Top 10 Security Tools For Your Smartphone

What would you do if you misplace your mobile phone, or worse still, had it stolen? Would you even know where to start to get it back, and what about all that personal data that is linked to your phone?

If this has ever happened to you, you know what a nightmare it can be. Although there are some good Samaritans in the world, more than likely they’re not going to be the ones who would steal your mobile device.

So what can you do to minimize the effects of a stolen smartphone? You can start by installing some form of security for your device. With all of the mobile apps readily available for use (and many for free), there’s really no excuse for not giving your phone ample protection. Even for apps that aren’t free, it’s worth paying that small fee in order to give your smartphone and the details it contain the security it needs.

Let’s take a look at some of the best tools available for protecting your smartphone.

Lookout Mobile Security

Lookout is a free app that protects your iOS or Android device around the clock from mobile threats such as unsecure WiFi networks, malicious apps, fraudulent links, etc. You can also use it to backup your contacts by scheduling automatic backups and then accessing the information online, or using it to restore your device in case of a crash or data loss.

If you lose your phone, Lookout can locate it on a Google map – even if the GPS is off. It will also activate a loud alarm – even if your phone is on silent.

Want more features like remote locking, safe browsing, phishing protection, privacy scans and app reports? You can upgrade to Lookout Premium for $2.99/month or $29.99/year.

Snap Secure Mobile Security

Snap Secure will securely and automatically back up your data to your online account so that you can access it, restore or transfer data to a new device if needed. It comes with anti-virus and anti-spyware protection, and will scan all of your new applications for malware.

It also includes a call-blocking feature that lets you block calls from unknown or unshown numbers. You can even block unwanted emails on your BlackBerry device, and block unwanted SMS messages on Android devices.

The Privacy Manager can also let you know how apps are using your personal information, and it has an anti-theft and location tracker which will help you catch the thief who took your phone. Best of all, it has a unique feature called the Personal Guardian. This is a panic button for the user to silently send out an email, SMS message, or tweet along with your location in case of an emergency.

Snap Secure is available for iOS, Android, and BlackBerry devices. There are both free and Pro versions. Most of the better features are only available with a Pro account, but you’ll get a 30-day free trial of Snap Secure Pro with the free version. The Pro version is $3.99/month or $17.99/year.

BullGuard Mobile Security 10

With BullGuard you get an online account that lets you remotely access your smartphone, along with a Mobile Security Manager that works with your device’s GPS. If you lose your device, you can lock it remotely and wipe it clean.

It also includes a Parental Control module so that you can keep your kids protected without having direct access to the phone. It includes anti-virus and anti-spyware, firewall, spam filter, backup/restore feature for contacts, and SIM card protection.

BullGuard is available for Android, Symbian OS, Windows Mobile, and BlackBerry, and is available at the cost of $29.95/year.

IHound Phone And Family Tracking

iHound is great for families and includes various tracking tools, yet it is also a great tool for protecting your device. iHound can use your phone’s GPS to track your device and report its location. It includes an alarm that can be set off via a push notification and heard even when the device is silent. If you use this on an Android device, you can also remotely wipe your data and lock your device.

iHound can also protect you with the unique geofencing feature that automatically checks you in on Facebook or Twitter when you arrive at your destination.

iHound is currently free in the iPhone App Store and includes 3 months of service. After this, you can extend your subscription for 3 months ($3.99), 6 months ($5.99), 12 months ($10.99), or 24 months ($19.99). If you’re on an Android, it’s only $3.99/year after a 7-day free trial.

McAfee WaveSecure

McAfee has also created an excellent mobile security application for iOS, Android, BlackBerry, Symbian OS, Windows phone, and Java. It includes all of the same features as the rest: remote wiping and locking; backup and restoring of data; and location and SIM tracking. With WaveSecure, not only can you backup your contacts, but you can also backup photos and videos.

Also, the tracking feature does not only track the current location, but plots several locations on a map so you can see the vicinity of your device. This feature works even if your GPS has been turned off.

McAfee WaveSecure is available for all devices at $19.99/year.

