Category: I-phone

Logitech has announced the Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac. It’s the company’s first solar-powered keyboard, for environmentally conscious Mac users. The K750 offers the standard Mac layout, with the addition of brightness and music controls, eject keys, and command keys. It also offers a full numeric keypad. Along the top of the K750 you can see the solar cells that keep the keyboard charged. They work off of both sunlight and indoor light. The keyboards come in five colors: all-silver, all-black, or silver with pink, green, or red solar strips at the top.

Overall, the K750 has a nice design and form factor. Not having to keep buying batteries is always a plus, and its 1/3 of an inch thinness is appreciated. However, the big drawback of the K750 is that it doesn’t connect via Bluetooth. Instead it uses a proprietary Logitech dongle known as the Logitech Unifying receiver that needs to stay plugged in to your Mac in order for the keyboard to stay connected. Also, while Logitech says the keyboard itself works with your Mac right out of the box without requiring software, the Unifying dongle does need software to be compatible.

I like my wireless accessories to use Bluetooth, but if the environmental aspects of the keyboard are more important to you than the connection technology it uses, the K750 is a fine choice for you. The Logitech Wireless Solar Keyboard K750 for Mac costs US$59.99 and ships later this month.

[via MacWorld]

Logitech solar-powered wireless Mac keyboard loves the sun, shuns Bluetooth originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Welcome back to another episode of TUAW TV Live, the only live streaming show on the Internet where you can try to figure out what the host is drinking, see what hat he’s wearing, and ponder the ageless question — is he wearing pants?

On today’s show, I’m planning on working the crowd in the chat room quite a bit, although I do have some app demos and a few third-party accessories to show off. I’ll also be taking some suggestions for things you’d like to see on some pre-recorded TUAW TV Not-So-Live episodes that will be coming up next month. Oh, and that “special” thing in the headline? Just trying to get your attention…

Below, you’ll find a Ustream livestream viewer and a chat tool. The chat tool allows you to participate by asking questions or making comments.

If you’re driving somewhere and would like to watch TUAW TV Live while you’re stuck in traffic, please don’t — keep your eyes on the road! However, if someone else is doing the driving, you can watch the show on your iPhone and join the chat by downloading the free Ustream App. It’s a universal app and is wonderful on an iPad, both for viewing and participating in the chat.

We’ll start at about 5 PM ET, so if you’re seeing a prerecorded show, be sure to refresh your browser until you see the live stream. For those of you who are not able to join us for the live edition, you’ll be able to view it later this evening on our TUAW Video YouTube channel and as part of the TUAW TV Live podcast viewable in iTunes or on any of your Apple devices.

TUAW TV Live: Special mid-August episode originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skype has just released Skype Wi-Fi, a free iOS app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch that allows users to access more than one million paid Wi-Fi hotspots around the world, and pay for them via Skype Access.

Here’s how it works: Let’s say you’re in Budapest, Hungary and you’ve got your AT&T iPhone 4 with you. You’ve got data roaming turned off because you don’t want to get a huge bill, but you’re at an airport that offers a Wi-Fi hotspot. However, the Wi-Fi hotspot costs money. Maybe you don’t want to enter your credit card info in on the spot for security reasons, or maybe the instructions for how to pay are in a language you don’t speak, or maybe the hotspot forces you to buy a day’s access for $30. You can bypass all of that with Skype Access.

Simply launch Skype Wi-Fi and you’ll see a list of paid Wi-Fi hotspots around you, along with their per minute price. Select the one you want to use and tap “Go Online.” You’ve then got Wi-Fi Internet; it’s that simple. Once connected, close the Skype Wi-Fi app and you’ll be able to access the Internet however you want: through Safari, Mail, or various third-party apps. Best of all, you are charged only per minute the length of time connected, it doesn’t matter how much data you use. Also, don’t worry if you forget to disconnect. You’re automatically logged off every 30 minutes unless you choose to stay connected and you can go offline at any time (even after only a minute).

Skype Wi-Fi seems like it might be a great way for international travelers to save a ton of money while accessing the Internet abroad. If you just need to log on to check your email for two minutes, it would only cost you about US$0.12 to do so, versus paying the standard $5-12 fee for connecting to a Wi-Fi hotspot for a fixed amount of time at an airport, for example.

