Verizon finally jumped on board the upgrade-sooner boat on Thursday with the announcement of Verizon Edge. The new program
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Rovio has made a name for itself in the mobile gaming industry with the release of Angry Birds some years back, and they have not looked back since. Angry Birds has more or less appeared on all of the popular mobile gaming platforms, be they tablets or smartphones, and have reduced the efficiency of workers at the office as they tend to sneak in a few minutes of Angry Birds from time to time while the boss is not looking. In fact, Angry Birds has also come up with its different merchandise to earn even more money, while working with the Star Wars before, where that game proved to be quite the hit, so much so that it warranted a sequel to this franchise via an expansion known as Angry Birds Star Wars II, which will launch later this September 19th in app stores worldwide.
Angry Birds Star Wars II will offer something new and old at the same time, where it will follow the story of the three prequel Star Wars movies, with the inclusion of never-before-seen Angry Birds Star Wars characters. Yes sir, for the first time, you are able to, in Rovio parlance, choose to “Join the Pork Side” and don the role as one of the villainous porkers.
We do know that some of the character additions will include versions of young Anakin, Mace Windu and Darth Maul, and there is one more thing which will definitely draw the attention of most folks – Hasbro’s TELEPODS technology, where it delivers an additional interactive layer of gameplay and content to Angry Birds Star Wars II. New characters and super powers can be unlocked for players as you place one of the collectible TELEPODS physical characters from the Hasbro range on the phone or tablet camera, followed by a scanning process to literally see that character enter the game. More than thirty figures will be available at launch in September. This is getting ridiculous, don’t you think so? Still, I think it looks set to be a winner (with parents becoming all the poorer for it).
You can check out a trailer of Angry Birds Star Wars II here.
[ Rovio announces Angry Birds Star Wars II copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Ever since the digital camera module was introduced into a smartphone, it was safe to assume that one day, the average dedicated digital camera would suffer a drop in sales, as most folks would just use their smartphone cameras to capture memories wherever they go. The day has not yet arrived, but it is definitely close with the recent announcement of the Nokia Lumia 1020 – a smartphone which boasts of a massive 41-megapixel sensor as well as optical image stabilization (OIS) that have surpassed existing benchmarks of smartphone photography. We are talking about unmatched picture detail and quality with an effortless capture, edit and sharing features here.
For starters, Nokia claims that they have reinvented zoom through the combination of their next-generation 41-megapixel sensor, ZEISS optics with half a dozen lenses and OIS. This would allow the Lumia 1020 camera to zoom into the details of every shot, where it over-samples the results so that your digital memories look sharper and clearer than ever before. Since you might be rather new to this digital photography thing, the Lumia 1020 allows you to point and shoot without worrying about missing the moment, as you can, at a later time, reframe the photo thanks to the new Nokia Pro Camera application.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 will support LTE networks where applicable, and it comes with a 4.5” AMOLED WXGA (1280×768) touchscreen display with Corning Gorilla 3 Glass, a 2,000 mAh battery, wireless charging support, a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon processor, their piece de resistance – a PureView 41-megapixel with optical image stabilization with Xenon and LED flash, a 1.2-megapixel front facing camera, 2GB RAM, 32GB of internal memory, 7GB of free SkyDrive cloud storage, USB 2.0, Bluetooth 3.0, Wi-Fi and NFC connectivity, all crammed into a body that weighs just 158 grams. The Nokia Lumia 1020 will arrive in yellow, white and black colors, shipping to the US on AT&T first this July 26th at $299.99 a pop – obviously with a 2-year contract, of course, before making its way to China and Western Europe later this quarter.
Press Release
[ Nokia Lumia 1020 announced – is it the end of entry level digital cameras? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
One Giant Leap happens to have a forward looking name, where it is an award-winning company that specializes in real-time feedback of human body mechanics as well as performance. Well, we bring you word that One Giant Leap as well as ANT+ have collaborated to deliver the paddle-based Kayak Power Meter. Just what kind of “magic” is the Kayak Power Meter capable of? Well, it is an instrumented paddle shaft, that comes with blades attached, in order to deliver real-time left/right feedback of performance data where among them would include power output , power balance and stroke rate. Pre-orders of the One Giant Leap Kayak Power Meter are currently being accepted, although the Kayak Power Meter itself will only be made available in September this year.
