If you have ever been faced with that gut wrenching situation where you have either dropped your beloved device in water or gotten it wet then you will be familiar with the age old solution involving a bowl of rice. While this would normally be the ideal solution as it is found in most peoples cupboards and can be readily bought quickly, is it really helping? In a way, yes, but not as much as you have been led to believe. While it is a good place to start, there is another solution you probably haven’t thought of.

First though, let me give you a recent scenario that I was faced with.

So, I am at work and I get several missed calls from an unknown number, followed by frantic tweets and messages from Facebook that turn out to be from my girlfriend asking me to ring home ASAP. Thinking the worst I immediately stop what I am doing and phone home. On the other end is a distraught and very upset voice trying to hold back the tears as she tells me she has just discovered her iPhone 4s rattling around in the washing machine. Damn, game over, right? Well actually, no. She had been changing the sheets on the bed and hadn’t noticed the iPhone as she wrapped them up and bunged them in the machine. After around 5 minutes she noticed a banging noise coming from inside and suddenly realised what had happened. Thankfully she managed to pry the door open, flooding the kitchen floor (not a priority), and found the phone, still functioning.

I instinctively tell her to dry it off and bury it in rice, which she had already done (I taught her well). I ask if she has turned it off, she tried but a short in the dock connector was causing it to come back to life straight away. This is not good as the longer there is power going through the device the more chance there is of a total short, ideally  the battery should be disconnected which as we all know with Apple devices is not for the feint hearted. Amazingly though, the backlight was still functioning, which in my experience, is usually the first thing to short out. As far as I could make out, the sound was the only thing not working and this was again because of the dock connector, which was assuming that the iPhone was docked which cuts off sound through the speakers and earpiece.

Luckily, it seems, the duvet that it got wrapped in had shielded it from the majority of the water as she managed to get it out of there before it had actually finished filling up.

Ok, so when I got home from work I decided to inspect it a little, not wanting to disturb it too much so as not to let the water spread even further. I decided to try and remove the rear panel which is easier said than done when you don’t have the correct tool (5 point penelope). I managed to get the back off and carefully wiped all the water I could see from the inside of the iPhone. I then placed it back in the rice and sealed the box.

Fearing the worst I contacted a local repair shop for some quotes, to which they replied “between £40 and £130 depending on the extent of the damage”. With both of us finding this a last resort option I told her to calm down and leave it be for a few days.

As I had been at work for a few hours before being able to get home that day I had the time to do a little research, and came across some references to desiccants. These are hygroscopic substances used as a drying agents. In some of the same articles I also discovered that rice does very little as it struggles to draw moisture from the air.

I then set about trying to source some desiccants, and found that I actually come into contact with a form of them every day.

You will recognise these little sachets as those you find in shoe boxes, suitcases, handbags, and most boxed electrical devices. Now, as I work for an electrical retailer I set about collecting as many of these sachets as I could lay my hands on. I was ripping through empty laptop boxes, searching laptop bags and anything else I could think of that was already open.

So, that night I emptied the rice from the box and replaced it with the sachets I had collected and basically covered the device as if building a sand bag wall around it. I then put the sealed box above the boiler. I had read that providing moderate heat would help remove moisture from the air quicker, however providing direct heat like that of a radiator would be harmful, so avoided doing this.

Roll on 3 days later, and after having been hen pecked constantly by the girlfriend, I opened the box to see what the residual damage was. I left the back off for the time being in case I needed to gain access again. It was dead, so I carefully plugged it in to my Macbook as if I was removing the core from a nuclear device, expecting it to go bang the moment I inserted the sync cable. To my relief  it started to charge and a few minutes later it powered on. Amazing! Everything seemed to be working perfectly, even the sound as I unlocked it. I then went through testing the sound, making a call, sending a text and opened a few apps. The look on her face and the relief was worth all I had gone through over the last few days.

Nearly 2 weeks on and still no issues, at all, not one! So if you are unfortunate enough to be faced with a situation like this, you will be better prepared.

This follows on from a previous ruling in Motorola’s favour at the end of last year. The licenses at issue are supposedly FRAND (Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory” patents which are considered to be industry standards. The court order is directed at Apple Sales International in Ireland, which operates the online store of Apple in Europe.

The Mannheim Regional Court found Apple infringed a patent used to synchronise e-mail accounts. The ruling also allows Motorola Mobility to ask Apple for information about past sales and holds Apple liable for damages. Presiding Judge Andreas Voss said in delivering the verdict “The court has come to the conclusion that the wording of the patent does cover functioning that were at issue here,” said Voss, Apple “wasn’t able to convince the court that it isn’t infringing.”

The German courts have also banned a number of Samsung products, including the first Galaxy Tab,  based on previous Apple patent complaints. Soon the only tablet available in Germany will be the Motorola XOOM’s.

Apple’s current flagship device, the iPhone 4[S], remains on sale at the German Online Apple Store. It isn’t certain as to why the 4[S] doesn’t fall into Motorola’s complaint, one possible excuse is that the device simply could be ‘too new’  and wasn’t included as part of the original complaint. Also the iPhone 4[S] and the CMDA versions of the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 use Qualcomm chips whilst the banned devices all feature Infineon baseband’s, so this could also be a possible reason.

In an emailed statement from Alan Hely, Apples company spokesman, to BusinessWeek he said “Apple believes this old pager patent is invalid and we’re appealing the courts decision,” and Apple also went on to tell Paid Content “While some iPad and iPhone models are not available through Apple’s online store in Germany right now, customers should have no problem finding them at one of our retail stores or an authorized reseller. Apple is appealing this ruling because Motorola repeatedly refuses to license this patent to Apple on reasonable terms, despite having declared it an industry standard patent seven years ago.”

Those same sources are now stating that, whilst they believe there still will be an Apple media event held later in February, the subject of this even will be ‘unusual’.

The sources said:

“I reported that Apple was going to hold Special Event in early February according to Asian supplier and source from united states, but this report told a half-side of truth. Apple will hold “Strange” event at February instead of Special Event.”

The source also then went on to retract a previous statement that the event would be based on Apple’s upcoming iPad 3, and instead noted that an announcement for the iPad 3 was likely to be made in March.

It is unclear what the source meant by an ‘unusual’ event regarding Apple’s media event in February but rumours are already starting to circulate that this could relate to the imminent introduction of Apple’s long-rumoured appearance in the television set market.

The screen shots reveal that there is 2 versions of the iPad 3 too be released, the first being Wi-Fi only and a second device with Wi-Fi and embedded GSM/CDMA/LTE for all carriers. Also the photo’s reveal which processor the iPad 3 will be using, an A6 Quad-Core processor with the model number S5L8945X. The previous versions of the iPad featured different processor model numbers, the A4 model was S5L8930X and the A5 is S5L8940X.

Also the screen shots reveal that the iPad 3 will apparently be a Quad-Core model, which will make the iPad 3 the fastest iOS device to date.

Take a look at the screen shots below:

There has been rumours flying around about the next iPhone device to include NFC technology and, before the iPhone 4[S] was released, the New York Times was quoted as saying that an upcoming iPhone would have NFC. Whilst it turned out that it wasn’t included with the iPhone 4[S], it could be on the next iPhone.

When the developer was questioned about how confident he was that the upcoming iPhone would include NFC he replied with “Enough to bet the App development on.” It has also been rumoured that Apple will be partnering with MasterCard to provide its payment systems following an interview with Ed McLaughlin, MasterCard head of emerging payments.

When McLaughlin was asked about if 2012 would be the year of NFC or contactless technology, he may have dropped a hint about what the future has in store for Apple.

McLaughlin said:

“The timeline is always as rapid as it makes sense for consumers, that’s a combination of having a critical mass of the merchants, which is what you’re seeing right now, and getting devices into the hands of consumers. I don’t know of a handset manufacturer that isn’t in process of making sure their stuff is PayPass ready.”

