Life’s too short to spend it thinking about the stuff you did or didn’t do in the past (or last night), because regretting won’t change anything. What you can do, on the other hand, is learn from your mistakes so you can live a fuller life in the future.
One way to do that is by keeping a diary. But if that sounds tedious, then maybe LifeLog might just be the thing for you.
It’s basically an app that centralizes most apps you use on a daily basis, to keep a log of your life and help you do the things you need to do, when you need to: photos, videos, contacts, calendar, entries, notes, and Facebook and Twitter integration.
The app promises to help you keep “more complete memories” and provide “stronger memory tools” while you go about your daily life.
It sounds like a pretty interesting concept, not to mention useful. You can head on over to their Kickstarter page to find out more about the app or back the project. A minimum pledge of $5 will get you one-month of exclusive beta access to the iOS app.
Depending on the programming and the data used behind the apps, weather iPhone apps can be a gamble. I’ve had a couple of them installed and it was always funny to see them give out different forecasts for the next couple of days at the same time. This particular weather app looks pretty amazing.
WTHR was designed by David Elgena, and the app itself is based upon Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles of Design. The UI is very clean and minimal, allowing you to easily figure out what the weather will be like without looking at endless graphics.
The WTHR app sells for $0.99(USD) in the iTunes App Store, but we’ve read that in its current incarnation, the app constantly uses the GPS of the iPhone, even after closing the app. Hopefully this will be fixed in a later update, since it is such a beautiful looking app.
Google has admitted that its Chrome browser is the cause of MacBook stability problems, with an incompatibility between the app and the integrated Intel graphics leading to crashes. “Work is proceeding to find and fix the root cause” a Google spokesperson told Gizmodo, though the company does splash a little of the blame onto Apple itself and the way OS X Lion is handling kernel issues.
“Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics,” the Google spokesperson continued, “since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior.” Apple is yet to comment on the issue.
Google is taking a two-pronged approach to dealing with the glitch. Chrome users should have already received a patch on Thursday afternoon, that temporarily shuts off some of the browser’s use of GPU acceleration on machines with the Intel HD 4000 graphics.
Meanwhile, work is underway to come up with a more lasting fix with full GPU acceleration functionality still in place. There’s no timescale for its release, however.
Yesterday, at its second Google IO keynote, Google confirmed that Chrome now has 310m users worldwide, making it the most popular browser around according to all the metrics the search giant said it could find.
Google Statement:
“We have identified a leak of graphics resources in the Chrome browser related to the drawing of plugins on Mac OS X. Work is proceeding to find and fix the root cause of the leak.
The resource leak is causing a kernel panic on Mac hardware containing the Intel HD 4000 graphics chip (e.g. the new Macbook Airs). Radar bug number 11762608 has been filed with Apple regarding the kernel panics, since it should not be possible for an application to trigger such behavior.
While the root cause of the leak is being fixed, we are temporarily disabling some of Chrome’s GPU acceleration features on the affected hardware via an auto-updated release that went out this afternoon (Thursday June 28). We anticipate further fixes in the coming days which will re-enable many or all of these features on this hardware.”
If you decided to snag the latest Nike+ wristband earlier this year, you’re about to get some added functionality thanks to an iOS application update. First, the outfit has added Path integration to the mobile software. Users can now keep track of the sights they’ve visited while out for a jog or bike ride and share said moments / achievements with their mates. When the day comes to a close, those points-of-interest along the trail will appear on the app’s progress graph. You’ll also encounter background syncing by holding down the FuelBand’s button alongside the ability to check battery status, offline data access and setting the time with your iPhone or iPod touch. For a quick look at what you can expect to see with the refresh, sprint to the gallery below.
Android 4.1 Jelly Bean devices will not get official Flash support, Adobe has confirmed, with the company pulling Flash from the Google Play store altogether after August 15. The decision, which follows Adobe’s move to adopt HTML5 for mobile platforms rather than Flash last year, also means that updates to Flash Mobile on Android devices will become more sporadic.
“Beginning August 15th we will use the configuration settings in the Google Play Store to limit continued access to Flash Player updates to only those devices that have Flash Player already installed” Adobe said in a statement. As for handsets like the Galaxy Nexus, which currently support Flash on Ice Cream Sandwich but which are expected to get a Jelly Bean upgrade in mid-July, Adobe warns that the change in OS might prompt instabilities.
“If a device is upgraded from Android 4.0 to Android 4.1, the current version of Flash Player may exhibit unpredictable behavior, as it is not certified for use with Android 4.1. Future updates to Flash Player will not work” Adobe says. “We recommend uninstalling Flash Player on devices which have been upgraded to Android 4.1.”
Having long argued with mobile device manufacturers – particularly Apple – that Flash was relevant for smartphone and tablet users, Adobe conceded defeat in November last year. ““Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores” the company announced. “We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations.”
Ice Cream Sandwich was the last Android OS version to receive a certified Flash Player installation, and as devices gradually migrate to Jelly Bean the framework will shrink in relevance.