Kaspersky Mobile Security 9

Kaspersky Mobile offers many features, but includes the most features for Symbian and Windows mobile devices. These features include: anti-theft, anti-virus, anti-spam, privacy protection, data encryption, parental controls, and firewall protection. The phone tracking feature shows your device on a Google map and provides coordinates.

One of the unique features it has is the ability to wipe your device clean even if the SIM card has been replaced. The Private mode feature is also useful because you can completely hide incoming calls and SMS messages manually, automatically, or remotely. So if your device is stolen or someone is trying to hack into your phone around, the joke is on them because they won’t be able to access that data.

Kaspersky Mobile is currently on sale for $9.95/year (regular $29.95) or $29.95/2 years (regular $59.90). If you want to try before buying, there is a 7-day free trial.

F-Secure Mobile Security

If you’re using an Android, Symbian, or Windows mobile device, you may want to try out F-Secure. It offers the basics such as protection against viruses and malware, parental controls, safe browsing, identity protection, location tracking, and call/SMS blocking.

There is currently a 30-day free trial of the Mobile Security service after which it’s $3.50/month or $39.50/year. If you prefer something totally free, you can download the always free Anti-Theft app, which protects the data in your phone if it is lost or stolen. The app will help you locate your device and let you wipe out the data contained and lock it remotely.

Norton Mobile Security Lite

Here we have Norton, another well-known anti-virus provider. Norton Mobile is unfortunately only available for Android devices. It protects you against unauthorized access, viruses, malware, phishing, and theft. If your device is stolen, you will be able to locate it, wipe the data within, and lock it remotely.

Even when you’re browsing the Web, you’re being protected with a privacy guard. If your device is compromised, it will detect and eliminate the threat. All apps will also be scanned to make sure they’re not malicious. Calls and SMS messages can be blocked as well.

Norton Mobile Security Lite is free in the Android Marketplace. Norton also offers the Mobile Utilities and Task Killer, Snap QR Code Reader, and Anti-Theft plug-ins all for free.

A very similar Android-only mobile security app you might like is by Trend Micro. It offers all of the same features as Norton Mobile and comes with a 30-day free trial, after which it’s $17.99/year.

I’ll throw AVG for Android in here as well. Along with all of the same features, it also helps to enhance the performance of your device by identifying applications that may be slowing it down. AVG for Android is also free.

Avast! Mobile Security

Avast! Mobile is yet another Android-only application, but I wanted to address it in more detail because of the many features it offers – all for free. When compared to the other free and paid mobile security options, Avast! delivers the same features and more.

It has real-time protection, customizable updates, privacy reports, a Web shield, call and SMS message filtering, a firewall and application manager. If your device is stolen, you can do everything except access or restore your contacts – because it doesn’t include a backup feature. Yet, you can locate your device and wipe or lock it remotely, set off an alarm, and even receive a notification if your SIM card is changed.

Now for the more: The App Disguiser is a unique feature that lets you choose custom names for your apps so that if your device is stolen, it will be harder for thieves to find the apps containing your personal data. Another great feature is called “Stealth Mode”. Once the anti-theft feature has been enabled on your device, the Avast! app icon will be hidden so that the thief can’t detect it; they’ll never even know that they’re being tracked.

GadgetTrak

Lastly we have GadgetTrack, an app only for iOS devices that not only tracks your stolen device, but takes a snapshot of the thief! If your device doesn’t have a camera, you can still use it to create tracking reports with and give you coordinates for your missing device.

While you’ll get better location-tracking with the GPS on, it’s not required. You can also lock the settings on the device so that the thief can’t change them. Plus there’s a “Deleting Apps” restriction that you can enable so that the thief cannot delete any of your apps – including GadgetTrack.

GadgetTrack is available in the App Store for $3.99.

Bonus: 2 More..

VirusBarrier

iOS users, if you’re looking for something only for your device, check out VirusBarrier. This app is $2.99 and can be used to scan email attachments and other files as needed. It checks for spyware, trojans, adware, hacker tools, dialers, keyloggers, and more. VirusBarrier even works with remote services like DropBox, iDisk, and WebDAV.

Due to the limitations of iOS, this app cannot automatically scan files or schedule automatic scans; this is probably the reason why most of the abovementioned apps are mainly for Android.

