Problem: Your iPhone takes amazing pictures, but when the sun is shining, you can’t see the damn screen. Solution: a giant eyepiece that sucks onto the iPhone’s screen and offers you a viewfinder shielded from the light of the sun. It’s called the Daylight Viewfinder, and it is coming to you via Kickstarter.
As technology and always-connected devices become more pervasive in our daily lives, companies, think-tanks, government agencies, non-profits, and other organizations have access tremendous new pools of information about virtually anything on the planet. The challenge of such a “big data” world is how to aggregate that information, analyse it, make substantive conclusions, and then package in a useful form.
Making sense of data and communicating the results in a concise and effective manner is such a big challenge that many organizations will pay research firms and think-tanks to analyse and package data form them – often as static snapshots with pages of text and charts and accompanying PowerPoint files.
The ability to access real-time data in a useful way is one of the things that makes MeLLmo’s iPad app Roambi a great business intelligence tool. Today, however, the company announced that it’s taking Roambi a step further and allowing companies to turn the Roambi’s dynamic and interactive data dashboards into full-fledged iOS apps in their own right and market them in the App Store.
This time last week we had very little idea of what the new iPhone may look like. Sure, we had rumors and claims that gave us something to go on, but none of them were supported by any evidence. But in the space of just a few days, we’ve seen several front and back panels from a number of different sources, which have today been backed up by what is purported to be a leaked blueprint for the next-generation iPhone.
I love my Apple Wireless Keyboard, but I don’t love changing its darn batteries every couple of weeks. But the Logitech K760 Wireless Solar Keyboard could soon be taking its place on my desk. Powered entirely by ambient light (it doesn’t even need batteries as a backup), the K760 will run for three months on a full charge with eight hours of use a day.
It’s ideal for those with Mac and iOS devices, because it allows you to connect to three devices simultaneously and quickly switch between them using the function keys.
Imagine a JawBone JamBox, complete with its cute combination packaging/display case. Now imagine that it has been shrunken down into a two-inch cube. Further, try to picture a box that has had the Bluetooth radio extracted and replaced by a high-end DAC (digital analog converter) and a quality headphone amp. Now, keep this picture on your head as you reach around and pat yourself on the back and hear the theme from Rocky in your head.
Congratulations — you have successfully imagined the NuForce Cube, whilst simultaneously engaging all three of your main sensory systems.
During the Q&A session at D10 today Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked an interesting question about how his company names its products. While many have speculated as to why Apple called the fifth-generation iPhone the “4S” back in October, Cook confirmed that the smartphone was named after its flagship feature, Siri.
Apple names its products each generation by either a flagship feature or design change. When a certain product establishes itself, naming conventions are usually dropped altogether, like the iMac and iPod Shuffle.
May is Mobile Management Month at Cult of Mac, where we will be profiling a different mobile management company every weekday. You can find all previous entries here and read our Mobile Management manifesto here.
FileWave is a new entrant into the mobile management space but a longtime player in many business and enterprise environments. FileWave offer multi-platform file and application deployment and licensing management for all desktop systems across an organization. The company has a very impressive track record for both IT-managed and self-service provisioning and deployment that has made it a solid enterprise solution for companies with Macs, Windows PCs, and Linux desktops. More recently, the company has begun offering iOS device management functionality. For Apple-oriented businesses, the combination of desktop and mobile device application management makes FileWave a choice well worth considering.
So, you may be thinking of traveling to far off places this summer, blithely jetting off to other countries, bringing your iPhone hither and yon to take pictures, check email, call your friends to brag about the nice weather, and play some Angry Birds while on the long plane rides. Unfortunately, using that beautiful iPhone in other countries could see you coming home with more that just a sunburn and jet lag.
If you use your iPhone and access its network capabilities, you could be seeing a bill of hundreds, even thousands, of dollars. Here’s how to avoid having to take out a second mortgage to pay your bill.
If you’ve ever seen an old color movie like The Wizard of Oz you’ve probably seen the “Filmed In Glorious Technicolor” crawl. In fact, for years, Technicolor was synonymous with seeing color on film and on your screens, and for good reasons: Technicolor was ingenious.
Despite the fact that no one had invented film stock that could actually capture color, the French company had figured out a way to make color movies by splitting the light being recorded with a prism into red, green and blue light, then recording those individual color spectrums onto separate strips of black-and-white film. Once these strips of film were colored and combined, the result was life-like color recorded on black-and-white film.
Pretty cool, huh? In the days of digital cinema, though, Technicolor has fallen on hard times. In fact, their entire company is unprofitable, with the exception of one department that keeps 220 staff on hand. It’s the patent licensing department, and their only job is to rip open new iPhones, iPads and Macs the second they come out and start looking for infringements.
RIM has made a lot of headlines lately. Most of them have involved an ongoing exodus of executives leaving the company for greener pastures and/or reports of massive layoffs as the company tried to restructure itself under the leadership of new CEO Thorsten Heins.
There’s one bright spot of publicity for RIM this week, however. J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Millard Drexler uses a BlackBerry Bold 9900 – a fact noted after a CNBC piece about operations at J. Crew.
Is this good news for RIM? Yes and no. It shows that not every major company has abandoned the BlackBerry and not every executive has demanded an iPhone (at least not yet). Of course, if Drexler wasn’t a member of Apple’s board of directors, it’s likely that no one would really care what type of smartphone he used.
