Author: TechDigest writer
Aliph introduce third gen Jawbone – Prime
Bluetooth doyens Aliph have launched the third generation of their Jawbone bluetooth headset.
The sleek and discreet Jawbone Prime features refined ‘NoiseAssassin’ technology and comes in a variety of natty ‘earcandy’ colours as well as more sedate business colours.
Its ‘NoiseAssassin’ technology, developed initially with the military, and then refined by Aliph’s own in-house team of bods, works by comparing an audio signal to the vibration coming from the Voice Activity Sensor which rest on the user’s cheek, and banishes everything else. Apparently giving the user five times better call clarity with nine decibels more sound suppression than Jawbone 2.
The new headset can pair with up to eight devices and its multipoint feature allows it to connect to two devices simultaneously. And if the Prime works with Skype, as the previous headsets did, fielding calls from your phone or VoIP service of choice will be no bother.
The Prime will give you up to four and a half hours of talk time with a full charge taking less than an hour.
But at £89 and with only limited defence against microphone technology’s arch nemesis, the pesky wind, you’re going to have to be pretty serious about your need for hands-free to invest in one of these.
The Jawbone is doubtless an impressive product but can it do what countless bluetooth headsets have tried and failed to do? Make the headset socially acceptable? Beyond the legions of mini-cab drivers and hooded nerdowells who have so warmly embraced the technology.
Well they’re trying. If you watch closely you’ll see the Jawbone worn in American prime-time series from 24 to Gossip Girl and Heroes. And maybe that’ll help. Maybe then we’ll feel it’s okay to don a Jawbone in polite company. Or maybe we’ll wear them in our bedrooms and pretend we’re super-villains. Either would be a step forward.
The Jawbone Prime will be available from Carphone Warehouse and Apple stores from 1 June and for pre-order at jawbone.comtarget=”_blank”, look out for a full review in the days to come.
Twitter Teacher faces invesigation after posting 38 tweets a day
A teacher, who tweeted while she taught, is to be investigated her employers after the Bute-based high school teacher posted up to 38 updates per day.
“Had S3 period 6 for the last 2 years…don’t know who least wants to do anything, them or me,” read one tweet.
“Have three Asperger’s boys in S1 class – never a dull moment! Always offer an interesting take on things,” read another. Argyll and Bute council have a policy of blocking all social networking sites in its schools.
It is thought that the unnamed teacher used her phone to send updates.
A council spokeswoman said: “Social networking sites are blocked in all schools as policy. This has always been the case and applies to all council staff and not just teaching staff.”
“The teacher in question is not facing disciplinary action, although the council is looking into the matter,” she added.
Even though the timing of posts appeared to coincide with school hours; “Depute came in while I was logging on.” Surely they’re at least going to confiscate her phone till the end of term!
Klang speakers beam tunes straight to you, just you…only you
No, they aren’t a pair of death-rays, it’d be cool if they were, I know where I’d be aiming them (Stroud). Designed by Adam Moller and dubbed Klang, they are in fact a pair of speakers. But with a difference – they beam music straight in your ears.
I know all speaker do that. What I mean is, just you. So you’re sat in a room and your housemates are watching Desperate Housewives, but you loathe it, so you sit with your laptop on-knee perusing Tech Digest and with these bad-boys aimed at you, you can listen to music without your housemates hearing a note.
I know what you’re thinking, the opportunity for some outrageous practical jokery with these would be far too tempting to ignore. Aiming them at passers-by in the street out of your bedroom window.
“This is God – give up your career – your fate is in musical theatre. Tell them…God sent you. Peace out.”
Apple rejects e-reader because sexual material in classic literature
Apple have rejected ‘Eucalyptus — classic books, to go’ an e-reader which allows users to download free public domain books from Project Gutenberg, from their App Store because classic literature contains sexual references.
Bewildered programmers received the following notification from Apple: “Thank you for submitting Eucalyptus — classic books, to go. to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Eucalyptus — classic books, to go. and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains inappropriate sexual content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:
‘Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users’.”
Call me a stuffy old traditionalist, but I remember (by remember I mean – have read about) a time when if something was thought to be obscene we had something called a trial. Like, I don’t know, the trial of Penguin Books for publishing Lady Chatterly’s Lover – in 1959. If they weren’t guilty then, how, HOW can things have regressed to such a degree that a mobile phone manufacturer is preventing people from reading whatever they flipping please on their phones.
Apple go find a mirror and take a long hard look at yourself in it. Have a think about your ‘reasonable judgement’. What are you becoming Apple?
Paid iPhone Apps: 10 awesome apps and 10 cr-apps
10 iPhone Apps you should buy
10. Air Mouse Pro, £3.98 – This awesome app lets you use your iPhone to control your computer from afar. Using either the pointer or track-pad mode you can control your Mac or PC’s pointer, and with the keyboard and dedicated media controls you can enter type and flick through your tunes.
