This awesome response of Slovakian viola player, Lukas Kmit, to a ringing cell phone during his recital has been doing the rounds. If you’ve ever been interrupted by a noisy, inappropriate cell phone during a movie, performance or presentation, enjoy…
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Smartphone, Pamphlet, Nanoparticles
In nanotechnology, a particle is defined as a small object that behaves as a whole unit in terms of its transport and properties. Particles are further classified according to size: in terms of diameter, coarse particles cover a range between 10,000 and 2,500 nanometers. Fine particles are sized between 2,500 and 100 nanometers. Ultrafine particles, or nanoparticles are sized between 100 and 1 nanometers.
The Booklet unfolds like a pamphlet with each side representing a commonly used application or function. Manufacturers can cut it to any size and once it’s worn out, just recycle it. Don’t worry about private information because everything is served from a cloud. Power is supplied by the sun thanks to energy absorbing nanoparticles.
Check this out:
Designer: Ilshat Garipov
Voice controlled TVs are finally here, Apple didn’t win the race!
Has Vlingo beaten Siri to it?
By now most people have heard about Siri, Apple’s mobile voice assistant. With the technology that Siri brought to the table, Steve Jobs said that he’d “cracked” the code for TVs, in the sense that a TV (read: Apple TV) would soon be controlled by voice.
Well, that was looking great until Vlingo stepped in; Vlingo is a virtual assistant that turns your voice into words and applies to the mobile smart phone industry. Here are three videos to bring you up to speed:
So it’s quite obvious that Vlingo is somewhat like Siri, but the problem here, for Apple and Apple fans, is that it looks like Vlingo has beaten Apple to the button with the voice television! About a week ago Vlindo announced at CES 2012 that it’s virtual assistant for Smart TVs is available, here’s a video example of what they’re doing:
Then just two days later Vlingo was featured on CNET, take a watch:
Pretty damn awesome! I still believe that Apple will release this technology very soon and I have no doubt that their solution will be seamless and beautiful like all their other software!
Magnetic wood – minimalist natural iPad stand
Etsy always has gems and one of those gems was found this evening, an iPad stand using magnetic wood:
This wonderful piece was made by Anna from San Francisco and sells for just $27 (delivery to South Africa is $6.50 on top). All you do is place the two slim stands on either side of the iPad (any direction) and you’ll achieve a perfect balance – as simple as that.
Another bonus is that you can choose from maple, cherry or walnut wood, with cream, milk chocolate or charcoal felt lining :)
Grab it here.
Android Market sees 10 billion downloads!
The Android Market was released towards to end of 2008 and in just a few years it’s already seen 10 billion downloads – go on, do the math and calculate how many downloads that is per second! Quite remarkable!
In celebration of this, a number of fantastic applications are being sold at really low prices, and by low I mean like 10 cents each! This includes Asphalt 6 HD, Color & Draw for Kids, Endomondo Sports Tracker Pro, Fieldrunners HD, Paper Camera and a few others.
This celebration goes on for 10 days, so grab these apps before the end!
Samsung takes a poke at Apple
Haha, Samsung takes Apple on! Samsung’s Galaxy S II is obviously a competitor with Apple’s iPhone 4, so Samsung has decided to take a shot at Apple’s iPhone 4S, through the launch of the iPhone 4S. I’m still a big fan of Apple and doubt I’ll change any time soon, but you have to give Samsung some kudos’ for being this brave.
Take a watch:
The Red Bull Mobile applications
Last week I spoke about Red Bull Mobile and gave you all an idea of the new device I was given and a little insight into what the device, and service offering, is like. This week I want to focus in on a few of the applications that come with Red Bull Mobile as well as a little more about my experience.
On Saturday I headed through to the Cell C store at Canal Walk to RICA my simcard for my new Red Bull Mobile; The service was outstanding and I was in and out of the store in a few minutes.
So, my simcard’s activated, I’ve loaded up airtime and I’ve had a chance to click around a little to familiarize myself.
Red Bull provides its customers with access to some free and exclusive applications through the Red Bull Mobile mobisite portal. Here are some of the applications you’ll come across in the portal:
- Hot Spot Viewer – Your channel to some of the coolest restaurants, bars and events that stock Red Bull. The hot spots come with information, pictures and often videos to assist you with understanding the location.
- Community - Keen on social networking? Well, Red Bull’s Community is what you need, the application assists you in posting your content to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube – lots of networks, one location, Community.
