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Posts tagged with "iPhone"

Apple’s Antenna Fix? Hide It Behind The Apple Logo

According to Patently Apple, the antenna engineers at Cupertino might have figured out a better placement for 3G antennas in future iPhone and “telephonic” MacBooks: hidden behind the Apple logo.

As Patently Apple reports, while the whole Antennagate story was spreading like a virus on the Internet and general media, Apple was busy thinking about a new patent they call the “logo antenna”. Placed behind the famous logo that’s on the back of computers, iPhones and iPads, such location would allow to “gain a stronger signal without intervening metal or other conductive housing walls interfering”.

It is difficult to place antennas in small and lightweight mobile devices, and the solution detailed in this patent would imply a “conductive antenna cavity” with “vertical sidewalls and a planar rear surface or may have other suitable cavity shapes”. Technical details are provided in Patently Apple’s coverage of the patent.

To regular users, this means that Apple has been thinking about new ways to improve antenna placement in mobile devices, and they’ve been thinking about MacBooks with built-in 3G connection, too. Me? I just want a glowing Apple logo on my iPhone.

Concept: iPhone-connected Smart Finger For The Visually Impaired

iOS devices come with great accessibility support. It is fairly easy for developers to implement in their apps, and iOS is packed with accessibility functionalities out of the box. The Thimble is “a concept multimedia finger glove” designed by Erik Hedberg and Zack Bennet that has an optical scanner right above the finger tip which is capable of on-the-fly conversion of text to Braille messages.

We know the iPhone 4 can be controlled with Braillant-32 bluetooth Braille Displays, but this concept is different: the Thimble also acts as a location-aware device that can connect to the internet to pull news and other data and pass them along as Braille messages. From the video below, it also looks like there’s some kind of speech recognition technology in there.

The Thimble is just a concept for now, but I think it would make for a great product to further extend iOS’ accessibility features. [FSM via dvice]

iPhones and iPads Take Over The Italian Parliament

In spite of the major conflicts and debates going on right now in the Italian Parliament, it seems like every member agrees on one thing: getting an Apple device for Christmas. As noted by iSpazio, members and senators from PD, PDL (Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi’s party) and FLI are all getting iPads from Santa.

It is unknown whether the devices will be gifted as a “bonus” for personal use or will be deployed for work purposes in the Parliament. We read about the iPad being used by congressmen at the U.S. House of Representatives before, and at the White House, too. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Italian Parliament coming up with its own apps to check on daily appointements, logs and activities.

As iSpazio also notes, members of FLI will be able to choose from iPads and iPhones. Not bad!  Why not giving away some Macs as well at this point? I think members would enjoy an awesome app like Screens.

#MacStoriesDeals - HUGE Wednesday!

TODAY is the last day before iTunes Connect shutdown for the holiday, so we’re re-running a few things you may have missed -> Here’s some great deals for today on iOS & Mac apps that are on sale for a limited time, so get ‘em before they’re gone!

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Tap To Chat Is A Simple, Useful App for Facebook Chat

I don’t use Facebook much, but when I do it’s for one thing: chat. I don’t like Facebook Messages, I don’t want to get in touch with my friends on walls, I don’t get the new Groups functionality – thus, I use chat. It’s not exactly reliable and full-featured (hello? easily file and photo sharing?) but as all my friends are on Facebook (and addicted to it) it’s the best way to get ahold of them.

What about the iPhone? The official Facebook app does chat, among other things. Those “other things” is what I don’t need: I don’t need to jump to people’s profile while I’m chatting, I don’t need the grid interface, I just want to find my friends online and chat. A simple request.