When asked if this would include Apple he responded with:

“Um, there are…like I say,  I don’t know of any handset maker out there,” McLaughlin says. “Now, when we have discussions with our partners, and they ask us not to disclose them, we don’t.”

We’ll keep you informed of any more developments of the upcoming iPhone 5 but do you think NFC technology would be a welcome addition?

MySiri will cost 0.99c and be available soon from the BigBoss Repo (hopefully the end of the week).

The tweak is a collaboration between Andrea Oliva & Akhil Tolani and offers some great and powerful features.

MySiri will be able to open Apps, perform commands such as locking your device and rebooting, toggling setting switches, allowing you to create your own conversations (this could be really fun) and even use your voice as an Activator to perform certain actions.

Check out the vid by idownloadblog that got an early preview…

Click here to view the embedded video.

If this tweak turns out to be able to do all the things mentioned above I personally can’t wait to spend my 99c to have a play with it. This could be the only Siri tweak that you may ever need.

Well, while trawling twitter, I came across a tweet linking to a post on macthemes.net that contained an unreleased MobileSubstrate tweak known only as Zeppelin. It had promise I thought, so I downloaded it and fired up iFile to install.

To my amazement it actually worked on my carrier logo, finally! The tweak is basically just a logo picker in the settings app with the ability to enable or disable.

So far there are only a handful of logos to choose from but I have no doubt that more will be added, especially if it hits Cydia.

Here are instructions posted by the developer;

Zeppelin is a MobileSubstrate tweak I made to get easy Carrier Logo switching to iOS. It works on Verizon and other Carriers that don’t naturally have images to replace too (It also works on Carriers that do have files to replace like AT&T).

I’ve tested this on my Verizon iPhone 4, an AT&T iPhone, iPad 3G, iPod 2G.

The experimental iPod build has been tested only on iOS 4 on two iPod 2Gs (legacy). If you have an iDevice (non iPhone) other than that setup please let me know how it works.

I’ve tested it on iOS 4 and iOS 5

Installation:
1. Download the deb
2. SSH the deb file to your iDevice at any location
3. Open iFile on your device and click the file where you SSH’d it.
4. Press install

Alternatively, if you don’t have iFile and if you have a version of MobileTerminal that is iOS4/5 friendly you can type:
Code:

dpkg -i /path/to/deb
Apply Themes/Logos in Settings->Zeppelin.

To install your own logos
1. On your local machine create a folder titled for your theme name.
2. Put images in it titled as follows: silver.png for the silver bar, black.png for the black bar, and etched.png for notification center. Make sure to add @2x to the file name if it is a retina icon.
3. Copy this folder from your computer to /Library/Zeppelin
4. Open Settings->Zeppelin and it should appear in the list
5. PROFIT

Put themes in /Library/Zeppelin after installation. Check the pre-installed ones to see how it is done.

If anyone would like to make an icon for the settings table it is welcome.

Thanks to:
Dustin Howett for making Theos and helping me out with my first tweak
Roshani for Infiniti, Android
TheBaddestiPod for Aperture, Triforce, and Batman
dsg for Pac-man, Superman, Beats
shallowheard for Blue Cloud
Lokheed for Space Invaders (this guy is the man. Buy his theme, Jaku)

Apologies to the above for not requesting permission. I never had planned to release this. If you would like your images removed, PM me.

More credits coming soon

Since iPods now work. I have submitted to ModMyI

Changelog
0.0.2
1. Aligned labels
2. iPod support

You can download the package here

The package has been submitted to ModMyi so should hit Cydia soon.

The guy behind Zeppelin, who goes by the handle jivhg on macthemes, states that he had some help from Dustin Howett, and a few others who’s images he used.

Thanks to @zooropalg for the tip!

This is a surprising move from T-Mobile as they currently don’t offer the iPhone on any of their packages so it will be available to users who are using an unlocked device. The new “iPhone scope of support” isn’t comprehensive but it does include help on common procedures, information on handset features and specifications along with “other basic device questions.”

At the moment, the current T-Mobile support for iPhone users is very sparse and it mainly focuses on getting users up and running on their network with unlocked devices. This is because T-Mobile isn’t an official partner and operates in a wireless spectrum that isn’t supported by the iPhone.

T-Mobile’s CEO, Phillip Humm, said that the company’s wireless operating frequency was the key reason as to why is doesn’t sell the iPhone. Also since a proposed agreement between AT&T and T-Mobile fell through, AT&T must pay T-Mobile $3 billion to fulfill the deals pre-negotiated terms.

The iPhone is a massive hit for any network which sells the device and the carriers that don’t offer the device have blamed poor customer sign-up rates due to not having access to the device.

The proposed support is due to come into effect on the 30th of January so this seems like a good move for T-Mobile but let us know what you think.

Microsoft stated this project back in December of last year when it introduced the official Xbox LIVE application for the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft has already started to move one game over called kinectimals, which allows you to visit the island of Lemuria where you can “play with, care for and fall in love with your very own cub.” But according to Forbes reports, that was only the beginning…

Quoting a Microsoft Spokesman, Forbes writes:

“While the Xbox Live experiences and games always work best on the Windows platform, we understand that some Xbox fans may be using other types of devices. To satisfy that need, we are working to extend a few of our Xbox experiences and titles to other platforms.”

Are there any Xbox LIVE games you’d like to see come to iOS? If so leave a comment below.

Source;  Forbes.

Yahoo has decided to do some cleaning with their applications in the market (AppStore and Android market place) and has announced that the company is no longer going to support their lesser apps in the market but they will still be there for users to download.

Yahoo has stated that as the mobile space moves at an insane rate, they too must keep up with what users want and are looking for in today’s market. These are the applications that yahoo will no longer support;

• Yahoo! Meme (iPad and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Mim (iPad)
• Yahoo! Answers (Android)
• Yahoo! AppSpot (Android and iPhone)
• Yahoo! Deals (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Finance (BlackBerry)
• Yahoo! Movies (Android)
• Yahoo! News (Android)
• Yahoo! Shopping (iPhone)
• Yahoo! Sketch-a-Search (iPad and iPhone)
• (Via Yahoo)

On first impressions the Steam App seems to be far more functional than Microsoft’s as it allows users to chat to their friends through the Steam Chat feature and you can also get entire access to the Steam store. Similarly to the XBox App users can also browse through their friends to see who is online and playing what.

At the moment the App doesn’t deliver mobile games for iOS, or Android, but by releasing the App over multiple mobile platforms it clears the way for any future additions which Valve decide to make.

At the moment, the App is in a closed BETA stage. This means that only a select lucky few are able to get passed the login screen and the majority of us will get a message saying Valve has “made a note of your account and will be sending out more invites shortly.”

The Steam App is currently available to download, though, and a final release should be heading our way shortly.

Today sees the release of the first plugin called “Lingual”. Developed by the guys over at CodeThemed, Lingual enhances Siri’s ability to translate what you say into another language.

Normally translations are handled by Wolfram Alpha, but with Lingual installed you get the answer directly from Siri, with a great native looking UI too. You simply ask siri “What is (word/sentence/phrase) in (language)” or “Translate (word/sentence/phrase) to (language)”. Lingual boasts the ability to translate to over 30 languages and is completely free from Cydia.

According to TechCrunch, Sireet will let you speak your tweet to Siri, where it will then confirm your tweet with you and let you send it using Siri’s characteristic responses. Once the tweet has been sent, your phone will chirp out a notification and Siri will leave you a confirmation. The one downside to this does appear to be that you can not review your tweets before you can send them.

Click here to view the embedded video.

This new free Cydia app has been added to the ModMyi repository and is ready to download now.

The newest iPhone model is said to have several different versions which are currently being tested and at the moment there isn’t an obvious choice as to which one is going to be used. The one thing that each model has in common is the 4-inch display with one of them being made by LG.

Each model is reportedly symmetrical in thickness, which means that they are the same width at the top as they are at the bottom which ends rumours of a new ‘tear-drop’ design. Also, interestingly, each model is either longer and/or wider than the current iPhone 4[S] but no models are final in their build.