Skype Wi-Fi is not a universal app (meaning it isn’t designed for the iPad) but it does run on the iPad in addition to the iPhone and iPod touch and is available today as a free download. We’ll have to test it out going forward and see if it’s as terrific a solution as it seems.

Skype Wi-Fi iOS app lets you access the Internet on a per-minute basis originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 16:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dear Aunt TUAW,

There’s a tiny spider running around just behind the glass of my iMac. Hopefully it won’t be cause for a service call!

[The photo is attached at the end of this post.]

Your loving nephew,

David R.

Dear David,

Obviously your Mac isn’t running the Robot Exclusion Standard that keeps spiders off of it.

That’s a little Auntie geek humor.

All in all, it’s probably harmless if a little unsightly. It probably got in through one of the ports or the speaker grill. Give it a few days and it will either find its way out or fall to the bottom, where it will go peacefully to eternal sleep and decompose to dust.

Auntie consulted with Josh Carr of Denver-based MacWorks, who demurred. “If someone brought this in to me, first thing I’d do is disassemble the iMac to take a look around to see if the spider had made itself at home and laid eggs. If the nest is on the board, it could potentially short out.”

He mentions that the iMac glass can be removed with a couple of suction cups, but that’s something that freaks out Auntie’s sensibilities. She’d more likely than not break the glass while trying to lay it down on the ground. Your mileage will vary.

In any case, you may want to get it looked at by an Apple Authorized Service Provider but things are probably going to be just fine without.

Hugs and kissies,

Auntie T.

Dear Aunt TUAW: There’s a spider in my iMac originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s the TUAW Daily Update, your source for Apple news in a convenient audio format. You’ll get all the top stories of the day in three to five minutes, which is perfect for a quick review of what’s happening in the Apple world.

You can listen to today’s Apple stories by clicking the inline player (requires Flash) or the non-Flash link below. To subscribe to the podcast for listening through iTunes, click here.

Daily Update for August 17, 2011 originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Many of us spend hours seated before our computers, and that’s not a good thing. A study conducted by the American Cancer Society linked extended periods of sitting with an increased risk of death. That’s a nasty side-effect, my friends. BreakTime (regularly US$4.99, currently on sale for $2.99) by excited pixel prompts you to get up and move at regular intervals. Plus, it’s unobtrusive and easy to use. Here’s my look at BreakTime.

This simple utility lives in your Dock or Finder menu bar (you choose) and ticks away your designated work period. When the session ends, it begins counting down your custom break period and then immediately begins the next work session. Here’s how to set it up.

Set it up

The preference pane is quite simple (above). First, use the sliders to determine the length of work and break sessions. Work sessions can range from 60 seconds to 2 hours while breaks can run from 5 seconds to ten minutes. You can tweak these settings a bit. For example, enter “93” seconds into the work field or “18” minutes for a break. Just don’t go nuts (my request for a 360 minute break was accepted).

The Enforce Break feature is nice. It prevents you from switching out of BreakTime while a break session is active. No quick peeks at Twitter or Facebook. This is a break time, so back away from the Mac and go look out a window. Remember outside?

There are four advanced features: show Dock icon, show menu item, play sounds and magic reschedule. Most of those are self-explanatory, but let me explain magic reschedule. If a work session expires and BreakTime does not detect any activity, it re-schedules the break time. In other words, it assumes you’re already away from your desk doing something else. Pretty nice, though not flawless: you could be zoning out with your iPhone, iPad or who knows what.

Use

I’ve disabled the Dock icon (a restart is required) so that only the teeny, tiny menu bar icon remains. As soon as it launches, the work session countdown begins. You can click the menu bar icon at any time to see how much time is remaining, turn the timer on or off and access the app’s preferences (see below).

Once your work session is down to 10 seconds remaining, the countdown window appears. As it ends, your display’s brightness dims and BreakTime’s break window appears, counting down the break time (see below). If you’ve elected to enforce breaks, the “Done” button on the right will be disabled. If not, it’s ready to receive your break-denying click.

If you happen to be right in the middle of something that absolutely, positively cannot be abandoned (like the the last golden egg in Angry Birds), click the In A Minute button to delay the break period by one, five or 15 minutes. Note that the In A Minute button remains available even if you’ve elected to enforce breaks.

