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MacintoshFrom: Ars Technica » Infinite Loop
How does the app fare compared to something you'd find natively on Android?
Evidence that Apple conspired to raise e-book prices is strong, judge says.
New motion suggests Samsung's version of Google Now is a Siri impostor.
From: MacNN | The Macintosh News Network
A little over a week since the last beta, Apple is seeding a new build of OS X 10.8.4 to developers. The release is listed as 12E55, and has no known issues. People are asked to concentrate testing on Safari, Wi-Fi, graphics, and Windows filesharing....
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Google-owned Motorola Mobility is appealing the US International Trade Commission's dismissal of a complaint filed against Apple, according to newly-published court documents discovered by FOSS Patents. A single patent was left in the complaint at the time of the final ruling, one involving using a proximity sensor to disable a touchscreen when a phone is held close to a person's ear. It's not clear what basis Motorola might be pursuing for the appeal....
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Radio service TuneIn has released a new version of its iOS app, v3.6. The update brings TuneIn Live to the iPhone, it having previously been restricted to the iPad. The Live screen shows album art and show titles that switch each time something new begins. Users can swipe through tiles to find new songs or shows that have started on any station hosted by TuneIn, and add events like concerts, games, or shows to a personal calendar, which triggers notifications whenever something starts....
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From: MacInTouch
Get discounts on new Mac Minis, Retina MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, plus digital cameras, TVs and much, much more at Amazon. *Plus*, while you're saving yourself money, you're simultaneously providing critical support to the MacInTouch website, at no cost to you, just by clicking through any of our links to make purchases!
"First they came..."; phone companies selling personal profiling information with location data; NSA snoop center
From: MacOSXHints.com
Siri's ability to access Wolfram Alpha lets you access a huge amount of interesting data by talking to an iOS device. One useful thing thing Siri can do for you is ask Wolfram Alpha to generate a very secure, random password.
To do this, invoke Siri, then say "Wolfram password," or "Wolfram Alpha password." This retrieves an 8-character random password, along with a list of a half-dozen others. You can also have Siri get longer passwords, if eight characters doesn't ring your bell. Say, "Wolfram 14-character password," for example.
The downside to this is that you can't copy this password, and once you've switched away from the Siri results, you can't get them back again. So you need to either type this password on a computer or other iOS device, or write it down. Either way, make sure you delete it, or store it in some sort of encrypted file.
Agile Tortoise's Drafts is a nifty tool for writing texts and doing things with them on an iOS device. I use it mostly for the more comfortable writing environment, and send texts as emails or tweets, but there's an entire sub-culture that's been hacking Drafts to do many things. (Check out the Drafts actions directory.)
David Sparks posted an interesting use of Drafts (credited to Milosz Bolechowski; I couldn't find the original on his site), together with noodlesoft's Hazel - a tool that automates tasks on your Mac - to put a Mac to sleep. In essence, Hazel looks for a file named "MB sleep" in a the Drafts folder in his Dropbox folder; when it finds that file, it puts the Mac to sleep wit ...
Flickr has announced that all users will now have 1 TB of storage for free. With that much space, surely it would be interesting to figure out how to use Flickr as a cloud drive.
Ricardo Tomasi has done just that with Filr, a command-line tool that turns Flickr into a storage repository. This solution isn't ideal, since it's only available for now from the command line, and has only been tested with certain types of files (images), and only on files of up to 15 MB. But it's worth highlighting, and I'm sure others will come up with better solutions very soon.
From:
From: CNET News
One of what's thought to be only six working Apple 1 computers -- hand-built by Steve Wozniak -- flies out of a German auction house for a tidy sum. The last one went for $640,000. [Read more]
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Move over Audioengine and Emotiva; the Adam Audio F5 is coming on strong. [Read more]
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Robert Sallin, producer of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan," shares his experience working on the film, looks at the future of "Trek," and dishes on whether that was Ricardo Montalban's real chest. [Read more]
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From: Wired Top Stories
From: Gizmodo
Hey guys. There was a new Xbox revealed this week. Oh you heard? We'll we've got some nice icing to put on that cake. And along with it we've got gems like the world's largest Lego model, the Subway worker who made a massive math innovation, how sunscreen actually works and much much more.
A completely unknown guy in the world of math has made a breakthrough discovery that will help us understand numbers better. Basically, a guy who once struggled to find a job and had to work at Subway, is helping math geniuses understand the twin prime conjecture, one of math's oldest problems.
It's been eight years and nine days since Microsoft showed the world the Xbox 360 on May 12th, 2005. Today, we see what's next. The Xbox One.
Your skin shouldn't look like a package of pork cracklins after spending the day outdoors; that's why we invented sunscreen. However, there's a right way and a wrong way to slather on your protection?screw it up and you could get burned.
The new Kinect is kind of awesome. Just by the numbers, it's a huge upgrade. You can see (most of) the full walkthrough we saw just a bit ago here at Microsoft's Redmond campus in the video above. Parts are jaw-dropping.
When I stepped off the plane in Mexico I got that sinking feeling. My iPhone wasn't going to work.
You saw the news yesterday. The Xbox One was everywhere, and everyone talked a lot about it. But when a new console hits, often we'll latch onto the biggest, shiniest new baubles. Now though, having slept on it, let's dig into the real nerd porn. It's worth a look.
