iPhone - page 341

Mobile purchasing systems based on NFC have a way to go before they become ubiquitous, but other types of mobile payments already here. A great example is the Starbucks app that can be used as a virtual reload-able gift card. When you want to pay with the card, a barista scans a code on your iPhone’s screen.

Starbucks may have made this technology a part of every day life for millions of people, but it isn’t the only company to do. Some airlines offer a virtual boarding pass as part of mobile check-in features.

The same iPhone/smartphone screen as digital token approach may soon extend to your commute as well as your morning coffee or air travel. A pilot project in Boston plans to bring the same NFC-less mobile payment technology to the city’s commuter rail service.

Everyone knows that Research In Motion has been on a downward spiral into destruction over the last few years. Sales and profits are plummeting, and the company’s corporate structure is falling apart. The end may be near for the once-popular Blackberry maker.

Recent stats from online trade-in site Gazelle.com reveal that Blackberry trade-ins have increased by 80% over the last month.

If Kickstarter were a forest, you wouldn’t be able to see it for all the iPhone camera adapter cases littering its leafy, money-begging hummocks. And here we bring you another photo-friendly sapling of an invention, only this one is a little different. It’s called the Magnifi, and it works with pretty much any piece of imaging equipment that ends with “-scope” (or “-lars, as we shall see in a second).

Minimalism is a fascinating thing. Our world is getting increasingly loud and busy, yet many are starting to want more minimal and distraction-free experiences. Apps specifically are another way that the minimalism trend can be observed; more and more applications are getting back to the roots by cutting away superfluous effects and features.

Pop is a perfect example of how minimalism manifests itself in a basic iOS app. Unlike other writing apps for the iPhone and iPad, Pop is just a blank pad to jot down text. Nothing else. Nothing at all… But really, that’s all there is.

Sony has announced two new all-in-one speaker docks for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod today, which claim to be the world’s first speakers to use magnetic fluid for dampening. Both devices also feature built-in DAB radios and CD players, while one also offers wireless Bluetooth connectivity and your own light show.

There have been a handful of technologies touted over the past few years that would remove (or dramatically reduce) the need to carry our credit/debit cards, loyalty cards, and even cash. For the past couple of years, NFC has been the technology of choice for turning our phones into digital wallets. Google and RIM have built NFC support into their respective mobile OSes and a handful of manufacturers have built NFC phones, but the technology hasn’t lived up to the hype.

AT&T is finally unlocking iPhones at the end of a completed contract, but if you bought the new iPhone 4S you’re going to be waiting another 18 months or so until your phone is eligible for an official carrier unlock. What if you want to use your iPhone on T-Mobile, or maybe go overseas and use a local carrier rather than pay for some crazy out of coverage fees? Fortunately, hacker Loktar_Sun has discovered an incredibly easy way to unlock your iPhone 4S or any other iPhone. The process is super easy – all you need is a jailbroken iPhone, and these 13 easy-to-follow steps.

The iPhone 4S is hardly a fatty, but it is thicker than many of its Android-powered rivals. However, thanks to in-cell touch technology and other improvements Apple is expected to make to the sixth-generation iPhone, the handset could measure in at just 7.9mm thick — 1.4mm thinner than the iPhone 4S.

VoodooPad, Gus Mueller’s amazing little desktop Wiki, has been updated to v5 on the Mac and v2 on iOS. The big news is that it has dumped Mobile Me syncing and instead now syncs via DropBox. There are lots of other tweaks and new features, but Dropbox — and by extension any cloud-syncing service — is the big one.

Apple has added a new page of iPhone app suggestions for business users. The page, titled iPhone at Work, lists apps broken down into five major categories: organize your day, view your business, manage projects, meet anywhere, and travel light. Each of those sections is further divided to show off the ways that the iOS apps Apple bundles with the iPhone and third-party apps can be used in business.

Microsoft has decided to jump into the mobile management marketplace. The company has announced plans to retool its Intune cloud-based desktop management service to manage iPhones, iPads, and some Android devices. The news follows RIM’s similar decision to include iOS and Android management in the new BlackBerry Mobile Fusion console that it designed for its PlayBook tablet.

Microsoft’s Brad Anderson, corporate vice president of the company’s management and security division division showed off the new version of Intune at Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) in Las Vegas. Anderson’s presentation, however, wasn’t able to illustrate Intune’s upcoming iOS management capabilities because the iPhone used in his demo failed to perform properly with the Intune release being used – an event that The Register reported as seeming “as though the spirit of Steve Jobs was in the room.”

645 Pro bills itself as an app which will turn your iPhone into a DSLR. At first glance, it seems like this has been achieved by mimicking the buttons and LCD panel of a modern SLR, and to an extent that’s true. But the real meat here is under the hood: 645 Pro shoots uncompressed JPEGs and TIFFs, and gives the closest that we’re likely to see to RAW images from the iPhone’s camera.

