News - page 1754

Minimalist weather apps must be the current hot trend among developers right now because we’ve seen a slew of pretty new iOS weather apps hit the App Store recently. If the last three weather apps we covered haven’t quite done it for you, maybe Partly Cloudy will.

Partly Cloudy is different from most weather apps in that it displays all the information you would need to know for a single day in one unique and compelling infographic. Modeled on a traditional clock face, Partly Cloudy’s infographic presents weather data in a fun new way that’s also very useful.

I don’t own a necktie, and I haven’t been clean-shaven since sometime in the mid-to-late 1990s. But that doesn’t mean I can’t brush up nice and get all dressed up from time to time. Which is why I’m seriously considering one of Photojojo’s smart-looking Camera Strap Neckties.

AT&T announced last month that it would be launching shared plans for pooling monthly data allotments between up to 10 devices per account. Instead of paying for a separate data plan for each smartphone, subscribers would be able to use a 1-20GB shared plan across multiple devices, including tablets and desktop computers. Verizon announced a similar strategy in June.

Today AT&T has confirmed that its shared data plans will be available to new and existing subscribers on Thursday, August 23rd.

How you and I share files right now:

• Open and write email.

• Realize we need to attach a file.

• Hide and/or move mail window out of the way.

• Find file.

• somehow manage to drag that file into the e-mail message window.

How Droplings shares a file:

• Drag file to menubar item. File uploads to Dropbox and link is copied automaticlly to your clipboard.

• Paste link.

Did you hear that we touched down on Mars? Again. Late last night NASA’s rover Curiosity successfully carried out a very challenging landing on Mars so that it can explore the red planet and send data back to Earth.

How’d it get there? First there was a bunch of rocket science stuff that we don’t really understand, but the landing sequence was guided and watched by a bunch of NASA brainiacs on their MacBooks Pros. Who says hipsters are the only ones that use a Mac?

Here’s another picture of the NASA MacBook setup:

Panic’s terrific CandyBar tool has just been updated to support OS X Mountain Lion, and if you don’t already own it, you can now pick it up for free. Panic will no longer be charging for the app because of the new restrictions Apple has introduced to Mac OS X, which means CandyBar’s future is now unclear.

1Password by AgileBits is a an incredible tool for keeping your data safe. More than just a password manager, 1Password allows you to encrypt and organize a wide range of data (website passwords, non-web digital accounts, credit/debit card numbers and financial account details, software licenses, and files containing confidential information.

Those features are all well and good, but the biggest feature is 1Password’s ability to keep all that data secure in the face of brute force attacks – the kind of attacks where a piece of software simply tries combination after combination of possible passwords. Password cracking software that rely on such attacks can easily try thousands of potential passwords each second.

To find out whether or not 1Password can withstand such attacks, AgileBits tested one 1Password against John the Ripper, one of the most well-known password cracking tools.

Remember that neat little hack to bring the Save As command back to Mountain Lion? It turns out that it’s not quite as handy as we first thought. Sure, you can now “Save As” instead of being forced to “Duplicate” the file and then save it, but Mountain Lion will not only save your changes in the new document, but write them to the original at the same time.

Do you remember the Pear, an ingenious Bluetooth dongle that would give any 30-pin iPod dock the ability to receive and play music streamed from an iPhone, iPad or iPod touch? We were eagerly awaiting the little gadget’s successful funding on Kickstarter, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer: the product has been pulled from the crowdsourced project funding website following an accusation of trademark infringement.

The good news is the issue should be resolvedpretty quickly: the guys behind the Pear say that they were hit with a cease-and-desist order over the name of the dock converter, which caused the Kickstarter page to be pulled immediately, leaving the Pear team with no way to tell their fans and supporters what was going on. However, with a name change and a slight design alteration, Pear should be back to life in the next 3-6 weeks. Let’s hope a shippable product isn’t too far behind.

Source: Pear
Via: Engadget

After getting its nano-SIM (4FF) proposal approved by the ETSI earlier this year, Apple’s new technology was always going to make its debut in the sixth-generation iPhone. And in case you needed proof of that, here are several pictures of the new iPhone’s nano-SIM tray up against the iPhone 4S’s micro-SIM tray. As you can see, it’s significantly smaller this time around, measuring less than a centimeter wide.

Susan Kare, the graphic designer famous for creating a number of icons for the Macintosh, will be called as a witness in the ongoing trial between Apple and Samsung. Kare will reportedly talk about the similarities between the user interface graphics on the iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy devices.

Paper. Ugh. Whenever somebody hands me a business card, a flyer or forces me to use a printer boarding pass sigh, my shoulders drop a little and I weep for the short-sighted idiots behind these backward-looking incidents.

Usually I just snap a photo with my iPad’s camera and recycle the offending ex-tree. But sometimes all I need is a to copy a few lines of info. This is, I guess, where the Radiul Mobile comes in.

Amazon is now selling more electronic books than all paper books combined – in the UK at least. The Kindle went on sale in Blighty just two years ago, and now “Amazon.co.uk customers are now purchasing more Kindle books than all printed books – hardcover and paperback – combined,” says Amazon PR.