Webroot SecureWeb

Here we go, iOS users, an application that you can use too! Webroot SecureWeb is available for iOS and Android, and mainly focuses on securing your Web browsing experience. On the iOS app you can browse using the integrated and secure tabbed browser and safe search feature, which identifies phishing and malicious websites. There are no anti-theft features included, unlike the Android version.

For Android there is both a free and Pro version (for $9.99/year – regular $19.99/year). In the free version you get secure browsing along with an anti-virus, location tracking, alarm, call and SMS message blocking, and remote locking. The PRO version has all of the above plus SIM card locking, remote wiping, and app scanning.

Conclusion

When it comes to your privacy and security, it’s better to be safe than sorry. So be sure you’re protected at all times!

source:hongkiat

Read more »

15 Android Ice Cream Sandwich Tips You Should Already Know

Not all too long ago, Google released the next great upgrade to the Android mobile operating system, version 4.o codenamed “Ice Cream Sandwich”, or ICS for short. While in the meantime Android 4.1 “Jelly Bean” has been released, most phones are still using Android Ice Cream Sandwich or will be updated to it soon.

Therefore, most people will be interested about what cool tricks ICS can bring to the table. I have to admit though, even I didn’t know everything on this list before I did my research.

Take Screenshots

Did you know that you can easily take screenshots with your ICS device without installing an additional app? If an option to take a screenshot doesn’t appear in the menu which appears after you hold the power button, you can also take screenshots by simultaneously holding down either the power and home buttons, or power and volume down buttons. A frame will appear around your screen, letting you know it has taken the screenshot.

Multitask With Ease

Multitasking in ICS has been improved quite a bit. In fact, on any screen, you can hold your Home button and a list of all running applications will appear. From here, you can easily tap on one to switch to it, or swipe it away to close to completely. This is also a good way of making sure that an app is really closed when you told it to.

Contact Swipe Actions

While not a new feature in ICS, you can find a contact in your contacts list and swipe to the right to call them or swipe to the left to send them a text message. This is a quicker way of contacting them through your preferred method instead of having to make a couple extra taps.

Unlock With Your Face

There’s a new way to unlock your phone! Forget using PINs or patterns when you can just use your device’s front-facing camera to scan your face! While this technique is fun and quite easy to use when it works, it’s not fool-proof and requires multiple pictures of your face in different lighting environments for it to work most of the time. As a failsafe, you’ll also have to set up an alternative unlock method so you can still get into your phone.

Take Pictures While Shooting A Video

In the past, we’ve only been able to shoot videos or snap pictures, but not both. That’s all about to change, as our camera apps are now capable of doing them at the same time. While shooting a video, just tap on your screen to take a photo. Whala!

Speak Your Words

Also not a new feature in ICS, you can now use Voice to Text in many more applications. In fact, it should be available for any text box now where your keyboard appears. It’s been improved quite a bit in ICS, so it’s worth giving a spin to give your fingers some much-needed rest.

Advanced Call Options

You can now customize how you’d like to end or deny calls in ICS. In the options, you can opt to use the power button as a way to end or deny a call so you don’t have to go hunting for the red “End Call” button. You can also deny phone calls on-screen and choose to send a text message instead from a few different templates. These settings can be found in the “Call” section of your device’s overall settings. Makes keeping people informed quite easy!

Private Browsing

A fantastic addition to ICS is the ability to create “private” tabs, which behave exactly like the Private Browsing mode in Firefox or Incognito windows in Chrome. Generally speaking, the entire tab management has improved in Android’s default browser, but private tabs are a welcome addition.

Unlock Using Your Google Account

If you’ve forgotten your PIN, password, or pattern, no need to freak out. Your phone won’t lock you out, turning your expensive piece of hardware into an even more expensive paperweight. Instead, when you hit the “locked out” phase of your distress, you’ll instead be asked to simply log back into your Google account to unlock your phone. Be sure to remember which one you chose for your phone, or else you’ll really have a paperweight in your hands!

Track Data Usage

As most of today’s data plans have data caps — usually around 2GB in America — it’s become quite important for people to keep track of their data usage. ICS devices can now do this, and even warn you when you’re getting close to that limit. Just go into your settings and choose Data Usage. You can choose a different warning level, and even opt to disable mobile data entirely once a certain amount has been reached if your carrier will charge you extra for additional data. Scrolling down presents you a list of your most data-hungry apps.

