With an update to v4.0, the Mac AirPlay server AirServer has gotten the ability to mirror the display of your iPad on your big-screen Mac. This is pretty big, as you can now not only send video and music to your Mac as you could before, but you can make presentations and even play games, wirelessly.
Y’all know Instapaper, right? It’s the amazing read-later service from Marco Arment which lets you save anything your find on the web to read at your leisure on your iPhone, iPad or Kindle. Now a new, free, Mac App Store app called Read Later will let you read your articles on your Mac.
Square, the iOS credit-card company, wants to replace lame old cash registers with sleek iPads sporting its little square white credit card-reading dongle. The new Square Register app for iPad aims to do just that.
Today would have been Theodor Seuss Geisel’s 108th birthday. Of course we know him as Dr. Seuss, one of the most revered children’s book authors of all time. Many people and organizations will be celebrating his works today and even Hollywood is doing its part by bringing the classic Thorax (auto-correct fail) The Lorax to life in an amazing looking 3-D CGI film (in theaters today). While his books have entertained and educated children for generations, recent technology has breathed new life into his classics via digital interactive children’s books. Oceanhouse Media, a leader in DICBs, has also joined the celebration by discounting their Dr. Seuss apps on both Android and iOS.
No one likes to be throttled — just ask Shep Smith — so when AT&T started sending throttling warnings to “unlimited” customers they considered to be the “Top 5%” data hogs, outrage and confusion ensued. After multiple complaints and an online petition, AT&T was forced to clarify their throttling policy and what it means to be in the “Top 5%.”
In case you haven’t heard, Google made a few changes to their privacy policy that has some people up in arms. No matter who you are, or what OS you use, chances are you use a Google product, so this news is concerning. Now we say Google made changes but the reality of it is, Google didn’t really change much of anything. They haven’t changed what data they collect or any of your privacy settings. Everything remains the way it has always been, aside from the fact that they can now share your data across their own services. That means if you’ve been searching luxury cars on Google and head into Youtube, you’ll probably see video suggestions for Mercedes-Benz. To me, it’s more personalization rather than a cause for concern.
The latest ruling to come out of the ridiculous patent game comes in favor of Apple and awards them an injunction on Motorola Android products found to infringe on an Apple patent regarding scrolling behavior in the photo gallery application. What does this ruling actually mean for German users? Nothing really. Motorola will simply push an update to change the scrolling behavior and that will be the end of that. Will German Motorola users notice the change? Most likely not. So what was the point? The same point of everything that involves lawyers — money.
The GSMA has announced the winners of the 17th Annual Global Mobile Awards which took place yesterday at Mobile World Congress. The top mobile products and services were showcased and there was even some entertainment with comedian/songwriter Tim Minchine as the host. Categories ranged from Best Consumer Mobile Service to Best Mobile Innovation for Publishing and while we love hearing about innovative products, it’s really the hardware categories that had us talking.
Ever find yourself alone in your positive review of an app? Maybe you think the price of a mobile game is too high while others think it’s a steal. User satisfaction in the mobile ecosystem is quite a roller coaster of information and emotion. That’s why uTest, a software testing company, decided to crawl hundreds of thousands of apps and user reviews to see just how happy or unhappy users of the top two mobile operating systems were with their app experience. uTest has laid out this information in a nifty little infograph showing user satisfaction across Android and iOS with side-by-comparisons of the two. Check it out and tell us what you think.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Snapily is an app that lets you snap 3-D photographs with your iPad or iPhone, and then view them with 3-D specs. You can even order 3-D lenticular postcards from the app and have them sent to your home. It would be amazing: if it worked.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — What if you could swipe your credit card and then — moments later — have the transaction details appear on your phone. Better still, what if all of your payments could be organized in a beautiful app, an app which could actually make managing your money fun. This service now exists for your iPhone, and it’s called Boku.
Mobile customers have been waiting for what seems like forever for family shared data. One carrier that’s been slowly working on making it happen is Verizon. Not to long ago we saw leaked training material from Verizon that showed they were gearing up for some sort of family shared data plan. We now have a better idea of when to expect these changes as Verizon’s Communication CFO Fran Shammo spoke about them in an investors meeting yesterday.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Speck, the prolific and (very friendly) gadget case maker, had something very special on show at the Mobile World Congress Mobile Focus even last night: An iPad 3 case, which you see above, now liberated and comfortable in the Cult of Mac Barcelona HQ. But all is not as it seems. It turns out the case isn’t quite as mysterious as you might think.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — As ever, NTT DoCoMo has some weird new tech to show off at the Mobile World Congress. This year, it’s a cellphone battery that charges fully in just ten minutes. and if you’re really in a hurry, you can get enough juice to last a couple of hours in just a minute.
