With iOS 5, Apple made the first move towards iOS Notification center widgets, but its still far from keeping the users satisfied. Jailbreaking Tweaks brings some android style powerful widgets to Homescreen (Springboard) and Lockscreen on iPhone, iPad or iPod touch.

The major credit goes to Cydia Tweak called Dashboard X. With Dashboard X, you can add several Notification Center widgets to the home screen. Not only that, you can make the lockscreen area of your iPhone more functional and productive as well, using the tweak’s Dock Mode.

Related: Ultimate Notification Center Widgets, Toggles for iOS 5

With its two modes, you can add permanent, translucent widgets to the Springboard (iOS Homescreen) or configure the Dashboard X dock mode to hide widgets until they are made temporarily visible via an user designated Activator gesture. Just Tap and hold your finger over any empty area of the Springboard, and as soon as you enter wiggle mode, the option to add new widgets to the Home screen will appear. You’ll be presented with list of available widgets, choose the one you like and hit the add button.

There are couple of preferences you can play with to customize Dashboard X to your needs. From settings app, you can enable or disable widgets, gestures. You can customize Activator gestures, and the chosen gesture will take you into dock mode. A simple double tap on statusbar brings the well organized widgets area, by default. But you can customize the gesture.

Most of the Notification center Widgets already in Cydia are compatible with Dashboard X, out of the box and many more are coming.

Dashboard X is available via ModMyi repo for $1.99, worth the price.

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RIM is bringing some innovative ideas to the Keyboard in its upcoming Blackberry OS 10. They haven’t really re-invented the wheel but have added som e nice tweaks to it. This could pave to

Can we really bet on BlackBerry 10 is yet to be seen, but they are sure making there way into modern smartphones.

Octopus Keyboard is a jailbreak tweak that seeks to bring RIM’s new gesture based predictive typing to iPhone iOS devices. The developer  Mario Hros, has released a preview of the video.

Octopus Keyboard is interesting in the way it presents dictionary predictions on keyboard based on its predictive and learning algorithms.

Actually using the tweak by swiping up on an individual key works surprisingly well. I was under the impression that the iPhone’s keyboard would simply be to small to accomodate a feature like this, but I rarely found myself making mistakes due to keyboard size and placement. I did find that using landscape input provided a bit more real estate that made some of the longer words fit on the keys better, but that too is an issue that Hros wishes to address before go time.

Here’s a preview of Blackberry 10 like keyboard on iOS:

It’s a pretty cool iPhone implementation of RIM’s new-fangled predictive gesture based keyboard. It still needs to be worked upon, but we are already impressed.

Here are the Key features of Octopus Keyboard:

• Automatically learns new words as you type them
• Custom completion engine
• Should work for any input language with key input (English, French, Czech, Russian, etc.)

Here are the features on our Wish-list for the final app:

• Avoid learning mistakes
• Autocapitalize words in sentences
• Handle punctuations like  , . ! at the end of a sentence
• Compatibility with popular tweaks like SwipeSelection

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iOS 5 learned from Android notifications and made it even more attractive (as per iOS 5 lovers).

Its hard to conclude which is better, but in any case Android users can now Get iOS 5 like Notifications, Banner bubbles on Android phones.

One thing we do anticipate is that iOS 5 notification bubbles are visually appealing when compared to Android counterparts. As per the developers of the app these “greatly improve the way your device displays notifications,” but it isn’t always the case.

iPhone notifications are offered in two app flavors: free version and full version (paid). The paid version offers extra features of displaying full notification text, set individual settings for each app and tailor the experience to the nth degree by choosing themes for the notifications and setting custom vibration patterns.

Download from Google Play:

• iPhone Notifications Lite for Android (free)
• iPhone Notifications for Android $2.63

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Microsoft Labs is betting on Kinect-like gestures everywhere. The new thing would be achieved without the complex Kinect hardware, a motion sensing gadget everyone was excited about since 2010. Kinect has been popular among Xbox users as well as Open source hackers who made DIY projects like no other gadget has seen before.

Microsoft’s research team is now about to get official with Kinect for Windows PC. The new Tech is called SoundWave and it is official Microsoft method to control software installed on a computer through the use of hand-based gestures.

With SoundWave, you can control software with the help of a set of speakers and an attached microphone.

Camera, they feel is not the best suited input device on a windows PC. You can see the prototype of SoundWave in action today, however this project may or may not see light of the day. SoundWave shows that it even works along nicely with ambient sounds, such as music.