Transfer Data with Android Beam

Android Beam is a brand new technology which makes transferring data between two capable devices extremely easy. The technology uses NFC, or  near field communication, as the method of communication, but the phones need to be running ICS to be Android Beam capable. With it, you can easily transfer photos as well as other multimedia.

Resizeable Widgets

Provided you’re not using a third-party launcher, you’ll now find your widgets in your application menu by either tapping on the “Widgets” tab or by swiping past all your installed apps. All these widgets are also resizeable, so you’re not forced to hold back from a widget just because you don’t have enough screen real estate.

Weather On Your Lock Screen

If you’d like, you can tell your device to have the local weather conditions appear on your lock screen. There aren’t many settings to configure besides on/off and temperature units, as the device will use your current location. It’s a very quick and easy way of determining whether you’ll need an umbrella or sweater.

Swipe Away Selected Notifications

If you have plenty of notifications waiting for you in the notifications area, but don’t want to dismiss all of them, you can swipe away those who’d like to dismiss. Just swipe the one(s) you’d like to remove to the right, and away they go. As always, you can hit the X in the top right corner to dismiss all notifications.

Keyboard Layouts In Different Languages

Your device should be capable of supporting keyboard layouts for multiple languages. I know this is definitely the case for phones which use Swipe, where the languages only need to be enabled before you can switch them on the keyboard itself with a single tap. This is great for international users who constantly need to type in more than one language.

source: makeuseof

Read more »

Motion-based smartphone UI possible within the year with Leap Motion

Pretty soon, we can control our computers, tablets and smartphones this way. Without the three-fingered gloves, of course. (Promotional image for Minority Report, 2002)

Touchscreens are currently the preferred way of interacting with smarphones and tablets. But mobile devices are a fast-evolving lot, and we have seen how QWERTY keyboards, stylii and even numeric keypads have been popular UI choices just a few years back.

Touchscreen alternatives are already in place, such as speech-recognition present in Apple’s SIRI and various Nuance-led efforts in Android and other platforms. In the future, we might also consider motion control. Think of it as Minority Report style manipulation of virtual objects on-screen.

Oh, wait. We already have that with Microsoft Kinect, right? Kinect was primarily marketed for console gaming, although a computer-based variant is available. But what’s missing at this point are workable user interfaces that actually turn motion-control a productive means of manipulating data.

3D workspaces

There is a development by a company called Leap Motion, which has created a device known as The Leap. The technology uses several camera sensors in mapping out a three-dimensional workspace for tracking movement. The Leap does not have Kinect’s limitations of distance and angle of view. Instead, the device can track motion as long as the user is within view of the sensors. What’s great is that the device is very accurate, and can track motion down to a hundredths of a millimeter, or about half the diameter of human hair. It can also distinguish among different objects and parts of the body.

Currently, The Leap is a device about the size of a USB stick, and the VGA cameras are limited to a eight cubic feet workspaces (0.22 cubic meters) — about the volume of a small to medium refrigerator. The technology can be scaled, though, such that the size of the workspace is only limited to the field of vision. I suppose Leap Motion can capture movement in bigger areas like entire fields and rooms.

But the small size has an advantage. It can be embedded into mobile devices like notebooks, smartphones and tablets.  Leap is already working with device manufacturers in possibly including the technology on their products. Leap is also giving free sensors to thousands of “qualified developers” in the aim of building up a good app base for the system.

The company says the cost of the device will be $70 when it is released sometime between December this year to February 2013. Interested users can already pre-order.

Minority Report

Leap is more than just motion-based capture, though. The company’s CTO, David Holz, says that motion-based technology should not force users to have to memorize gestures and combination of movements in accessing data. Instead, developers are encourage to provide a constant dynamic feedback. This means the UI should be intuitive and responsive enough that a user should not have to wonder how to use it.

For instance, the pinch-to-zoom analogy is quite self-explanatory. So is turning an object to rotate. The aim here is to make the UI as similar to manipulating real-world objects as possible.

