Guzzling up websites on your iPhone is now quicker than ever thanks to 4G LTE. It also means that your monthly data allotment can disappear in a poof if you go on a YouTube binge, but at CES this morning AT&T announced it has a plan to help customers consume even more data by allowing advertisers to foot the bill on their content.
LAS VEGAS — Maybe tech journalists are prone to ADHD, and simply attracted to things that flit about. Or maybe the rest of the gadgets strewn about the room at CES Unveiled, the press-only event that customarily kicks off CES for journalists, just weren’t all that zingy this year. Or maybe Parrot‘s Lilliputian drone really is that cool.
Whatever the reason, Parrot’s new MiniDrone — a miniaturized version of their AR Drone with no camera but detachable wheels that let it roll about on the ground or “climb” a wall — drew throngs of tech bloggers and had camera crews lined up to film.
The New Year is finally upon us, and while your resolutions to eat less and run more are admirable, they’re certainly not a lot of fun. So to kick off the year we’ve teamed up with Aio Wireless to hook up one lucky reader with a brand new blue cyan iPhone 5c.
Entering the contest is certainly easier than your newfound commitment to stop munching your fingernails and to make the prize even better, Aio is tossing in a free month of unlimited talk, text, and data on its contract-free 4G LTE network.
Here’s how to win the iPhone 5c:
LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – For those with cardiovascular issues, keeping tabs on your blood pressure and heart-rate means spending extra time and money going to the doctor’s office for frequent check-ups. To cut down on the trips to the doctor, Qardio is releasing the QardioArm – a wearable blood pressure band that is completely integrated with iOS.
Worried about what the sun’s harmful rays are doing to your skin? With June, a new smart bracelet from Netatmo that’s aimed at women, you can find out exactly how much exposure your skin is getting, then decide what kind of sunscreen you need to stay safe.
Although the vast majority of us now take for granted being able to carry super powerful cameras around in our pockets at all times, there’s still something joyful about taking a photograph and having it instantly print out, creating a physical artifact of a moment.
Over the last few years, Fujifilm’s Instax series of Polaroid-like cameras have managed to capture that joy in a number of ways, but their newest gadget melds the strengths of the Polaroid with the flexibility of an iPhone.
Last year we featured the Bluetooth fork that vibrates when it thinks you’re overating — and this year’s wackiest CES unveiling so far goes to the Bluetooth toothbrush (Bluetoothbrush?).
Shown off for the first time at a preview event on Sunday, the toothbrush (made by French startup Kolibree) aims “to reinvent oral care” — according to company co-founder Loic Cessot.
One of the nicer things Apple does every year is its “12 Days Of Gift” promotion, in which iTunes account holders in the Europe (and most recently, the United States) are given twelve digital gifts in the days following Christmas for the considerate price of nothing.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and Apple has just released its last free offering as part of this year’s “12 Days Of Gift” promotion. Luckily, it’s a good one: a free mini-album by the Rolling Stones themselves!
If you were a kid in the 1970’s or 1980’s, you probably had a Trapper Keeper, a famously popular line of loose-leaf binders and folders featuring velcro flaps and bright, colorful, kitschy designs. Trapper Keepers are still out there, but they’ve lost a lot of their cool kid cachet over the last couple decades… but if you grew up in their heyday, just the site of a Trapper Keeper is enough to bring a smile to your lips.
Over at If Industries, a Seattle-based maker of Etsy gear, they have mocked up an awesome look at what an officially sanctioned Trapper Keeper iPad case would look like, right down to the retro-tastic Back to the Future and Lisa Frank designs. And there’s even an embedded Bluetooth keyboard in each one!
Parisian tech company KEECKER promises to let users project movies, listen to music, surf the Internet, make video calls and play videogames through a new smartphone innovation.
So far, so normal, you might think. Instead of simply acting as a universal remote control for the devices around you, however, KEECKER offers this functionality courtesy of your very own personal robot!
In Spike Jonze’s latest film, Her, a mustachioed Joaquin Phoenix plays a man who falls in love with a Siri-like “digital assistant,” Her, played by Scarlett Johansson.
You’d think Siri would appreciate having a movie made about her, but instead, kitty’s got claws when it comes to her filmic counterpart: thanks to Apple’s cheeky and surprisingly timely programmers, if you ask Siri “Are you her?” she will respond: “No. Her portrayal of an intelligent agent is beyond artificial”, “No. You know that it’s just a movie, right?” and “No. In my opinion, she gives artifical intelligence a bad name.”
LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – Chatting on Facetime with friends is great. That is until your double-comes barreling over the screen. We’ve seen people go to some pretty extreme lengths to overcome the unflattering Facetime camera angles, but Brookstone is introducing a new product at CES that finally gives users a Facetime facelift without the need for cosmetic surgery.
iTOi Booth is a case/console that goes over your iPad and uses a patented optical lens system perscription to adjust the camera angle of your iPad so your eyes are level with the screen when Facetiming. The result is direct eye contact with the other person on the screen and a more natural appearance, but will anyone want to lockup their iPad in a gigantic console just to look prettier on Facetime?
