iPad 5 Case: December 2013

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Samsung Galaxy S4 uses the latest Gorilla Glass 3 for screen protection

Somehow last night during the announcement we missed the fact that the Galaxy S4 is the first phone to feature Corning’s Gorilla Glass 3. Yeah, I know, it’s not a big thing, but tech geeks are sometimes excited by small things like this.

The Gorilla Glass 3 was announced back at CES, earlier this year, and is marketed as having Native Damage Resistance?. Of course, that’s just a bunch of words marketing people love to use. What matters is that the new glass reportedly provides enhanced scratch resistance, reduced scratch visibility, and better retained strength once a scratch occurs.

According to the manufacturer, the Gorilla Glass 3 is stronger, and is 3x more scratch-resistant than Gorilla Glass 2. Plus some 40% less scratches are visble once they occur.

Source 1 | Source 2

BLU Life One hands-on impressions

With a 5” IPS LCD display, the BLU Life One sits above the entry-level Life Play, and below the phablet-proportioned Life View in the freshly launched smartphone series from the Miami based manufacturer. Given the increasing popularity which the 5” Android smartphones enjoy lately, the dual-SIM BLU Life One is likely to generate the most interest from potential users.

Save for the smaller display, the BLU Life One packs the same spec sheet as its bigger brother which we previewed a couple of days back. The highlights include a MediaTek MT6589 SoC with 1.2GHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU, PowerVR Series5XT series GPU, 1GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in expandable storage, 5” HD display, and a 13MP camera on the back of the device, coupled with a 5MP unit at the front.

BLU Life One live photos

At a first glance, the BLU Life One does not look as premium as the bigger Life View due the former’s plastic back cover. The frame of the handset however, is made from aluminum, so it feels pleasant and solid to hold.

The measures of the Life One are 144 x 73 x 8.9 mm, while its weight tips the scale at 145 grams. The device is powered by a removable 2,000mAh battery.

BLU Life One sized up against the rest of the Life series

When it hits the shelves, the BLU Life One will boot Android 4.2 out of the box. Like in the case of the Life View, the Life One offers a pleasant Android OS experience thanks to its quad-core SoC.

The BLU Life One is priced evenly with its larger sibling � at $299 unlocked, free of contract commitments. For the money, the latest BLU offering represents good value, thanks to its solid build, good looks, and rich functionality. The BLU Life One, together with the rest of the series will hit the shelves at the end of this month.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Apple iPad’s Photoshop apps now official

Apple iPad’s Photoshop apps now official, go on sale

It’s a small step for Adobe and a huge step for the iPad as the Photoshop-aid tablet apps are finally official and there for the taking (buying).

Adobe Eazel, Color Lava and Nav are online at the Apple App Store for the iPad and could be yours for a total of 10 bucks or $5, $3 and $2, respectively.

It wasn’t all that long ago when the touch SDK for Photoshop was released by Adobe and the iPad seems to be the first to take advantage of it.

The Adobe Eazel is a standalone painting application, which lets you unleash your inner artist on the world and create shapes and figures, paintings, which you can then port to your desktop Photoshop CS5, that scales them to whatever size you wish.

Here’s a promo video, made by Adobe, for it.

Adobe Color Lava lets you mix colors, while Adobe Nav gives the control of your Photoshop application to the iPad for touch navigation.

Check out the promo videos for the Nav and Color Lava, they’re really cool.

If you’re interested, turn on your iPad and go to the App Store. Or just click on these links: Adobe Eazel, Color Lava and Adobe Nav. Keep in mind that all three applications are compatible with Adobe Photoshop CS5, so an earlier version won’t do.

Friday, December 6, 2013

LG announces Smart Video feature

LG announces Smart Video feature, bound to hit the Optimus G Pro as part of a Value Pack upgrade

LG continues trying to steal Samsung’s thunder ahead of tonight’s Galaxy S IV show and has just announced a new software feature dubbed Smart Video.

Destined to hit the Optimus G Pro, Smart Video works pretty much the same way as the Smart pause feature we saw in thoseGalaxy S IV leaks – videos get automatically paused when you’re not looking at the screen.

LG says it has achieved this through advanced eye recognition technology, which recognizes the position of the viewer’s eye. The moment the front-facing camera detects your eyes are not on the display, video playback will be paused.

Smart Video will be joined by the Dual Camera features as a part of something LG calls Value Pack upgrade. It’s going to be offered for the Korean version of the Optimus G Pro next month. The international variant of the smartphone will get the sweet extras later down the pipe.

Here’s the rest of the Value Pack contents that’ll make it to the Optimus G Pro:

Magic Remote Pad and Text Keypad via the QRemote function. These new options
for QRemote work specifically with LG Smart TVs to enhance convenience when
using Optimus G Pro as a remote control for LG Smart TVs.
The Smart LED Lighting outlining the home button of the Optimus G Pro will be
upgraded so users can customize the colors to correspond to their favorite contacts.
The flashing of the LED in different colors will allow users to identify the source of
incoming calls, missed calls, unread messages and emails.
Video Pause/Resume allows the user to stop and start in record mode for one continuous video file.
The first Color Emoticons in an Android smartphone for more personalized text
messages.

Source

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Apple changes and/or ditches Google Maps in iPhoto

Apple changes and/or ditches Google Maps in iPhoto?

During the ~~just~~ iPad announcement yesterday we saw iPhoto migrate from a OS X-only to an iOS-capable app.

And while that on its own doesn’t deserve too much attention, the iPhoto maps integration is curious in that it no longer features Google’s Maps.

In iPhoto for Mac the Map interface (where you see your geo-tagged pics) is definitely Google Maps, but in the iOS version it looks nothing like it.

There’s been a lot of digging into the matter and some users are finding that the map data is actually coming from an Apple server gsp2.apple.com.

John Gruber of The Daring Fireball actually took it directly to Apple, which replied the data is coming from Google Maps.

So there’s no knowing what’s at play here – perhaps Apple is en route to introduce its own mapping service on iOS (and OS X) – they bought maps company Placebase, then and 2010 Google Earth rival Poly9 and finally, 3D mapping firm C3 Technologies in August 2010.

Interestingly, the map data for the Places tab in the Photos app still comes from Google Maps.

Maybe iPhoto is a way of testing out a new layout, maybe Apple (aware of the attention this will immediately attract) changed up the maps UI to send a clear message to Google, maybe collect thoughts on the new map design.

We’ll probably have to wait until iOS 6 to find out.

UPDATE: It seems that Apple is indeed using Open Source Maps but with a custom overlay of their own. This was confirmed by OSM in their official blog. And here’s a tool you can use to see the difference between Apple’s layout, OSM’s and Google Maps’s.

Source | Via