
There are some fantastic photos hidden in the videos you’ve shot on your iPhone over the years. You just need to know where to look.
That idea’s the starting point for new iOS app Vhoto, which uses computer vision technology to intelligently scan through your videos to find and extract the best photographic moments.
Less than a decade ago, Apple was singled out by Greenpeace as one of the least environmentally friendly tech companies on the planet.
Apple has since turned over a new leaf, embracing environmentalism as something every bit as central to the company as the latest iPhone.
Just how important became evident a few months ago, when, during a routine earnings call, Cook spoke of his dream for Apple as a “force for good in the world beyond our products.” The recent global celebrations for Earth Day for the first time in nearly a decade mean that his dream is closer to becoming a reality.
So what changed exactly?
Apple’s FaceTime service is getting another rival — courtesy of an update from disappearing messages service Snachat.
The update will introduce instant messaging and video call functions — opening up more possibilities for users wanting to have private conversations.
As with existing Snapchat messages, conversations won’t be stored on users’ phones by default. Since some conversations are worth saving, however, the update will allow users to manually save them.
As we creep closer to the expected September release date of the iPhone 6, more mockups and reported leaks are showing up on what seems like a daily basis.
This latest one, which surfaced on the Chinese technology blog 86Digi, is a physical mockup claimed to be based on real iPhone 6 machine schematics from sources in the supply chain.
It shows the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 as a 6mm thin devices, featuring rounded edges and various other changes — including a relocated power button, rectangular volume controls on the left hand side of the device, and the camera and circular LED flash on the rear.
Do you remember the classic Simpsons skit from the episode “Homer Bad Man?” When Homer walks past a salesman, they try to catch his attention by yelling, “Hey, sir! Try our wax lips: the candy of 1000 uses.” Homer is skeptical. “Like what?” he asks. “One, a humorous substitute for your own lips,” the salesman responds, before immediately running out of other possible other uses.
Well, Logitech’s new modular case+ promises to be the “wax lips” of the iPhone 5 and 5s — albeit with more actual applications. Using magnets to switch between a variety of interchangeable accessories — including power supply, car mount, kickstand and wallet modules — the case+ hopes to be the most versatile iPhone case yet.
Okay, so pinball maybe isn’t the first thing you think of when hear the two words Star Wars, but this actually looks pretty great.
Developers Zen Studios are veritable Jedi masters at bringing out both the video game quality you need in a digital pinball table, and also at utilizing licenses in a way that doesn’t feel money-grubbing and superficial.
Apple has made another interesting hire in the form of Bobby Hollis, a former vice president of NV Energy who will serve as the company’s new Senior Renewable Energy Manager.
The appointment took place earlier this year, while Hollis took his post back in April.
At NV Energy in Nevada, Hollis worked as the Vice President of Renewable Energy and Origination. He also served on the board of the Solar Electric Power Association, and was recently named one of Las Vegas’s 40 Under Forty business leaders.
Could iBeacons help improve the air travel experience? Sir Richard Branson thinks they could.
Branson’s majority-owned Virgin Atlantic is the latest company to hop aboard the iBeacon bandwagon — announcing plans to use the technology to send customized messages to passenger’s iPhones in London’s Heathrow airport in the UK.
The program, which is being created in conjunction with beacon startup Estimote, will use Apple’s iBeacons technology in conjunction with the Passbook iOS app.
CNBC has named Steve Jobs the most influential person of the last 25 years. On a list entitled “First 25: Rebels, Icons & Leaders,” Jobs ranks above the likes of Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffet — along with the founders of Google, Amazon, and other tech giants.
The organization claims Jobs deserves the spot because, “his vision spurred changes far beyond his industry and put an indelible stamp on the wider culture.”