CheckIn+ with AR for Foursquare and Facebook Places

Posted by on August 10, 2011 No comments

Let’s check in

(Source : http://www.youtube.com/user/NatShape)

iOS 5 Speech-To-Text Feature Revealed

Posted by on August 10, 2011 No comments

We had heard rumors that Siri’s artificial intelligence and assistance technology may be deeply integrated into iOS 5, before it was unveiled at WWDC 2011 Keynote.

Couple of weeks back, folks at 9 to 5 Mac had published a screenshot from an Apple iPhone test unit, which indicates that the feature will be called Assistant. They have published another screenshot from iOS 5 with a microphone in the standard keyboard.They explain how the feature will work:

As you can see, it is quite simple. Just click the microphone icon next to the space key and start talking. Once the key is clicked, a new microphone overlay will appear as long as you are talking. After that, the text will appear in the text field as you can see in the screenshot above.

Meanwhile, MacRumors points out that Apple has gone out of its way to hide the feature in iOS 5:

Apple’s certainly aware that individuals comb through every new developer beta looking for hints of upcoming features. In this instance, they’ve obfuscated the names of various pieces of the interface. For example, calling the microphone button “forward delete key” and the keyboard pretends to be a “Dvorak” keyboard. The move is a reflection of the increased scrutiny of Apple’s moves but also the relative significance of this feature that Apple has gone out of its way to hide. 

Back in June, we saw couple of screenshots, which revealed Settings for Nuance’s speech recognition technology built into what appeared to an internal iOS 5 build as these settings are not available in iOS 5 beta that was released to developers. The screenshot confirm that Apple is definitely working on integrating Nuance speech recognition technology in iOS. We hope that Apple introduces it at the iPhone 5 launch later this fall.

( Source :www.iphonehacks.com)

iCloud.com Beta Now Live With Mail, Contacts, Calendar, iWork Web Apps; Pricing Revealed

Posted by on August 4, 2011 No comments

There was a lot of speculation as to whether Apple would develop a web interface for its cloud services. All that speculation had been put to rest when Apple clarified that iCloud services would be available on the web and today, iCloud.com is finally live albeit in beta. It is primarily meant for developers to test iCloud features with their apps.

The web apps available through iCloud.com are Mail, Contacts, Calendar, Find My iPhone and iWork. As you would expect from Apple, the iCloud interface looks fantastic, right from the login screen to the web apps themselves. Apple has, at the same time, made no compromise in terms of speed and responsiveness of the web interface. In fact launching web apps like Contacts and Calendar (yes launching, because it is so familiar to the iOS Home Screen paradigm) take almost the same time as their native counterparts on iOS and OS X. The supported browsers are Chrome, Safari 4+, Firefox 4+, IE 8+, Opera and of course Mobile Safari.

iCloud.com borrows a lot of UI elements from iOS and OS X. Icons, alerts and the web apps themselves would look very familiar to iOS users making them feel at home while using the iCloud web interface. In the long run, this is what Apple wants to do, make their products feel the same throughout, be it on mobile devices, PCs or the web.

Since the service is currently in beta, it doesn’t offer a way to sign up for a free me.com account or use features like Photo Stream. According to MacRumors Apple has also cut off access to iCloud.com for non developers. So if you’re not a developer and can’t wait until the full fledged release of iCloud here is a video walkthrough of all that is available through the web interface currently.

Apple has also unveiled pricing plans for iCloud, which you can find below stacked up against other major players in this space.

iCloud Pricing versus others

As you can see Apple’s pricing is more expensive than Amazon’s Cloud Drive and is also limited to 55GB storage. But even heavy users would find it difficult to go past the 55GB mark since Apple doesn’t count purchased music, apps, iBooks, and Photo Stream towards the storage quota. Most users would in fact be content with the 5GB of free space Apple provides all its users.

( Source: www.iphonehacks.com)

Mac OS X Lion roars

Posted by on August 4, 2011 No comments

In the review of Mac OS, Schiller showed how file management will be easier in Mac OS X Lion owing to a few new features that help users save their work, track previous changes, and pick up where they left off after a shutdown. With Versions and new auto-saving features, Lion automatically creates a version each time users open it and every hour they work on it. Just like the interface in Time Machine, users will be able to cycle back through versions if they just want to retrieve a previously deleted item, for example. They can then cut and paste work from an earlier version of their document to the current version.

Mac OS X Lion's new Resume feature lets users get back to where they left off after a shutdown or restart, bringing them back to exactly where they were when they closed out. This means they won't need to reopen all their apps and set everything up after a restart--all will be ready right from where they left off. In the demo, Federighi showed off how quitting an app doesn't prompt you with a save dialog because Lion has not only auto-saved your work, but also will save all your settings and how each window was laid out in the app.