And of course the Kindle itself is far from the whole story. The Kindle’s presence on pretty much every device ever, including the iPhone and iPad, makes the Kindle store a much more compelling place to buy books that the iBooks Store, whose offerings will only work on Apple devices. And it doesn’t hurt that it’s trivially easy to strip the DRM from Kindle books, making people like me a lot happier buying them.

PreviewMaker is a new tweak for jailbroken iPhones that’s likely to be particularly useful to app developers, theme designers, reviewers, and more. It takes all the screenshots you’ve taken on your iPhone and applies an iPhone-style frame, meaning you no longer need to edit each one and add it manually.

After a short will they/won’t they moment last week, Apple has finally made the Thumderbolt to FireWire adapter officially official. Despite last week’s hesitations, you can now buy the adapter for – you guessed it – $29.

Every time I’ve talked about iOS gaming, I’ve said that it’s missing one thing: physical controls. Sure, all kinds of games work well with a touchscreen, but a lot don’t. Numerous accessory makers have attempted to change this with add-on controllers, but none have really taken off.

The Bladepad hopes to change that. It’s a detachable case with a slide-out controller that features dual analog sticks, physical buttons — including shoulder buttons — and more.

Apple is talking to the people behind social e-commerce site The Fancy, according to a report by Business Insider.

The Fancy is viewed by some as a rival to Pinterest, albeit a much smaller one. However, if Apple buys and promotes it among the gazillions of people who have their credit cards on file with Apple’s iTunes Store, the site could become a major hit overnight.

Business Insider also reported in July that in mid-June, Apple CEO Tim Cook had created an account on The Fancy and “fancied” seven items. Here’s Cook’s account.

Apple went after Samsung today in the most direct and perhaps damaging interchange, yet, using Samsung’s own internal documents to prove Apple’s claim that Samsung’s practices go beyond mere competition and are truly copyright infringement.

Apple called Justin Denison, Samsung’s chief strategy officer, to the stand today. Attorney for Apple Bill Lee, after some preliminary questioning, went right for the jugular, directly calling out Samsung, and asking Denison point blank if Samsung had copied Apple products. Denison denied the claim, and then Lee pulled out a set of internal documents from Samsung. Some of the titles of these reports were pretty incriminating.

The International Data Corporation (IDC) released preliminary data yesterday from its Worldwide Quarterly Media Tablet Tracker. The study shows that total worldwide tablet shipments for the second quarter of 2012 are estimated at 25 million units, which is up from 18.7 last quarter. That’s a quarter-over-quarter increase of 33.6 percent, says the data analysis company, reflecting the total year-over-year growth rate of 66.2 percent of retail tablets in the US.

Guess which tablet is the largest part of those numbers?

In the aftermath of a data breach that it announced this week, Dropbox says that it will begin implementing new security measures. Those measures include new automated techniques for spotting suspicious behavior, a page where you can examine all active logins to your account, password update requirements, and two-factor authentication.

All of those are reasonable steps to take. That Dropbox hasn’t implemented most of those items before is a bit surprising. Only one of those items – two factor authentication – really puts a burden onto Dropbox users, but it could put a very big burden on iOS users and app developers.

According to an internal email revealed during the Samsung vs. Apple trial currently in progress, Eddy Cue, Apple’s SVP of Internet Software and services was in favor of the idea of a 7-inch iPad back in 2011.

In an email to Scott Forstall, Tim Cook, and Phil Schiller, Cue remarked: “I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one.”

Apple has launched its first Mountain Lion training guide and certification for IT professionals. The certification is the Mountain Lion edition of the Apple Certified Associate – Mac Integration certification, which can be viewed as the introductory Mac IT certification.

Apple began offering the certification following last year’s launch of Lion. Unlike Apple’s other certification options, Apple provides a free guide to the material on the Mac Integration Basics Exam on its training site. You can also register and take the exam online for $65. Should you fail the exam, Apple will let you retake the exam at no additional charge.

A new iPhone cometh, my friends, and sooner than you think! Find out all we know about Apple’s rumored September 12th media event on our newest CultCast, and what special goodies they will be revealing unto the world that fine, fine day.

Then — it’s been the talk of the Applesphere — those controversial new Mac ads the big A unleashed during the olympic games. Love’em or hate ’em, we’ll tell you why we’ve been less than thrilled, and so will our special guest, former Apple ad guy and long time Jobs’ collaborator, Ken Segall.

Subscribe to The CultCast now on iTunes, or easily stream new episodes right on your iPhone or iPad with Apple’s newly updated and freshly debugged Podcasts App.

Show notes ahead!

The number of companies investing in mobile management and security solutions related to bring your own device (BYOD) programs is growing, but not nearly as fast as the number of companies that are actually offering BYOD to their employees. The result is that many companies are putting themselves and their data at risk by jumping onto the BYOD bandwagon too quickly and without properly securing employee iPhones, iPads, and other devices or the business data that is stored on them.

Ever since I got a Jambox speaker, I have been looking for a way to mount it on my bike for some in-ride tunes. And here, made in the good old U.S of A, is the Jambox Case, a little $25 accessory which will strap the portable speaker to just about anything, including a bike.

So why haven’t I bought one? Why don’t you just watch the video and see for yourself.