Viper SmartStart comes to your wrist. Photo: ViperViper SmartStart comes to your wrist. Photo: Viper
Remember that Ericsson phone that let James Bond control his BMW 750iL remotely in Tomorrow Never Dies? Now you can have your own… kind of.
Viper SmartStart is a smartwatch app for Android Wear and Apple Watch that puts car controls on your wrist, allowing you to locate, start, and control your vehicle before you even get in it.
Booq’s new Viper hardcases are tough, zip-up versions of the regular Viper sleeve, an already very protective case to carry your MacBook or iPad. The hardcase is sized to fit an iPad, an 11-inch MacBook Air or a 13-inch MacBook Air. MacBook Pro users can suck it – it’s not like you ever leave the house with your giant computers anyway.
Believe it or not, Christmas is almost here, and we’ll mark this midwinter festival by getting together with friends and family and continuing to drink and eat far too much.
Meanwhile, we also buy gifts for those same friends and family members, whether they want them or not. Luckily, we’re here to help, and if you follow our festive advice, your gifts just might make it into the “wanted” category.
From now until Christmas, Cult of Mac will be putting together holiday gift guys full of ideas for the special ones in your life, no matter what their interests or your budget. Today, we’re looking at gifts that cost less than $50. Yes, you can appear to be a big spender, but without actually spending that much.
OK. You spent $100 on your iPhone 4 (plus the invisible $1 trillion your contract will extract from you over the next 24 months). What do you do next? How about dropping $160 on an aluminum bumper case? Thanks to the fine folks at ElementCase, you can do just that with the Viper Pro Stealth 2.
Magnets are a big part of almost all Apple’s products these days — the MagSafe power adapter, the iPad Smart Cover, the closures for all its notebooks and even holding the screen on the iMac.
So why not use magnets in cases? That’s the thinking behind Booq’s shiny new Viper Sleeve for the MacBook Air.
Programming Siri to do weird and wonderful things that are yet to be sanctioned by Apple is quickly becoming a hacker’s favorite hobby. We’ve already seen how well the digital assistant can control your home’s thermostat, but this latest hack is even more impressive.
One developer has created used the same proxy featured in the thermostat hack to connect Siri with his Viper car alarm system. He can now tell his iPhone to lock his car, enable his alarm, pop his trunk, and even start his engine.