Next up was AirDrop. Schiller showed how using AirDrop will let you drag and drop documents to nearby users. Simply open the peer-to-peer Wi-Fi based network, drag the document to your chosen user, and the AirDrop automatically saves it to that users Downloads folder.

Apple's Mail program will receive a face-lift as well, using much the same layout found on the iPad's Mail app. Now with Mail 5, users will be able to quickly browse through messages on the left and get a full-screen preview of every e-mail on the right. The addition of a new Mailbox bar will let users quickly access the most-used mail folders, letting them get where they want to go quickly. Schiller demonstrated the improved searching in Mail 5, showing how the app automatically gives you contacts and content from actual e-mails through the drop-down so you can find what you want quickly.

Mail 5 also offers a new conversation view, much like an organization system found in the latest versions of Microsoft Outlook. With Conversation view, users will be able to group an entire thread of e-mails by conversation so they can quickly get to everything said about a subject. From there they can either save or delete entire conversations with only a couple of clicks. You can also drag-and-drop entire conversations to your favorites bar in Mail.

Schiller pointed out that they were only demonstrating the main features, but there was plenty more to look at. As expected, Lion will only be available in the Mac App Store and will be 4GB in size. It installs right in place, and when you purchase it, you can use it on all your authorized Macs. Mac OS X Lion will retail for $29.99.

(Source: http://news.cnet.com)

Windows Phone 7 browser aces the HTML5 drawing test

Posted by on August 3, 2011 No comments

Mangoes are apparently good for mobile web browsers – the Internet Explorer 9 that comes with the Mango update for Windows Phone 7 beat Mobile Safari and the Android Browser at a hardware-accelerated graphics rendering test, demonstrated at MIX11.

The test at hand is HTML5 Speed Reading – it uses a Canvas element to draw an animation. The Canvas element gives JavaScript a lot of flexibility when it comes to drawing and is often used in HTML5 games (ones that often claim to be as good as Flash but with no actual Flash required).

The test offers a framerate counter, which reveals a startling difference. The test was run simultaneously on an HTC Trophy, Google Nexus S and an iPhone 4 (actually, the iPhone had a head start).Here’s the video of the demo from Microsoft’s MIX11 conference:

The Windows Phone 7 browser goes at a breezy 20fps, the Android Browser manages 11fps or so, while Mobile Safari chugs along at just 2fps. Again, this test measures Canvas drawing performance, rather than general browsing speed, or JavaScript performance and such.

But still, it’s a very impressive demo that shows Microsoft has put a lot of work into the Mango update. There’s also quite a bit of other new functionality coming to Windows Phone 7 with the Mango update.

(Source: www.winrumors.com)

NASA Releases iPad App For Exploring Earth

Posted by on August 3, 2011 No comments

NASA has been all about exploring space, but now with their space shuttle program winding down and the imminent decommissioning of the International Space Station, it’s time to focus on exploring Earth. Well, at least that’s what the freshly launched NASA Visualization Explorer app will help you do on your iPad. The app packs in real-satellite data along with a plethora of informational stories, movies, and still images.

The app explores various topics such as climate change, Earth’s dynamic systems, as well as the plant life both on land and in oceans. Data captured by NASA satellites are visualized into variety of maps, charts, and diagrams. Also included are six editorial features about Earth science, which will be augmented with two editorials each week with topics possibly covering the sun and solar system as well.

NASA hopes to make the Earth science data that they’ve collected over the years of research more accessible by everyone, with the visualizations helping to make it also more easily understandable. They’ve already offered a NASA App HD that features thousands of images from their image bank along with an iPhone app with similar features. This new NASA Visualization Explorer app can be downloaded from the Apple App Store.

( Source :www.slashgear.com )

Apple – Introducing OS X Lion

Posted by on August 3, 2011 No comments

(Source: http://www.youtube.com/user/Apple)

Face Recognition May Be Coming To iOS 5

Posted by on August 3, 2011 No comments

It looks like Apple is planning to include face recognition capabilities in iOS 5.

9 to 5 Mac has discovered several face recognition APIs in iOS 5 beta 4 that was seeded to developers late last week.

 9 to 5 Mac reports:

We have taken a look at these iOS 5-exclusive APIs and they are highly sophisticated. The first, called CIFaceFeature, can determine through an image where a person’s mouth and eyes are located. The second API, CIDetector, is a resource within the operating system that processes images for face detection.

hasLeftEyePosition

hasRightEyePosition

hasMouthPosition

leftEyePosition

rightEyePosition

mouthPosition

This presumably would power face detection via live motion imagery. The significance of this finding is that Apple is making face detection an even easier feature for developers to implement.

