Hasta La Gadget!

Apple confirmed and assured everyone that it was working on a fix to the iOS 7 lockscreen bypass bug last week that let sneaky individuals mess with users’ email and social network accounts. And now, exactly seven days later, said update is hitting handsets in the form of iOS 7.0.2. Directly to the point, the update is said to “fi[x] bugs that could allow someone to bypass the lock screen passcode.” And hey, there’s also a Greek keyboard option for passcodes thrown into the update for good measure.

Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Apple

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Via: 9 to 5 Mac

If you’re anything like me, you spend way too much of your day seated, at your desk, hunched in front of your computer. During busy days — especially once firmly planted “the zone” — it’s easy for a few hours to fly by without leaving a sedentary position. For this reason, I’m probably not the only one who could use a gentle reminder, just a little, “Hey Rip, you’ve been sitting for two hours, how about standing up, ya lazy bum?”

Well, my friends, your Fitbit can remind you that you’re behind on your steps, but what if your desk could remind you to stand up, or take a break? Thanks to Stir, a Los Angeles-born startup founded by former Apple, Disney and IDEO employees, now you can buy a smart desk that will do just that.

The Stir Kinetic Desk, the startup’s first product, which launches today, combines the health-tracking software of popular wearables like FitBit and Up with connected-hardware and machine learning to create a work experience that actually promotes movement — and, in so doing, your health.

Stir Founder and CEO JP Labrosse was one of the first 35 employees to join Apple’s iPod Division, where he led engineering development teams on two early iPod projects. It not surprising, then, that the Kinetic Desk borrows a bit from familiar Apple designs and interfaces, including built-in touch screen, which has a very iPod-type size, shape and look to it. It’s this touch interface that acts as the desk’s main “control panel,” allowing users to change the configuration and height of their desk, or to go from sitting to standing (and back) just by double tapping.

Not only that, but the screen displays graphs and visual representations of a user’s movement, so they can quickly see how long they’ve been sitting and what their work habits and usage looks like. The desk contains a thermal presence sensor and computer outfitted with its health-tracking software, allowing it to track your movement and display that data through its touch screen.

While it may sound almost uncanny, not to worry, the desk isn’t yet outfitted with Siri’s voice or any sort of personal assistant. While Labrosse was willing to admit that the Stir Kinetic Desk could incorporate some Watson or HAL 9000-like features down the road, for now, the desk is meant to work in concert with the Internet of Things, not to try to commandeer it and dominate your office.

In fact, the desk tracks and adapts to your personal routine in such a way that’s meant to optimize health and productivity. The desk will display how many calories you’ve burned, time spent standing versus sitting — and your answer to “who is the most beautiful desk of them all?” of course.

Labrasse, echoing Harvard Business Review’s recent study, called sitting “the smoking of our generation,” which is probably a little overdramatic, but it’s true that in our overworked, over-connected modern work environment, we do spend more time in chairs than on our feet. While your Kinetic Desk won’t remind you to eat, shower, finish coding and go outside or be a better friend, it will help keep you upright and mindful of the healthier routine that’s right around the corner.

The desk also contains a setting called “active mode,” which you can activate by hitting a button on the front of the desk, which will put it into “Whisperbreath” mode — meaning that the desk prompts you to move after you’ve been sitting for too long with a gentle, one-inch rising and falling motion. You can then double tap to change positions.

Stir’s new smart desk also comes with built-in AC and USB ports (eight and four, respectively), connected to a single power cord you plug into the wall, and comes with Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity, which the CEO hopes will eventually allow the desk to integrate with third-party fitness and wellness devices. To think: Your desk could be come your fitness and wellness graph itself. Imagine that. The team will also eventually release a web-based dashboard to allow you to view your work and health data on the go.

The Stir Kinetic Desk has a hardwood surface, comes in white, espresso and four underside colors, and will retail at an expected $3,890. It’s not cheap, but, hey, you can’t put a price on good health, people, especially when it’s your office furniture that’s keeping you healthy.