One of the hallmarks of great Apple software is that it makes you smile like a kid when it does something unexpected and undeniably cool. The first time you pinch-to-zoom, for example, or when you swipe over a picture in iPhoto for iOS and it automatically applies a correction depending on what’s under your finger.
The other hallmark of Apple’s apps is that they look great.
Scalado’s PhotoBeamer manages the first of these things, appearing to work as if by magic. On the second, though, it fails somewhat.
The core apps and features in Apple’s iOS operating system have looked largely the same since the original iPhone made its debut back in 2007. Put certain iOS 5 apps — Calendar, Contacts, Maps, YouTube — alongside those from the original iPhone OS and you’ll notice hardly any difference.
However, Apple could be gearing up to make some changes in iOS 6 that will introduce a fresh new look to the iPhone. This summer we could be waving goodbye to that traditional iPhone blue that has adorned iOS apps for the past five years and saying hello to sexy silver.
Mac and iOS business app developer Marketcircle announced the latest of version of Daylite, the company’s business and productivity management app. The new version, released today, is a major upgrade from previous versions. Daylite is an excellent business management tool for OS X and iOS. It focuses on aggregating all manner of company data, monitoring processes, and helping ensure that business users follow up on leads and opportunities. The new release focuses on increasing performance, workflow, and integration with iOS devices.
Imagine the scene: You’re in the middle of a particularly intense iPhoneography session, and the photos you’re getting are gold. You snap one keeper after another and then shift over to SnapSeed or some such app to really spice things up. But you’re so engrossed in the process of editing that you don’t notice your iPhone’s battery is almost dead until you get the dreaded pop-up warning.
If you are equipped with Photojojo’s keychain backup charger, then you needn’t worry. Just flip the top, plug it in and continue working.
After the insanely fast sellout of tickets for Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, which kicks off in a couple of weeks, we profiled a range of other events for Mac and iOS developers and for IT professionals who support and/or manage Apple’s desktop and mobile platforms.
While these events are great for developers and IT pros, they focus on the underlying technologies of OS X and iOS more than on how companies and other organizations can implement and leverage Macs, iPhones, and iPads in various businesses and industries. For that, there’s the i.Business Expo, a series of events focused on using Apple technologies to both improve business workflows and for customer/client engagement.
Shortly after the Chronic Dev-Team launched Absinthe 2.0 last Friday, Apple pushed out a revised iOS 5.1.1 (9B208) update for the iPhone 4. As yet, no other device has received the same update, and it’s unclear exactly what the software does. But if you installed it accidentally, you’ll be pleased to know that the Rocky Racoon untether now supports it.
Have you ever been browsing through your iPhone’s camera roll and stumbled across a photo that you don’t remember taking? Or would you like to know how old that picture of your sister’s cat is? Then you need Dater, a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones that adds timestamps and dates to the pictures stored on your device.
The biggest challenge for many business when dealing with the consumerization of IT and BYOD trends is often cultural. IT needs to cede control of devices, app choices, and where/when employees and executives actually interact with corporate data. That’s a cultural shift for IT. There’s an equal cultural shift that needs to happen when it comes to users and executives who must take at least partial responsibility for keeping their iPhones, iPads, or other devices secure along with the business data on them.
This requires user education and solid communication between users and IT. To be truly effective, security policies need to be endorsed by senior management and adoption and understanding of them needs to follow from the top down through the organization.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what’s happening in many businesses. In fact, the people most likely to ignore or violate such policies are C-level executives, members of the board of directors, and even IT.
Now that you’ve filled your device with bargain iOS games from those Memorial Day App Store sales, maybe it’s time to accessorize it, too. ZAGG, which makes some of the finest accessories for mobile devices, has discounted 20% off keyboards and cases, and 50% off almost everything else.
Struggling to get a decent signal on your iPhone? If you’ve jailbroken your handset with the latest Absinthe 2.0 release, then you may be in luck. SignalRefresh is a new, $0.99 iPhone tweak that promises to boost your signal strength to give you “the strongest possible voice/data signal at your current location.”
Okay, the headline may be a little exaggerated, but LG has finally given the iPhone’s Retina display a real competitor. Its new, 5-inch smartphone panel boasts a 1920 x 1080 resolution with a staggering 440 pixels per inch and promises to provide incredibly crisp images with full, high-definition video.
In comparison, the iPhone’s 3.5-inch Retina display boasts just 326 pixels per inch at a 960 x 640 resolution.
Rumors have been saying for the past two years that Facebook is working on its own smartphone. According to The New York Times today, Facebook has been hiring former Apple engineers who worked on the iPhone and iPad. The new talent will reportedly help Facebook try to build its own smartphone by next year, according to the report.
Kicking off this week’s must-have apps roundup is a new web browser from Yahoo! called Axis, which hopes to redefine web searching on desktops and iOS devices. We’ve also got a terrific app for web editors, one that’ll help you monitor which apps are accessing your personal data, and two new apps from Facebook.
Men in Black 3, the official game of one of this year’s biggest action blockbusters, is now available on iPhone and iPad, finally giving you the opportunity to create and manage your own MiB agency and protect New York from the scum of the universe. It’s completely free and its leading this week’s must-have games roundup, which also includes Sega’s first Virtua Tennis title for iOS, a stunning new game from Chillingo, and more.
Today the Chronic Dev Team released a new version of Absinthe, the popular tool used to jailbreak iPhones, iPads, and iPods. In this video, I’ll show how to jailbreak your device running iOS 5.1.1 with Absinthe.