This app is particularly handy if you, like me, hook up your Mac or PC to your TV to watch films. You can sit on your sofa and wafting your iPhone in the air summons up your film to the amazement of all those assembled. Even if “all those assembled” is just the cat – he’ll pretend he’s not impressed but he is.
9. LogMeIn £17.99 – This app easily justifies its frankly, pretty hefty, price tag by letting you use your home computer from anywhere in the world (with a decent 3G signal, so not like, Stroud). Download a free software whirligig from www.logmein.com to your home computer and you’re off.
Failing to see the potential of this? Okay. So you’re on your way to a meeting you realize you’ve left your spreadsheets on your home PC, and if you don’t have them Johnson’s going to do a poo, you’re already on your last warning after the incident with the sausage rolls and the Dutch rep at the Christmas party. Fear not, whip out your iPhone, launch LogMeIn, open your email, attach the files, send them to yourself, Bob’s your uncle – Fanny’s your Aunt, you escaped another day without revealing just how ridiculously incompetent you really are.
8. Atomic Clock £0.59 – Okay I realize the geek factor with this app is substantial. But seriously it’s like the MOST accurate clock ever. It uses a special internet protocol to fetch the ultimate mega-exact time from a dedicated Apple Time Server used to synchronize Mac OS X systems.
The on-screen display even mimics the famous Gorgy clocks used in Radio and TV stations – like the one John Humphreys looks at in the Today studio when he says, “It’s coming up to quarter to eight, so that means it time for thought of the day,” and everyone turns off.
Unfortunately you can’t sync the Atomic Clock with your phone’s clock – which is a bit crap.
7. Email ‘n Walk £0.59 – This app keeps you from looking like a numpty. We’ve all been there walking along when we get an email. No way! Rich snogged Lisa at Greg’s house last night even though Rob was there and he totally fancies her and Rich knows and he was really out of order and everything. Or something to that effect. Then, frantically emailing back, you walk into a lamp post.
Email ‘n walk lets you compose emails while using your iPhone’s camera to show you where you’re walking – niftypies! So you can avoid those uncaringly placed pieces street furniture without taking your eyes off your phone.
6. Safe £3.49 – Safe lets you secrete your most private and personal particulars on your iPhone, password protected using 256-bit AES encryption, certified by the NSA for government use and TOP SECRET information.
With pre-designed templates, you can store all your bank and personal details and even if you lose your phone nobody’s getting into it.
Maybe more useful is Safe’s ability to hide photos. You know, those photos. Of your other life? You can hide them, safe in knowledge that nobody snooping in your phone, will find out about your other life in that UB40 tribute band. Oh no, I’ve said it now. On the internet. To everyone. Sozzzz.
5. Intelliscreen £7.59 – For jailbroken bad-lads only I’m afraid. This app lets you view your email and SMS inboxes, weather, RSS feeds and calendar on your front-page without having to unlock your phone.
Need to know more about Jailbreaking? Check out our guide here.
6. Brothers In Arms £5.99 – Easily the best 3rd-person shooter on the iPhone. Brothers In Arms is a must for anyone looking to escape the crush and drudgery of the daily commute, to the altogether more relaxing world of the hellish blood-soaked WWII battlefield.
Sigh – thems were the days.
5. Simplify Music 2 £1.79 – Easily the lamest of the tile designs here, Simplify 2 will, doubtless, end up relegated to the third screen of your springboard. But you’ll probably use it more than your ipod, as it streams music from your home computer’s itunes. Buzz-zing.
With Simplify you no longer need to worry about filling the piddling 8gig of storage on your iphizzle.
4. Tioti TV+ £1.79 – Not only an insanely comprehensive TV guide but also a remote Sky+ controller and an iPlayer viewer! This well thought out app even lets you mark the shows you like and builds you your own ‘Personal Channel’ – compiling a TV schedule that you can see any time on ‘My Tv’.
3. Reader £1.79 – There are lots of RSS and ATOM viewers for the iPhone but certainly none with the feature this little baby packs. Import your feeds from Google reader, Netvibes or my Yahoo!
But the real beauty of this app is its sheer span of options for drilling down into your plethora of blogs and RSSs, browse by categories, date, news items, unread and names.
It won’t however, sync with your blog account, only imports – got that. Imports. Not syncs. So it can import, but it can’t…? Sync. Yes that’s right, well done, clever you.
2. Pocket Lawyer £2.99 – We’ve all been there – it’s 3.30am, you’re face-down on the pavement with an 18 stone copper on your back and you’re screaming, “get off me, I know my rights!” But you don’t. You’ve no clue what you’re rights are. You know the one about right to a fair trial, right to freedom of expression – but not the one about not being sat on by a massive prop-forward for no reason.