The source is also said to be the same source which reported that the iPhone 5 would not be released late last summer and that Apple were instead building the iPhone 4[S], a prediction which turned out to be true. Because of the accurate prediction from before, can we expect the same level of accuracy as before which would mean that we could soon expect to see a bigger iPhone which is still as slender as the current device and without a form-fitting back?

We will keep you updated with any more developments on this story but let us know what you think about this story.

Belfy is a free tweak from Cydia on the BigBoss repo.

Ryan Petrich has managed to pull the Apps from the iPhone package them up and but them on Cydia for an easy install.

The Apps when downloaded will need to be x2 so that they fit the iPad screen but with the help of 2 other tweaks Retina Pad and FullForce they look great.

Installing the tweak from Cydia takes between 2 and around 7 minutes and requires a reboot once complete.

Check out the vid below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So there you have it if you need these apps now there is a nice and easy way to get them.

Many of you might remember Geohot for developing and released the Limera1n jailbreak tool and then being dragged through the courts by Sony for developing and releasing tutorials for a ‘jailbreak’ on the Playstation 3. Once the dust settled around his court case Geohot disappeared from the hacking scene and took a job working for the Facebook social network.

Well now it appears that he has recently quit from his position there and has been reported to be taking part in ‘Hackathon’ at a start up named Backplane, which was rather surprising funded by none other than Lady Gaga.

During the competition, Geohot built an application which showed where your Facebook friends were at any time, on a map, using their check-ins. Working alongside Aviv Ovadya, Hotz concentrated on extracting API information and programming it into location data.

The jailbreak community is brimming with talent, you only need to look at the work done by the Chronic dev team, the iPhone dev team and of course the newly formed A5 ‘dream team’ consisting of members from PlanetBeing but getting Geohot back onto the scene would surely be a welcome addition.

There is no confirmation that Geohot has left Facebook, or he has indeed returned to the iOS scene, but this news is certain to generate a lot of interest amongst the jailbreak community.

As usual we will keep you informed with any more news on this exciting development, keep checking back here.

This years finalist added Siri to the mix for a bit of fun.

The advert as you can see in the vid below doesn’t mention Siri, but it is implied that it is Siri that is making the Doritos, Sumbero the dogs magically appear. It even plays on the joke that Siri doesn’t get everything right all of the time.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Let us know in the comments below what you think if the ad.

Chinee, a Chinese case manufacturer, have already begun selling cases for a device which has been called the iPad 2[S], a name which obviously gets its origins from the iPhone 4[S], where the ‘S’ stands for an internal specification update rather than a redesign. The case designs seem to indicate that the iPad 3 will be identical to its predecessor but will be slightly thicker.

The manufacturer of these new iPad 2[S] cases have said that the device is 1mm thicker than the iPad 2′s form-factor and they also went on to say that their sources are from within Apple’s supply chain.

These iPad 2S/3 cases are notable because it means that the internal schematics for the new iPad are floating around. It also means that rumours that Apple started its production for the latest iPad in January could actually be correct.

Besides the new design, the iPad 2S/3 is rumoured to have a quad core processor, retina display, Siri dictation support and LTE network capabilities.

Keep checking back here for more updates as they come available.

Now a company called True Knowledge has developed an App called Evi which is designed to go toe-to-toe with Siri. The Evi App is designed for all versions of the iPhone and iPad and is available to download from the App Store for £0.69 ($0.99). Evi is based on the same Nuance voice recognition as found in Siri and the licensing of which accounts for the price tag attached to the App. It also features integration with Yelp and other sources to deliver an array of information so it does seem to compare favourably with Siri.

Below is a list of features that Evi is claimed to be able to deliver on:

• Voice or text input – Chat to Evi in plain English and she will understand
• Local information for UK and USA – Shopping, news, dining and more. Evi knows where you are and gives answers based on your location
• One tap words – Allowing you to build your question super-fast
• Built in browser – No need to swap to a different browser, view web links within Evi’s app
• A learning and adapting intelligence – Rate Evi’s answers to help it learn more about the world
• More than a search engine – Evi takes the searching out of search, able to review and compare nearly a billion facts from her database to give you exactly what you need

But is it really that good to call it a rival to Siri?

One of the big things that makes Evi stand out is that it works in the UK, something that Siri users have been struggling with since it’s release so it will appeal to iOS users outside of the US. Another major point is that Evi will deliver all the information you need inside the App, so, whereas before Siri would ask to perform a web search for you, Evi will produce all the information into the App making it easier for you to get the information you want.

True knowledge have claimed that the App contains “Almost a billion facts” so if you ask Evi a question, such as ‘how do you make apple pie’ it will come back with a list of recipes with relevant links to the information you need to make it within the App and not needing to perform a web search, so it does have speed and ease of use firmly on its side and with the ability to “infer trillions more if necessary” it does seem on first impressions that Evi could be a good rival for Siri.

There are, of course, some things which Evi can’t compete with Siri on, such as the calendar integration and reminders so as a personal assistant Siri still claims the top spot but as an intelligent search engine Evi does seem like a good alternative for those of us who have older iPhone’s and iPad’s without the Siri technology.

One other good thing that could come out of the Evi App is it could spur Apple on to make improvements to the Siri App.

Have you used the Evi App? let us know what you think about it by commenting.

To get this to work you will obviously need a Jailbroken device running iOS 5 (at least) with Activator installed (available from Cydia).

Head over to Settings.app – Activator – Anywhere – Pick a Gesture (personally I have it set to Hold Status Bar) – Scroll down to “Compose Tweet” under the Systems Actions header.

Now you can tweet from anywhere within iOS 5+ other than directly from the lockscreen, and you didn’t given need to buy a tweak from Cydia!

Some say that the biggest thing announced yesterday was the textbook innovations that were introduced, along with iBooks 2.0. I personally feel that iTunes U(niversity), which offers free lectures, tutorials, and classes to anyone online, is an equally important announcement. And let’s not forget the fact that now, Apple has unleashed into the world a dirt-simple application (for the Mac only) to create your own eBooks. Not just textbooks, but actual, interactive eBooks. So yes, in a word, yesterday’s announcement was revolutionary.

Let’s start with iBooks 2.0.

Credit to AllThingsD.com for the image.

It seems that Apple has made a choice, and drawn a line in the sand: they no longer believe that physical text books are the way of the future. They are contending that the way to go is now all digital, and unfortunately, as much as it pains me to say this, I must concede that they are correct. As a writer myself, I can say that I personally completely owe just about my entire education to books, and the worlds of knowledge that are contained within them. To me, there is no greater feeling than cracking open a new book, and taking in a whiff of that “new book smell”. And equally, it is just as important as that great feeling you get when you find a rare, old book, and take a peek inside to be met with that “old book smell”. Most nerds out there will agree with me. It’s a magical thing. However, when on the move, it has become incredibly cumbersome to drag along with you 20 or maybe even 30 pounds of books with you at all times, and this to me is exactly here the convenience lies: on your iPad, you can simply bring that with you, buy a case for it (instead of those God forsaken “book covers”) and there you go, you can literally walk around with thousands of books at your beck and call.

However, besides just the ability to carry with you an entire library, these books are different: they are now interactive, in ways that books of my childhood never were. With iBooks 2, gone are the days when you would have to carry around an accompanying dictionary in the event that you stumbled across a word you were unsure of, because with iBooks 2, you can simply double-tap the word to highlight it, and hit “define”, and voila! Up comes the definition!

Further than that, you can now also use the same double-tap-to-highlight method, and actually highlight the text, so that you can be instantly drawn back to it later, as well as have an instant study-guide created: the infamous index card. Once you do that, a new menu will pop up. The options are “Copy/Define/Highlight”, and for these purposes, you would simply hit the “Highlight” option, where even more options would appear, giving you the choices of the color of highlighter (or just a red underline), to cancel the highlight, and the option to turn it into a “Note”, a/k/a an “index card”. It is here that you would obviously create the index card, but further than that, to view these “Notes”, you would go to the “List Menu” button up top, and choose the “Notes” section, where it will display all of the notes you have chosen to take.

