If you thought the idea of using your voice to control your smartphone was neat, just wait. One developer has hacked Siri to allow it to control third party devices, starting with his WiFi-enabled thermostat.
In what he says is his first-ever Ruby project, St. Louis developer Pete Lamonica set up a proxy server in order to effectively trick Siri into thinking it's communicating with guzzoni.apple.com, the server on which Siri's functionality actually happens. Developers can write their own custom handlers for various actions. In this case, Lamonica uses Siri to get a reading off of his thermostat and then change the temperature.
Google shipped a major redesign of its Google Search app today with a faster and more tablet-friendly interface for the iPad version. The launch page is now a spare, simple descendent of the iconic Google.com homepage for the post-PC era.
The search bar is front and center, collapsing to a top menu bar instantly when you put in your query. You can also access search history, Google Web apps, voice search and "Goggles" - image search using the iPad's camera - right underneath. The new Gmail app for iOS may be a dud, but this update to an already-great Google Search app makes it the best Google iOS app by a longshot.
The native Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch users is back in the App Store. The app was first released on November 2, but it shipped with an unfortunate error that greeted new users with an incomprehensible error message. Shortly after releasing it, Google pulled the app from the store. The problem was caused by broken push notifications, and that bug has been fixed in today's release. The update also improves handling of images in HTML messages.
Unfortunately, users' more substantive concerns with the app have not been addressed. The Gmail team's blog post says that multiple account support, improved notifications and mobile-specific signatures are coming, along with "many more" features. But for now, little has changed about the app that many panned as insufficient for a native Gmail app.
Continuing our series about the Consumer Cloud, today we compare the three leading music cloud services: Apple's iTunes Match (just launched today), Amazon's Cloud Drive and Google Music. With these three highly competitive services, online music fans have never had it so good.
There are two main battles going on in the online music market, each of which is benefiting consumers greatly. One is between the three so-called cloud lockers mentioned above, which are competing to be the online archive for your digital music collection. The second battle is about whether you even need an online archive at all.
More than a month after the release of iOS 5, Apple has finally made its cloud music service iTunes Match available to the public. With the release of iTunes 10.5.1 (available here), Apple now offers iTunes users the ability to sync their music library across devices by "matching" each song with a high quality version stored on Apple's servers. Any other songs can be uploaded.
The service is an extension of iCloud, the cross-device content syncing feature rolled out in iOS 5. That feature lets users sync contacts, calendars, mail, apps and other data between iPads, iPhones, iPods and Mac computers. For an additional $25 per year, they can now include their entire music collection in Apple's cloud.
Amazon announced today that the Kindle Fire Newsstand will offer over 400 full-color subscription publications. Anyone who subscribes before March 1, 2012 will get a free three-month trial of Vanity Fair, GQ, Wired and 14 other Condé Nast magazines. Amazon's new tablet hits stores next week, and Amazon has boosted the initial shipment twice to keep up with demand.
This is one of the most anticipated tablet launches since Apple's iPad, and the comparison is inevitable. But there are lots of differences between the two devices for consumers. Still, Apple's Newsstand feature of iOS 5 has turned out to be a huge success for the publishing industry, thanks to the iPad. Amazon is using the Kindle Fire to confront that head on, right down to the name.
AnchorFree, the company that makes the popular Hotspot Shield application that secures mobile browsing activity, is bringing the app to iOS. Hotspot shield gained some acclaim this year during the revolutions of the Arab Spring by allowing users to create a private connection to the Internet. Users were able to skirt detection by officials that may have been monitoring mobile Internet activity.
Hotspot Shield works by creating a mobile virtual private network (VPN) that encrypts a Web session, turning HTTP into HTTPS. Hotspot Shield will also serve as a bandwidth compression service on iOS, cutting down on the amount of data that users consume. Create a VPN through an app anywhere with your iOS device? There is sure to be a market for that.
Yesterday we started a new series about the Consumer Cloud, defined as an online repository for your content and applications. These services, such as Apple's new iCloud and Amazon's Cloud Drive, are becoming increasingly important in the multi-device world we live in.
One of the applications for which the Consumer Cloud is particularly relevant is the calendar. Unless you still carry around a paper diary, you likely use a digital calendar service such as Google Calendar, Apple iCal or Microsoft Outlook. You probably want to access your calendar while you're out and about, for example on your smartphone or tablet. While there are many ways to sync your calendar to your various devices, they're typically fairly technical or fiddly to set up. In this post we'll explore how calendar sync has evolved... or has it?
Charlotte-based CLT Blog connected the dots and found that Amazon has purchased a speech recognition startup called Yap, according to an SEC filing. While neither company has made a formal announcement - and the filing doesn't even mention Amazon by name - it says that Yap merged with a company called "Dion Acquisition Sub," which has the same address as an Amazon building.
With the Kindle Fire about to hit stores, it's tempting to compare this acquisition to Apple's purchase of Siri. But is that a fair comparison? Yap transcribed voicemail. Siri was based on a DARPA-funded military artificial intelligence project. With some consumers hesitating between the iPad and the Kindle Fire, there's bound to be a feature race. But speech-to-text input is one thing. The AI-powered future of search is another.
The Web is singing this morning. The coming death of Flash on mobile devices has made a lot of tech pundits and developers very happy. There is a big fat "I told you so" coming from all corners the of Internet while all Adobe can do is quietly sit back and rue the day the original iPhone was announced.
There could be several books written about the battle for Flash against mobile. "Steve Jobs' Last Laugh" could probably be finished in time for the holiday shopping season. "How To Kill Flash For Dummies" would be an enlightening title as well. It is a bittersweet day for many. We want to know: how are you reacting to the passing of Flash for mobile? Take the poll below.