BreakTime and Pomodoro

Some of you know that I’m a huge fan of the Pomodoro Technique. In a nutshell, it teaches you to alternate work/break periods all day long. For example, you’ll work for 25 minutes and then break for five. Repeat the process, taking a longer break (15 minutes) every five “pomodoros” (which is Italian for tomato). Pomodoro practitioners can easily use BreakTime as a Mac-based timer.

Years ago, computers were primarily work machines. Today they’re increasingly used for leisure activities, commandeering even more of our time. If I monitor my own behavior, I notice that I sit at my desk from 7:00 AM to about 3:00 PM daily, then take a four- or five-hour break and return around 8:00 PM for several more hours of sitting. This sedentary lifestyle isn’t doing me any favors.

Not only does work require me to park it, force of habit influences my behavior, too. “I”ll just check email,” I think, or “Let’s take a quick look at Twitter.”

I fully expect to live a slothful existence aboard the Axiom within a few years.

Fortunately, BreakTime is here to intervene. It’s a steal at 4.99 and a “no-brainer” as the kids say at three bucks. Do yourself a favor and let BreakTime nag you into motion.

Daily Mac App: BreakTime originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Andy Miller, Mobile Advertising VP and Former Quattro Wireless CEO, is reportedly leaving Apple to join Highland Capital. Highland Capital is a Boston venture capital firm that previously funded ad company Quattro Wireless. Quattro was scooped up by Apple in an early 2010 acquisition. The ad platform was eventually shuttered when Apple decided to focus its efforts on iAd.

The departure reflects poorly on iAd which has been slumping. After a launch filled with enthusiasm, the mobile advertising platform has not lived up to performance expectations. To improve adoption, Apple has sliced the price on its iAd campaign by as much as 70%. Apple was initially charging clients US$1 million but those prices may have dropped to as little as $300,000. Even at that reduced price, Apple still has to compete with less expensive alternatives like AdMob and Millennial Media.

Apple’s mobile ad head Andy Miller leaves for Highland Capital originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 14:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Santa Monica (California) Planning Commission is considering a proposal tomorrow for what appears to be a new, giant Apple Store for the L.A. area. While the building permit application delivered to the commission and architectural renderings don’t specifically mention Apple as a tenant, the design of the proposed building is a dead giveaway that the company is planning to replace the existing Third Street Promenade store with this new location.

ifoAppleStore reports that the new facility would encompass almost 12,500 square feet of space, covered with a 34 foot tall arched glass roof. The existing Third Street Promenade store opened in July 2003 about two blocks away from the new location, and has been one of the Apple Store’s busiest locations. It helps that the average household income within five miles of the store is $106,012, almost double the average for other Apple Stores.

The architecture of the proposed store is very similar to the Upper West Side store in NYC that opened in 2009, although that store has an angled front due to the shape of the property on which it is located. We’ll keep you updated on the status of the proposed store after the meeting tomorrow.

Plans reveal huge LA Apple Store expansion originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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After having a few weeks of guest appearances on TUAW TV Live, it’s back to flying solo for a week. What does that mean? Oh, an hour of fun conversation in the chat room, some app demos, and perhaps even the chance to show off some new accessories for Apple products. Perhaps we’ll know by show time why the Apple Store was down all morning, and yesterday’s OS X Lion 10.7.1 update — and what it did and didn’t fix — should be good for discussion as well.

As usual, I’ll be starting the show at 5 PM EDT (2 PM PDT / 10 PM BST) sharp, and we’ll take a few minutes to chat before the demos start. To join in on the chat and watch the live streaming video, drop by TUAW about five minutes before the start time to get your instructions on how to participate. If you’re unable to join us for the show, remember that you can always subscribe to the video podcast and watch the show at your leisure in iTunes or any other favorite podcatching app. The past shows are also available on the TUAW YouTube channel.

TUAW TV Live at 5 PM: Flying solo originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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About 27,000 South Koreans are suing Apple over privacy violations related to Locationgate, the location-tracking scandal that hit Apple earlier this year. Apple revealed that a software bug was collecting location information from cell phone towers and Wi-Fi hotspots and storing it on the phone without user authorization. This data was also transferred to the computer when a user synced their handset via iTunes. Acknowledged by Apple as glitch, this data collection was fixed in a subsequent update to iOS 4.