Now, since I myself do not have an iPad, I have mainly been using it on my iPhone 4[s], and for such a small display, I have to mention, that Apple just simply “got it right”, again. I personally have not seen what these textbooks are capable of in regards to the further interaction, but I have seen the power of iBook Author. This application is simply stunning, and powerful, especially to the amateur or self-publisher – and it’s free. On top of that, as part of the announcement, Apple has included the fact that it has partnered with three of the most widely recognized textbook publishers in the world, Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. These three textbook publishers are responsible for approximately 90% of all textbooks released to educational establishments, period. This could’t have been a more welcomed addition, because what good would all this software be without any actual content? There might not be a stunning amount of content available at the moment, with only about eight (8) books being released, but the content available does give you some insight as to what you can expect in the future.

Below are some photos of the interactivity, but I think that the videos actually do it more justice.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

While those are only some of the videos out there, more and more are popping up every single day, and it is truly mind-blowing. It honestly makes me a bit jealous of today’s youth, as they get to learn up-to-date information in a fun way, while using a device that they will most likely become familiar with for the rest of their lives. And the best part in my opinion is the cost of these textbooks. Ignoring what people have been paying for all these years, they are being sold by Apple for $14.99. And yes, anyone who is familiar with the cost of these books just did a double-take. But, what if you aren’t a student? What if you are an author, or have some other like-minded projects that you’ve been putting on the back burner, like me? What if you want to release your own eBooks? Well, there’s an app for that, literally. We mentioned above that they had something called iBook Author, available for the Mac. And it accomplishes everything that it says it will: it will turn you into an iBook author! If you have ever used a word processing application, such as Microsoft Word, or Apple Pages, then you will instantly feel right at home in this environment. While it may be more in-sync with the Apple iWork apps, it is truly not hard to get the hang of it, and get the hang of it quickly. Just by opening it up, you can see the power of this application. They offer you some simple methods to get complex things done. So, thank you, Apple, for that. It is truly appreciated. You can release/publish your books to the iBookStore, and they are subject to the same review process as all other books. If they are free, they usually seem to get pushed through faster, but if you opt to tack on a fee to them, it can go only as high as $14.99, of which Apple will take a 30% cut from as per their licensing agreement. Something that should be noted though, I have read throughout the internet that books you create in iBooks Author are only available for iPads. If you wish to create your eBook for iPods, and iPhones, then you will have to go about it using all of the previous methods that are already in place. This is kind of a bummer, but ultimately, in my opinion it isn’t a deal-breaker. Plus, for those of you who have an iPad as well, you can literally text out your progress via the iBooks Author app, provided that your iPad is connected via USB. It’s pretty great for instant updates as well, and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Anyway, here are some more screenshots of iBook Author, as well as some videos:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

And finally, iTunes U(niversity). I will be honest with you, there is not much that I know about this service. I know that I wrote an article about it once in the past, announcing that they were offering free courses online which would teach you how to develop applications for iOS iDevices, but further than that, I wasn’t really up-to-speed on what it was about, or how it worked. As it seems, it is currently only available for iOS devices, as I cannot seem to install it on my Mac, however, after trying it out on my iPhone 4[s], I can truly recommend that you see this as a legitimate learning tool. Many courses are available free of charge, and as we all know, knowledge is power. Here are some screenshots.

So as you can see, Apple is serious about it’s stance on revolutionizing the world of education. This is not just for the United States, but globally. Now, if you so desire, you can simply go on a textbook purchasing spree, regardless of whether or not you are a student, and literally expand your horizons for a fraction of what it used to cost. And most importantly, you get to do in on your terms, on devices that you are already familiar with, in ways that you’ve already become accustomed to. Gone are the days where you soak up knowledge from a 15 year old textbook with inaccurate or out-of-date information. Gone are the days of developing slipped discs and hernias because of the weight of the books you carry. And gone are the ways of archaic methods used to teach students who were bored out of their minds. As usual, Apple seems to have truly found yet another market to revolutionize. And in the process, at least as far as I am concerned, they have crossed the gap that has ben an age-old hurdle: how to make learning fun. Keep your eyes peeled, people, as I guarantee you, this is just the start.

Apple has also released an update to iTunes 10.5.3 today, to bring a handful of new features. Here is what came in the description;

“iTunes 10.5.3 allows you to sync interactive iBooks textbooks to your iPad. These Multi-Touch textbooks are available for purchase from the iTunes Store on your Mac or from the iBookstore included with iBooks 2 on your iPad.”

It has not yet been confirmed whether this update is safe for current and would-be jailbreakers so you update at your own risk. You can download iTunes 10.5.3 via Apple’s website or via Software Update on your Mac.

This isn’t good news if it turns out to be more than just a coincidence.

It has also been mentioned that Siri may use FairPlay which we hear DOES have some level of Jb detection.

FairPlay is a digital rights management (DRM) technology created by Apple Inc., based on technology created by the company Veridisc. FairPlay is built into the QuickTime multimedia software and used by the iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV, iTunes, and iTunes Store and the App Store.

Anyone seen any jailbreak detection in Siri? Siri stopped working after a day of running with jailbroken kernel on the iPhone 4S …

— Stefan Esser (@i0n1c) January 19, 2012

** Further information from @i0n1c confirms that after a simple reboot Siri resumed operation as normal. Crisis averted people! **

Apple today has changed the way we learn in our education by Introducing three new applications, iBooks 2.0 (As an update to the existing one), iTunes U with an all new look, and iBooks Author (which is available in the Mac AppStore) which where all shown off in an educational keynote today.

If your not one of the lucky ones that where waiting in the freezing cold to be let into Apple’s Media event in NYC, then this is this good news for you, because after the event Apple posted the entire one hour video online for you to watch.

To watch the entire media event, just head over to this link and play the keynote. Also you will need a browser that is compatible with Quicktime in order to view it.

What do you think? Please leave a comment below.

While iOS 5.1 beta 3 brought with it some new features, such as (in my opinion and through tests) better WiFi signal and battery life, there seems to be a strange bug that has come along with it.

This bug comes in the form of the proximity sensor that is used so that Siri knows when to start when the Raise To Speak option is turned on.

Although this option is turned off in the settings menu the sensor is still active as long as your phone is now asleep.

According to the dev forums, to fix this you need to turn the setting off, then turn the phone off normally (slide to power off). Then turn it back on and the sensor will be off. However as soon as you reboot your device the sensor will start up again and stay on.

While iOS 5.1 is still in beta this isn’t too much of a problem but lets hope they fix it in the final release.

Apple’s interest in expanding Siri to help with online shopping has been revealed this week and it was discovered by AppleInsider. The planned invention, which is being called “Intelligent Automated Assistant” provides a detailed look at not only what Siri is capable of doing at the moment, but also what it can do in the future.

As things stand, Siri for the iPhone 4[s] will not allow users to complete online transactions, instead it will simply reply with “Sorry, I can’t purchase that”. But Apple’s latest patent filing lists e-commerce specifically as a key function of its “Intelligent Automated Assistant”. It also notes that Siri could be used for online purchases such as “books, DVD’s and music.”

With the new e-commerce functionality added to Siri, users would be able to make purchases such as films, songs, albums and even TV episodes through Apple’s own iTunes store. It could also mean that purchases from iBookstore and the App Store are also possible. But the filing also mentions the possibility of purchasing physical items such as DVD’s, CD’s and books, which suggests that Siri will allow users to make purchases from other online retailers.

Last month, users gained the ability to check the availability of an item at Best Buy through Siri, thanks to new capability and the Wolfram Alpha engine Siri utilises. But whilst customers are able to see if an item they would like is in stock, they are unable to purchase them through Siri.