- Radio - Red Bull’s Music Academy features thousands of performances, interviews and mixes. You can access RBMA via your device and enjoy all this fresh content.
- Flugtag - Play Red Bull’s ever popular Flugtag right on your mobile device!
- Red Bull Apps - Red Bull’s Apps assisting you with finding the applications that best suite your location, ensuring that you receive your applications in your native language.
- Mobile Coach - This one’s a good one, Red Bull’s Coach means that you have your own personal trainer right in the palm of your hand! Keep track of your exercising, see how many calories you’re burning and even publish your progress to their portal. Cool for the Sleek Geek Challenge!
- X-Fighters - We all love stunts don’t we? X-Fighters is a wicked Red Bull game that’ll keep you occupied for hours on end, it’s worth taking a look at.
- TV - Watching is better than reading, at least in my world, so knowing that there are sports games, surfing events, concerts and all sorts of things just a finger tap away on your device is comforting for those who want to lock into some sport and exciting events.
It’s a really great offering in a highly competitive market, so before you just push this aside, take the time to go into a Cell C store and have a look, this might be the right path for you to follow, Red Bull’s an exciting brand, they’re focused on offering what they feel we all want! You can access the Red Bull website by clicking here, or perhaps engage with them on their Facebook Page.
iPad 2 3G Internet with Vodacom South Africa
So I’ve finally go my grubby paws on an iPad 2 that has 3G support and I wanted to be able to use Internet, but how on earth do you go about getting all the Vodacom settings, sim cards and all of that? Well, it’s possible, but it’s a bit of a nightmare so I’m going to write up a tutorial to assist you in case you land in the same boat.
Firstly, here’s what you’ll need:
- R20 for a microsim
- A pen and paper
- Green ID Book
- Proof of residence
- Patience
If you follow these 7 steps you’ll be surfing the Internet on your iPad 2 in no time.
- Head on over to a Vodacom shop (I used the Vodacom Customer Care at Century City) and request a microsim. The microsim is the size of the simcard that fits in the iPad/iPad2. You’ll need to take proof of residence as well as your green ID book with you.
- The person at Vodacom will do a bunch of things on the computer and hand you the microsim in exchange for 20 Rand. Double check that the person has activated the APN settings.
- Wait about 30 minutes and insert your microsim into an iPhone, give it a couple minutes and dial 100 from the number pad. This will give you options, you want to select option 3, which will read out your new number – have a pen handy.
- Remove the microsim and insert it into your iPad
- Log into your online banking and transfer some data to your microsim using the number you wrote down in step 3.
- Turn your iPad on and navigate to Settings > Cellular Data > APN Settings and enter in “internet” into the APN field. You do not need to worry about the username and/or password.
- Open up Safari and browse to a website – sorted.
It took me about an hour and a half to get it all done, including the driving, so the idea here is that with this guide it’ll take you half time.
Please feel free to pop me comment below if you have a better way or need some assistance.
Rate Things Around You With Oink
From the creative mind of Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, comes Oink, a brand new iPhone app. The application is beautifully designed and is a pleasure to use. Oink also connects with Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare which allows for easy sharing with your friends.
Oink allows you to rate the things around you from within the app. You get to set your areas of expertise as you’re setting the app up, and as you add photos, reviews and ratings to different categories, you build your cred, which is how Oink has added a gamification layer to their app. It’s basically Foursquare, Twitter and Instagram rolled into one beautiful application. The focus, however, remains on things rather than places. In fact, the places just put the things you rate into context.
For example, if you’re a fan of a particular dish in a particular restaurant, the focus will be on the dish, which you can rate with a thumbs up, you can even love it or write a mini review about it. You can also add a photo to your rating. But there could also be something that you particularly dislike at said restaurants. This time, however, you can rate different things in the same place with a totally different rating.
Oink also lets you discover things in places around you, with distances varying from 1 mile to global. So if you’re out of town, and you’re looking for a good cup of coffee, you can search for coffee in a 5 mile region and all the reviews of coffee in the area will be presented to you, allowing you to make an informed decision.
I’ve started playing around with Oink and it’s aesthetically pleasing and a pleasure to use. It’s proved to be a little slow, but then again, I am using a 3GS with iOS 5. I think the app could be extremely handy if more people started using it. In the Johannesburg region, I think I’m one of maybe three people that are using it, but hopefully it catches on and spreads.
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