Once out, Leap should make it possible to manipulate objects be moving your hands and fingers through the air, or even along a surface. This kind of technology has actually been explored by Apple, and the company has even applied for a patent that senses motion over a screen without the need for capacitance.

As such, we might soon expect to be able to control our devices even without touching them. We can perhaps cancel or answer calls by swiping our hands in the air. We may also be able to ask the phone to read out messages through another hand motion.

Couple this with technologies like Google Glass, and we’ve got ourselves a computing future like Tom Cruise’s system on Minority Report. Let’s just hope it doesn’t lead to crime precognition or we’re all screwed.

Check out the demo video below.

Read more »

Google Adds 13 New Languages To Google Voice Search

Google has updated its Google Voice Search and added an additional 13 new languages, which means that Google Voice Search now supports a total of 42 languages in 46 different countries.

The new languages added to Google Voice Search include Swedish, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Norwegian, Catalan and many more you can see the full list of additional languages below.

New languages added to Google Voice Search.

Icelandic
Norwegian
Romanian
Serbian
Slovak
Swedish
Basque
Bulgarian
Catalan
European Portuguese
Finnish
Galician
Hungarian

You can find out full details about the latest version of Google Voice Search over at the Google Blog.

Read more »

Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 In Action (Video)

The new Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 went on sale in the US yesterday, and now Samsung has released a hands on video of the device and we get to see some of the features on the new Galaxy Note 10.1.

The Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 features Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and the devicefeatures a quad core 1.4GHz Samsung Exynos processor and 2GB of RAM.

Other specifications on the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 include a microSD card slot, USB 2.0, Bluetooh 4.0, WiFi Direct, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, on the front of the device is a 1.9 megapixelcamera for video chat, on the back there is a 5 megapixel camera with auto-focus and an LED flash, it also comes with Samsung’s S-Pen.

Source Samsung / YouTube

Read more »

Search Engine History [INFOGRAPHIC]

Search Engine History [INFOGRAPHIC]

During the early development of the web, there was a list of webservers edited by Tim Berners-Lee and hosted on the CERN webserver. One historical snapshot from 1992 remains. As more webservers went online the central list could not keep up. On the NCSA site new servers were announced under the title “What’s New!”

The very first tool used for searching on the Internet was Archie. The name stands for “archive” without the “v.” It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, computer science students at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) sites, creating a searchable database of file names; however, Archie did not index the contents of these sites since the amount of data was so limited it could be readily searched manually.

Search Engine History:

The rise of Gopher (created in 1991 by Mark McCahill at the University of Minnesota) led to two new search programs, Veronica and Jughead. Like Archie, they searched the file names and titles stored in Gopher index systems. Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Net-wide Index to Computerized Archives) provided a keyword search of most Gopher menu titles in the entire Gopher listings. Jughead (Jonzy’s Universal Gopher Hierarchy Excavation And Display) was a tool for obtaining menu information from specific Gopher servers. While the name of the search engine “Archie” was not a reference to the Archie comic book series, “Veronica” and “Jughead” are characters in the series, thus referencing their predecessor.

In the summer of 1993, no search engine existed yet for the web, though numerous specialized catalogues were maintained by hand. Oscar Nierstrasz at the University of Geneva wrote a series of Perl scripts that would periodically mirror these pages and rewrite them into a standard format which formed the basis for W3Catalog, the web’s first primitive search engine, released on September 2, 1993.

In June 1993, Matthew Gray, then at MIT, produced what was probably the first web robot, the Perl-based World Wide Web Wanderer, and used it to generate an index called ‘Wandex’. The purpose of the Wanderer was to measure the size of the World Wide Web, which it did until late 1995. The web’s second search engine Aliweb appeared in November 1993. Aliweb did not use a web robot, but instead depended on being notified by website administrators of the existence at each site of an index file in a particular format.

JumpStation (released in December 1993) used a web robot to find web pages and to build its index, and used a web form as the interface to its query program. It was thus the first WWW resource-discovery tool to combine the three essential features of a web search engine (crawling, indexing, and searching) as described below. Because of the limited resources available on the platform on which it ran, its indexing and hence searching were limited to the titles and headings found in the web pages the crawler encountered.

