Hasta La Gadget!

In order to activate Siri on the iPhone, we’d have to press and hold the home key. For Android devices, Google Now can be activated by saying “OK Google”. Either way it involves you reaching for your phone in order to get the voice assistant feature up and running, but wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t have to keep reaching for your phone all the time?

That’s where the CommBadge comes in. The device, as you can see pictured above, is a 1.54-inch device that can be clipped onto your shirt. Basically what it does is that it allows you to perform voice commands like you would with Siri or Google Now by touching the device as opposed to have to get your phone, unlock the display, and then activate the feature.

According to its creator, the CommBadge will play nicely with Siri and Google Now so basically your phone could be in another room and you’d still be able to interact with it, as long as it is within Bluetooth range, of course. The great thing about CommBadge is that you don’t have to wear it all the time as it can be used in other settings, like in the car, for instance.

The creators are also adding a security feature by partnering up with SmartTek Systems. What this does is that whenever the user presses and holds the device for more than 5 seconds, it will automatically call out to an emergency number who will then be able to listen in undetected and then dispatch the appropriate emergency services, although this could cost you extra for the service.

As it stands the device is currently $15,000 into its goal of $20,000 and with 18 days to go, there is a good chance it could reach its goal. If you’d like to learn more or pledge a donation of your own, head on over to CommBadge’s Kickstarter page for the details.

CommBadge Bluetooth Wearable Device Lets You Interact With Siri/Google Now Hands-Free , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Gadgets, crowdfunding, google now, kickstarter, siri,

It is no secret that Google Glass has a myriad of potential uses, although on the consumer front, it seems that non-Glass wearers are taking offense to people who do. Perhaps it could be that they’re worried about the invasion of their privacy, perhaps it could be for other reasons.

However on the professional front, it seems that Glass is finding more use in the field, like in the medical field for instance where we recently reported that due to the ability to pull up patient records on the fly, a doctor could have potentially saved his patient’s life. That being said, on the military front it seems that there is appreciation for the Glass device as well.

According to a report from VentureBeat, the US Air Force’s Battlefield Air Targeting Main-Aided (K)nowledge (BATMAN) research team has been testing the use of Google Glass in the Air Force, and so far they are pretty happy with the results.

This is attributed to the fact that Glass is a low-powered and a low-footprint kind of device, not to mention the way the device is worn will not obstruct vision, which we guess is extremely important in the battlefield.

It has also been suggested that the research team is looking into developing some kind of proprietary software that can be integrated into Glass’s current software that would be military specific. This sounds like our previous report where the company Wearable Intelligence helped created a specific piece of software designed for doctors, although in this case it would be only for the military.

Of course it remains to be seen how in the heat of battle will such a device perform, or how it might hold up (will it be too fragile?), but for now it sounds like a pretty good idea.

Google Glass Being Tested By The US Air Force , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Gadgets, Military, glass, Google, Wearable Tech,

While the phones in our pockets have been getting smarter and smarter at an alarming rate, bike computers (despite having the word "computer" right in their name) have been lagging way behind. But as sensors, radios, and chips have shrunk smaller and smaller, we’ve seen more and more intelligence come to the handlebars. The new Edge 1000 from Garmin is trying to pack the most in.

Read more…

This article was written on November 27, 2012 by CyberNet.

When you’re using the desktop view in Windows 8 things won’t feel all that much different than they do in Windows 7. Something I thought Microsoft might change in Windows 8 was the size of the thumbnails displayed when you hover over running apps in the Taskbar, but unfortunately they are just as small as they always were.

Luckily you can change that just like you could in Windows 7 by using a third party app. The one that I would recommend this time around is Taskbar Thumbnails Tuner. This free app gives you all kinds of control over the Taskbar thumbnails including the size, margins, spacing, delay, and more. You can even use it to disable the thumbnails all together if you don’t like using them. Change take effect immediately without needing to reboot your machine.

I’ve always been a big fan of increasing the size of the thumbnails so that I’m able to see more clearly what each window contains. If you, for example, have multiple instances of Windows Explorer open it can help immensely to be able to see the contents of each window before switching to it.

There is one downside to increasing the thumbnail size though. The larger you make the thumbnails the further your mouse will have to travel to select the one you want to switch to. So you’ll probably want to keep that in mind as you determine the right size for your needs. Initially I started with them as large as I could make them, but eventually lowered it down so that they ended up being about 50% larger than what the default is.

Taskbar Thumbnails Tuner Homepage (Windows only; Freeware)

Copyright © 2014 CyberNetNews.com

From time to time whenever we run into an issue with an app or software, we have the option of sending in a bug report in hopes that the company will fix it. We expect that developers receive many such reports a day. Sometimes it could be an intended function that confused a user into thinking it’s a bug, and sometimes it’s a legitimate claim. The point is that there are probably a ton of reports that need to be sifted through.

That being said, how are we to know that an issue has been fixed or acknowledged at the very least? Well Apple is apparently looking into such a feature, according to a report from a reader of MacRumors who recently claimed that Apple is apparently testing a feature in its Maps application that will notify users when an error has been fixed.

As we’re sure many of you guys are aware by now, Apple Maps isn’t exactly the most accurate of Map apps available at the moment and has it fair share of instances where it has provided users with the wrong directions. Apple has since encouraged users to submit any issues or errors that they might have spotted and thanks to this feature, it will prompt users when a problem has been fixed.

Apparently this feature is currently being tested as not many people have noticed it (there are a handful who have) and there has been some difficulty replicating it ever since, but hopefully this is a feature that Apple will roll out in earnest in the near future, or perhaps with the release of iOS 8.

In the meantime what do you guys think? Will you appreciate being notified when a bug or issue you reported has been fixed, or would you rather that developers just work quietly in the background and assume that they will get around to fixing it?

Apple Reportedly Testing Map Notifications To Inform Users Of Fixed Problems , original content from Ubergizmo, Filed in Apple, Cellphones, Apple Maps, Apps,