Aereo is a startup company with a $12/month service that lets you stream live and recorded over-the-air TV using an iOS device or your web browser. You simply touch a show and live TV starts streaming on your device.
Unfortunately, Aereo is currently only available in New York, but the project is still an ambitious one. The technology behind the service is rather unique: Aereo has several large “antenna arrays” set up somewhere in Brooklyn, filled with thousands of tiny TV antennas. When users access their Aereo, account they are assigned their own individual mini-antenna.
A subscription allows you to tune in to live TV on any of the major networks in New York or schedule recordings just like on a regular DVR.
Everyone knows that the next generation iPad is coming, but will Apple skip past the iPad 3 and go straight for iPad 4G?
The Wall Street Journal has reported that the newest iPad will feature 4G LTE technology, which will enable it to the faster networks on Verizon and AT&T.
It’s still speculation at this point, but it seems rather likely that Apple will capitalize on its carrier’s 4G networks.
Sources say that Apple has scheduled an event in early March to unveil the newest iPad, and many are speculating that it will be available for purchase a week or so after the event.
The iPad has definitely been a game-changer in the home automation field, and it’ll be exciting to see what changes have been made in the newest iteration.
Two iPhones, one in Brazil and then another in Australia, have reportedly self-combusted in recent weeks.
The Australian incident happened on November 25 during a Regional Express flight from Lismore to Sydney. According to the airline’s official statement, one of the passengers’ phones “started emitting a significant amount of dense smoke, accompanied by a red glow”.
The case on Brazil involved a phone that was plugged in overnight and started shooting sparks.
We all knew it would happen eventually, but I certainly didn’t expected it to happen so soon: Siri has been used for home automation.
It’s a rather complicated process, and it was only used to turn on a fan, but it’s still pretty neat and I’m sure there’s more to come.
The programmer, Christoper Deutsch, gives a detailed account of the process on this blog.
Android users have long maintained that their phones offer many more options than the iPhone and now that list of options includes becoming an iPhone.
The new Espier launcher perfectly mimics the iOS home screen on your Android phone and even includes some gesture controls.
Of course, the real question is why you’d want an Android that acts like a iPhone, but at the very least the launcher can give you some (more) bragging rights over iPhone users.
The internet is filled with stories of cheating spouses done in by their social networking accounts, but Apple may have set a new record for the fastest breakup due to an app. Merely four days after its release, info from the new Find My Friends app is being claimed as evidence in divorce proceedings.
Find My Friends (FMF) is like a blend of Facebook and Google maps: you send someone a request through the app and, once they accept, you can see their location on a map. It sounds a little creepy to me, but Apple’s description makes it sound rather benign and even useful (assuming everyone you know also has an iPhone). Their examples include things like keeping track of traveling companions or making sure your kids got home from school. You could probably also enlist the app to track down a lost or stolen phone or, you know, just stalk someone…not that Apple would ever condone that.
Still, FMF will undoubtedly be used for amateur sleuthing and may have already been used to catch a cheating spouse. A man posting on the MacRumors’ forum claims that he secretly put FMF on his wife’s phone when he started to suspect that she was having an affair and used it to catch her in a lie.
“I got my wife a new 4S and loaded up Find My Friends without her knowing. She told me she was at her friend’s house in the East Village. I’ve had suspicions about her meeting this guy who lives uptown. Lo and behold, Find my Friends has her right there.”
There are a lot of problems with this story and many people doubt it’s even true, but it’s still an interesting look at the role technology plays in our life.
The true measure of a smartphone isn’t how great the camera is or how many apps it has—it’s how durable it is when dropped.
And it will be dropped. No matter how careful you are, it is the fate of every expensive gadget to be dropped (or worse) at least once in its lifetime.
Luckily there are people out there who get a kick out of “testing” to how much abuse certain gizmos can take before they bust. Here’s SquareTrade’s iPhone 4S vs Samsung Galaxy S II drop test.
This might be a little painful to watch for technophiles, but remember that it’s all done in the name of scientific experimentation.
Spoiler: The iphone doesn’t fare too well…but it’d almost be worth it if Siri was programmed to say “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Apple sold 4 million of their new iPhones in three days, smashing the already record sells of the iPhone 4.
It’s no surprise that people are excited about Siri, Apple’s AI assistant, voice-control has been on consumers’ home automation wish-list for a while. If Siri proves to be a success and not just a gimmick, we’ll no doubt end up seeing the technology used on a larger scale.
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