Mobile World Congress is undoubtebly one of the premiere places to see smartphones, but how about 3,500 smartphones fashioned to metal rods to create a 19-foot tall mythical winged horse? Well, that’s exactly what you’ll find guarding this year’s MWC thanks to Huawei and London’s Machine Shop.
The iPhone is ranked as the top smartphone in the United States, and with sales on the upward trend worldwide, one would think that there’s no stopping Apple’s magical handset. As it turns out, the iPhone has a “crutch” that’s key to its success: carrier subsidies.
It’s common practice for U.S. carriers to subsidize a phone to make it more affordable for the average consumer. The trick is that customers get locked into a two-year contract. While Apple profits and carriers take an initial hit off the subsidized model in countries like the U.S. and U.K., less expensive Android devices are dominating markets where consumers pay full price for their new phones.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — There’s a curious flipside to Microsoft’s iron-grip on the minimum specs for Windows 7 phones: They’re pretty much all alike. This is clearly to Microsoft’s advantage — who cares what brand is on the box as longs as it runs Windows? But it makes it hard to write much about new handsets unless they have great style (Nokia) or, say, a fancy camera. And so there is almost nothing to say about the ZTE Orbit.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Samsung seems to be obsessed with adding easy-to-break, easy-to-lose accessories to its “phones” and tablets. The two Notes come with tiny, disappearing styluses, and this monstrosity — the five-inch Wi-Fi-only Galaxy S — has an antenna. Yes, heft this slab in your palm and you’ll be whisked back to the early 1990s, when phones were the size of bricks, and you pulled the antenna out to make and receive calls.
BARCELONA, MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS 2012 — Samsung continues to chip away at the iPod Touch market with a newer, bigger version of its Wi-Fi-only Galaxy S Wi-Fi 4.2. It’s a Gingerbread device, running on a 1GHz processor, and — surprisingly — it has a 4.2-inch screen. Obviously Samsung saw lucrative a gap in the market between the 4-inch and 4.5-inch sizes.
Spectacular and a little spooky; Ban.jo, an iOS/Android app that launched last summer, is startling in what it’s able to give the user: the realtime whereabouts of any friends who have location services active for any of (now five) different social media platforms.
Hey, iPhone users with death wish: We have just the thing to tantalize your suicidal tendencies. It’s called the Xappr, and it’s an augmented reality gun for your beloved iPhone 4. Simply pre order the Xappr for $30, hop on the plane to any decent-sized U.S city and wait for the cops to see you and mow you down in a glorious rain of lead.
CineSquid Suction Mount from Cinetics on Vimeo.
Remember the Cineskates? They were a Kickstarter sensation, a bendy Gorillapod married to three roller skate wheels and useful for anything from smooth dolly shots to crazy bullet-time-like movies. Now Cinetics, the folks behind the Kickstarter project behind the Cineskates have come up with the Cinesquid, a tripod with suction cups for feet.
Along with iTunes (ten minutes to transfer a TV show to my iPad?), the iTunes Apps Store is possibly the worst experience one can have while using Apple products. You can never find anything good; all the listings are clogged with scam software and other crap; and it is slow, slow, slow. The good news is that Apple looks set to fix it, with the purchase of Chomp.
Oh man. €3,500 ($4,650) is a ridiculous amount to spend on an external digital-to-analog (DAC) for your iPad, but the Zodiac looks so sweet I’m still tempted. The top-of-the-line Zodiac Gold itself will only set you back €3,000 alone, but when purchased with the optional Voltikus power supply, you hit the bigger figure.
Cirago’s Aluminum Bluetooth Keyboard Case looks mighty familiar, huh? It’s almost as if the designers at Cirago took Zagg’s/Logitech’s iPad 2 keyboard case, filed of some corners and added a kickstand. Then again, as just about the only thing wrong with the Zagg is the non-adjustable stand, maybe that’s not such a bad idea.