The patent Application lists Amazon’s name specifically as a potential partner for such a system. With an example having Siri telling a user “I can help you find music, movies, books, electronics, toys and more–and buy it from Amazon. What are you looking for?” The proposed invention was made public this week by the U.S Patent and Trademark Office and was first filed in January 2011. In the long list of creditors it lists some of the original employees of Siri, the company which Apple acquired, including Dag Kittlaus, the co-founder of Siri, who left Apple last year after the launch of the iPhone 4[s].

As usual we will keep you posted as more information comes available on this but is the possibility of making online purchases through Siri something which appeals to you?

This sounds far too easy to be true, but AppleGordon claims that when he plugged his brand new iPod Touch into his computer and restored it from a previous iPhone 4[s] back up, Siri was installed and ready to go with the dictation feature working fine although Siri couldn’t process any search features.

Wow I almost didn’t get through writing that without chuckling! This simply isn’t true, kudos for blagging all those blogs though.

Backups made through iTunes and iCloud contain things such as contacts, application settings, icon placements etc. To our knowledge, these backups DO NOT contain UI elements, so to suggest that the Siri UI was magically transferred from one device backup to another is ridiculous!

Click here to view the embedded video.

The video quite clearly shows an iPod calling up Siri, but it is undoubtedly using one of the many Siri ports found in Cydia.

Even well respected iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith finds this ludicrous.

RT @slashgear Siri on iPod Touch with simple iPhone 4S restore slgr.co/v9n <;- can people stop reporting on this? Doesn't happen

— Steve Troughton-Sm… (@stroughtonsmith) January 18, 2012

Like many the first draft of this article was misinformed but we hope this clears things up for you.

When I first saw this watch I didn’t know whether it would really be a great benefit but after reading some of the plus points one thing stood out to me. I’m quite a forgetful person and quite often I leave the house thinking I’ve forgotten something only to realise later that I’ve left my phone behind. I’ve also done this on wild nights out as well and I’ve had to replace a fair few phones, so after reading that this watch comes with a vibrating alert which lets you know when you get 5 metres away from your phone I thought “fantastic”.

After receiving it and trying it out for a few days though the other features do, actually, come in quite useful. The primary function is that if you get a phone call it will vibrate on your wrist and there is an LCD display which shows you the name and number of the person calling you so you don’t need to keep checking your phone to see if you want to take the call or not. A quick glance at your watch is all it takes.

I know it’s not really a great deal of effort to check your phone’s screen, but the simplicity of just checking your wrist is a nice feature to have, and you can also pretend that you’re James Bond at the same time….awesome! The vibrating alert that it gives out is powerful enough to make you take notice as well, so if you’re dancing in a loud night club you won’t miss a call from your friends asking where you are.

On to the design of the watch, and this is where my main gripe is, being an avid fan of retro clothing (yes I’m an indie boy) the watches futuristic design doesn’t really suit any attire which I decide to throw on. This won’t affect everyone as most will find the futuristic look enticing but for me a simple, old-fashioned watch with this feature would’ve made me look and think “I’ve got to have one of those”. The design is similar to a bangle and is open at one end to make it easier to slip on and the interior rubber grips give it a comfortable feel as well so you won’t keep adjusting it.

This is also a strong plus point for me, again not for everyone, as I have an allergy to certain types of metal so I don’t have to worry about breaking out into a rash which looks rather unsightly so if you’re suffering from a similar allergy to me then you can rest assured that you can wear this in comfort.

To tell the time you need to simply press one of the buttons on the side of the watch and it brings up a digital clock displaying the time in 24 hour format. After a few seconds the time will disappear and it goes back to looking like another wrist band what you’re wearing so it is quite discrete as well (although at roughly 30mm’s wide it’s a rather large wrist band).

To get it to work is relatively simple as well. When you first get the watch it will need charging up, this took me about 30 minutes to give it a charge so it could turn on but to fully charge the battery it can take up to a rather lengthy 3 hours but from this you’ll easily get a day and a half to 2 days of use. The packaging quotes 72 hours of standby time, but once it’s paired and you’re getting a fair few phone calls, you will notice that the battery life will start to drain quicker.

To pair it to your phone you have to hold down the second of the two buttons on the side for around 5 seconds where the display will then show “pairing” and then find it on your phone and enter the password so it’s all pretty simple and easy to set up, it’s just the initial charging that takes the time.

All in all I think the SmartTime is a good idea but not really breath-taking and you can live without one, but for £34.95 I’ve seen watches that are a lot more expensive and they do far less.

Again I’d like to thank Mobile Fun for sending me the SmartTime to sample and review and I’d also like to point out that they do sell a wide range of other accessories, including a nice range of mobile phone covers.

“Future Shop said scam artists bought Apple’s popular tablet computers with cash, replaced the devices with bags of model clay, resealed the boxes and returned them. The returned fakes were then put back on the shelf and sold to unsuspecting customers. It really saddens Future Shop that people stoop to be this opportunistic and make money is this kind of organized way.”

One customer bought his wife an iPad 2 for Christmas only for her to be shocked when she received a lump of modeling clay inside the box where the iPad 2 should be. To make things worse, when the customer returned the iPad 2 box with the modeling clay inside, he was apparently treated like a criminal by the stores manager.

Thankfully Future Shop has confirmed that it has refunded the customer and given them a free iPad 2 as compensation.

Well with iOS 5.1 beta 3 it seems that Facebook is going to receive some similar integration.

Looking around inside the new developers build of iOS 5.1 iMore discovered that Facebook has its own entry field into in the Contacts.app right below Twitter.

Let us know in the comments if you prefer Facebook to Twitter.

Update….

After more research from our very own Nazaroth it seems that this feature is available on iOS 5.0.1. However it only shows if a Twitter username has been entered into the contact.

After CES it appears the company that is currently leading the race to land a deal with apple is HzO, who are claiming that their WaterBlock Superhydrophobic coating is better than all of the competitions, and it seems that they have managed to get Apple’s attention.

HzO recently told Pocket-lint:

“We showed the Samsung Chairman the technology with a Samsung Galaxy S that we had coated with HZO and he couldn’t believe his eyes,” a representative of the company told us. “Samsung is really excited by the tech.”

The company has told us that they are also talking to Apple as well, hoping to be able to let Apple make the iPhone 5 waterproof.

“We expect HzO to be in next season’s phones,”

Apple did have over 250 employee’s stationed at CES, possibly looking for new technologies to implement on the Apple bandwagon, and it’s possible that one of their employees stopped at the HzO booth and liked what they saw.

It isn’t known if Apple is currently looking to work out a deal with HzO, but we will keep you posted with any further information as it becomes available.

Grooveshark has made it’s way back on to the iPhone and iPad, thanks to an all new mobile-friendly HTML5 Web App that the company has built from scratch, this means that there will be no Adobe flash required, it is just HTML5 and lets you stream music across various platforms.

The mobile-friendly HTML5 Web App supports these platforms, iOS (both iPad and iPhone including iPod touch as well), Android 2.3+, Blackberry Playbook, and the HP TouchPad.

Grooveshark was released into the Apple AppStore back in August 2010, but it didn’t last long, because a few hours later on the same day the Grooveshark team had received a letter from Apple basically saying that they had received a complaint from the Universal Music Group UK, due to that the company decided to remove the app from the ITunes AppStore.

After that, the Grooveshark team decided to release the free-service app into the Jailbreak world without being under Apple’s command and you could have the app on your iPhone by going in to Cydia and downloading it (and you still can) but if you haven’t got a Jailbroken device there was no way you could get it, until now.

Grooveshark is a music streaming service that allows users to search for, stream, and upload music you like that will be played instantly on your device or you could add it in to a playlist, which brings all the music you want to listen to and puts it in to a group of music for you to listen anytime and anywhere. For unlimited access and no ads on mobile, you can get Grooveshark Anywhere for $9 per month.

Grooveshark is one of the many streaming services, like Spotify and Pandora (US only) that allow you to stream music instantly without the need to download it first.