One of the first “full text” crawler-based search engines was WebCrawler, which came out in 1994. Unlike its predecessors, it let users search for any word in any webpage, which has become the standard for all major search engines since. It was also the first one to be widely known by the public. Also in 1994, Lycos (which started at Carnegie Mellon University) was launched and became a major commercial endeavor.

Soon after, many search engines appeared and vied for popularity. These included Magellan, Excite, Infoseek, Inktomi, Northern Light, and AltaVista. Yahoo! was among the most popular ways for people to find web pages of interest, but its search function operated on its web directory, rather than full-text copies of web pages. Information seekers could also browse the directory instead of doing a keyword-based search.

In 1996, Netscape was looking to give a single search engine an exclusive deal to be their featured search engine. There was so much interest that instead a deal was struck with Netscape by five of the major search engines, where for $5Million per year each search engine would be in a rotation on the Netscape search engine page. The five engines were Yahoo!, Magellan, Lycos, Infoseek, and Excite.

Search engines were also known as some of the brightest stars in the Internet investing frenzy that occurred in the late 1990s.[9] Several companies entered the market spectacularly, receiving record gains during their initial public offerings. Some have taken down their public search engine, and are marketing enterprise-only editions, such as Northern Light. Many search engine companies were caught up in the dot-com bubble, a speculation-driven market boom that peaked in 1999 and ended in 2001.

Around 2000, the Google search engine rose to prominence.[citation needed] The company achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called PageRank. This iterative algorithm ranks web pages based on the number and PageRank of other web sites and pages that link there, on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. Google also maintained a minimalist interface to its search engine. In contrast, many of its competitors embedded a search engine in a web portal.

By 2000, Yahoo was providing search services based on Inktomi’s search engine. Yahoo! acquired Inktomi in 2002, and Overture (which owned AlltheWeb and AltaVista) in 2003. Yahoo! switched to Google’s search engine until 2004, when it launched its own search engine based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions.

Microsoft first launched MSN Search in the fall of 1998 using search results from Inktomi. In early 1999 the site began to display listings from Looksmart blended with results from Inktomi except for a short time in 1999 when results from AltaVista were used instead. In 2004, Microsoft began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own web crawler (called msnbot).

Microsoft’s rebranded search engine, Bing, was launched on June 1, 2009. On July 29, 2009, Yahoo! and Microsoft finalized a deal in which Yahoo! Search would be powered by Microsoft Bing technology.

Read more »

Google upgrades Maps for Android, includes new public transit features

Google's mapping service for mobile devices is getting an upgrade as the Internet search leader braces for new competition from iPhone maker Apple.The improvements center on listings for public transportation options in nearly 500 cities around the world. Wednesday's update includes suggested routes and departure times for more than 1 million stations worldwide, about 50 percent more than a year ago. At some stations, Google will provide indoor directions to help riders navigate the system.
To highlight what it sees as a competitive advantage, Google is offering its latest improvements only on devices running its Android operating software. They include models from Samsung Electronics Co., HTC Corp., Sony Corp. and Google's Motorola Mobility division. Google said it eventually hopes to make the upgrades available for other systems, including the iPhone and the iPad, but it didn't say when.
The changes come as Apple Inc. prepares to oust Google's maps as the automatic navigation service on the iPhone and the iPad. Apple will offer its own mobile mapping service in the next version of the iPhone and iPad operating system due out this fall. The switch could come as early as next month if the release of Apple's next iPhone comes then, as several technology blogs have speculated.
Apple's snub represents a major blow for Google Inc., which stands to lose mobile advertising revenue and valuable insights about people's whereabouts if users of the popular iPhone and iPad devices embrace the alternative mapping service from Apple.
Google's once-close relationship with Apple has been fraying since it began giving away its Android software in 2008 to cellphone makers looking to challenge the iPhone. Android has since established itself as the leading operating system for smartphones, helping Google boost its revenue by selling more digital advertising on its mobile services.
Steve Jobs, Apple's late co-founder, viewed Android as a rip-off of the iPhone's innovations and vowed to retaliate against Google for the perceived betrayal. Apple is currently pursuing allegations of intellectual theft against Samsung, a leading maker of Android devices, in a high-profile trial in a federal court in San Jose, Calif.
Google Inc. believes it can stay a step ahead of Apple in mobile mapping by adding features such as its expanded public transportation directions.
New technology on the maps will allow users to focus exclusively on directions for specific transportation options, such as the subway, while excluding other alternatives, such as the bus.
Navigating public transit is even more important than driving directions in many major cities where cars aren't the most popular way of getting around, said Brian McClendon, vice president of engineering for Google's maps. Requests for mass transit directions are especially high in Japan, London, Sydney and New York.
"I am very confident these are the best transit maps available," McClendon said. "It's not something you can just go out and buy on the street."