Way back in the dark days of the 1990s, when smartphones had styluses and mobile apps were made from Java, I yearned for a way to stream music from my Sony Ericsson P900 to my stereo via Bluetooth. At the time, it was impossible.

Fast forward to the present day (by drilling down through several hard-to-navigate menus and hitting the tiny “skip” button with the tip of the stylus) and there is an embarrassment of choice. These days I’d rather pick up my JamBox and carry it into the living room rather than fire up the proper stereo that’s already in there.

Joining this wealth of wirelessness is the Audio Cube from Satechi, an inexpensive, pocket-sized Bluetooth speaker with all of the features you’d expect.

One of the interesting tidbits to emerge from testimony during Oracle panent infringment trial against Google is that Oracle had considered producing its own smartphone and buying either RIM or Palm. The testimony came from Oracle chief Larry Ellison, who was a close personal friend of Steve Jobs. Ellison is, in fact, quoted as describing their relationship as “best friends” in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs.

The news raises some interesting questions – not the least of which are whether Jobs knew of the plan and what impact Oracle jumping into the smartphone game against the iPhone might have had on their friendship. Jobs was obsessed with the idea that Google and its former CEO Eric Schmidt (also a former Apple board member) had ripped off Apple’s iOS design work in creating Android.

PicPlayPost is supposedly a way to make video diptychs of your precious moments, and then share them via the usual social networks. But if you grew up in (or otherwise managed to live through) the 1980s, you’ll know exactly what this app is for: remaking the cheesy title sequences of 1980s TV shows like Dallas.

Earlier this month, five regional U.S. carriers announced that they would begin carrying the iPhone 4 and 4S. All were offering the devices at $50 less than the standard list prices of the larger national carriers (AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint). All five carriers are in more rural areas of the country that aren’t well served by the national carriers. Two are in Alaska, for example.

Abvio has updated its trio of iPhone fitness apps — Cyclemeter, Runmeter and Walkmeter — with iCloud support and a bunch of new features. The biggest improvement, though, is that they are no longer annoying to use.

Cydia is home to one too many lock screen tweaks. There are classic packages like LockInfo that enhance the iOS lock screen with all kinds of handy shortcuts and features, but there’s also tweaks like LockLauncher that are messy and ugly. With that said, FastLock is a refreshingly simple take on lock screen shortcuts for jailbroken iPhones.

Many have speculated that Apple’s next iPhone will have lightning fast LTE ‘4G’ networking speeds. Chipset maker Qualcomm has been experiencing incredible demand for its next generation  28-nanometer LTE chips, and industry watchers are saying that device markers are having to adjust their LTE product roadmaps accordingly for 2012.

This news could be a factor in why Apple’s sixth-gen iPhone probably won’t hit the shelves this summer if it does indeed come with LTE. Instead, analysts are predicting an October rollout, mimicking the iPhone 4S launch just last year.

Puerto Rico based iGenApps showed off its signature service at the DEMO Spring event in silicon valley this week. iGenApps offers the ability to create iOS and other mobile apps with no programming knowledge and just a basic working knowledge of HTML. The service is centered around web app development, but the company claims a premium service will turn web apps into native apps for a price.

Mobile app management company Apperian announced two new features for companies looking to expand the use of iOS, Android, and BlackBerry apps as part of an overall mobile strategy. One feature aims to connect end  users within a company with IT staff and developers for collaboration on new and existing apps. The other is designed to give employees an easy way to rate and comment on apps already in use.

Apperian provides app management and deployment services for business and enterprise customers. The company’s EASE platform allows IT to create internal app stores showcasing both internal apps and public apps that are available through the iOS App Store. The company also provides a range of related services including the ability to push out apps and updates to devices over the air.

The iPhone and iPad are great mobile work solutions for many professions and IT is no exception. With the right collection of apps, virtually every IT job role can become mobile. Systems administrators, user interface designers, and even help desk agents can use their iOS devices to keep tabs on the technologies that they manage and resolve problem at any time from almost anyplace.

IT tools for iOS cover a wide range of ground from basic remote access to network diagramming. Here are a set of tools that no IT department should be without.

There are few photo editing apps on for the iPad that are as versitle and easy to use as Snapseed while also giving users some great tools to make photos look better. It’s the best photo editting app on the iPad, but earlier today Snapseed released a new update for the app that makes it even better.

645 Pro is a new app that claims to shoot RAW images with your iPhone. It also offers control over almost every aspect of photo-taking, and comes on like an app that turns your iPhone into a DSLR. But let’s get back to that RAW business, which we all know is impossible.

I’ll come out and say it at the top of this review: Mattebox is hands-down the best camera app I have used on iOS. That it was launched in December of last year and I only found out about it today is something of an embarrassment.

If you love the richness of features and tweakability of something like Camera+, then Mattebox may not be for you. But if you ever picked up a Leica and loved how the camera seemed to disappear, allowing you to just get on and shoot, you’re gonna be out by $5 in the next few minutes.