The Kayak Power Meter will play nice with any ANT+ display unit which supports the ANT+ Power profile, as this particular device enables kayakers to create the perfect data monitoring setup for their needs. It has been specially customized for shaft stiffness and length, where it can capture both left and right stroke data individually so that paddlers are capable of taking advantage of a more detailed reading on each stroke’s performance.
I guess you can say that it is pretty much in the same vein as that of the ANT+ cycling power meter and bike computer setups, considering how the Kayak Power Meter relies on ANT+ ultra low power technology so that it can capture and display power metrics on any ANT+ enabled fitness watch or kayak mounted computer sans wires. If you do not have the luxury of time to do so at that particular moment, data can also be viewed at a later time on a tablet or smartphone which will obviously need to have native ANT+ support, or to connect to ANT+ with the help of an adapter. The Kayak Power Meter has been slapped with a price tag of NZD$1,039 if you are interested.
Product Page via Press Release
[ One Giant Leap introduces Kayak Power Meter copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
I remember being a, shall we say, a young adult? Some extra make-up and a newly purchased fake I.D, getting a six pack of little green bottles of beer and drinking them with my best friends up near the lake. Those memories used to be so much fun, now I have a daughter of my own and she’s highly likely to create the same horrors for me, that I did for my mom… but for her, pulling the same nonsense is getting tougher every day.
Check out the barZapp ID Scanning App, this useful tool allows you to simply aim a smartphone at the barcode or the magnetic stripe located on a genuine driver’s license and within seconds, you can instantly verify the age and ID validity of the license, and the person handing it to you.
Meant for certain types of merchants including bar owners, this nifty little app can greatly reduce the chances of receiving fines and penalties when selling all kinds of age-restricted products like alcohol, cigarettes or chewing tobacco, access or movies, or any other products or activities that might require age verification.
A quick and simple barZapp scan of the encoded license information will actually display the bearer’s name, gender, ID number, date of birth and their computed age alongside sample photos of IDs from the appropriate states so you know exactly what that Idaho drivers license is supposed to look like, and soon the app will also be able to maintain VIP lists and banned patrons.
The barZapp app is available at the Apple App Store for $1.99, and annual and monthly licenses are available on Intellicheck Mobilisa’s website for $19.95 per month. BarZapp requires iOS 6.1 or greater, and a version for Android will be available soon. So much for the little green bottles up at the lake, huh kid? Now if we can just come up with an app to scan her dates with…
[ barZapp – Can I Scan your I.D. Please? copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
We make a large investment in our phones, not only are we invested monetarily, but these phones hold important information that we need to go on about our daily lives, and then, one day, we jump out of the car at our favorite Italian restaurant and wham! the phone lands on its face, on the hard concrete sidewalk, and despite the cute and bejeweled phone case, the screen shatters into a million pieces and I instantly no longer feel like spaghetti and meatballs followed by a cannoli, I just want to cry.
Well, I have a new phone and a new plan for it, I’m checking out Rhino Shield, a custom formulated, patent pending, impact resistant screen protector. Forget about Gorilla Glass 2, Rhino Shield is able to take on at least 5 times the impact energy and it’s still highly transparent, and incredibly thin (.029 cm) and can protect your precious touch screen from all kinds of unexpected perils, without changing how the screen looks, reacts, or feels.
Rhino Shield is actually layers of protection, all in one thin and effective super screen protecting sandwich. Rhino Shield protects the screen from those annoying fingerprint and oil smudges (you know, the ones you wipe off on your pants, don’t lie, I’ve seen you do it) and it protects your phone from scratches, and best of all, it helps to absorb the impact if you happen to drop your phone face first on the ground at Mama Luigi’s.
Rhino Shield, by Evolutive LABS was founded by some students from the University of Cambridge and was funded as a successful Kickstarter project back in April 2012, and now you can protect your own phone with it, starting at only around 25 bucks. Rhino Shield is available for most iPhones, the Blackberry and HTC, please check bitemyapple.co to see if there’s one for you.
[ Rhino Shield – Don’t go Anywhere without Protection copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
I remember being back in high school, and listening to my math teacher tell us the importance of being able to quickly solve problems on paper, because we wouldn’t carry a calculator everywhere when we got out into the real world. While those lessons were good ones, almost everyone does have a rather powerful calculator in their pocket. In fact, most of us can’t seem to be parted from our smartphones. So what happens when you’re at the office, and your phone is about to die, and there is no charger in sight?