But with this cunning little app, reams of useful legislation are but a finger-tap away. Is some morose nerdowell refusing to serve you alcohol at 10 to 12 in your local BP garage; whip this beauty out and shove section 4 clause 11.2 of the Licensing Act 2003 in his stupid face. “Read it beehotch, that’s the law, now give me my Blossom Hill sucka.”
1. PDANet £1.99 – Tethering! Ahh the El Dorado of functionality. Some iPhoners will tell you it doesn’t exist, that it can’t be done. Don’t listen to them, they are the sheep, the drones, the proles, the shit-munchers. It does exist. For those basking in jailbroken liberty tethering is very much a reality.
PDANet lets you use your phone’s 3G or EDGE signal to access the internet on your PC or Mac. Does that sound ace? It is. When you’re in Stroud and you can’t get a WiFi signal for love nor money just tether up to your iPhone and away you go.
It does rinse your battery though, and if you haven’t got an unlimited data contract you might end up losing your home.
10 Paid CR-APPs (see what we’ve done there?)
10. GPS Compass £2.99 – A compass, that doesn’t work – not even remotely. Launch it and without a moment’s hesitation it says, “North – that way” and is almost always absolutely wrong. This app isn’t just useless, it’s dangerous, if you’re lost this thing will get you loster. I know it’s not a word – when I get angry my semantics suffer.
9. Time Crisis £5.99 – I wasn’t expecting much, it didn’t provide much. Tapping a screen to shoot people is just rubbish. It’s not their fault really, they’ve made good stab at it. It works well enough. It’s just that when you’re raining a hail of bullets at people with your thumbs you can’t really see what you’re shooting at. And no one wants to feel like that. Except for American soldiers. Who love it.
8. iBubble Level £0.59 – A spirit level in your phone – what could be better than that? I don’t know; an actual spirit level. The spirit level is a genius invention, this is most certainly not. It’s only really any good if you calibrate it to within an inch of it’s life, which is such a laborious process that by the time you’ve done it, you’ll be within an inch of your life, and that shelf will still be squint and you’ll realize I should have spent a pound on a real spirit level.
7. Fake Calls £0.59 – An application that ‘simulates fake calls’ to give you ‘the perfect excuse to get out of an annoying conversation’. Here is my tutorial on how to do exactly the same thing without having to buy this piece of crap. So, you’re in an annoying conversation with Ian, from accounts, he’s talking about talking his love of adult pop-up books (no not adult like that, adult like subject matter) “Yeah I’ve just got this new one, it’s the Maisons of the Dordogne.” At this point take your phone out of your pocket and say the words, “Sorry I need to take this.” Then leave the room, he’ll assume it was on silent. No need for Fake Calls just good old fashioned cunning. Next week – whistling to hide guilt.
6. iFart £0.59 – Farts are funny! Proper funny, ones that come out of your bum. Not ones that come out of your phone. You also don’t have to pay for the ones that come out of your bum – not a penny, especially not 59 of them.
5. Feng Shui Decision £0.59 – FSD might seem like its making decisions randomly, but it’s not, it’s analysing the Feng Shui of your current surroundings and then selecting the appropriate answer based on that information.
If you’re dumb enough to let ‘the Feng Shui of your current surroundings’ decide a course of action for you, download this, live by it, and see how it takes before your life goes tits-up.
Feng Shui – Feng Shite more like.
4. National Rail Enquiries £4.99 – No platform numbers, inaccurate information and an unjustifiable high price-tag, especially when iRail a free app did exactly the same thing but was then snatched out of the App Store.
Why would anyone pay 5 buff for an application that does something that you can do in Safari quicker, easier, with more accurate information and for free.
3. Glasgow Mini A-Z £5.99 – A whole series of the ‘Mini A-Z’s have popped up, giving you a detailed map of specific cities, at the touch of a screen. The only thing is, there’s already an app that does the exact same thing, does it better, for free and goes beyond the limits of just one city. It’s called Maps.
And if you do find yourself lost in Glasgow, a map will only be third on a list of things you need, a decent pair of running shoes and the will to live being the top two.
2. v.Drummer £1.19 – This piece of cr-app just can’t keep up with my blazing finger beats and with just one set of drum sounds for you hard earned £1.19, you’ll feel right disappointed once you launch this pointless sod.
1. Police Scanner £1.79 – A police scanner, supposedly, although this cynical old hack is more than a bit suspicious of the veracity of these supposed ‘police channels’ and find it even more hard to believe that Apple would let you download a Police Scanner of it’s App Store. Also no UK cops, just yanks cop, bloody moaning fascist yank cops, loads of them, all the time, just moaning, and being fascists and that.
