Straight into the New Year and here we go with some free stuff –
Apple – has 2 short Toy Story Toons films – Small Fry and Hawaiian Vacation
Amazon – is offering a free game, New Years Mahjong
Google – has a Coldplay extravaganza. Lots of free stuff.
A press shot has surfaced showing the new super deluxe flagship from Sony. The Xperia Z.
Is it me , or doesn’t this look like any other 5 inch smartphone with blow out specification. Lets see if Sony has a killer feature or service when CES starts on Monday.
Samsung has just released a CES teaser that it is about to revolutionise TV’s as we know them. Below is the photo added to the teaser release.
From what I can fathom the TV looks translucent and is portrait in design. My other thoughts are that Samsung is trying to beat Apple to re-inventing and innovation TV’s as we know them.
CES is looking like its going to be superb in 2013.
It’s nearly the end of 2012. 2013 will be with us very shortly dependant on where in the world you are.
I’m just taking this moment to wish you all a healthy and happy 2013.
There will be plenty of tech news in 2013, so until next year, have a good evening.
A new round of photos have emerged of the new handsets from Blackberry featuring the long awaited and overdue BB10.
First up is the Z10. This is an iPhone like touch phone. It doesn’t look IMO anything special or different, but maybe BB10 is fantastic.
Next up is the X10, which features the traditional thumb keyboard that blackberry made themselves famous for.
source of photo <a N4BB/ .
It’s only a month away before Blackberry themselves reveal the full glory to the world. However, I am sure we will see many more leaks.
Are you excited about the new Blackberry handsets and operating system?
The TNW magazine have issued a new item to say they are no longer going to produce their magazine on android. The have cited many reasons, but again it just highlights the iOS app advantage over any other operating system.
The diversity of android is its strength but also it’s weakness.
Today’s latest offers are as follows –
Apple – Sonic Jump – a superb free game, similar to Doodle Jump in concept but Sega style
Amazon – Draw a Stickman Epic – an reasonable offering from amazon today
Google Play – Smash – the pilot of the Spielberg musical is free today.
Stay tuned for tomorrow for the next lot of offers and freebies.
iOS 6 is a marvellous operating system. There are many little tricks to make it even better to use. And what’s surprising is how many people haven’t even bothered to look at a certain menu in their tablets or iPhones.
So lets get started. We will use the iPhone as the example, but the principle is similar for your iPad, except for flashes.
First up, go to the settings app, select general, keyboards, add new keyboard. Scroll down til you get to Emoji. Select this. Whenever you go to use the iOS keyboard you will now have a globe icon bottom left. Tap this to switch between emoji and the standard keyboard.
Next go to settings app again, general , accessibility and turn on speak selection, scroll down a bit and turn on led flash for alerts.
So what do all these settings do in practice. Emoji icons allow you to do this “😄🏁🚲💉🍻⛄☕” now if you don’t have an apple device you won’t see them. Some android devices do have the emoji plugin or installed as a third party option, but it’s not standard yet in that system.
Problem is, what do some of the emoji icons actually mean. There are so many different facial expressions it can be tricky working out their meanings. Panic no more, simple hold and select them , and one of the new options is speak. Tap this, and Siri will read out all the emoji icons expressions in full. Speak all will read out any text highlighted. Siri is quite fun with this.
The led flash for alerts does exactly what it says, when the phone is asleep or screen off. The camera flashes briefly to alert you on a notification. On the iPhone 5 it is a powerful yet discreet alert. On older iPhone models like the 4S the flash is very bright.
So there we have a few tips for your today. If you have any other ones, feel free to share in the comments.
Starting January 28, Foursquare will be changing two main things: your full name will be displaying your full names and businesses will see more of their customers’ info (for more than 3 hours).
From Foursquare –
1. We will now display your full name. Currently, Foursquare sometimes shows your full name and sometimes shows your first name and last initial (“John Smith” vs. “John S.”). For instance, if you search for a friend in Foursquare, we show their full name in the results, but when you click through to their profile page you don’t see their last name. In the original versions of Foursquare, these distinctions made sense. But we get emails every day saying that it’s now confusing. So, with this change, full names are going to be public. As always, you can alter your ‘full name’ on Foursquare at https://foursquare.com/settings.