Adobe was very public about dropping mobile Flash last fall. In case that wasn’t clear enough, the developer just drew a line in the sand: Android 4.1 doesn’t, and won’t ever, get certification for Flash. The company is stopping short of saying that Flash won’t run, but it’s evident that Adobe won’t help you if the web browser plugin doesn’t install (or breaks in spectacular fashion) on that Nexus 7. Just to underscore the point, the firm is also halting new installations of Flash from Google Play as of August 15th. Security updates and other vital patches will continue on for existing users. Any fresh downloads after that fateful day, however, will have to come from Adobe’s mausoleum for old versions. The company had already said that HTML5 was the way forward on phones and tablets — now we know just how quickly it’s backing up that claim.
Creating machinima with a video game engine usually requires accepting one of two truths: either that it will require a lot of fudging or that it will have all the sophistication of playing with action figures. Valve Software isn’t very happy with that dichotomy, which is why it’s posting its very own movie-making tool, Source Filmmaker, as a public beta. Any game that runs on the Source engine, whether it’s Left 4 Dead 2, Portal 2 or another in the family, can have gameplay run-throughs edited and dissected right down to custom facial expressions. As Valve expounds in the video after the break, throwing a gaming-grade PC at the task gives directors the advantage of seeing exactly how any changes will look in the final scene; there’s no rough wireframes or pre-rendering here. Budding Francis Ford Coppolas can sign up for an invitation to the Filmmaker beta at the project page. If you’d just like to see how far someone can go with the end results, we’ve also included the latest Team Fortress 2 character profile video, Meet the Pyro, after the jump.
This week Google has released the first public build of Google Earth‘s 3D flyover features, and at the Google I/O 2012 developer event, we got the chance to take a peek at a relatively massive set of four HDTV units combined to bring on one giant vision of the future. This 3D mapping feature is currently out for Google Earth on Android and will be coming soon to iOS as well, as our Google hosts note in the video below.
This hands-on – or eyes-on rather is just a glimpse of what you’ll be working with in the near future once you grab the update to the app you’ve already more than likely got running on your devices right this minute. This 3D mapping adventure comes at essentially the same time as Apple has announced their own 3D mapping project to be tied in with Apple Maps on the future versions of iOS for the iPhone and iPad. That said, this Google Earth action will also, once again, be available for iOS more than likely sooner than the Apple equivalent.
The folks you see above are both Googlers, speaking during the Lives Stream of the Google I/O events you may have caught from a different perspective earlier today!
Have a peek at the hands-on video above and peek at the couple photos above and below as well, and grab the update for your Google Earth app from the Google Play app store now! Also be sure to continue following us all week for all the most fabulous Google I/O 2012 action!
This week Google has introduced a new component to their search and location-aware ecosystem in the mobile realm called Google Now. This system sits at the heart of Android, with your ability to access it sitting right in your lock screen. Google Now is effectively an add-on to the Google Search experience, adding a selection of “cards” that show you where you are, how you’ll be getting to the next place you’re going, and where you might very well want to go.
To access Google Now, you’ve only to access it from your lockscreen or to tap on the Google Search widget or app icon. From here you’ll find that you’ve got a lovely and super simple search bar at the top that’s ready to accept all typed or spoken voice commands as well as search terms. The real magic of course is in the cards that sit below the search bar before you do your search.
Above you’ll see the Nexus 7 connecting to this service via the lockscreen – in the hands-on video below you’ll see the Galaxy Nexus working with Google Now.
These cards include Weather, Public Transit, Places, Traffic, Flights, Sports, Appointments, Translation, Currency, and Time Back Home. The last item on this list is something you’ll have to program, it simply needing to know when you’ll want to see a map back home – and it’ll need you to mark where your home is, but just once. Appointments are connected to your Google Calendar, Translation and Currency appear when you go to a foreign country, and Sports show the scores of your favorite teams.
Flights is a card that’s able to track your flight information, how late you’ll be, and how long it’ll take you to get where you’re going. The same is true of Traffic and Public Transit, these connecting to Google Maps and Navigation to bring you the information you need, while Weather and Places are the most common cards as they’ll almost always be active to bring you information on the place you’re physically at.
Once you’re done with the info these cards can bring you, you can head straight back up to the search bar where results will spill over the cards to bring you deeper into the web.
Stick around as we continue to bring on the heat via our I/O 2012 and Android portals all week!
Microsoft has been promising a cheap-and-cheerful upgrade path to Windows 8 for those who buy new PCs. But what about that five-year-old PC in the basement? If the historically well-connected Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet is right, the upgrade path will go further back — much further. Although upgraders will still want Windows 7 if they need to carry over absolutely everything, tipsters claim that settings can transfer from releases as old as Windows Vista SP1. Those with truly ancient PCs (we’re looking at you, corporate customers) can even bring over personal files from an OS as dated as Windows XP SP3. Like we saw last time around, some of the 7-to-8 upgrade rules are a bit Byzantine — 7 Professional users can’t step down to the non-Pro Windows 8 release, for example, and it’s equally verboten to change language editions or move from 32- to 64-bit code without a full-scale reinstallation. The extra-long olive branch will be slightly unusual for Microsoft if it’s confirmed, but then the company is also trying to move along a user base that in some cases has clung to XP for more than a decade. Redmond is no doubt eager to get rid of our dependency issues.
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.
It’s basically an app that centralizes most apps you use on a daily basis, to keep a log of your life and help you do the things you need to do, when you need to: photos, videos, contacts, calendar, entries, notes, and Facebook and Twitter integration.
