iPhone - page 215

For years, home automation has been the exclusive province of the very rich or extremely technical.

Companies you’ve probably never heard of, such as AMX, Control4, Crestron, Elan, HomeLogic, Colorado vNet, Vantage and Zenpanion have provided the platforms and many of the fundamental products, while integrators took care of the installation and service for many people.

Or, very dedicated and technical DIY enthusiasts have cobbled together their own ingenious solutions.

Recently, the major phone carriers have gotten into the act, and rumors suggest Google, Apple, Microsoft and other consumer electronics companies are working on home automation.

The reason everybody’s jumping is that home automation is in the process of making a transition from “hardly anybody” to “pretty much everybody.” So everybody wants a piece of what will definitely be a massive new industry.

In five years, the majority of homes in the United States are likely to have significant home automation happening in their homes — voice-controlled thermostats, Bluetooth-unlocking door locks, lights on self-learning timers, automated pet feeders, doorbells that ring your phone rather than a bell in the house and much more.

The reason? Kickstarter, mostly.

We posted all about NASA engineer Mark Roper’s gruesome, iPhone-augmented Halloween shirts last year. Since then, Mark has quit his job at NASA to focus on Halloween. The result is more designs and, even better, both an improved t-shirt and a horribly gruesome effect worthy of being designed by someone who worked on the Mars Curiosity rover.

Robots are pretty cool, but have you ever wanted to create your own iPhone controlled cyborg? Backyard Brains is banking that a lot of kids are interested in cyborg technology and neuroscience (ethical dilemmas be damned), so after three years of R&D they’ve come up with the RoboRoach – a small electronic surgery kit that lets you turn a real-life cockroach, into an iPhone-controlled cyborg for a few minutes.

The kit comes with a backpack that contains a battery and receiver you superglue to the cockroach after sanding down a patch of shell.  You have to jab a groundwire into the cockroaches thorax, and then after that you carefully trim the antenna so you can stick some small electrodes onto both of them and receive signals from your iPhone. Don’t worry, the iPhone app and the cockroaches come free with the $99 kit, so you don’t have to go hunting for some behind your supermarket’s dumpster.

Foxconn, the Taiwanese company that assembles almost all of Apple’s most popular devices, has admitted that it has forced student interns to work illegal shift patterns.

Thousands of students from the Xi’an Institute of Technology were made to work overtime and night shifts at the plant in violation of company policies. And if they refused to do so, they were in danger of losing their degree certificate.

Thanks to the iPhone, it seems there’s little hope left for BlackBerry these days. Apple has stolen most of its market share, and now it’s stealing its employees, too. The Cupertino company has reportedly been contacting BlackBerry staff via LinkedIn and inviting them to recruitment events in Cambridge, Ontario.

Your swanky new iPhone 5s may be significantly faster than its predecessors, but it’s twice as likely to crash when running third-party apps as the iPhone 5 and the iPhone 5c. New research from Crittercism, a company that monitors mobile app performance, has found that apps crash around 2% on the iPhone 5s, but under 1% on its siblings.

Love Pad&Quill’s sweet bookbindery iPhone cases, but don;t love the big Baltic birch frames that bulk them up? You’re in luck! The new Bella Fino is a leather taco for your iPhone 5/S/C that does away with the frame in favor of a reusable, re-stickable 3M “clean release” adhesive panel.

I’ve applied dozens of screen protectors to my iPhones over the years, and I’d say less than 10% of them actually went on straight. They almost always go on wonky first time, and that means pulling them away and applying them again.

Fortunately, I don’t have to worry about this anymore, because I have the ALIN from TYLT. The ALIN plastic alignment tool that clips into the side of your iPhone 5 or iPhone 5s and ensures that every single screen protector you apply goes on completely straight first time.

It takes the hassle out of the whole process, and it turns a ten-minute job into a two-minute one. And as you might expect, ALIN is reusable, so you can keep hold of it and put it to work every time you need to apply a new screen protector.

ALIN costs $25, and for that you get the alignment tool, plus four screen protectors — three clear ones, and one anti-glare one. Is it worth your money?

Fitbit has today announced its new fitness tracker, the Force, which combines all of the features found in the original Fitbit Flex with some of the more advanced features found in the Fitbit One tracker. It costs $129.95, slightly more than the $99 Flex, and it’s available today.

If you’ve ever traveled internationally and been unlucky or unknowing enough to keep on using your smartphone’s data as if you were still in the fatherland, you’ll know that watching a single YouTube video on a foreign network can result in a few hunded dollars being added to your bill.

International roaming charges are so insane that the European Commission is actually planning to abolish them altogether. But looks like T-Mobile beat them to the punch: the uncarrier is now promising free global data in over 100 different countries, no extra charge.

In a move that’s sure to upset some third-party app developers, Microsoft is planning to launch official Remote Desktop apps for Android and iOS later this month. Like the Remote Desktop solutions for Windows and OS X, the apps will allow you to connect to your PC and control it remotely from your smartphone and tablet.

UPDATE: Looks like FreshPatents isn’t so fresh. Despite labeling this patent as “new,” it seems it was first published back in March. Nevertheless, it’s still a pretty interesting one, so we’ll leave it here for those who haven’t seen it before.

