It’s happened to us all. You’re planning for some big project and suddenly you’re in need of a power drill… Or kitchen stand mixer… Or hiking gear. Now, you could just shell out for it, but when are you going to use it again? Enter Leila, a genius little "borrowing shop" in Berlin that saves you money while putting the dusty things in your closet to good use.
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If you take a picture of a car or house key, could you use that picture to get a copy made? Yes—quite trivially, actually. I have a folder on my laptop that is filled with photos people have taken of their keys and put onto the internet. Every few weeks, I take some idle time and associate one of those keys to an address (lot of Googling, mostly) and then I decode the cuts in the key.
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Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems are used on things like ebook and movie files to make them more difficult to share. During the Napster era the major record labels got on board with DRMs in a big way hoping that they could reduce piracy by locking their music files down. But a new study shows what we’ve all thought for a long time. It doesn’t help. And in fact it DRMs hurt sales.
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What we experience in real life isn’t enough, so our digital lives are becoming more and more 3D. iOS 7 has parallax, movies want you to feel like you’ve been hit in the face with a satellite, and lots of developers have been trying
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Instagram may have missed the initial iOS 7 update run last week, but the retooled iPhone app is good to go now. Version 4.2, available for download today, brings design tweaks that mesh better with the latest iOS, with a slightly simpler interface and rounded profile pictures in the feed. Additionally, photos and video are a bit larger, and the resolution has been increased as well, enabling a better viewing experience overall. Instagram for iOS 7 can be yours right now. You’ll find the download at the source link below.
Filed under: Software, Mobile, Facebook
Source: Instagram, Instagram (iTunes)
Remember Bump, that nifty little app that let you transfer data from phone to phone—or phone to computer
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We know you’ve got questions, and if you’re brave enough to ask the world for answers, then here’s the outlet to do so. This week’s Ask Engadget inquiry is from Zoe, who needs to help out her mum (she’s in the UK) with a tricky WiFi problem. If you’re looking to ask one of your own, drop us a line at ask [at] engadget [dawt] com.
“My mum’s retirement community offers a municipal WiFi service for £130 per year, but only provides a login that can be used on a single device at a time. More annoyingly, that device has to use a web browser, which means that you can’t access it using an Apple TV at all. To get around that, I’ve leant her my Mac Mini, and then I share the WiFi connection over Ethernet to an Airport Extreme. Unfortunately, this only works for short bursts at a time before the DHCP or connection sharing goes screwy and needs to be reset. My question, therefore, is what can I buy that will connect to this crappy WiFi and share that connection to the other wireless devices around the home? Would it be possible to use Raspberry Pi or some other small device to do the job? All it has to do is be stable and have an uptime longer than 2 hours. Thanks!”
This is the sort of question that most geeks love getting their hands on, because it’s a good old-fashioned problem. You’ll just have to ignore all of the people who tell your mom to move house instead of coming up with a useful solution. Either way, we did think that perhaps there was a way to share this connection using a hotspot device, but they primarily use Ethernet. As such, we’re going to turn this question open to our community for some sage advice. Surely there must be a simple way to do this without depriving Zoe of her Mac Mini?
Headphone parties, or silent discos, seldom translate well to mobile devices — the likelihood that every listener has the same songs is rather slim. If Apple implements a newly granted patent, however, it could be easy to start those private gigs. The technique shares the tempo of a master track with other devices invited to a party; those gadgets automatically pick similarly paced tunes and sync their playback. Participants could be part of an ad hoc local network, but the approach would also work when people are miles apart. Apple even proposes a social networking element that lets aspiring DJs share avatars and other identifiers. While there’s no guarantees that the patent will reach shipping products, we wouldn’t be surprised to see iPhone owners grooving in unison at some point in the future.
Filed under: Cellphones, Portable Audio/Video, Mobile, Apple
Source: USPTO
Facebook has just unveiled a new feature that allows multiple users to share one photo album. Now, up to 50 different "contributors" can each upload up to 200 photos into one, collaborative album—contributors can only edit their own photos while moderators get absolute power. In other words, let the public shaming commence.
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Proximity-based content sharing systems for mobile tend to focus on one-at-a-time transfers — see Android Beam and Apple’s upcoming AirDrop as examples. Google, however, has just patented an interface that would simplify sharing content with nearby groups. Users would only have to drag private items into a public space to share them with everyone inside of a certain range; the reverse would hide those items once again. The approach wouldn’t be limited to files, either, as it could be used for invitations to chat sessions or events. Google won’t necessarily take advantage of its sharing patent, but the concept is simple enough that we wouldn’t be surprised to find it in future apps or Android revisions.
Filed under: Cellphones, Software, Mobile, Google
Source: USPTO
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