If you check out MyGreatPhone and MyGreatTablet everyday you know that recently Amazon had launched a HTML5 web app for the iPad that allows customers to purchase Kindle ebooks, Apple didn’t let Amazon offer purchase links for ebooks in its native iOS app because it violated the App Store’s guidelines.

You can have access to the HTML5 web app at http://html5.grooveshark.com/ on your mobile device.

The PopSockets case for the iPhone 4/4S literally makes your iPhone Pop and Lock.

The case is the brain child of David Barnett, a professor of philosophy at the University of Colorado-Boulder. David has spent a year designing the PopSockets Case and after over 60 design cycles he managed to team up with the people over at Speck Designs. Between David and the Speck Design people that have really come up with a case that both serves a purpose and has great design.

The case has 2 sockets in the back that expand allowing the iPhone to stand up and be used in many different ways. Either both of the sockets can be popped out at the same time or you can just pop out one of them.

David only needs $12,000 worth of backers to get the PopSockets case to be manufactured and guess what, because the case is that good with 28 days left the KickStarter Project has already been 111% funded.

The case can be used to hold your earbuds, prop your iPhone in either landscape or portrait mode and can help with holding the device and texting with just one hand.

The cases will come with two solid-colored sockets with the cases themselves looking bright and certainly attracting attention. David has also teamed up with Brainbowinc to offer the sockets in some funky designs.

To help the project out and secure yourself one of the first PopSockets cases then you can back them starting from just $1.

• £1: A link to an uncut version of my Kickstarter video.
• $25: One PopSockets case in the color of your choice… Sockets will be a solid colour.
• $40: One PopSockets case in the color of your choice…. 2 sets of designer sockets.
• $60: Two PopSockets case in the color of your choice…. 2 sets of designer sockets.
• $100: Two PopSockets cases, colors of your choice, plus a link to a dance video tailored to the song of your choice.
• $150: Six PopSockets cases, colors of your choice, with 6 extra pairs of designer sockets, designs of your choice.
• $500: Twenty PopSockets cases, colors of your choice, and David will join your next dance party either in person or by Skype video (depending on location)
• $1000: All of the above and a plus a big than you.

One of the best things about the project is Davids video make sure you check it out right here

Honestly though its nice to see a fresh design in an iPhone case and the PopSockets case is certainly fresh. I personally can’t wait to see the end product.

If your a Facebook fan and you want to keep an eye on the PopSockets Project then head to their fan page.

For iPhone 4[s] users it’s been a long 3 month wait for a jailbreak and for iPad 2 users who updated to iOS 5 it has been a lengthy 7 months but it looks like there is finally light at the end of the tunnel as @pod2g announced this on his blog post…

“Here are some news about the current work on the A5 research. @planetbeing escaped from the sandbox with the help of @saurik. Thanks to their awesome work, there should be nothing left blocking for the A5 jailbreak. Now it should be a matter of days. Still no precise ETA of course. We all want this to be finished ASAP, we’re getting tired!”

This post surely shows that the ‘dream team’ has made huge progress over the last few days. It was recently reported that the hackers had cleared sandbox and resolved all of the major blocking issues but there was still no update as to when we could expect a jailbreak to be released and today @pod2g has stated that it’s only a matter of days although this is an estimate.

The team, who are still working tirelessly to get a jailbreak released, could face a lot more problems between now and a release date but this shows that they are getting ever closer to achieving their goal.

Keep checking back here for more updates as it appears that an A5 jailbreak could literally be here any day.

ZAGG today posted the above image on twitter, which they allegedly received from an attendee at CES 2012. The picture shows a box of what looks to be the iPad 3, yeah, ok.

The picture shows the iPad being insanely thinner than the iPad 2. Maybe because it is just a screenshot from of an original iPad homescreen with no actual device visible. Unfortunately, this picture above of an iPad 3 box is a poorly designed fake and somebody is having a little fun with it.

Still don’t believe us? Well, if you look closely, Apple always updates the box with the latest features available on the device and the operating system, wether it is new applications or a new dock arrangement, they always update the product packaging showing the changes. Unfortunately the PhotoBooth, FaceTime and Camera applications, which are standard with all iPads running iOS 5 are not in the picture and it still sports the wallpaper from the original iPad.

Also, when Apple released the iPad 2, the packaging simply said “iPad”, just like the original as there is only ever one current new version being sold at any one time.

So we say total fakeroony!! Good effort but seriously, try a little harder next time.

After getting so far by himself, @pod2g teamed up with members of both the Chronic and iPhone Dev teams to help him finalise his iOS 5 untethered jailbreak for older A4 devices. We have all seen his work implemented in the updated version of Redsn0w and through the Corona utility on Cydia, which can be used on devices already using a tethered jailbreak.

If you had an iPhone 4[s] or an iPad 2 though, you were out of luck in regards to an untethered jailbreak on your device due to the team not having the relevant exploits to inject the untethered files. In order to obtain these files the jailbreakers needed to get them from an official developers account and therefore they could not be released to the general public for everyone to enjoy.

Well it now appears that the dream team have recruited a new, famous, member with MuscleNerd tweeting that the creator of Cydia, Jay Freeman (AKA Saurik) will be lending a helping hand with the A5 version of @pod2g’s untethered jailbreak. Due to his experience in this area, he did express that he would not put an ETA on when this will happen but things are moving forward.

In another tweet @pod2g also paid thanks to another legendary hacker PlanetBeing, who has also been providing a helping hand to try and alleviate sandboxing issues which the team has been experiencing. It’s believed that his knowledge and skills may help to move this jailbreak forward than would be possible if he wasn’t involved.

As usual we will keep you posted on any more developments as they arrive.

This means that Gorilla Glass 2 will allow for better colours and a touch that is more responsive than it’s predecessor, alternatively,  at it could be even stronger if it’s left at the same thickness. There has been a lot of discussions about whether Apple will continue to use Gorilla Glass but it would be surprising if they didn’t, especially on it’s larger devices such as the iPad.

Corning Gorilla Glass 2 allows up to a 20% reduction in glass thickness whilst still maintaining its industry leading damage resistance customers have come to expect from the worlds most widely deployed cover glass. The new Gorilla Glass 2 allows devices to be slimmer, produces brighter images and a greater touch sensitivity. This will give manufacturers superior flexibility with their designs as they address the consumers demands for increasingly high-performing, touch-sensitive and durable mobile devices.

James R Steiner, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of Corning Speciality Materials, said this:

“We knew Corning Gorilla Glass could get even better. So, in response to our customers’ drive toward thinner form factors, we designed this new glass to enable meaningful reduction in thickness without sacrificing the outstanding glass performance for which Gorilla Glass has become highly recognized. This glass, along with Windows operating system innovations from Microsoft, will help deliver exceptional beauty, performance, and toughness for new Windows PCs. You will see this early this year with Windows-based PCs which we expect to be the first in-market laptops designed to leverage the performance of our new second-generation glass,” 

Product qualification and design implementation for Corning Gorilla Glass 2 is already underway with Corning’s customers and a number of them are expected to unveil their new devices, using Corning Gorilla Glass 2, in the coming months. It is thought that Apple is likely to do the same with it’s upcoming devices but as usual we will keep you informed as soon as more information is available.

So, with that being said, as of today, Activision has officially released the iOS and Android application which grants you access on your iDevice to view all of the benefits of this service. It includes sections which allow you to view your progress, it allows you to take a quick look at any games you may have saved, or videos you may have saved, and it gives you tips on how you can improve your overall gameplay experience within the ‘Call of Duty’ universe. Another option with this application that I think is pretty cool, is that it allows you to edit and save your custom classes for the game directly through your iOS device, while on the go.

Immerse yourself in Call of Duty® wherever you go with the Call of Duty® ELITE mobile app. Evaluate your multiplayer progress with in-depth stat analysis. Formulate new strategies based on your recent performance and remotely incorporate edits to your loadouts. Push your changes directly into Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare® 3 so you’re always ready to play.