9 to 5 Mac speculates that Apple will open up these APIs either to developers to make it easier to implement face recognition technology in their iOS apps or Apple could be working behind the scenes in developing a killer app using these face recognition APIs.

Apple had acquired Polar Rose, a Swedish face recognition company in 2010, and it is quite likely that their technology is being used for this feature in iOS.

You can checkout the demo video of an augmented reality app called Recognizr, which Polar Rose co-developed to get a glimpse of what to expect:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=tb0pMeg1UN0

Another example is RecognizeMe – a jailbreak app already brings biometric face recognition security to iPhone, which generated quite a bit of interest from our readers. Checkout the demo video of the app:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=u3dUCSvcffU#at=153

Apple iPad reminds us how brands succeed by transforming experiences

Posted by on August 2, 2011 No comments

To borrow a line from Scrooge, “I’m as giddy as a drunken man.” With today’s Apple iPad intro, it feels like Christmas. I was glued to Engadget’s live blogfeed of the announcement. Apple is leveraging its iPhone technology in a new tablet format, adding bells and whistles like unlocked, no contract, and cheap 3G data plans, a keyboard dock and the iBookstore. But once again, as we’ve seen in the past with Apple, the whole may be larger than the sum of the parts.

In the tech industry we pay homage to “innovation” as the ultimate springboard for leadership positioning and killer differentiation. Lots of companies make products, but only a few reinvent how we learn, communicate and experience. Remember trying to use a pre-iPod Mp3 player? Mine was a Diamond Rio; frustrated and ticked off are two reactions that come to mind.

Remember how you felt the first time you used an iPod? For me, it was the same feeling I get when I step foot in a new country. Wow, this is someplace different, and it’s cool, and a little scary but I’m happy to be here and I want to discover this new place.

The iPod wasn’t just innovative because of its simple design and intuitive ease of use. The kicker was the iTunes store – it gave us a whole new way to stay on top of music, broaden our horizons, consume and share at far less cost. The entire experience of finding and listening to music was transformed. I used to think it was de rigueur to be able to stay in touch via e-mail on my mobile phone. But now as an iPhone user, I can’t fathom how I was satisfied with a device that made surfing the web painful and offered little else.

The iPhone gives me a broader, more fulfilling experience. While typing is a little less speedy, I now have - in one device – painless Internet, much better viewing, a decent camera, games, nifty video, all the music I love, instant social networking connections, an e-book reader and access to over 140,000 apps. Nice trade-up.

The iPad isn’t perfect (bad name; doesn’t multi-task; no webcam; no widescreen; no GPS) but it may hold similar long-term promise.

If I was a newspaper or magazine publisher, I’d be more hopeful. This device has the potential to help reinvent the publishing industry like iTunes reinvented the music industry. As I watched today’s New York Times demo, it reminded me of the Harry Potter movies where animated video moves across “The Daily Prophet” student newspaper. The iPad features drop down context menus; re-sizing of pages with a pinch; and embedded video inside articles. If the content providers and app developers get onboard with this vision, it could be a reinvention of how we read and learn.

It remains to be seen whether the iPad will make it or die a Newtonian death. The lesson I walk away with is that consumer and B2B brands can endear themselves to their customers – and potentially win – if they focus on innovating customer experiences vs. merely announcing feature-rich products. The former is a benefit-laden differentiation that’s damn hard to disrupt.
(Source :www.beaupre.com/blog)

AT&T Preparing for September Launch of iPhone 5?

Posted by on July 28, 2011 No comments

When it comes to iPhone 5, Apple is in a great position. Many folks have already planned to pick the device up as soon as it hits the market. Even Apple partners expected the company to bring its next generation smartphone to the market in the summer. According to a new report, AT&T is now preparing for a mid-September launch of iPhone 5. BGR’s sources have indicated that AT&T has started to get the ball rolling by informing employees across the company to finalize their preparations.

Many now expect iPhone 5 to be introduced by the end of August. That could explain why Apple itself is bringing back former employees on a part-time basis in September. AT&T and Verizon certainly can’t wait for this device to hit the market:

We are probably what I would view as maybe a quarter behind what we had talked about in January. We expect that probably sometime in the fall, and I think you will see a significant jump there when we get to that point.

said Verizon Communication’s new CEO, Lowell McAdam. Verizon and AT&T should not have any issues selling a ton of iPhones as long as they do not tweak their plans yet again.

A recent survey by PriceGrabber indicates that 35% of consumers can’t wait to get their hands on iPhone 5 as soon as it hits the market. Most of these folks look for iPhone 5 to have a better battery life. A good number of those who were surveyed wanted reduced prices and 4G support in iPhone 5. This new phone is expected to have a larger screen and better cameras though.

( Source :www.iphoneness.com)