If you happen to be carrying the CulCharge, then you need only find the nearest USB port to ensure that your phone will stay juiced up. The CulCharge is one of the smallest USB chargers around, as it measures 6cm long. At that size, it’s small enough to sit on your keychain, and go unnoticed. It’s even thin enough to slip into your wallet, without causing a bulge.
Due to the small size, they aren’t able to fit multiple connectors onto one CulCharge. You’ll need a separate one for each type of device. They have them available with MicroUSB, MiniUSB, 30-pin iPhone, and Lightning plugs, depending on your need. If you back the IndieGoGo campaign, you’ll be able to get one for just $9, unless you’re after the iPhone 5′s Lightning connector, in which case, you’ll need to spend $15 (due to the increased costs associated with it).
[ CulCharge ensures you always have a way to charge your phone copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
The folks over at Japan are a pretty creative society – just take a look at the kind of quirky fashion ideals that people in the country ascribe to, and you have a better and clearer picture of how things look like. Not only that, their smartphones have long been so much more advanced than handsets in the West and the rest of the world, functioning as a portable wallet and all. This time around, we have Dentsu, a Japanese advertising company, make an announcement that they have come up with a new T-shirt technology that they call Asoberu-T.
The Asoberu-T can be said to be a form of augmented reality, as it comes in three different ways for one to “enjoy” the T-shirt, namely Play, Shot and Share. In order to begin “playing” with your T-shirt, you will first need to install the dedicated free application on your smartphone. Once that is done, hold the smartphone over the T-shirt and run the app, where your eyes will be greeted by characters as well as other designs which will pop-up on the screen as though it involved magic, and you can even manipulate those characters and designs from your phone’s touchscreen to boot. In Shot mode, you can pose with the characters while composing an entirely new photo, while Share would let you upload those photos to a special website. Definitely trendy and fashionable, don’t you think so?
Source
[ Asoberu-T augmented reality shirt copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
So you happen to be a smartphone user for the past few years already, and have more or less gotten bored of the device, so much so that you are thinking about the possibilities of a new kind of smartphone accessory which would make you a starry-eyed kid once again, with wonder written all over your face. Perhaps there might be something out there in the ever evolving consumer market, and the $149.99 Romo the smartphone robot could very well fit your desires to a ‘T’.
Romo might even end up being your new best friend if you are a social outcast, as Romo will learn and grow up with you the more time you spend with it and interact alongside. Basically, I guess you could call this the geek’s Furby, as the more you make use of him, the faster and more he will be able to learn. Sure, he looks cute as heck – at least getting near Wall-E levels, and is controllable via any Wi-Fi enabled computer or iOS device. The Romo the smartphone robot might be the perfect fodder to help you break down walls if you are not too good with kids, and it also brings your standard video chat sessions to a totally new level.
[ Romo the smartphone robot copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Have you ever had an “oh no!” incident with your iPhone? You know what I’m talking about, you leave for your high school reunion in New York City, with the address of the fabulous apartment where you will meet all your old friends conveniently stored on your phone, when whoops! You accidentally delete the info and spend the next 2 hours walking up and down 54th Street… in a designer dress… in the rain? Yup, it really happened.
If only I had Wondershare Dr.Fone, an easy-to-use tool that can help you easily recover data that you thought you’d lost forever, not just your high school reunion adress, but photos & videos, contacts, SMS, call logs, memos and a whole host of other information. Dr. Fone offers two kinds of recovery modes, recovery directly from the iOS or Android device, or making it easy to extract from your backup.
Dr. Fone can be a good friend to have when disaster strikes, it’s nice to be able to recover lost data, but what about completely irreplaceable things, like memories? Oh yes, I’m still kicking myself for erasing the picture of my daughter catching her very first fish. With Dr. Fone you simply connect the device to the computer, launch Dr.Fone, and with a few clicks you can scan your Smartphone, iPad, or iPod Touch and instantly see the information that is recoverable from the device, and then restore it.
So, if you accidentally deleted files on your Android or iOS device, or your device is smashed, broken, locked by a forgotten password or an upgrade failed to initiate appropriately, or your just not paying attention (like me) and you’re left missing useful, or sentimental information, just get Wondershare Dr.Fone available for iOS and for Android mobile phone and tablet users. Buy it and download it instantly at amazon.com for under a hundred bucks, or try it free from wondershare.com.
[ Wondershare Dr. Fone – For when you Need your Data Back copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
