Photo of Andrew Lansley looking at apps from Department of Health Flickr feed; used with permission
Doctors in the UK might soon be able to prescribe apps as well as drugs, following a government study that asked the public to nominate their own favorite health-related apps.
Path recently sparked a huge controversy over user privacy violations in popular App Store apps, and the media firestorm that resulted has now promoted The California Attorney General to enforce new standards for informing users about app privacy policies.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, HP, Amazon and RIM will now be implementing new policies that developers must comply with when publishing apps online. All information that’s collected from the user will be outlined in the app’s privacy policy and made viewable in app stores before downloading.
Good news for Adele: Colombia Records has announced that the singer/songwriter has become the first artist to go double platinum on the iTunes Store. She recently sold a staggering 730,000 copies of her album within a week after winning 6 Grammys Awards The album has been purchased on iTunes 2 million times in under a year.
As the first artist to achieve such a digital milestone, Adele can confidently say that her album includes 16 million singles sold in the United States alone.
I’m excited to announce Cult of Mac’s shiny new audio podcast, The CultCast — made with absolutely 0% child labor!
Why should you listen to The CultCast, you ask? Simply put, it’s the best 30 minute conversation about Apple you’re going to hear all week. Join Leander Kahney, Buster Heine, and me, Erfon Elijah, as we banter about all the most popular Apple news, rumors, and products. Hear the stories behind the stories of our favorite Cult of Mac pieces, and get caught up on all the best things from the world of Apple in a fun, 30 minute chunk each week.
Our maiden CultCast episode will be released Thursday night, but you can subscribe right now on iTunes to make sure you never miss an episode. We’ll have a new CultCast for you every Thursday evening!
Users of Google’s Flight Search will now be able to receive the same great desktop features on their mobile devices. Flight Search is now available for both Android and iOS users who search for a flight via their mobile browser. Just search for a flight departing from the US and watch as Google provides you with a table that shows available flights, including duration and prices. Benefits of Google’s Flight Search include:
Amidst concerns about trademark battles in China, an unprecedented factory audit of Foxconn, and the question of potential stock dividends, Apple is scheduled to meet with AAPL shareholders tomorrow at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. All investors are encouraged to attend.
Securing business data on employee-owned devices like the iPhone and iPad is one of the biggest challenges for IT departments when it comes to operating bring your own device (BYOD) programs. The mobile device management (MDM) approach taken by most companies is an excellent starting point because it aims to make devices themselves more secure. Unfortunately, it also tends to impose limits on what workers can do with an iPhone or iPad that they bought and paid for out of their own pockets.
Another approach to the challenge is to carve out a specific niche of secure storage on each employee-owned devices. Good Technology has always offered this mechanism for securing business emails and related technologies like shared contacts and calendars. This week, Good took that concept and made it available to iOS developers in a product called Good Dynamics.
With a plethora of options available for any taste, it’s a better time to be a digital music fan than ever before. iTunes Match. Spotify. Rdio. Soundcloud. Grooveshark. There’s a streaming music service for every taste, a place for every song in the cloud no matter how obscure.
With all of these competing services floating around, though, finding music in your library isn’t as easy as it once was, though… mostly because you probably don’t have a central music library. Some of your favorite albums are on iTunes, while others might only be available on Spotify, or knocking around as demos on Soundcloud.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was an iTunes-like media manager to consolidate all of your music? An app you could use to just find that song on all of your services, no matter where it’s stored: just type it in and hit play?
There is. It’s called Tomahawk. And it’s awesome.
This is my favorite bag. I have many (too many) bags, but this is the best. I doesn’t have any fancy features. It has no padding, and there’s no way to lock it securely shut. But unless I have a special task requiring a special bag, it’s the one I always grab. I’m so used to it that every piece of junk I carry with me has its place inside.
And even after more than a year of solid use, it’s as good as new. The bag is the Zero Messenger from Rickshaw, and here’s why it’s so good:
GEVEY has announced the Ultra S unlock for the GSM iPhone 4S. Unlike an unlocked iPhone you have to buy at full price from your carrier, GEVEY’s $55 solution turns your iPhone 4S into a plug-and-play device for any GSM network around the world.
Jailbreakers have been able to unlock their iPhones with a software tool called UltraSn0w, but an unlock for the iPhone 4S has yet to be provided until now. The GEVEY Ultra S does not require a jailbreak, and it’s definitely the easiest way to get your iPhone unlocked for cheap.
PopClip brings cute iOS-style select-and-click text tools to your Mac. It’s great.
When you put off going to the gym, the results get put off as well. In some cases, they don’t even happen at all because of the delay. Bootcamps are no different — except you can see the results much faster because of how they are so jam-packed with activity. The more you put in, the better the results — but you will see results of varying degrees just by taking part in the bootcamp.
The same can be said for the Web Developer Bootcamp Bundle, which is one of our Cult of Mac Deals that ends…today. (You had to know that a deal on a course that is selling for 60% off had to end at some point, right?)
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Ever wonder how the sensor in your camera or iPhone works? Specifically, how does ISO, or sensor sensitivity, work? If so, go grab the beverage of your choice, get comfortable and spend ten minutes in the fine company of Dylan A Bennet, as he explains it all.
