Hasta La Gadget!

There’s no question that cell phones have made our lives easier, but they can also sometimes cause some pretty big headaches. Dropped calls, for instance, are always a major annoyance, and a new poll from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that the vast majority of cell phone users still find themselves dealing with them. 72% of respondents told Pew that they still experience dropped calls occasionally, which is a ridiculously large number of people when you consider how many of us own some kind of cell phone.

Of those people who answered in the affirmative, 32% said they suffer dropped calls multiple times per week or more frequently. Though we’ve only got 32% of polled cell phone users saying that they experience dropped calls frequently, the number that say dropped calls are still an issue is pretty staggering. Looking at the chart above, we can see that 6% of users say they deal with dropped calls on a daily basis, and another 6% say it happens multiple times per day, which we imagine is endlessly infuriating.

Elsewhere in Pew’s report, which was authored by Jan Lauren Boyles and Lee Rainie, 69% of users say that they occasionally receive unwanted marketing calls, with 25% of users claiming that it happens a few times per week. 79% of cell phone users say they text message, and 69% of those texters claim to occasionally receive spam messages. Finally, we come to mobile Internet download speeds. 55% percent of cell phone owners use their phones to access the Internet, and 77% of those mobile Internet users claim to be hit with “slow download speeds that prevent things from loading as quickly as they would like” every once in a while.

The sad news is that smartphone owners report these problems more frequently than “other cell owners.” Looking at the second chart from Pew, we see that smartphone owners report problems with dropped calls, unwanted calls and texts, and slow download speeds more often than the rest. Pew says that the poll took place during March and April 2012, and that the non-profit polled a total sample of 2,254 adults to get these rather interesting results. At least now you know that you aren’t the only one suffering when you experience a dropped call, right?

Majority of cell phone owners still experience dropped calls, Pew poll finds is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Despite the millions of dollars of profits that it’s raking in, Apple still hasn’t come up with a way to include native support for physical controllers in iOS games. The best that we can hope for is for a gamepad manufacturer to step up and get support from developers. I really hope Bladepad does that.

The Bladepad is a Bluetooth 4.0 gamepad that comes with all the buttons and sticks present in a modern console controller: a D-pad, two analog sticks, four face buttons, four shoulder buttons and even a select and start button. It comes with a case, but you can detach the Bladepad itself if you choose. It even comes with a charger that can simultaneously juice up the controller and the iOS device that it’s attached to.

Now for the bad news. Because it uses Bluetooth 4.0, the Bladepad is only compatible with the iPhone 4S and the new iPad. Worse, as of this writing the controller is confirmed to work with – drum roll please – only one game.  The makers of the controller did say that they’re working with “several major game studios and many independent studios as well.” I really like how the Bladepad looks and fits, so I hope it gets widespread support from developers.

A pledge of at least $59 (USD) on Kickstarter gets you a Bladepad, but if you ask me I think you should pledge less than that. You might be stuck with a beautiful controller that has no games to control.

[via AVING]

Getaround is a company that lets you rent out your car while you’ll be away for an extended period of time, but before today, the process of renting your car could end up getting a little involved. That isn’t a problem anymore thanks to Getaway, a new Getaround service that allows you to speed up the rental process. No longer will you have to manage your own rental, as Getaway’s team does most of the work for you.

With Getaround, owners had to list their car and name a price themselves, and then communicate back and forth with potential renters to set everything up. With Getaway all of that is done for you, so you just have leave your car with the folks at Getaround and let them do all the work. Not only does this cut back significantly on the time investment, but Getaround tells Mashable that it could potentially lead to more money, as the Getaway team will determine the pricing of your car.

In fact, Getaround founder Jessica Scorpio says that after initial tests, some owners were making as much as $1,000 per month. Owners who take the time to list everything through Getaround typically make an average of $350 a month, so those who opt to go with Getaway could potentially make more money than those who do all the work themselves with Getaround’s standard service. Of course, Getaround performs background checks on all potential renters, so you can rest assured that your car isn’t going to be placed in the hands of someone with a terrible driving record.

Currently, Getaround is only available in San Francisco, San Diego, Austin, and Portland, with Getaway only available in San Francisco and Chicago. Getaround recently received $13.9 million in funding, however, and with that money, Scorpio hopes to expand Getaround into more areas across the country. Expect to hear more form Getaround soon, as Scorpio says that the company is still on the lookout for new business partners. By offering a service as attractive as Getaway sounds, we’re thinking it won’t be long before Getaround secures that additional funding.

Getaround introduces expedited Getaway car rental service is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A 19-year old electrical engineering student at the University of
Queensland in Australia has created a levitating light bulb that is not
an optical illusion.  While it may not look too sexy in this photo,
just wait until you see these LevLights floating around your ceiling in
designer glass shades.

Here’s one that the conspiracy theorists among us will love: the FDA has approved an “ingestible sensor” made by Proteus Digital Health for marketing as a medical device. Though such a device sounds like it can’t be anything other than devious, the idea behind it is quite simple, as it will be used to make sure that patients are taking their pills when they’re supposed to. Apparently Proteus has been working with the FDA since 2008 to get this thing approved, so this could prove to be a pretty big breakthrough for the company.

It could also end up being a big breakthrough for doctors and caregivers who previously didn’t have any control over whether or not their patients actually followed their instructions. The fact of the matter is that no one actually likes taking pills, and sometimes we choose to ignore instructions that tell us how much to take and when, precisely, to take it. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that ignoring those instructions can lead to some pretty serious problems, so now doctors have a way of ensuring that their patients are doing what they should be.

Proteus says that the sensor can be “integrated into an inert pill or other ingested products, such as pharmaceuticals,” and is powered by those wonderful fluids you have sloshing around in your stomach. Once the sensor has been ingested, it sends a signal to a patch worn on the skin, telling it the exact time you took your medicine. That information is then relayed to a smartphone app, allowing caregivers to monitor your (hopefully stellar) medicine habits. Once the sensor has done its thing, it dissolves right there in your stomach. This all happens with the patient’s consent of course, so you don’t need to worry about someone sticking microchips in your pills without telling you (or do you?).

It sounds like a great idea in theory, but at the moment, there’s no word on when this technology will hit the market. Still, expect to hear more about this soon, as insurance companies will likely eat this technology up. After all, they’d raise your premiums in a heartbeat if they discovered you weren’t regularly taking your meds, so plan on this being a big hit with them.

[via Engadget]

FDA approves ‘ingestible sensor’ for use as a medical device is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.