iPhone - page 200

Apple holds one of the world’s largest collection of active credit cards in the world thanks to iTunes, yet despite all that purchasing power, it has only recently begun to look into processing payments for physical goods, and PayPal is desperate to play a role in the action.

Payment industry executives say that PayPal is pitching Apple hard to let it in on the company’s rumored payment initiative, according to a report from Re/code. At this point, executives aren’t sure what type of tech Apple wants to use, or even how big a role it wants to play in the industry, but they’re willing to go as far as white-labeling their payments service, just so Apple will use it.

iPhone wallet cases are traditionally cases first and wallets second; their focus is on protecting your iPhone, and then a few pockets are added for carrying your cards and cash. But the Danny P Pocket Book for iPhone 5 and 5s is a little different.

Made from the finest Italian leather, it’s essentially a traditional wallet that has space for your iPhone, so you don’t need to make any compromises to use it. You can continue to carry as many cards as you want — there are 8 card slots in total with two additional sleeves for business cards, receipts, and anything else you might want to stuff in there — and there’s more space for bills than most of us will ever need.

The Pocket Book is available in cognac — a beautiful tan color with blue internals — and it’s priced at $129. As iPhone wallets go, it’s pretty darn good.

iTunes Radio now lets you create stations full of the artists and songs you like, just like Pandora. You can also add artists to the list that you don’t want playing in the station.

When you create a new iTunes Radio station, though, it’s typically named after the first song or artist that you create the station with. That’s not always what you want.

You can rename any station you like with a couple of easy taps.

If you’re anything like me, you’ll change your iPhone’s wallpaper on a regular basis to keep things fresh, but finding a good one isn’t always easy. At least that was the case — until Wallgram came along. Wallgram isn’t just another photo bank full of images; it uses Instagram photos uploaded by your friends to create beautiful parallax wallpapers.

The immensely popular SwiftKey keyboard makes its debut on iOS today via a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. It promises to be the fastest way to make notes on an iPhone and iPad, and it boasts features like Evernote syncing and multilingual typing. It’s also completely free.

Facebook today announced a new standalone iPhone app called Paper, and you’ll be pleased to hear it’s nothing like any of the Facebook apps that came before it. Paper’s main focus is to make all the news you’re interested in easy to access it, but it’s much more than just a newsreader; in fact, it does enough to replace the regular Facebook app for more users.

Fish can swim into some pretty deep dark places, but now they can’t hide from anglers thanks to FishHunter, a floating sonar pod that syncs to your iPhone to tell you where all the big fish are hanging out.

Rather than attaching a sonar sensor to your boat, FishHunter’s sensor can float in the current and sketch the bottom of bodies of water while you’re sitting safely on dry land. Using Bluetooth LE, it transmits data to your iPhone or Android up to 80 ft away, signaling anything it thinks might be a fish.

Its $229.99 price tag is pretty cheap compared to other fish finders, and it’s equipped with extra features like tracking your best fishing spots via GPS and a photo sharing feature so you can let your friends know who’s the best fisherman.

Here’s the product trailer:

What if you could print your iPhone photos and have them sent to your door, without paying a penny? Sound impossible, right? But that’s exactly what new Kickstarter-hopeful startup Flag is planning to do. The catch? An ad, printed on the back of each picture.

For the last few weeks, I have had a little pebble-shaped gadget sat out on the wall of my balcony. It’s the Tempo, a Bluetooth thermometer which keeps the last 24 hour’s temperatures in memory, and passes them to your iDevice on demand. It’s also pretty tough, as we’ll see…

Having just crawled out of its smackdown from Google, Rap Genius is back with a new app for iOS that gives you access the site’s breakdowns and explanations on all those pop songs you just don’t understand.

The Genius app lets you swim in the all the annotations for song lyrics, poems, and news articles provided by the Rap Genius community. Once you install the app it scans your iTunes Library to prep all your song lyrics. There’s also a Shazam like function that can find lyrics for any song that’s playing around you.

The app is only available on iPhone with no word on an iPad version or upcoming support for Android, but you can grab it for free on iTunes starting today.

Here are the full release notes:

Starwood Hotels & Resorts has begun a pilot program in two of its major hotel locations in Manhattan and Silicon Valley, which does away with keycards altogether by allowing guests to enter their rooms using just their smartphones.