You don’t know the true meaning of pain until you’ve dropped your shiny new iPhone on a hard surface. If you’re lucky, it will land on its back and your case will protect it, but if you’re not, it’ll land flat on its face and you’ll need a new display. But what if there was a way of ensuring it landed on its back every time?

A new Apple patent that covers a “Protective Mechanism for an Electronic Device” describes how future iPhones and other mobile devices could have built-in motors that automatically flip them over in mid-air after they’ve been dropped to protect vulnerable areas.

Behold, the iKettle, a water-boiler that can be almost completely controlled from your iPhone while you laze around in your bed.

In addition to using Yahoo! Weather data, the new Weather app in iOS 7 also borrows some of its look from the stellar Yahoo! weather app that came out prior to the release of Apple’s latest mobile operating system.

One new feature that the built-in Weather app from Apple brings to the table is a way to see all the locations you check the weather for into one screen. Here’s how to access it.

Foursquare released an update for its iOS app today that includes an updated look and feel, as well as a new real-time recommendations feature. Using your iPhone’s location data, the app now serves up recommendations such as what to eat at a restaurant or sales coupons for a store you’re already shopping at. Users can also expect to see recommendations for places of interest throughout the day when visiting new cities.

The feature has been on Android for a month now, but Foursquare plans to roll it out to a small batch of iPhone users today with more added every day. The app also brings back a feature that lets you see what your friends are up to by filtering between nearby and worldwide. The free update is available now in the App Store.

Here are the full release notes:

Flickr for iPhone can now automatically upload all the photos in your camera roll, thanks to a new update for devices running iOS 7. There’s also a new auto-straighten feature that fixes your wonky snaps, and the Google sign-in issues that plagued the previous release have been fixed.

I write a lot on my iPad. I love the distraction-free atmosphere provides and the portability of the platform. I have written a ton of blog posts on the iPad, and wrote the majority of my book using the device as well. That said, it’s tough to write regularly on the iPad without a keyboard. And it’s even tougher to find a keyboard that doesn’t adda ton of bulk to the device at a price that’s easy to swallow.

That’s why the Touchfire appeals to me, and Cult of Mac Deals has it available for only $34.99 during this limited time offer.

Do you miss the dedicated .com button from the iOS 6 and earlier software keyboard? Many of us do, remembering that you could tap and hold it for other oft-used URL finishers, like .net, .org, and the like.

If you want to find the .com button again, you’re out of luck, but if you want to get that same functionality in iOS 7, here’s how.

Back in March we took a look at the SIMPLcase, an iPhone case which stored your spare SIM cards and a SIM tray eject tool inside. One Kickstarter campaign and several months later, the SIMPLcase is a shipping product, and one which I which I have been testing out in a recent move from sunny Barcelona to gray Germany.

Does the SIMPLcase pass? Yup. With flying colors, in fact.

I am not a fan of clutter – be it paper-based, digital, or otherwise. I’ve got a scanner that takes care of the first type, and a combination of apps (including Hazel) helps take care of the second type. But I’m also a guy who likes to keep things need and tidy in order to avoid clutter. My desk doesn’t have a lot of working space, so I really need to keep desk clutter at a minimum. I had yet to find a fully functional solution…until the latest Cult of Mac Deals offer came along.

The 100% bamboo Station is the solution I’m talking about. Functional, minimalist, eco-friendly – it’s the ideal desk organizer. And Station is at an ideal price as well – only $34.99 for a limited time.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has confirmed that Microsoft Office will come to the iPad just as soon as it’s ready for devices with a touchscreen. Speaking at the Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Florida today, Ballmer said, “iPad will be picked up when there’s a touch first user interface.”

That user interface is “in progress” Ballmer added, but it’s likely to come to the Windows version of Office first.

Imagine that you had a stick of gum that could be bent into any shape. OK, that part was easy – all you had to do was imagine a normal stick of gum. Now imagine that that stick is weight-bearing, and that it would actually stay in the shape you gave it.

If you were doing it properly, then you just imagined the Gumstick, a rubbery, pose-able stick of gadget goodness.

Google chairman Eric Schmidt has dismissed claims that Android is insecure by claiming “it’s more secure than the iPhone.” The platform, which has more than a billion users worldwide, goes through rigorous real-world testing, Schmidt said, before promising consumers would be happier with Android “more than you can possibly imagine.”

What’d Samsung ripoff from Apple this week? Well, you may have heard that the Galaxy Gear just dropped a few days ago. The reviews have been less than stellar, but to promote its smartwatch Samsung released a commercial that looks a whole lot similar to the very first iPhone commercial Apple dropped at the Oscars in 2007.

The original iPhone ad featured tons of famous movie scenes with someone picking up a phone and saying “hello,” and then a shot of the iPhone was finally shown at the end. Samsung has taken inspiration from Apple and released their own take but all the scenes are people using smartwatches like in Star Trek, Predator, and Inspector gadget.

Take a look a look for yourself and tell us what you think:

Skype for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch has finally been updated for iOS 7. The new release, available to download now from the App Store, introduces a new, “refreshed look and feel,” as well as a number of improvements.