Unfortunately for Apple, this location-tracking violates South Korean law. Apple paid three million won to the Korea Communications Commission and was successfully sued by lawyer Kim Hyeong-seok. Kim was awarded one million won ($930) by the courts. Now that he has one victory under his belt, Kim is ready to try again. This time with 27,000 people. If successful, Kim could net his clients about 27.6 billion won (about US$25.7 million as of this writing) total.

27 thousand South Koreans sue Apple over privacy concerns originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In past earnings conference calls, Apple has emphasized the important role of Asia in its future growth. And it’s not just iPhones that are flying off the shelves. Mac shipments are also booming in the Asia-Pacific region. According to Needham analyst Charlie Wolf, Mac shipments rose 67.6% in the region and this explosive growth drove worldwide shipments to a staggering 55.2% year-over-year increase. Mac sales have been on the rise over the last six quarters, a trend that is only increasing and not slowing down.

Apple products are popular in Asia and its middle class, with discretionary income, is growing. If you need more proof, just look at all the fake Apple stores that are cropping up across China. They are trying to capitalize on Apple’s success, too

Mac sales are booming in Asia originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As tweeted by TUAW earlier this morning, the online Apple Store was down for hours and finally came back up a few minutes ago. Although we’d love to be able to announce a new Mac Pro, the iPhone 5, and an iPad 3, it appears that nothing has changed in the store, and the outage might have been due to a larger problem with the Interwebs.

Apple was not the only company getting hit with large issues today. VoIP carrier Ooma is reporting a nationwide outage although some California customers are reporting that things are beginning to get back to normal. John Gruber’s Daring Fireball blog was down part of the morning, and readers and bloggers have been reporting that Twitter was visited by the Fail Whale, Facebook was temporarily faceless, and various ISPs are having issues.

We haven’t heard what exactly is causing these issues and if they’re related, but it seems odd that so many services would be experiencing issues at the same time. Keep an eye on TUAW and we’ll update this post when we find out if what or who is causing the problems.

Apple Store outage related to larger ‘net issues? originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Tweetbot, the powerful US$2.99 Twitter app from Tapbots, has been updated to version 1.5. The new version has added a number of features that are sure to please current users and entice other Twitter fans to give the app a try.

Tapbots has moved Tweetbot to Twitter’s native URL shortening service t.co, taking any URL over 19 characters in length and crunching it down — but keeping the real URL in your timeline so you can actually know where you’re going.

One notable addition to Tweetbot 1.5 is mute filters. Tired of listening to someone tweeting without thinking? Although I’m sure that never happens, you can tap on a person’s avatar or hashtag and select the “Mute” option. Choose a time duration from one day to forever, and you no longer have to listen to that person’s blathering. What’s great about this is that if the muted person ever mentions or DMs you on Twitter, you still get the message.

Tweetbot 1.5 also has support for international hashtags now, as well as the ability to email single direct messages. It’s a free update, and if you’re not already a Tweetbot user, the new features are a good reason to switch from your current Twitter client.

Tweetbot 1.5 offers mute filters, direct message emails, more originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fox Mobile Entertainment updated its Star Wars Blu-Ray Early Access App to include support for the iPhone. Now all you smartphone owners can enjoy the same experience as your iPad-owning brethren. The app is a teaser meant to tide you over until the Blu-Ray discs land next month. It includes trailers, background information and some bonus content to whet your appetite until you can pop in the discs and watch Star Wars to your heart’s content.

[Via Engadget]

Star Wars Blu-ray pre-release app ready for iPhone originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Musician and artist David Byrne has contributed a few pieces to a social media-related art exhibit at the Pace Gallery in New York, and his entries all consist of authentic-looking App Store listings .. for fake iPhone apps. Childster, for example, will run you $1.99, and “turns your phone into a babysitter,” so you don’t have to worry about the kids yourself. Invisible Me, on the other hand, will send automatic replies to any communication, leaving you free to be by yourself all the time.

Interesting. The gallery is opening up next month, and will feature other works taking a look at social media (and apparently other Internet periphery) through “an aesthetic and conceptual lens.” If you’re in New York, the gallery will be open until sometime in October.

David Byrne creates fake iPhone apps originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Wed, 17 Aug 2011 09:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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