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Washing Machine X9

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Automatic: Your Smart Driving Assistant on Your Smart Phone [Sponsor]

Automatic is a smart driving assistant that plugs into your car’s data port and lets you connect your smartphone (either iPhone or Android) with your car. By  talking to your car’s onboard computer and using your smartphone’s GPS and data plan to upgrade your car’s capabilities, Automatic will allow you to easily diagnose your engine light, never forget where you parked your car, and save hundreds of dollars on gas.

Automatic learns your driving habits and gives you suggestions through subtle audio cues to drive smarter and stop wasting gas. Thanks to a map view available on your phone, Automatic can display a trip timeline after every driving session, showing you how you’re doing with a Drive Score; the app can even track local gas prices and tell you how much you’re spending.

In case of engine problems, Automatic can decipher what the “check engine” light means and show you a description of the issue with a possible solution. And thanks to a feature called Crash Alert, Automatic can detect many types of serious crashes and automatically alert local authorities as well as your loved ones when you can’t.

Automatic is currently available in the US for iPhone and Android devices, with a 45-day return policy and free shipping in 2 business days. Automatic retails at $99.95 with no subscription fees.

MacStories readers can go to automatic.com/macstories to get 20% off and buy Automatic at just $80. For more information, check out Automatic’s website.

Our thanks to Automatic for sponsoring MacStories this week.

Apple Initiates a Limited iPhone 5 Battery Replacement Program

If you missed it late last week, Apple has implemented a limited battery replacement program for the iPhone 5. The program involves replacing the battery for certain iPhone 5 devices that have suddenly begun to experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently. The devices affected by the issue were sold between September 2012 and January 2013 and fall within a certain serial number range.

If you have been experiencing battery issues with your iPhone 5, you can check your device’s serial number on Apple’s website to see if it is eligible for the free battery replacement. The replacement program has already begun in the US and China, but will be available in other countries from this Friday, August 29th.

1Password App Extension for iOS 8→

AgileBits explains what the 1Password extension for iOS 8 will be capable of:

  1. Access their 1Password Logins to automatically fill your login page.
  2. Use the Strong Password Generator to create unique passwords during registration, and save the new Login within 1Password.
  3. Quickly fill 1Password Logins directly into web views.

If you’re a developer working on an iOS 8 app that includes user registrations and logins, I strongly recommend considering the upcoming 1Password extension. The integration with the OS and the main 1Password app is incredible, especially if you’re used to the limitations of iOS and the things you’re not supposed to have on an iPhone or iPad.

The fact that the extension will also offer a password generator is a solid incentive to implement it – you’ll give 1Password users a way to easily retrieve and create secure passwords within the context of your app. This is one of the most exciting changes coming with iOS 8 (and there will be many).

For a technical read, check out this post from AgileBits’ blog.

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Estimote Announces Stickers→

After introducing considerable improvements to their SDK last month, Estimote has announced Stickers – extensions for regular beacons to add context to everyday objects.

Estimote Stickers are complementary to Estimote Beacons. Whereas beacons add a layer of contextual intelligence to static locations such as stores, museums and airports, stickers extend that context to the objects within those venues. Stickers contain accelerometer and temperature sensors and an optimized ARM processor with flash memory and Bluetooth Smart controller, all inside a significantly smaller and thinner form factor. Stickers are truly designed to be placed on everyday objects. Simply attach a sticker to an item to turn it into a nearable - a smart, connected object that broadcasts data about its location, motion and temperature.

The video created by Estimote shows the potential of Stickers when applied, literally, to objects we interact with on a daily basis.

It’s hard not to be impressed by the pace of rollouts by Estimote and, generally speaking, the entirely new dimension that beacons are opening up for third-party developers and apps.

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PlayStation Network and the App Store→

Matt Birchler compares Sony’s PlayStation Network storefront to Apple’s App Store:

Everything you see when you load up the store has been hand-picked by someone. Of course, the PS4 store only has 147 items on the platform, so manually curating that content is easier than it would be for Apple with its 1+ million apps, but we’ll set that aside for today. Here’s what I have found when thinking about how I shop on the Playstation Network without any top lists to guid me.

As he argues towards the end, Apple does a lot of editorial curation on the App Store – and they are going to do more of it with iOS 8 – but the Top Charts don’t reflect those efforts and they remain a difficult place for developers to break into.

Sony has it easier than Apple: the App Store’s editorial team has to deal with thousands of apps released each day, frequent updates to existing apps, and a diversity of games and apps. The App Store is a much different market than the PSN or Nintendo’s eShop, and, as I’ve written before, it remains to be seen whether customers will care about more visibility to curated sections in iOS 8.

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Google Photo Sphere Comes to the iPhone

Google yesterday launched a free iPhone app for their Photo Sphere Camera tool. Photo Sphere originally launched in October 2012 as an Android 4.2 feature, allowing people to create their own panoramic views that can be uploaded to Google Maps. The new iPhone app is simply a port of that original Android functionality and allows you to take your own ‘Photo Spheres’ with an iPhone (4S and above). Unfortunately you can’t view other people’s Photo Spheres in the app - just ones that you have made and two samples.

It reminds me a lot of Microsoft’s Photosynth which has had an iPhone app for some time. Photosynth also has the advantage of letting you save a static panorama to your camera roll or even share an interactive Photosynth (where you can make it unlisted). By contrast, if you want to share a Google Photo Sphere, your only option is to publish it to Google Maps. On the plus side, Photo Sphere did seem to make slightly better quality panoramas in my testing.

Finally, it would be remiss of me to not link you to the Google Photo Sphere community and the Photosynth website, both have some incredible panoramas that are well worth taking a look at.

Mailbox Launches Public Beta for Mac→

Announced back in April, Mailbox for Mac is out today as a public beta for those who signed up to receive access. Ellis Hamburger has a preview for The Verge:

Mailbox still has plenty of work to do, even on the homefront. There are lots of bugs in the Mailbox for Mac beta, and there are still more email services to add like Exchange and Yahoo, which Underwood says his team is thinking about. But, much as Sparrow did before it, Mailbox is paving the way towards a future where email works faster, syncs instantly between all your devices, and just acts more like the other modern communication apps we use today.

From the preview, Mailbox for Mac already looks pretty great. The “snooze to device” feature sounds genius, and I like the fact that everything (including drafts) sync fast across devices.

Unfortunately, Mailbox is another app I can’t use on a daily basis. The app is still limited to iCloud and Gmail, whereas our email runs on IMAP and Exchange. It’s not clear whether Mailbox will support IMAP in the future, and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to Gmail.

Mailbox is also using a “betacoin” system to handle access to the beta: users who got an invitation today received three images of golden coins, which they can share with other users to let them use the beta.

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Nuzzel for iPhone Lets You Catch Up on News from Twitter

I’ve been using a free iPhone app called Nuzzel to catch up on interesting links and news shared on Twitter following a recommendation on Kottke and a tweet by Ben Thompson. I’m a fan of the underlying idea and the execution of filters in the app, but there are a few things that annoy me and that, I suppose, stem from this startup’s need to track clicks on links and “user behaviors” as much as possible.

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