2. A business on Foursquare will be able to see more of their recent customers. Currently, a business using Foursquare (like your corner coffee shop) can see the customers who have checked in in the last three hours (in addition to the most recent and their most loyal visitors). This is great for helping store owners identify their customers and give them more personal service or offers. But a lot of businesses only have time to log in at the end of the day to look at it. So, with this change, we’re going to be showing them more of those recent check-ins, instead of just three hours worth. As always, if you’d prefer not to permit businesses to see when you check into their locations going forward, you can uncheck the box under ‘Location Information’ at https://foursquare.com/settings/privacy.
What do you think of the changes. Personally they don’t seem to onerous.
Did you know you can completely control twitter via SMS. Go to your twitter profile and add your mobile number and allow SMS control if asked. Make a note of the twitter SMS number.
Twitter SMS Commands –
Turning mobile Twitter updates OFF and ON:
ON: turns ALL your authorized Twitter updates and notifications on.
OFF: turns ALL phone notifications off.
ON [username]: turns on notifications for a specific person on your phone. Example: ON alissa
OFF [username]: turns off notifications for a specific person on your phone. Example: OFF blaine
FOLLOW [username]: allows you to start following a specific user, as well as receive SMS notifications. Example: FOLLOW jerry, or F jerry, for short.
UNFOLLOW [username]: allows you to stop following a specific user.
LEAVE [username]: this command allows you to stop receiving SMS notifications for a specific user without having to unfollow them. When you log into twitter.com from the web you will still see this user’s updates in your timeline. Example: LEAVE benfu, or L benfu, for short.
STOP, QUIT, END, CANCEL, UNSUBSCRIBE, or ARRET: will deactivate your account if you are an SMS-only user. If you completed the sign-up flow on the web, sending any of these commands to your Twitter short code will simply remove your phone number from your Twitter account.
Fun stuff – friends, favorites, and stats:
Use the commands below to send direct messages, mark Tweets as favorites, and more.
@[username] + message – shows your Tweet as a reply directed at another person, and causes your Tweet to save in their mentions tab. Example: @meangrape I love that song too!
D [username] + message – sends that person a Direct Message that goes to their device, and saves in their web archive. Vital you keep SMS under 160 characters
RETWEET [username] – sends that user’s latest Tweet to your followers
SET LOCATION [place name] – updates the location field in your profile.
SET BIO – edits your Bio information on your Twitter profile.
SET LANGUAGE [language name] – selects the language you’d like to receive notifications in.
SET NAME [name here] – sets the name field on your Twitter profile.
SET URL [url here] – sets the URL field on your profile.
WHOIS [username] – retrieves the profile information for any public user on Twitter.
GET [username] – retrieves the latest Twitter update posted by that person. You can also use g [username] to get a user’s latest Tweet. Examples: get goldman or g goldman.
FAV [username] – marks that user’s last Tweet as one of your favorites (reply to any update with FAV, FAVE, FAVORITE, FAVOURITE, or * to mark it as a favorite if you’re receiving it in real time). Examples: fav crystal, fave crystal, favorite crystal, or *crystal
STATS [username] – this command returns the given user’s number of followers, how many people they’re following, and their bio information.
SUGGEST, SUG, S, or WTF – this command returns a list of Twitter users we think you might find interesting and would like to follow.
HELP, INFO or AIDE – texting help, info, or aide to Twitter will bring up helpful tips.
SUGGEST – this command returns a listing of Twitter users’ accounts we think you might enjoy following.
A few notes on SMS commands:
Using ON/OFF [username] from your phone only stops notifications coming to your mobile phone; you’ll still collect a person’s updates on the web since you’re still following them.
Use UNFOLLOW [username] to unfollow a user via SMS.
Use BLOCK [username] or BLK [username] to block a user via SMS.
You can also use UNBLOCK [username] or UNBLK [username]
Use REPORT [username] or REP [username] to report a user as spam.
The following commands perform the same actions: FOLLOW = ON. And LEAVE = OFF.
Following someone from a phone for the first time will also cause you to follow them on the web.
You don’t have to use ON/OFF [username] from your phone, you can also set individual notifications from a person’s profile page on the web, or check your following page and manage all phone notification settings there.
