MyAssistant is the jailbreak community’s latest enhancement to Siri
In the two brief weeks because the iPhone 4S received its first public jailbreak, we’ve already observed many tweaks that expand Siri’s capabilities. SiriToggles makes it possible for you to open apps and adjust system settings, although AssistantExtensions can sooner or later lead to a host of tweaks and enhancements. This week we were given but one more enjoyable Siri tweak in Cydia, and it just could be the very best 1 however.
MyAssistant is a 99 cent app in the BigBoss repo that adds a ton of customization to the virtual assistant. The most significant feature here might be the integration with Activator, the app that lets you choose an activation method for just about any job. When combined with Siri, this indicates that almost any program function on your iPhone 4S can be performed with your voice.
In addition to the Activator functions, My Assistant also adds a lot of core abilities of its personal. Want to snap a photo with 1 voice command? Check. Really feel like obtaining the lyrics of the song you are listening to? Check. Decide that you want to free up some memory, and you do not feel like selecting up your telephone? Check (as long as you also have an app named MemoryTap installed).
My Assistant also adds some functions that aren’t specifically practical, but that could add fun and aesthetic. It lets you customize Siri’s background image, and lets you develop custom question/answer combinations for Siri. Be prepared for the deluge of YouTube Siri skits that this will undoubtedly spawn.
Although it is understandable why Apple does not let Siri change technique settings, geeks can get pleasure from the higher customization that some of these early jailbreak enhancements supply. Even much more impressive Siri-connected Cydia apps will possibly come later, but in the meantime, MyAssistant is a fantastic commence.
ADzero eco-friendly phone made from bamboo
Plastic as we know it, does not actually do the environment good when disposed away. Supplies like these take centuries to break down and aren’t recyclable either. Rather, UK style student Kieron-Scott Woodhouse utilized bamboo to carve out this astoundingly green smartphone called the ADzero that could soon hit store shelves. The world’s very first telephone produced from bamboo, this one’s made from four-year-old organic bamboo, a raw material that is biodegradable and eco-friendly. Running Android four. Ice Cream Sandwich, the telephone weighs half as a lot as the iPhone 4S and sports a camera with a flash too, generating it an ideal device for the nature conscious technology lover.
[inhabitat]
iPhone photography course on offer for ‘appy snappers
three February 2012 17:36 GMT / By Paul Lamkin
In what is believed to be a UK first, London’s Kensington and Chelsea College is to offer budding photographers a photography course with a twist. For there won’t be any SLR action going on the course, called “iPhoneography” is, you guessed it, centred on teaching fanboys and girls how to take very good pictures with their Apple handsets.
Richard Gray will be taking the course and he says that “all you need to have is a passion for photography and a creative thoughts”.
In Depth: iCloud: the essential guide
Essential iCloud guide: Introduction
Poor old MobileMe. It tried hard, but never quite delivered. Expensive, sometimes slow and saddled with a clumsy name, it has long had the air of an unloved child.
Its development cycle was long and drawn out. And by the time Steve Jobs announced the end of its short and undistinguished life, just two years after its rebirth from the ashes of .Mac, few were inclined to shed any tears.
Yet it wasn’t all bad. The email service was stable and largely dependable. It synced our contacts, so we didn’t need to tap them all in on an iPhone keyboard, and the calendar tool always made sure we turned up on time, wherever we happened to be.
Apple knew this as well as anyone, which is why it chose to preserve those parts, jettisoning the web publishing, photo gallery and iDisk, as it set about building iCloud.
Housed in a vast data centre in North Carolina, iCloud is Apple’s next-generation online service. It syncs your iPhone, iPad, Mac and iPod touch. It can track a lost device, copy your iPhone snaps over the web so they’re safely backed up on your Mac, and synchronise your iWork files so that whatever device you’re using, downtime is never wasted time.
Apple overturns German online sales ban on iPhone, iPad
Germany appears to be a hotbed for patent war activity at the moment with Apple now overturning an on the web sales ban on several of its 3G gadgets.
Just this morning we reported on an injunction won by Motorola stopping Apple promoting the iPad 2, iPhone 3GS and iPhone four on it is official on the internet shop due to its alleged infringement on a 3G patent.
Nonetheless, the wheels of justice move swiftly in these matters and Apple has been able to strike down the injunction with haste.
Moto becoming unreasonable?
The Cupertino-based business says that the legal see-saw was in a position to occur due to Motorola Mobility’s refusal (no doubt backed by its new pals at Google) to "reasonably" license the patent to Apple.
An Apple spokeswoman told AllThingsD: "All iPad and iPhone models will be back on sale by way of Apple’s online store in Germany shortly.
Star Wars Darth Vader iPhone 3G and 3GS Hard Plastic Cover
Fans of the dark side of the force can protect their iPhone 3g and 3GS with this Star Wars Darth Vader iPhone 3G and 3GS Hard Plastic Cover and show off their adore for Darth Vader.
It comes in Vader black with two pieces of tough plastic protective plates for the front and back. It measures about four 1/two-inches tall x two 1/two-inches wide x 1/two-inch deep. Capabilities Vader himself. I think it tends to make the telephone look even greater.
It will price you just $ 29.99 from Entertainment Earth.
Why Neil Young Hates MP3 — And What You Can Do About It
Legendary artist Neil Young at the AllThingsD media conference Tuesday in Laguna Niguel, California. Photo: Asa Mathat/AllThingsD
Neil Young is appropriate: Those songs on your iPhone do sound like crap, and it’s time we demand far better-sounding alternatives for our digital music.
Speaking at the D: Dive Into Media conference Tuesday, the outspoken musician expressed his deep dissatisfaction with the MP3 format and called for an finish-to-end reboot of the consumer digital audio ecosystem, from file formats to playback devices.
Young’s huge beef: Digital music files download swiftly, but suffer a significant loss in quality. Bitrates for most tracks on iTunes common 256kbps AAC audio encoding, which is drastically inferior to the top quality of recorded source material in almost each case. By Young’s estimation, CDs supply only 15 percent of the recording data contained on the master tracks. Convert that CD-top quality audio to MP3 or AAC, and you’ve lost a fantastic deal of richness and complexity.
Apple Now the World’s Third Largest Cellphone Maker, IDC Says
Apple’s iPhone 4S helped enhance it up the ladder of mobile-telephone marketplace share.
Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired 
Apple has moved past LG in the worldwide rankings of mobile-telephone unit sales. According to IDC, Apple is now the world’s third biggest mobile-telephone manufacturer, behind Nokia and Samsung.
Apple jumped two spots over the course of 2011. This time final year, Apple held fifth spot amongst the world’s top rated phone producers.
Nonetheless, there nevertheless remains a massive gap in between Apple and the twin forces of Samsung and Nokia, which dominate the mobile-telephone marketplace thanks to the reputation of their inexpensive function phones. For Q4 2011, Nokia owned 26.6 percent of the worldwide mobile-phone industry, Samsung held 22.8 percent and Apple had 8.7 percent. For the year overall, the stats were slightly diverse: Nokia had 27 percent of the market, Samsung had 21.3 percent and Apple had 6 percent, just beating out the 5.7 percent of LG Electronics.