via:ndtv gadget
source: googleblogspot

Read more »

Live Like a Refugee: The UN’s Eye-Opening New App

Photo: UNHCR

Make room on your smart phone between Shazam, Angry Birds, and Instagram for the most realistic “Survivor” story out there: The new app released by the United Nations’ High Commission for Refugeescalled “My Life as a Refugee.”

This easy-to-play, visually stimulating, interactive app includes all the war, natural disaster, rape, and murder of the most intense games. The only difference is that navigating this labyrinth of violence is whatrefugees all over the world have to do on a daily basis just to survive.

Based on the lives of three characters, Merita, a 27-year-old married, pregnant mother of two; Paulo, a 15-year-old trying to avoid being conscripted as a child soldier; and Amika, a 24-year-old women’s rights activist, the app leads players through a maze of real-life situations each character faces as he or she navigates conflict and persecution forcing him to make tough decisions that might have disastrous consequences. In Paulo’s case

One morning rebels attack your village and round up the young men and boys your age. In the confusion you see a chance to escape.

Do you: Stay behind with your brother?

Leave him and escape?

The player gets 20 seconds to decide until the screen moves on to the next scenario, which occasionally spirals into a gloomy ending.

Photo: UNHCR

The project, rolled out as part of UNHCR’s “Dilemmas” campaign, was launched in conjunction with World Refugee Day. The intent is to, as one UN official says, “Raise awareness in a society that is increasingly complacent.”  Designed to be appropriate for any kid older than nine, the app also targets high school and college students to be used as a teaching tool “in a climate of rising intolerance toward refugees and asylum seekers.”  Using a backdrop of actual photography from refugee sites around the world, the UNHCR hopes that after players interact with the realistic scenes on the screen, they’ll visit the UNHCR website to find ways to take action or donate money.

Competitive types take note: With a little luck, your character can reach safety, but there are no real winners in this game.

Read more »

Animators Bring Life To The Boneless

Animators love to make realistic-looking creatures. Duplicating the look of most vertebrates -- whether people, mice or marmosets -- is a well-established art. Making an invertebrate, like a jellyfish, look realistic is another matter.

Karen Liu, Jie Tan, and Greg Turk from the Georgia Institute of Technology presented a paper at SIGGRAPH 2012, detailing a new method of building animated characters, one that makes it a lot easier on the animator, and a lot less expensive.

PHOTOS: Video Game Fails

Instead of treating bodies as frameworks of bones, they programmed "muscles" that would change a character's shape. They also included an algorithm that assumes the mass of the character stays the same even though its shape changes .Ordinarily, an animator might use the "skeleton" of a character as a basis for movement. While walking, an animated person's feet remain the same size, just like in real life. Or, if he is standing still but gesturing with a hand, the feet remain stationary, as will most of the leg. That wouldn't happen with an amoeba or some other blob-like creature -- as one side moves, it pulls on the opposite side, elongating it, for example.

The computing technique allowed the programmers to make characters that move according to higher-level goals, which means they didn't have to specify every single movement and every portion of the creature. That cut the programming time and effort a lot. To demonstrate they made a video of dancing letters of Jell-O. See it below.

Image: Georgia Tech

via Georgia Tech

Read more »

Follow TV Trending Topics on iPad

Boxfish iPad App: Free

Remember the days of flipping through channels to find out who was talking about what? For me, fervently hitting the recall button on the remote to watch two shows at the same time was almost a game to see how good my commercial-avoiding skills were. Programming menus from Verizon Viewdini and Xfinity have made those times a distant memory. Now you can add the Boxfish iPad App to the list.