Like many Apple fans, I love the idea of the an iPod nano watch. I adore the fact that an idle comment from Steve Jobs about how the new nano is so small it can be worn as a watch got turned into a cottage industry of Kickstarters fashioning a multitude of hip new watchbands.
The only thing is I don’t want to wear the damn thing. I’m not a wristwatch kind of guy: I’m the sort of person who prefers pulling something out of his pocket, like my iPhone. So I wonder why it took someone so long to think of this incredible idea. Instead of a wristwatch, why not turn the iPod nano into a pocket watch?
Nike has extended its Nike+ range with two new shoes that cover basketball and training. Aptly named Nike+ Basketball and Nike+ Training, they’re the first shows to take the Nike+ technology beyond its traditional focus on running.
Mobile devices are now so common in the workplace that we’ve reached a tipping point where providing mobile options for many desktop apps has become a requirement for businesses. That’s the findings of a new survey from Symantec on mobile device use in business.
The survey, initially reported by InfoWorld, identified that not only are the numbers of mobile devices increasing, but also that the tasks they perform are increasing. A dramatic number of companies are now seeing core business tasks being completed on mobile devices. That’s driving the need for companies to develop comprehensive mobile apps for access to corporate information systems.
Wouldn’t it be great if there was some kind of iPhone accessory that let you toss your $650+ device around, abusing it by bouncing it off walls and floors? If you answered a sensible “no” to that question, then congratulations. You are a responsible adult with a sense of perspective. If you answered “yes,” then you might be interested in The O, a foam ball with — you guessed it — custom apps.
Get ready to save Springfield from a horrific nuclear explosion caused by none other than the bumbling Homer Simpson in what Electronics Arts expects to be one of the biggest freemium hits of the year. Expected to be released in the coming weeks on iOS (and then later on Android – D’oh!), The Simpsons: Tapped Out will be a free download for users but will follow the success of other freemium apps by offering optional in-app purchases. This virtual currency will of course come in the form of doughnuts and while not necessary to complete the game, will give impatient users a way to speed things up.
Here at Cult of Mac, we’re big fans of Clear, the elegant, zen-minimalist to-do app for the iPhone released by Impending and Realmac Software. That said, for all its attractiveness, it doesn’t actually push the bar very far technically… which, as it turns out, makes it a fairly trivial feat to recreate in HTML5!
Apple CEO Tim Cook has been invited to participate in a roundtable discussion at the National Comprehensive Cancer Network’s (NCCN) annual conference on clinical practice guidelines and quality cancer care. The topic of the discussion is Cancer and Corporate America: Business As Usual. At the moment it isn’t clear if Cook will attend (NCCN lists both speakers that have confirmed their attendance as well as those that have not).
The invitation raises some questions about why the organization chose to invite Cook. One obvious answer centers around the role that Cook played in managing Apple while Steve Jobs was fighting the pancreatic cancer that eventually led to his death last year. While that is certainly plausible, there could be other reasons behind NCCN’s invitation.
The Quad Lock case is a universal mount and case for the iPhone 4/S. Wait. Where are you going? This case is actually very cool. I promise, especially if you have a home, a car or a bike.
A few weekends ago, I had some friends over, and we all got drunk and played Beatles Rock Band for a fun couple of hours. It was great. There really is something for everyone in the Beatles’ music catalogue.
One particularly funny moment came as I was singing “I Am The Walrus.” John Lennon has always claimed that the song is a blistering parody of caterwauling crooner Bob Dylan’s nonsense lyrics, but a friend of mine made an utterly bizarre case that the song is, instead, a subversive anthem in support of polysexual sodomy… an interesting interpretation, to say the least.
The key to the interpretation, he argued, is the chorus line. “Ooompah oompah! Stick it in your jumper. Everyone has one,” my friend quoted, his eyes bulging meaningfully. I found the whole exchange so funny that I immediately made myself an iPhone ringtone of the appropriate section of the song.
On a tangentially related note, The Fab Four has just released their first ever batch of iTunes ringtones. “I Am The Walrus” isn’t there, making my ringtone unique and signaling a conspiracy, but there are a ton of good songs available. Full list below.
We’ve seen countless tributes to Steve Jobs since he passed away on October 5, but the latest is really incredible. It’s a Facebook timeline that documents Steve’s entire life since the day he was born, and it’s truly jaw-dropping. I can’t imagine the effort that must have gone into this.
Can there be any clearer way to say “Don’t breed with me” to a lady than to wear these dorky keyboard jeans? Named Beauty and the Geek, the QWERTY-toting pants come from Dutch design duo Erik de Nijs and Tim Smit, who look like pretty normal guys. The pants, however, seem designed less for wearing and more for tech bloggers to write jokes about.
As we all age, chances are our senses will age along with us. As someone with great vision most of my life, I was aghast a couple of months ago when I couldn’t read the writing on a watch battery, no matter how close or far I held it from my eyes. So sad!
Luckily for us, and for thousands of users with visual impairments, OS X has a plethora of ways to interact with the Mac, all built right into the operating system. In this tip, we’ll focus on the vision side of things.