Features:

- Check your Career Summary for deep details on your multiplayer activity. Analyze your progress over time to see which areas you need to improve in and which areas you excel in.
- Review Recent Matches to track your performance on a match-by-match basis.
- View and edit your Custom Classes on the go. Push your changes into the game so you’re ready to play the moment you load up multiplayer.
- Track your Challenge progress to help you work toward the highest XP gains.

It is rumoured that Apple is preparing to release a Siri style app but it seems like Dragon TV has beat it too the punch with a platform that will enable users to find “content by speaking channel numbers, station names, show and movie names”

“Nuance Communications Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today unveiled Dragon TV, a unique voice and natural language understanding platform for TV, device and set-top box OEMs and service operators. Dragon TV makes finding and accessing shows, movies and content in today’s digital living room easy and fun for consumers.”

Nuance has provided a few examples of the the type of voice-controlled commands that we can expect such as “Go to PBS” or “Find comedies with Vince Vaughn”  but users comments could include “virtually anything”. The platform is also set to include social networking features such as email, Twitter, Facebook and Skype. All of these features will also be voice-controlled allowing users to speak what they would like to say.

According to the press release, Dragon TV is already available to television and device OEM’s and it features support for “all TV, set-top box, remote control and application platforms.” The specific platforms mentioned are Linux, Android and iOS and there is also the possibility that the Dragon TV platform will land in a version of Siri for an Apple TV device.

Nuance Mobile Senior Vice President and General Manager, Mike Thompson, said this regarding the announcement:

“Traditional search on televisions is tedious and amazingly outdated. Dragon TV brings an amazing voice experience directly to the living room, similar to what people do every day on their phones and in their cars.”

Mike Thompson has also stated that “Traditional search on televisions is tedious and amazingly outdated,” and he also went on to add “Dragon TV brings an amazing voice experience directly to the living room, similar to what people do every day on their phones and in their cars.”

Dragon TV is currently available for TV, device OEM’s, operators and developers, supporting all major TV, set-top box, remote control and application platforms including, Android, Linux and iOS.

If there is 2 things that I take everywhere with me its a USB stick and my iPhone. My USB drive hangs from my set of keys and well my iPhone is usually in my hand. The problem with this is that I always worry that the USB drive will somehow drop off my keys and I won’t notice.

ego have come up with a great idea though, the ego USB Case.

The ego USB case comes in 5 size options 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, 16GB and a massive 32GB version. The case is the second from the ego Hybrid Series with the first being the ego Snap that we reviewed last year.

The USB case comes in 5 classic colours Sky Blue, Yellow, Red, Pink and Black and is a collaboration between the companies SNS design team and their customers.

Personally I feel that a USB case could be one of the best cases there is on the market, with ego’s great designs and the protection that their cases offer I’m sure this case is going to huge success.

The ego USB case should be available to purchase late January 2012 and we will be sure to bring you a full review once they are available.

Netflix has a huge library of TV and Film available for you to stream to the following devices;

• iPhone, iPod, iPad, Apple TV
• xBox 360, PS3, Wii, PC, Mac
• Smart enabled TV or BluRay player
• plus more

You can sign-up using your Facebook account or without, but you will need to add a credit or debit card. Try it out for 1 month and then decide to keep your subscription or not, simple as that.

If asked “What mobile phone do you use?” the majority of us will almost certainly have a smartphone of some kind. The one thing that sets most smartphones apart from the average phone is the amazing and sometimes very large touch screen.

If, like me, you treasure your device enough to actually look after it properly you will no doubt have explored reasonably priced ways of covering/insuring it. Whether this be through an insurance company, Apple Care or maybe through your bank.

Well, as a friend of mine found out (the hard way…..three times!) gadget cover provided by banks isn’t quite as good as it sounds. Lets take Barclays bank for example. When opening an account, you quickly realise that it is going to cost you £5 per month for them to watch over your money. After calming down, you may ask them what on gods green you actually get for this? They then go on to reel off a fantastic list of perks including extended warranties, price protection and gadget cover.

So you are probably thinking
, damn that is pretty sweet considering you were paying the £5 anyway, why not take advantage of these perks too! To cover your gadgets all you need to do is phone the helpline to register your precious devices. Once done you are pretty much covered for everything.

Well, much like any cover similar to this, you probably expect some sort of excess, right? Ok so here is the scenario, you have gone to the gym and while laying on the bench press lifting dumbbells you drop them, forgetting you have your iPhone 4 neatly tucked under the bench out of harms……CRUNCH!

Ok so with wrecked iPhone 4 in hand, you break out the backup phone gathering dust in your drawer (AAAAHHHHGGG BUTTONS!!!), phone the helpline, post off your iPhone and play the waiting game as you await word of the status of your poor wounded friend.

Weeks pass until you finally hear back from them. They say they can fix it but it will cost £70 to replace the screen, now this seems unreasonable, and frankly it isn’t good but not having read the small print or asked any questions regarding the excess rates you don’t really have a choice. Considering you can get an iPhone fixed locally for £84 (which for some reason you STILL haven’t researched!) within an hour of walking through the door, having to wait weeks to get your iPhone back is not ideal, but you have sent it now and you agree the excess fee. Hell, if you are feeling confident you can pick up a replacement kit for around £30 on Amazon.

Months later, you are walking down the street, chatting to your friend and catching up with Twitter when KAPPOOWWW!! a wild, flailing arm comes from nowhere and you watch in slow motion as your iPhone flies through the air, landing flat on the screen and then slides a few more feet along the ground before coming to a halt. Your heart sinks and you remember the last time you broke it.

Having still not looked into alternative ways to fix your iPhone, you phone the helpline once again, you know the drill. This time when they phone you, the excess has risen to £100, wait WHAT? Angry but desperate (holiday looming) you agree the fee and wait for your war hero to return to you in the mail.

After a great holiday you return to work, glad that you received your phone back in time for your trip so you could take lots of pics, but work is dull and the boss insists that you move some washing machines around. Remembering your training, you use your upper thigh as leverage to lug this thing off a 3 inch platform, but you forgot the golden rule! Don’t enlist the help of your iPhone, sitting in your pocket, located by your upper thigh. CRACK! This time you have had enough! If you have to pay one more excess fee you will have forked out more than half the money that it cost you to buy it in the first place. So now you make the choice to leave your fallen soldier, well, fallen.

Some months pass, and you FINALLY decide to do a little research, well, you phone the Apple store anyway. They say for £119 they will replace it with a new handset………….

Detailed on their service’s blog, Instagram made by Burbn. Inc, has teamed up with Facebook – the most popular social networking site in the world, with over 800 million users on Facebook, 400 million of which sign in every single day – to bring you support for deeply integrated photo sharing. So now, not only can you share your beautiful pictures with your followers on Instagram, but you can have the option to send it over to your Facebook account for your friends and family to see.

That’s right, as stated above, when you share with Facebook, photos you have taken in Instagram from this point onwards which you wish to share to Facebook will be automatically added to a folder named “Instagram Photos“. If for some reason you don’t want or like   that name you can always change it by following these simple steps;

1) click the photo album of the title that you want to change, 2) then click “organize album“, 3)  click “edit info“, and finally; 4) change the name of the album as you wish. After you’re done, make sure to click “save changes“.

When you share your pictures from Instagram to Facebook, not only will your Instagrams appear full size on your Timeline, but every picture is consolidated into one helpful photo album for quick, easy reference. Instagram will now also allow you to share already taken photos to your Facebook account — simply by following these instructions to get started.

Download Instagram for your iPhone via the App Store for Free.

So what would giving an iPad or iPhone thunderbolt mean I hear you asking, well Thunderbolt which is a creation between Apple and Intel will give the devices faster charging times and quicker data transfer rates.

The patent that points to Apple thinking about this says

“a connection may be provided between a portable media player and a display, a computer and a portable media player, or between other types of devices.”

For Apple to get this to work it would first have to relook at how the Thunderbolt connector is designed, as it would now have to be “flat enough to fit a USB-type of device slot”.

