LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Y’know how we said something or other about how iHome had an avalanche of new products? Yeah, forget we said that; the amount of new products at the Philips fort (really, they had, like, an encampment) made the iHome avalanche look like a powder dusting. And amazingly, most of it is actually worth talking about. Here’re the highlights from our booth tour.
We’re all concerned about online privacy issues in some form or another. Some of us are obsessive about it while others are a bit more cavalier. Regardless of how you feel about online privacy, there are tons of websites that have your personal information.
Why? Because of data brokers.
Data brokers collect your personal information and sell it online for background checks and marketing. Even social networks can expose sensitive details about your life that you thought you were only sharing with friends and family – and many of them can because of what their terms of service allow.
With this Cult of Mac Deals offer, you can finally fight back – with a one year subscription of Safe Shepherd for just $29!
We told you about FTL back when it came out back in September of 2012, added it to Day 9 of our Awesome 2012 Advent Calendar, and put it in uur Editor’s Picks For 2012’s Best iOS And Mac Games article. Can you tell we love this game?
That it’s a full 50% off again on Steam is icing on the cake, so we wanted to let you know where to spend that spare $4.99 you might be sitting on.
If you’re as much a Twitter and Facebook junkie as we are, you’ll have both websites up continuously, or you’ll run a third party app that you’ll need to switch to obsessively to keep track of your Twitter stream and Facebook status updates from all your FB friends, right?
If you want even more instantaneous access to your social feeds, however, you might want to try Tap Social, a Mac app that puts a stock-ticker style window at the bottom of your screen and streams the latest from your Twitter and Facebook accounts in an always on, real-time perspective on your social networks.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – With seven groovy, psychedelic colors to switch between for backlighting, Luvvitt’s new Ultra Thin Keyboard Cover would no doubt have been Timothy Leary’s keyboard of choice — had iPad Minis, iPads or technology in general been around in the ’60s.
Delta Air Lines has released a completely new iPad app for its customers, and the Fly Delta iPhone app has also been updated with numerous features in the App Store. On the iPad, you can browse, book, and manage flights. There’s an in-app flight tracker and information to help you learn about where you’re going.
On the iPhone, iOS 6 users can finally take advantage of Apple’s Passbook to store boarding passes. Support for the iPhone 5’s taller display has also been added alongside additional flight management features.
Don Melton is best known for starting the Safari browser and WebKit at Apple years ago. On his personal blog, Melton has been publishing old stories about Safari, including how the browser was almost named “Freedom” and how Apple hid Safari by pretending it was Mozilla.
In his latest post, Melton recalls the original Safari announcement at Macworld back in 2003. “There’s nothing that can fill your underwear faster than seeing your product fail during a Steve Jobs demo,” according to Melton.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I told my co-workers that I have now officially seen it all. On the show floor, a company is showing a toddler potty with a built-in stand for the iPad. Is there anything that hasn’t been turned into an iPad accessory? Apparently not.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – I always pack two cases when I’m about to embark on heavy travel with my iPhone: a battery case and my trusty Incipio Feather Ultralight case. I realize toting extra juice is a necessity I have to live with, but I haven’t yet found a serious battery case with dimensions I can live with — I simply hate the bulkiness. This means I’m often stuck balancing my need for my juice with my want for less bulk by constantly swapping cases, and frankly, it’s a pain in the ass.
Back in early December, Apple and Google joined forces to purchase a patent trove from Kodak, the once-reigning photography king. Kodak’s collection includes 1,100 imaging patents that can be used to diffuse litigation between big companies in the tech industry.
To keep bidding wars from escalating, Apple and Google teamed up for the purchase. After filing for bankruptcy, Kodak said that its patent trove was worth $2 billion, but the U.S. court approved a $527 million price tag instead.
What the companies involved with this deal plan to do with the acquired patents remains to be seen.
Source: Bloomberg
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – The Consumer Electronic Show is winding down. Friday is the last day. There are so many weird and wacky wonderful things, it’s worth another gallery.
Elvis — an icon of Las Vegas — is posing for pictures and representing the United States Post Office, posing next to his commemorative stamp. He has the snarl down.
Apple issued the first beta of iOS 6.1 to developers back at the beginning of November. Since then, the software has undergone four beta revisions. The latest version was seeded on December 17th.