If TV guide and Twitter made a programming baby, Boxfish made be it. It surfs through the closed captioning of 3,600 TV stations and creates a live feed of what's being said. The stream of data is constantly updated, ranging from sports to business, celebrity gossip and news. Users can save their favorite channels to make checking what’s being broadcasted easier.

The app and Boxfish's website even lets users search for any word being said on television in real-time. Like Twitter, trending topics are posted and updated by tallying how many times the topics are mentioned on each channel. Right now, trending topics include “drought,” “Microsoft,” and “Tebow” (Really, Tebow??). The app can be synced with TiVo as well as DirectTV for easy channel changing directly from iPad. For channel surfing aficionados, the app is currently free in the iTunes store with an iPhone version coming soon.

via Gigaom

Read more »

Are Sound Waves the Future of Mobile Marketing?

Your Starbucks runs and concert visits will soon be more interactive.

Imagine the luxury of walking into a coffee shop and receiving a personalized drink deal on your smartphone or tablet upon entry. Or, receiving an automated mobile thank-you note for watching a film, exactly an hour after leaving the theater.

Thanks to Sonic Notify technology, activated by audio, our smartphones are getting smarter. So smart, in fact, they’re interacting with elements in your surroundings to bring you relevant media. By installing Sonic technology into apps, companies can trigger mobile notifications at precise times or specific locations.

Co-founders Jonathan Glanz and Alex Bell started developing the unique audio-to-mobile technology in 2011. A year later, brands and entertainers can engage with customers using the patent-pending Sonic technology. The next time you’re standing in the dairy aisle deciding between ice cream flavors, don’t be surprised if you receive mobile recommendations and discounts from a tech-savvy brand.

The sound-triggered technology allows precise delivery of content to mobile devices within apps, Sonic Notify EVP Ross Weinstein tells Mashable. Sonic technology can be integrated into in-store radio broadcasts, TV shows, movies, sporting events or live concerts. The triggering sound, inaudible to human ears, can also play from discreetly placed devices.

“Anywhere audio is being broadcast, there’s an opportunity for content to be delivered,” Weinstein says.

Sonic Notify’s clients can choose to push out mobile content at a specific time and location. Musicians can push out exclusive media to an entire stadium of fans. Stores can wait to engage customers standing in front of a specific product.

How the Technology Works

Companies and brands interested in Sonic technology should have mobile apps. Installing the Sonic Notify technology into said app is simple. All clients have to do is install Sonic’s SDK — a software kit the company provides — into their app. It’s as easy as adding an extra line of code.

“Anyone can download our SDK and install it into their app whether, it’s a Linkin Park, a Madonna, a sports team or an Epicurious,” Weinstein says. “Name the app and they can all put it in there.”

The next step is to incorporate an inaudible Sonic sound into your in-store radio, television show, live concert or PA announcement.

“The user can say, ‘I want to deliver these pieces of content at this particular point in time to this particular app or apps,’” Weinstein says. “They take the audio file that we provide, and they mix that into their media.”

Once the Sonic SDK is installed into your app, a user with the mobile app will be able to receive sound-triggered updates. A wireless web connection and GPS capabilities are rarely needed for successful media transmission.

Who’s Already Using Sonic

Sonic works well for live events such as sporting events or concerts. Tech-savvy pop diva Lady Gaga uses Sonic Notify to connect with concert goers. Fans can vote for an encore song and see exclusive images during the show.

It also works well for pre-recorded shows. As long as the inaudible Sonic sound is integrated into the show, the consumer’s smartphone or tablet will be able to receive content.

“The phone will receive content as long as it’s got an app with our Sonic Notify SDK in it,” he says. “If the app is open, it will receive content. If the app is not open and running in the background, the user will still receive content and … a push notification.”

For the near 12-person team based in New York, it’s all about perfecting this engagement platform. They’re also focused on building accompanying metric systems to measure success.

“The unique piece is the audio that we provide that basically delivers content to the smartphone. It creates a unique experience,” he says.

For the future, the Sonic Notify team hopes to be the go-to user engagement tool. The team hopes to be ubiquitous across all apps in as many places that have speakers and microphones as possible.

via:mashable

Read more »