Guess what, we have an app for that. It’s called Tap To Chat, it’s universal for iPhone and iPad and it’s available at $0.99 in the App Store. Tap To Chat is the simple Facebook chat app meant for those who just want chat to work without all the bells and whistles of Facebook. Simple factor aside, Tap To Chat (developed by the same creator of Buddies) has a few tricks up its sleeve that make it the best implementation of Facebook chat I’ve seen on iOS devices. Read more

iPhone To Play Nice With Ford Cars in 2011

If you have an iPhone and have a 2011 Ford Fiesta – or you’re considering a Ford car for your 2011 car fix – you’ll soon be able to control a couple of apps using your voice. As noted by Engadget, Ford has announced that it will extend of its Sync AppLink Platform to Apple’s smartphone sometime in 2011, allowing iPhone users to control music playing from Pandora vocally. Pandora Radio for iOS and Android is indeed one of the first apps to support Ford’s voice recognition technology in cars.

BlackBerry and Android phones are compatible with Ford’s Sync now, iPhone users will have to wait a little longer. I’ve always been interested in this kind of technologies that let users do stuff in the car without having to look at an additional display, but I do wonder how Ford’s solution will handle high music volume and voice control. I mean, I don’t want to scream to change songs.

Press release embedded below. Read more

FaceTime Santa Spotted At Apple Store

Ok, Apple has a thing for Santa Clause and FaceTime. They launched a new iPhone 4 commercial to promote FaceTime with a dad dressed up like Santa, and now they have put FaceTime Santas in the Apple Stores. They previously installed iPad Snow Globes to get people and customers ready for the Apple Christmas season; now it’s time for Santa to take the spot and FaceTime with his elves at the Apple Store.

Check out the video below. I usually don’t like mannequins, and that smiling Santa with an iPhone 4 kind of creeps me out.[via TiPB]

Camera+ 2.0 Is Live In The App Store

As announced by tap tap tap yesterday, here comes a new version of Camera +. Camera + 2.0 is a major update that contains a huge list of new features and interface improvements, such as a redesigned lightbox, faster start-up times, a timer shooting mode, lots of new modes and effects. From a first look at the app, it looks like one massive update – which is free for existing users.

I’m testing the app right now and I can already say the tap tap tap developers really did a great job in optimizing everything to make the app faster. The SLR screen has been removed to let Camera+ start up directly to the camera UI, just like Apple’s own Camera app. The various shooting modes are accessible from a popover menu next to the camera button, timer shooting mode will let you choose between different intervals before shooting a picture. It’s really nice. The lightbox animations are faster, each photo has its own details such as ISO and location, there are several new effects available under the in-app purchase “I love Analog” pack. You can adjust these effects with a slider, and preview them as demo.

Everything feels new and improved in Camera+ 2.0. From a first quick run, I’m seriously impressed by what tap tap tap has achieved with “just an iPhone app”. The interface design elements on screen sport some beautiful pixels, too. Most of all, Camera+ doesn’t “force you” to share anything, I see it more as a full-featured replacement of the default Camera app that allows me to edit and apply neat effects to my photos, or not. Camera+ 2.0 – but this was a strong selling point of the first version, too – lets you decide whether you want to shoot, edit and share, or just shoot better (thanks to its multiple modes) and forget about it. I like choices.

The app is available here. Expect a detailed review soon on MacStories. Full changelog and screenshots below. Read more

SB 2 Cloud Now Out in Cydia: Automatically Upload Screenshots to Cloud App

SB 2 Cloud is a new tweak now available in the Cydia Store at $1,49 which allows you to easily share any screenshot you take on the iPhone through Cloud App. Really, it’s the simplest Cloud App client for the iPhone ever: once activated, every time you’ll take a screenshot by pressing the home and power buttons simultaneously the file will be automatically uploaded to Cloud App in the background. Just like on the Mac with Cloud set to automatic mode. The iPhone will also paste the short URL to your system’s clipboard for easy sharing.

The app doesn’t come with an actual interface or shortcuts to quickly modify the behavior of the upload. You can only enable or disable automatic upload of every single screenshots for now, and hopefully more options will be added in future updates. SB 2 Cloud shows you an upload in progress with a cloud icon in the iPhone’s status bar, and will play a sound notification once it’s complete.

SB 2 Cloud is simple, but does uploads in the background really well. Recommended for Cloud App users.