This is truly unbelievable: Lego has built a 1:1 scale model of the X-Wing fighter using an astounding 5,335,200 bricks! It's as big as the real thing, capable of fitting the real Luke Skywalker?and Porkins.
Gamers seem to hate the Xbox One. If you wade into a comments section or ask a man-on-the-street at your local Mountain Dew distributer, you?ll hear a variety of reasons why the Xbox One is not for gamers?why it?s a horrible misstep, presumed dead on arrival. Some of these criticisms will ring a little truer than others, but none really tap into what?s really eating at the gaming elite. They?re mad that they?re not the center of attention.
With the release of iOS7 just around the corner, clamor over the changes Jony Ive will institute is growing. The general consensus?on this site and elsewhere?is that Apple is about to get a flat makeover. But for the uninitiated, ?flat design? can be a confusing term. So let's talk it out, shall we?
It's getting dangerous just to walk and text at the same time much less do so behind the wheel of a car. But with Siri being just slightly less helpful than HAL, how are you supposed to surf the web and simultaneously travel safely? All you have to do is ask.
Become a Dictator: With touchscreen displays quickly becoming the norm for mobile devices, you have little choice but to look at what you're typing since you can't feel your way across the keyboard. But rather than try to split your attention between driving and typing, have your phone write it for you.
Send yourself a reminder note by tapping the mic icon and prefacing the message with, "Note to self." Gmail will deliver both the audio message and a transcription of it to your inbox. You can dictate outgoing emails as well, though it requires a few steps.
First tap the mic icon and say "send email." Next identify the recipient by saying "To [the contact name]", then state the subject of the email using "Subject: [whatever the email is about]", and finally input the message itself with the "Message" command and speaking the punctuation marks. Altogether it would sound something like this, "Send email to tips@gizmodo.com, subject a hot tip, message have I got a tip for you exclamation point." And for SMS texts, you only have to say "send text to" followed by the recipient and the message.
Get Directions: Whether you have someone riding shotgun or not, there's no reason for you to pull double duty as both driver and navigator. Instead, offload direction duties to Google Maps' navigation feature. Tap the microphone icon on the Google Search bar and say "Navigate to [your destination]" for turn-by-turn dictation, "Directions to [your destination]" for written instructions, or "Map of [your location]" for a basic map of the area. Unfortunately, "Take me to [Funkytown]" is not a valid command.
Get a Forecast: Sudden downpours are murder on a convertible's interior. Don't risk getting drenched waiting for the next radio weather report, simply ask your phone "What is the chance of rain today in [your location]." Google Search will read the current weather conditions aloud. You can also query it for a five-day forecast of any locale worldwide.
Refuel: The fuel warning light has been on for way too long now and unless you want to push your ride the rest of the way, you'd better find a gas station?fast. Luckily, all you have to do is ask, "Where is the nearest gas station?" and Google Search will pop a list of options with directions to each. They may not be the cheapest available (oh but to have that search feature) but any gas is better than running on fumes.
Now that you've found fuel for your ride, it's time to do the same for yourself. Tap the mic icon and say, "nearby restaurants" for a list of local eateries. You can also specify by cuisine ("nearby diners") or chain ("where's the nearest Taco Bell?").
Discover: Can't quite remember what that catchy tune is that's playing over the gas station's PA system? If you don't have the Sound Search app handy, you can still access the function through the search bar. Tap the mic icon, ask "what's this song," and hold your phone up to a speaker.
Once it names that tune, Search will pop a purchase link as well. And it's not just Sound Search, you can also quickly access Goggles functions without opening the app itself by using verbal commands. Tell your phone to, "scan a barcode" to do just that. It works for both linear and QR codes.
While these commands are handy when you're behind the wheel, they're by no means a complete list. Check out more helpful verbal cues here.
The Apple 1 is a little piece of history, the first in a lineage that's taken the world by storm since its birth in 1976. And that piece of history is worth a lot. An anonymous collector just picked up a still functioning(!) one of the suckers at auction for a cool $671,400. And you thought gaming PCs were expensive.
The recent sale?which just closed today?beats out a record of $640,000 that was set in the same Cologne, Germany auction house just last year, and a record of $374,500 just a few months before that; these have got to be some of the few electronics that are going up in value as they age.
Not much is known about the purchaser except that he/she is "a wealthy entrepreneur from the Far East" according to the New York Times. I'll bet you wish you had that much cash to throw down on a seriously antiquated piece of hardware. And though it might be a bit of an increase over the machines initial $666.66 launch-price (some $2,700 in current-day dollars), it's priceless in its own way. But most of us would probably just be better off with an iPad. [The New York Times]
Update: According to the Associated Press the price was $668,000. Either way, a whole hell of a lot.
From: National Geographic News
Salt from the Afar region of Ethiopia, one of the Earth's hottest places, makes its way to market.
Travel writer Paul Theroux takes one more trip to Africa and writes about it in his new book, The Last Train to Zona Verde.
The emerging technology has printed out a life-saving implant for a baby?and is poised to make pizzas that are out of this world.
From: BBC News - Science & Environment
Cockroaches are outsmarting our efforts to kill them by evolving to avoid the taste of sugar traps, a study reveals.
Chinese scientists trace the rare white colouration in Bengal tigers to a single change in a gene that affects a host of animals, including humans.
The remains of King Richard III, discovered under a city car park, were buried in a "hastily dug, untidy grave", researchers reveal.
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