Three Wolf Moon T-Shirt sales soar as Amazon reviews go viral
Humorous reviews of a wicked-cool T-shirt featuring 3 wolfs and a moon went viral this week sending sales soaring 2,300%.
“It’s got 3 wolves on it. Like, I’d be happy with a t-shirt with one wolf on it, but this one’s got three. Three wolves – and a moon, and it’s a full moon and stuff, so it kind of makes me feel like a werewolf when I’m wearing it – which is kind of my favourite way to feel,” said Carl Chesterson, in one of the 454 reviews on Amazon.
But Isabelle O’Carroll, editor of online fashion bible, Catwalk Queen, told us that actually, “Wolf print t-shirts have been the height of hipster cool for some time now, and then Martin Margiela had some airbrush hippy tees in his SS/08 collection (that’s spring summer 2008 for the non-fashion types)”
“Then Topshop followed suit with their take on the trend, so the wolf tee might be hitting headlines but as usual fashion got there first!”
And actually, Tech Digest wouldn’t mind a return to the days when a man could don a wolf, or He-man, or Fat Willys t-shirt without being castigated.
Michael McGloin, art director of the firm behind the tee said: “We’ll take ironic fashiom any day, we’re printing another 400,000 more t-shirts.
“It’s just a fantastic thing.” It is. It really is. Wolf t-shirts for all.
4Chan hit YouTube with Porn Prank
4chan are at the centre of another internet crapstorm after users of the site laid siege to YouTube, posting a plethora of lewd and pornographic videos.
Already infamous for attacks on white supremacist Radio DJ Hal Turner and responsible for the Rickrolling phenomena, 4channer posted videos tagged with the names of tweenie stars The Jonas Brothers and Hannah Montana.
The films start with innocent footage then meander into smut.
“We are aware of the slew of pornographic videos that were uploaded,” said a spokesman for Google.
“We are addressing them as we would any video that violates our community guidelines.”
“In addition any account we discover that has been specifically set up to attack YouTube will be disabled.” Yeah YouTube you tell them.
Microsoft to unveil Wii-style motion controller at E3?
Are Microsoft going to release a Wii remote rival at E3 this year? Recently released patent applications might suggest so.
The application, for a motion controller called Magic Wand, that interacts with a collection of sensors was filed in 2007.
But Microsoft, being the ruddy sods they are, are refusing to “comment on speculation”.
Creepily, the patent application also describes “biometric sensors” that would examine “fingerprint, hand geometry, hand vein pattern, palm pattern, and grip configuration” along with “facial thermogram, a facial feature, a retinal feature, or an iris feature”.
This might allow you to put your face in-game on-the-fly. It also might allow Microsoft to hijack your face and your biometrics and use them to implicate you in a series of grisly politcal murders. I’ve got your number Gates, you’ll have to get up earlier than that to get one over on me – TechDigest Writer.
Swedish audio-buffs JAYS announce v-JAYS on-ear headphones
Swedish audiophiles JAYS have been knocking out affordable high-performance headphones for a while now. Their amazing j-JAYS In-Ear Noise Cancelling headphones were a constant companion of mine for well over a year, until that fateful day. No, don’t. I don’t want to talk about it. I’ve moved on.
So I was excited to see that JAYS are to release an open, on-ear headphone next month. JAYS promise that the new v-JAYS, will “deliver finer bass without overwhelming the finer audio nuances that some other headphones often miss”. Which is nice.
JAYS new foldable 59g badboys will be available from the start of June for £59.99 – look out for a full review in the coming days.
BenQ launch their hand-sized LED GP1 projector
BenQ today launched their tiniest projector to date. The sultry GP1 is a lampless, PC-less portable projector with a USB port. It’s not as small as the Acer K10 Pico Projector and not as cheap as the Samsung SP400B, so what has little projector got to offer.
Well it can project an automatically keystone corrected image up to 80 inches, that’s a 6 ft 8 inch image! That’s bigger than Peter Crouch! Bigger than Michael Jordon! On your wall! In your house! Exclamation mark!
The GP1 does away with unwieldy video ports, opting instead for one consolidated breakout cable for your traditional composite and VGA cables. The GP1 also flexes a nigh-on pointless 2 watt speaker. But at just 12cm x 13cm x 5cm and weighing just 640g, who can argue if it’s a little hard to hear, its got plenty of audio outputs after all.
What the GP1 has over its competitors is its in-built media player which allows for playback of video found in a plugged in its USB. You can even play your PowerPoint presentations without having to hook the GP1 up to a computer. No bad.
But at a whopping £499, a full £150 more expensive than SP400B, the BenQ might struggle in an already busy market.
