It may not be official, but with the start of September, summer is pretty much out the door. No one likes to see those sunny days fall by the wayside, so we’re sure there was a bit of gloom hanging over the workweek. Fortunately, we’ve got a whole slew of iOS apps for you to take your mind off your troubles. Just push ’em way deep down inside—it’s the healthy thing to do.
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Well, it’s Friday, and despite it only being a four-day work week for many of you, we’re still proud of you for making it to the end. Here are the best of the best Android apps we found this week, one for each day of working our fingers to the bone.
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We’ve all done it. After a tough day at work or a long night of drinking, the gentle motion of the subway rocks you right to sleep, and the next thing you know, you wake up in the Bronx. It’s a frustrating problem, but one app developer thinks he has the solution: a motion-based alarm clock that wakes you up at your stop.
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A Kickstarter project that launched this week wants to put a mic on your wrist, for constant audio monitoring, in a twist on the wearable tech and quantified self movement. The Kapture, as it’s called, pairs with an iOS and Android smartphone app that allows for quick sharing of audio clips recorded by the hardware wristband, which is constantly recording audio to a 60 second, recycling buffer.
The concept might sound somewhat familiar: An app called Heard debuted back in June that records audio in the background, capturing a 12 second buffer by default, or up to five minutes of the very recent past via in-app purchase feature unlocks. The Kapture differs by offering a hardware accessory, which is worn on the wrist, and from which you can flag a clip for saving instantly via a simple tap on the exterior of the device.
The Kapture hardware uses impact-resistant plastic and a silicone strap, with a battery that’s said to last a little over a day. It has a simple multicolor LED notifier, no screen, a vibrating motor and a waterproof, omnidirectional mic built-in. The accessory prototype is connected via Bluetooth 2.1 to your phone, but that’s being changed to Bluetooth 4.0 for production units, and there’s micro USB for charging along with an accelerometer for tracking motion.
Kapture’s founding team includes Mike Sarow, an engineer with over a decade of product manufacturing experience at Procter & Gamble, as well as Matthew Dooley, a marketing guy who knows the right recipe for product placement. The team is seeking $150,000 to get the Kapture off the ground, and is offering backers the chance to get one for a $99 pledge, in either black or white. Different colorways start to become available at the $110 level.
Unlike Heard, Kapture seems quite married to the concept of a set, 60-second audio buffer, so this isn’t going to be a device spies use to make sure they capture every juicy tidbit, and the Kapture folks are positioning it more as a way to make sure those organic memorable moments don’t just fade away into the ether. And the hardware has an advantage over Heard in terms of recording quality and being always in an optimal position to capture conversations.
But there are other issues with the idea, including battery that lasts only a day, as well as building the habit of remembering to tap a wristband thing to record a minute of preceding audio – hardly behavior that comes naturally to anyone. I also can’t help but cringe at the caption on this photo:
The Kapture is an interesting twist on the concept of lifelogging, to be sure, and one that does so with a design that is admittedly not too hard on the eyes, but the truth is that people only have a limited number of wrists and there’s an increasing number of gadgets vying for those, including smartwatches from big-name brands like Samsung. The Kapture is unique in design and interesting in concept, but it’s also quite niche. Still, this might be the best way to exploit sound as a social commodity in the end.
Every other startup out there is trying to become the new big thing in email, but what we get more often than not is a bunch of half-baked tweaks that sound nice on paper but don’t really do all that much to change the experience. Ping, however, actually is probably unlike any other email client you’ve used before.
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Chrome is celebrating its fifth birthday today, and amidst the fan fare is a new announcement: Chrome Apps have gone (near) native on Windows and Chrome OS, gaining a launcher and allowing for use on desktops in the same way apps are used on a tablet or smartphone. The “new breed of Chrome Apps” are […]
Up until now, Chrome’s Web Apps have been trapped in your browser, living with the rest of your internet like glorified tabs. Well, Google’s putting an end to that today. A new breed of Chrome Apps is here, and they live on your desktop.
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The line between native and web apps has been blurring more and more with the advent of HTML 5, and now Google’s taking things even further with what it’s calling a “new breed of Chrome apps.” These new apps, while built with web technologies and the Chrome browser, appear and act like native apps. In fact, Google is rolling out a Chrome app launcher for Windows to allow users to launch these new apps directly from their desktop. Windows and Chrome OS users will get first crack at using these apps, with Mac and Linux folks getting them a bit later.
To give these apps a native feel, Google has given devs a whole host of new tools. Apps work offline, can save data locally or in the cloud, provide desktop notifications and can connect with any device hooked into your computer via USB or Bluetooth — meaning games can be designed to use external controllers. And, apps won’t look tied to the browser as they won’t be saddled with tabs, buttons, text boxes or any other browser-esque visual cues. The idea is to create Chrome apps that are nigh indistinguishable from their locally installed counterparts. For now, there are over 50 such apps available in the Chrome Web Store, with offerings including games, basic photo editing and task tracking apps, among others. However, we have a sneaking suspicion that Google’s going to ensure that number grows exponentially in the near future.
Source: Google Chrome blog
PayPal has rolled out a major update for both its Android and its iOS apps, bringing with the latest version a newly redesigned interface and some new features. Though multiple notable features have been added, perhaps the most important among them for users is the inclusion of “Shop,” a tabbed section that details restaurants and […]
Firefox has certainly taken some pretty huge steps since Mozilla initially announced its “Phone for Apps” program back in May. Still, the browser maker knows there’s a lot to be done before the mobile OS becomes more of a household entity. To help it achieve that, Mozilla’s launching phase two of the “Phone for Apps” initiative, offering developers a Firefox OS device — in this case the Geeksphone Keon — in exchange for porting their HTML5 apps to the young platform. More specifically, this qualifies devs who have “already built and shipped an HTML5 web app and have the time now to port that app to the new Firefox OS.” Is this you? Then here’s what’s left to do: click the source below to peruse the rest of the guidelines, fill out the application and, if you’re amongst the chosen group, expect a confirmation to reach your inbox sometime thereafter.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile
Via: TechCrunch
Source: Mozilla
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