[Source]

I live in the UK and when I got my iPhone 4S I knew that I would not be able to use all the features that my friends in the good old US of A would be using. If you didn’t know, Siri’s features are limited if you live outside of the US. You can’t use it to look up local businesses or use it to get directions to places.

After a few days of having Siri and doing the funny things with it like the vids below:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I found myself thinking am I actually going to use Siri at all and I was surprised when the answer came back after a few months as yes.

So what can we do with Siri if we don’t live in the US. Well we can get it to send Messages, check the weather, set reminders, set alarms, Google things for us and work out math problems. Now I don’t really use it for searching the web but all the other things I can honestly say that yes, I use Siri for that on a daily basis.

Siri is great for use is the car for example, I regularly use it to call / text my wife and love the way that it knows (through me telling it once) who my wife is. At home I use Siri to set the timer to know when to take things out of the oven, set my morning wake up alarm and over Christmas I even used it to add things to a Christmas list in the reminders app. But the main thing I use Siri for is to convert things like currency and temperatures.

I can honestly say that Siri is a pleasure to have and if I was asked would I miss it if I didn’t have it then the answer would be yes. It makes my life that little bit easier and a little bit quicker at doing things.

Earlier I sent out a tweet asking the question in the title of this article and here are a few of the replies I got:

@MyGreatiPhone for typing

— Charlie (@charlieraf) January 7, 2012

@MyGreatiPhone appointments & texts

— Carl Hamilton (@Cookiesnfooty) January 7, 2012

@MyGreatiPhone mostly reminders occasional texting and calling peeps but not often

— drewshaw (@drewshaw74) January 7, 2012

So you can see that people are using it, and I can bet as soon as it comes out of beta and the rest of the world get the other functions like businesses, then Siri will really get used to it’s full potential by the rest of the world.

Let us know via Twitter, Facebook, Google+ or in the comments below how you use Siri.

The developer of iBiker, Gurminder Marwaha, was awarded a UK Government grant from the Department of Transport in order to develop his idea and make it a reality. iBiker also serves as a support channel to help national campaigns which encourage responsible, safer and fun motorcycle riding. The app runs as a social enterprise with all cash generated invested back into the app and was created by Redefine Convention using Gurminder’s designs.

With the help of the DfT’s ‘Think Bike” Facebook page and their 35,000 fans, the app name, the design and some features where chosen.

Features

Here is a run down of some of the best features of iBiker.

• Plan, plot and save rides/routes
• Highlight points of interest including cafes, cash points, campsites, petrol stations, meeting points and many more
• Rate routes
• Share all that information with the motorbiking community/friends via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and other social networking channels
• Check the weather along routes from within the app

Cleverly, the app is based on crowd sourcing and social media using British EuroRAP intelligence provided by the Road Safety Foundation that highlights “the most risky roads and routes in Britain” to bikers in the UK.

Probably one of the best features is the ability to see your route BEFORE you ride it. With the help of the video ride throughs provided by experienced Motorcycle Police with local knowledge, users can see routes around the country and specific collision hotspots, thus enabling them to familiarise themselves with a route before they ride it.

The app also features World Superbike Champion James Toseland on a number of myth busting and bike safety videos.

The app is available globally for iPhone and Android with the current information being far more relevant to UK users, but the developer hopes to have similar information available for other countries in the future.

Here are some screens of the app and some examples of the ride through videos.

Here is an example of one of the ride through videos

Click here to view the embedded video.

iBiker costs just £1.49 which is amazing considering the amount of information it gives to riders. You can download iBiker here for iPhone and find them at the following social links;

Facebook/Twitter/Youtube/Web

According to network firm Arieso, Apple’s new voice recognition software Siri is causing iPhone 4s owners to use almost twice as much data compared to Apple’s 4th iPhone which hasn’t got the new Siri feature.

The firm, based in Arieso, discovered that the data usage of the iPhone 4 was 1.6 times higher then Apple’s 3rd iPhone (iPhone 3Gs), while the Apple iPad 2 tablet consumed 2.5 times more data.

In an interview in London, Arieso Chief Technology Officer Michael Flanagan said, “Voice is the ultimate human interface.” Michael Flanagan also said “I use the iPhone 4 myself and when I first heard of the iPhone 4S features I was not compelled to rush out and get one. However, the data usage numbers I am seeing make me wonder what I am missing,”

Flanagan also noted in the interview, that the tablet usage closely resembled that of high-end smartphones. “A tablet still looks like a big smartphone,” Michael said.

So you have heard one explanation for it with Siri being the culprit, but is this entirely accurate? Popular iOS developer Steve Troughton-Smith thinks not;

Siri uses minuscule amounts of data (10s of kb). To suggest it’s the reason that the 4S has double data usage is insane.

— Steve Troughton-Sm… (@stroughtonsmith) January 6, 2012

As we have no doubt that Siri will be a contributing factor, it doesn’t look like it will be the main cause for such an increase.

What do you think? Let us know below.

In an effort to find a distributable exploit that can work with corona, @Musclenerd, @Planetbeing, @p0sixninja and @pod2g are all working together. That’s right, the iPhone-Dev Team and the Chronic-Dev Team have set aside their differences and combined forces to bring us the most anticipated jailbreak on record.

With the eta set by @pod2g closing in, this can only help towards it.

Back in November he sent a tweet out stating that he had managed to find a bug in the iOS 5 software which he believed could lead to a jailbreak being released. And he was true two his word when recently he released an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 devices with an A4 chip.

However, the one thing that @pod2g has been struggling with is a jailbreak for the iPhone 4[s] and the iPad 2 as they both run using the dual-core A5 chip and with the released of the Corona jailbreak, the research needed to get a jailbreak for the devices using the dual-core A5 chip has taken something of a back seat. Recently @pod2g disabled the ability for viewers of his blog post to post comments, which he offered his sincerest apologies for.

Now it seems that @pod2g has released a new blog post which features a number of FAQ’s which are designed to clear up any confusion as to why he is unable to find a jailbreak at this time for the iPhone 4[s] and iPad 2.

The first question relates to the fact that @pod2g has actually managed to get his own iPhone 4[s] on an untethered jailbreak and why it hasn’t been released for everyone else to take advantage of. This is because of legalities involved in distributing a jailbreak for public consumption. This is because the files which @pod2g used to inject into his device come from an Apple developers account and until they find a distributable exploit which enables to Corona files to be set in the correct position it will remain impossible.

The next set of questions focus on the fact that a untethered jailbreak on A4 devices was easier because there was already a jailbreak available which was a good enough foundation for the Corona files to be installed.

Its fair to say that the amount of work put into these jailbreaks is at times unappreciated it’s not always easy to get a jailbreak released for everyone to enjoy. A lot of the time the jailbreaks are released for us to download for free and the guys who put the effort in rely solely on donations.

However, he has stated that work will continue to go on in an attempt to find the required exploits and make a jailbreak available to us all and hopefully, fingers crossed, we will see an A5 jailbreak solution soon.

Earlier today, Apple announced that their latest smartphone, the iPhone 4[s], will be available in China and 21 additional countries on Friday, January 13th. After the rollout, the iPhone 4[s] will be available in a total of 90 countries making this Apple’s fastest iPhone rollout ever. For more information, hit us after the jump below.

“Customer response to our products in China has been off the charts,” said Apple’s CEO Tim Cook. “With the launch in China next week, iPhone 4S will be available in over 90 countries making this our fastest iPhone rollout ever.”

Beginning Friday, January 13, iPhone 4[s] will be available in Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Bolivia, Botswana, British Virgin Islands, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, China, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Grenada, Guam, Guinea Conakry, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritius, Niger, Senegal, St. Vincent and The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos and Uganda.

It seems as if Apple is having a great run at releasing their newest iDevice in as many possible countries as they can reach. What do you think about the speed of this rollout? Was it as fast as you would have liked, or do you feel as if it is taking too much time? Feel free to leave any comments or questions below, or contact us via Twitter.