Hasta La Gadget!

Nokia Lumia WP8 owners have it pretty good on Foursquare thanks to AR and other exclusive features — but that doesn’t mean lower-end device owners are being shirked. The app is now available on the Asha 501, something Nokia and Foursquare promised when it hit the S40 feature phone and its huge user base. Despite the Asha’s lack of a GPS, owners of the sub-$100 device will get all of Foursquare’s main features — like check-ins, mayorships and badges — since the app can use a network connection to figure out where you are. It’ll likely arrive on other Asha devices soon as well, so if you’re looking to rule your local haunt as mayor, better grab it fast.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia

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Source: Nokia Conversations

While speaking with journalists after last night’s three-pronged Google Android 4.3/Nexus 7/Chromecast spectacular, the company’s Sundar Pichai reportedly told people that Samsung’s preparing an updated Nexus 10 to sit alongside the new Asus-made Nexus 7.

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Do you subscribe to the notion that “music is the universal language”? I always thought that love was the answer as to what a universal language would constitute, but I suppose that music would rank somewhere in the top five list. Having said that, if you happen to be one of those folks who absolutely cannot live without music all the time, then surely you would be in possession of the early Walkman, Discman, iPod, and smartphone, as all of these devices do deliver audio playback in a portable manner. How about during those moments when you are trying to experience an “Eureka!” moment in the showers? This is where the $49.95 iPad Musical Shower Curtain comes in.

The iPad Musical Shower Curtain works as its name suggests, it is a shower curtain that boasts of built-in speakers as well as a waterproof pocket for you to place your iPad inside. This would be able to turn any ordinary shower into a real singing sensation event, and fret not for your iPad’s safety – the pocket that holds it will be able to zip closed from the outside, allowing it to remain safe and sound from moisture, while it sports an integral audio cable that hooks up to an iPad, iPhone, Android phone, or MP3 player, connected to a couple of speakers in the upper left and right corners of the curtain. It will be powered by a trio of AA batteries, so if you plan on using this for the long term, it would be best to get rechargeables.
[ iPad Musical Shower Curtain copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

Apple has been tinkering with ways to make the iPhone better at managing battery life intelligently based on usage pattern, a new patent filing published by the USPTO today (spotted by AppleInsider) reveals. The application describes a system that learns your habits, evaluates how much power is needed between your usual charges and does everything it can to keep the phone running when you’re away from power sources.

The invention involves using location data combined with the kind of activity that a user is actually engaging in with their smartphone to give a more complete picture of when they need to be stingy with power and when they don’t. It’s a little like how your Mac can detect when it gets plugged in and then change its power profile accordingly, adjusting things like display brightness and time until sleep. The mobile version would be smarter, however, and even estimate the amount of time a user will be away from a power source and modify energy usage accordingly.

Thus when a person is at home, the phone will know that and not worry too much about longevity. But when a user is traveling long distances, the phone would adjust “characteristics” to compensate. Those power saving strategies could include limiting data fetch intervals, turning down display brightness, turning off open applications or even preventing some from running.

The automatic component of the system would involve the iPhone storing a number of regularly used charging points and estimating time between those points based on daily habits, but users could also directly input specific information, like how long they thing they’ll be away from power for instance. Users could also select from different types of power profiles, the application suggests.

In another neat trick, the system would detect what kind of source is being used to charge and adjust the charging rate accordingly – charging faster when it knows it’s in a car and only available to power for a limited time, for instance, but slowing down at home to decrease the effect on battery health.

Power management is one way to tackle the needs of battery-hungry users who often find that to be the limiting factor of their smartphone devices. In place of sophisticated new battery technologies, this could be what Apple turns to to make iPhones balance ever-increasing processing power and energy demands, and it is a logical development for mobile computing in general.

If you think these images from the North Pole look more like a lake than the snow-covered expanse you’d expect, that because it is is—the North Pole has melted.

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