Here’s video of iToi Booth in action:
As a Christmas present, hackers over the holidays released two great jailbreaks. For the majority out there running iOS 7, Team Evad3rs released the much heralded Evasi0n jailbreak, while for the holdouts, p0sixninja released a working jailbreak for iOS 6.1.3, 6.1.4 and 6.1.5 called p0sixspwn. It’s the latter jailbreak which has been updated today with support for OS X Snow Leopard, and numeorus bug fixes.
Have you ever watched somebody with long fingernails tap-tap-tapping at their iPhone or iPad screen? It’s painful. Either their overgrown keratin caps skitter over the screen in a chitinous clatter, or they have to approach the screen with the flat pads of their fingers, as if they were carefully giving the government a perfect image of their fingerprints.
But no longer. The most useful new product showcased at this year’s CES is Elektra Nails, a set of capacitive stick-on talons.
We recently called SteelSeries’ H Wireless gaming headset a “miracle of sound and function.” Will the same enthusiasm hold true about the company’s other gaming accessories?
SteelSeries is obviously hoping so, since is has announced its new wireless iOS gaming controller — the Stratus — at CES 2014.
You know what would make all of those crazy-dangerous squirrel-suit action movies even better? A big, wide, cinematic 2.39:1 aspect ratio. And that’s just what you’ll get with the new Letus AnamorphX Adapter for the GoPro Hero.
Griffin has added a non-ugly, multitrack version of its StudioConnect music box. The sturdy-looking unit lets you record multiple instruments on your iPad (or Mac, if you’re still living in 2010), piping the results straight into the music software of your choice.
Having beaten out Apple TV as the most-used streaming set-top box in the United States, Roku is set to debut its own smart TV — called Roku TV.
“That’s right, actual TVs, designed to give consumers a simple and powerful entertainment experience in today’s connected world,” Roku CEO Anthony Wood noted in his company’s announcement. “We’ve applied the same principles that have made Roku the most popular streaming players in America to TVs.”
Ever felt the need to turn your Mac up to 11? Of course you have, and now, thanks to Griffin’s new Bluetooth PowerMate, you can do it wirelessly.
The rush to announce products at CES means we often see CGI renders and vague price promises, just to get in on the news action. But we’re giving SuperTooth a break here for two reasons. One, the company makes great speakers, and two, pretty much every one of those speakers has started life as a dummy model on a trade-show stand.
Withings isn’t content with looking after your body throughout every waking hour of your life. Now it wants to make like some kind of Inception-style doctor and keep an eye on your dreams with the help of the Aura.
Today LaCie announced its new lineup of hard drives, including the Fuel, a wireless 1TB hard drive that works with the Seagate Media iOS app. This is the first collaboration between the two storage companies since Seagate bought LaCie last year.
Besides the Fuel, LaCie is also unveiling three new hard drives at CES, including the Little Big Disk portable drive with Thunderbolt 2.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2014 – At the big “CES Unveiled” press event on Sunday night, one of the biggest draws was the TrewGrip keyboard; a funky Bluetooth keyboard for smartphones and tablets with the keys on the back of the device.
The company’s reps were mobbed by curious journalists, jockeying each other to get a better a look at the keyboard that claims to be “the evolution of typing.”
Designed for typists on the go, like healthcare professionals making hospital rounds, the TrewGrip is a unique reverse keyboard with a full set of QWERTY keys on the back.
Using it requires retraining and takes a week or more to master, but at the booth, company reps were tapping out 60-80 words a minute. Not as fast as many touch-typists on a regular keyboard, but a lot faster than pecking away on a glass screen.
Apple has acquired SnappyLabs, the small startup behind the SnappyCam iPhone app, according to a report from TechCrunch. SnappyCam gave the user the ability to shoot 20 full-res photos per second with the iPhone’s camera. By comparison, Apple’s new Burst Mode on the iPhone 5s can only capture 10 photos per second.
The price Apple paid and exact date of the acquisition remain unknown, but the SnappyCam app was recently pulled from the App Store.
This time on The CultCast: We all know the NSA likes backdoor access, but are they really spying on us via our iDevices, and worse, is Apple in cahoots? We’ll tell you what we think… Plus, if you had to pick just one app, one piece of tech, and one movie as your favorite of 2013, what would they be? We’ll tell you ours on this first episode of the year!
Have a few laughs and get caught up on each week’s best Apple stories. Stream or download new and past episodes of The CultCast now on your Mac or iDevice by subscribing on iTunes, or hit play below adventure begin.
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