Labrasse and the Stir team were kind enough to let us take their new health-conscious desk for a spin, and you’ll find our video below. Find the Stir Kinetic Desk at home here.

Nine Inch Nails frontman and music genius Trent Reznor gave a fantastic interview to the Fader, and it sums up just about everything about the state of electronic music and how we listen to it.

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Despite its recent acquisition, BlackBerry announced it will be releasing a desktop BBM app at BlackBerry Jam Asia 2013 this week. Unfortunately, the long-overdue app leaves much to be desired. BBM will come to desktops, starting with Windows-based PCs. Since the bulk of BlackBerry’s core customers were enterprise clients, these customers spent a lot of time behind their desks. This release should have come way earlier. But even more striking, the desktop implementation of the messaging service is awful.

After installing the app, users will have to link their phones with their computers, probably through Wi-Fi. If you’re in a coffee shop and want to send a quick message from your laptop, you’ll first have to find a way to connect your phone to your computer. It’s the PlayBook nonsense all over again.

Messaging someone should be ubiquitous and effortless. You shouldn’t have to wonder whether your phone is still turned on to send a message from your computer. Some applications allow you to send text messages from your computer. But the point of BBM is that it’s not SMS — it’s supposed to be better. Moreover, BBM messages go through BlackBerry’s servers, just like Facebook messages, iMessages, WhatsApp messages, etc. And these other services don’t reroute all your messages through your phone.

That’s why limiting BBM to one device at a time is a serious flaw that should have been fixed. Many people have a phone, a tablet and a computer and want to use the same services on those three devices. In its current implementation, that’s not possible without a dirty hack for BBM. Due to multitasking limitations, iOS users will even sometimes need to relaunch the app to deliver the desktop messages — that is, if BlackBerry can fix their servers and actually launch BBM for iOS and Android.

There is no release date yet, and the company only showed the Windows version at the conference. WhatsApp doesn’t have a desktop client, so you might say that BBM’s release is better than nothing. But BBM for desktop 2.0 will have to be more than a simple interface that redirects your messages to your phone. For now, it’s just an empty shell.

Update: It turns out that what was demoed on stage is a way to extend BlackBerry 10 to the desktop. Here’s a statement from Chris Smith, Vice President, Handheld Application Platform and Tools at BlackBerry:

“This was a demonstration that showed how applications could be projected from a BlackBerry 10 device onto a computer running Windows or Mac OS. In the demo, the power of BlackBerry 10 is used to sense the connection, over Wifi or USB, then adapt the user interface and mirror the content onto the desktop monitor.

The concept demo was used to demonstrate just one of the possibilities of mobile computing – and to showcase the capabilities built into the BlackBerry 10 platform that our developer community could leverage in their own apps.”

Will computers take over the human race eventually? Perhaps, as we do see robots creeping up bit by bit to “invade” different aspects of our lives. When it comes to the battlefield, there is nothing quite like a battle hardened marine, is there? Perhaps an alternative can be found in the solution from firearm company TrackingPoint. This particular solution is a software which has been integrated with its Precision Guided Firearms (PGF), offering shooters near perfect accuracy right from the get go. Known as “Tag Track Xact” or TTX, the advanced target-tracking technology boasts of offering on-point shots over a range of 1,200 yards – which is roughly the equivalent of 22 Olympic sized swimming pools.

TTX hopes to deliver an exact, accurate shot every single time by taking into account for the coriolis effect, magnus, temperature, pressure and spin drift when you take aim at your target. The software will be shown through TrackingPoint’s Integrated Networked Tracking Scope, which will also feature integrated functionality such as a compass, microphone, Wi-Fi server, batteries, ballistic calculator, laser rangefinder and filters for shooting in bright or dim light. Still, I am quite sure that the TTX is unable to do miracles such as curving bullets around an obstacle in the movie Wanted.

TrackingPoint Develops Smart Rifle With TTX Technology original content from Ubergizmo.