If you’re a skier or a snowboarder, there’s nothing better than hitting the slopes before anyone else does, being the first one to lay down your tracks on the freshly-fallen snow.

There’s an app for that. Called First Tracks, it’s an alarm app that will wake you up earlier if it snows. And it’s useful even if you don’t like to ski too!

Russia’s second-largest mobile carrier MegaFon will start selling iPhones again in its retail stores — for the first time since 2010.

MegaFon’s new three-year contract with Apple comes after the Cupertino company relaxed its sales policy in Russia.

Readability, the oft-overlooked but competent rival to Instapaper and Pocket, has reached v2.0, and added an iOS 7 makeover, plus a few neat new features.

This must be just about the worst gadget ever, which of course makes it the most fun to write about gadget ever. It’s a love-detecting bra, which will only open its front clasp if “true love” is detected. Where “true love” means “iPhone” and “detected” means Bluetooth.

Virgin Mobile has been competitive with its iPhone pricing ever since it came out of the gate, and that trend doesn’t appear to be going anywhere.

In the U.S., Virgin Mobile has reduced its unsubsidized iPhone prices by 10 percent in a time-limited, Web exclusive offer — meaning that you can pick up a 16gB iPhone 5s for $494.99: representing $154 less than the unsubsidized handset cost from Apple’s Online Store.

In Germany, bank cards come with NFC chips that let you make small payments just by tapping your wallet onto the POS machine. You pre-load the chip with money from your bank account (only small amounts are allowed, because if you lose the card you lose the money) and spend it as cash.

So I finally see the point of NFC in a phone. And now I can have NFC in my iPhone, thanks to Incipio’s Cashwrap case.

Cortex Camera fixes one big deficiency with the iPhone’s camera: low-light noise. Or more specifically, the iPhone has no way to avoid cranking the ISO when shooting in low light. With a regular camera, you can just choose a longer shutter speed to keep the ISO low, steady the camera on a tripod or other sturdy base, and enjoy noise-free pictures taken in the dark.

And now you can (kinda) do this with your iPhone, using this sweet and simple app.

Pundits (including me) have been predicting Apple’s entry into the mobile payment space — using a smartphone instead of a credit card to buy stuff in the real world — for years.

It hasn’t been a hard prediction to make. The financial rewards are enormous, and Apple has filed multiple patents around mobile payments over the years.

Now, it’s finally happening. And although Apple hasn’t really started yet, they’re already way, way ahead of just about every other player.

The iPhone 5c’s lifespan will be short-lived, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal. Apple will reportedly discontinue the 5c this year and release two larger iPhone models.

The initial success of the iPhone 5c has been questioned amidst reports that Apple cut orders by as much as 35% shortly after releasing the phone last fall.

Rumors of larger iPhone designs have been swirling for months now, and the Journal is saying to expect screens larger than 4½ inches and 5 inches.

If you’ve wanted to protect your iPhone 5 without compromising its form factor, then this Cult of Mac Deals promotion is for you.

The unique clasp locking system of the Leverage i5 was inspired by high-end watch clasps, and the metal latch and lever system are built to last. Plus, with its integrated buttons, the case never gets in the way. This bundle also comes with three interchangeable backplates – flat (normal), headphone wrap, and credit card holder (for 1–4 cards) – that add functionality, but only when you need it.

And you can have The Sleek iPhone 5/5S Protection Bundle for just $39.99.

SwiftKey, the most popular third-party keyboard on Android, is coming to iOS through a new note-taking app called SwiftKey Note. A leaked promotional image for the app has been leaked on Twitter today, but it’s not yet clear when it will be available to download from the App Store.

External USB battery packs are a dime a dozen, and most of them look pretty similar. Why bother with one of those, though, when you can power your iPhone with Darth Vader’s fricking lightsaber?

Evernote continues to suck as an app, and excel as a back-end service for better-designed apps. EverMemo is yet another quick note taking app which posts your important scribblings direct to your Evernote account to be indexed and assimilated, all without having to launch Evernote’s own bloated monster and tap desperately as you try to find the new-note button before you forget whatever it was you were trying to remember.

You’re most likely using one of two calendar services, or maybe both: Google Calendar and/or iCloud. Now – if you’re using the truly excellent Fastmail email service – you can test out the beta version of its new calendar. It’s as clean and simple as the mail service, and syncs perfectly with your iDevice or Mac using CalDAV.