A new rumor from German blog iFun claims that the final iOS 6.1 GM (the same version that’s released publicly for everyone) is in the final internal testing stages, and the software is about to be released to registered devs. Apparently the iOS 6.1 GM could ship as early as today or Monday.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Griffin’s Survivor+Catalyst might have a goofy name, but it’s the first ruggedized waterproof case I’ve seen which isn’t hugely oversized or just plain fugly. In fact, it might be slim and stylish enough for everyday use.
Here’s a neat idea that will make you wonder why you hadn’t thought of this already. I know that’s what I thought as soon as I saw it.
Even though we have stuff like Find my iPhone and Find my Mac available, what about that honest person who finds your iPad or iPhone on a bus or in a restaurant and wants to return it to you? If you haven’t engraved your contact information onto the iPad (and who does that, really?), and you’ve set a passcode to get past the lock screen, that kind individual will be out of luck in trying to find you to get your iPad or iPhone back to you.
What’s a helpful iOS device owner to do, then, to help a good samaritan return a lost item?
Rickshaw, maker of most of my favorite bags, is hawking this neat new sack on Kickstarter. It’s a version of the venerable Zero Messenger bag, with the addition of a glowing LED strip along the back.
When Microsoft launched the Surface with Windows RT, it was supposed to be the answer to all of their iPad problems. It runs on cellphone chips, yet still looks like regular Windows 8. It’s supposed to be awesome. But sales of Windows RT tablets haven’t been strong, and now Samsung is saying that they’re second guessing the platform.
In a recent interview at CES, Make Abary, Samsung’s senior vice president who oversees the company’s tablet business, said that Samsung has decided they won’t launch their Windows RT tablet in the U.S. after discovering there’s not much demand for them.
It’s pretty rare to find quality sounding earbuds that look as good as they sound. But you’ll find just that in our latest Cult of Mac Deals offer. That’s because you can get a pair of brown BodyGuardz Moxy earbuds with a mic by for just $35…but only for a limited time.
This is Canon’s Instagram camera. That’s right – this little point and shoot is designed to work with your smartphone, connecting via Wi-Fi and even pre-processing some of your pictures for you.
The Caliber Advantage is yet another iOS gaming pad, but this one has one major advantage: It comes from Zagg, well-known accessory maker and purveyor of some of the finest iPad keyboards known to mankind.
Reduce is a slick and polished universal app which puts your photos on a diet. It’s aimed at photographers, but will be great for anyone who needs to shrink a lot of images, and who doesn’t hate themselves. Why? Because Reduce is the first such app I’ve tried that doesn’t make me tear my hair out.
LAS VEGAS, CES 2013 – Now that the iPad is quickly replacing PCs in the workplace, your office is probably packed with tablets everywhere that need to be charged. Rather than letting you suffer through some half-baked homemade solution, iLuv introduced the MultiCharge-X at CES this year.
If you’ve been around on the internet for any length of time, you’ll have probably heard about a site called Xtranormal, which converts text you enter into a simple little video starring cute animal characters. (If you haven’t heard of it, go and have a play there now, it’s fun.)
Tellagami is a new free iOS app that does something similar. I say “similar”, but the two are not in the same league. Tellagami is very simple, and its features limited. That doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it, though.
Welcome to the most awkward booth at CES. There are battery packs for your iPhone and MacBooks. You can check out a new stylus. On display in the corner is an external iOS drive. They even got some new iPad cases on too. But don’t let those products distract you from the real show: the four naked women standing on display.
Scantly clad booth babes are a common sight at CES, but HyperShop has taken it to a whole new level by unabashedly displaying naked women at their booth. They claim it’s art, and maybe it is (what is “art” anyway?), but what the hell do these naked women have to do with battery packs?
Third-generation iPad owners became understandably upset last November when Apple announced a new sixth-generation iPad eight months after theirs went on sale. It was the first time the Cupertino company had launched an iPad within 12 months of its predecessor, but it looks like we’d better get used to it.
Rumors have this week suggested that Apple is now looking to update its iOS devices every six months, introducing two every year. And according to one analyst, that’s exactly what’s going to happen with the next-generation iPads.
pod2g, an iOS hacker famous for his many jailbreaks, most recently the Absinth 2.0 release for devices running iOS 5.1.1, has released today released his first iOS app. It’s called podDJ, and it turns your iPad into “the most realistic virtual turntable you have ever seen,” allowing you to mix and scratch any track in your iTunes library.