How SoundWave works

SoundWave can use your existing speakers to generate high frequency tones in the ultrasonic non-audible frequencies range i.e. between 18-22 kHz. This Real time technology then uses the attached microphone to pick up any reflected signal that is generated by hand motions and estimates the motion based on the frequency shifts. Well, what does that do? You hand movement creates an scientific phenomenon you may know as the popular Doppler Effect.

The technology can use change in frequency, amplitude and phase of the sound to detect Gesture inputs.
The possibilities are really endless (as you would see in the video) and to begin with it can be used to automatically lock and unlock your PC based upon your movement away or towards the PC. It works well in any noisy environment. Check it out demoed below:

The technology is extremely intuitive but doesn’t come without a number of limitations. One of the limitations is the distance a user has to be from the PC for the gestures. And not to forget, some humans are capable of hearing high-frequency sounds, especially children and pets. It can be extremely annoying for them.

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The basic reason behind slow Wifi handoffs is the design itself. Wifi was designed to work in local areas where you don’t need to roam more than couple of meters. Wifi networks were deigned for local wireless access within a vicinity: Whether its your home, office or a coffee house. The WiFi Alliance taking steps to encounter this problem. The new Passpoint program aims to make WiFi a “true extension of service provider networks,” letting users roam from one hotspot to another with no manual effort, just like cell phone owners already switch seamlessly from one cell tower to another.

“With Passpoint, devices automatically identify and join WiFi networks, and users are not required to complete a cumbersome manual login process, Passpoint also automatically configures industry-standard WPA2 security protections without user intervention. Passpoint certification for network equipment and end user devices is expected to begin in June, and is based on the WiFi Alliance Hotspot 2.0 Specification.”

So the question that comes next is how do you keep track of billing when you roam into a different Wifi network? The solution is to use cell phone’s SIM card for identification and billing. This makes it possible to have internet access readily available wherever you go, without password and it also help service providers move the congestion of cellular networks to Wifi networks.

The Passpoint program is complementary to a new revision of the IEEE’s 802.11 WiFi standard (Gigabit 802.11ac), and supports faster devices and networks as well as better handoff between cellular and WiFi networks. As of now, its unclear how cell providers will charge the customers, however  we’ll be able to see Passpoint-enabled WiFi networks available to consumers in the third quarter of this year. Some of the service providers in US have already been participating in field trials worldwide. T-Mobile had been part of the field trials in the US, and we are sure that they will be among first few providers to launch it.

Sprint says that they are “exploring all the options available to maintain our networks’ performance at optimal levels, but have nothing to share at this time about specific services.” Verizon similarly said it won’t discuss future plans regarding Passpoint.

Basically, any device that can connect to WiFi and supports WPA2 security will be capable of using Passpoint services. “There’s no hardware requirement. It will be a software update”. About 72 percent of users are looking for such a service. And most of them are even ready to switch to a new service provider to avail such service.

Wifi Roaming is sure a hot topic for end of 2012 and early 2013. More on this later.

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This year at the CHI conference in Austin, Disney research lab in Pittsburgh demonstrated their way to make touch sensors out of anything. This is like one of the best Touch sensitive technologies you;ve ever come across.

Using the Touché technology, you would be able to do amazing things like:

1. Control cell phones and MP3 players from your hand gestures, without touch the device.
2. Touch gestures to any object like grabbing, touching an object.
3. Make your Sofa touch sensitive and it can be used to turn ON Tv when you sit on it. And when you relax on it, lights can be dimmed automatically. When Sofa detects a more comfortable position, it can turn off the TV.
4. Smart Door Knob: Depending upon how you touch the Door knob, it can be used to set status for your room. e.g. touching the door handle with single finger can mean “in a metting, come in quietly”. Or close the door with 5 fingers to indicate that you’re unavailable, etc.

The Technology has endless possibilities as it can sense any kind of Touch gesture on any surface.

How Advanced Multitouch Gestures Work
Like the capacitive touch sensors in our phones and tablets, Touché measures the rise and fall of a capacitor’s charge over time. Unlike other touch sensors, Touché scans the capacitor at different rates, allowing for a ‘capacitive profile’ that is used to recognized touch gestures.

Its hard to believe. You have to see it to believe it. Checkout the Video below:

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With iLockIt, you can get Windows 8 Lockscreen Gestures on Android. It mimics the Windows 8 Logon Lockscreen behavior where you’ve to touch various points on the image to Unlock the screen.

iLockit Lock Screen is security-oriented Android app that offers 4 different screen locking methods that you can be used in any combination. With iLockit you can do things like:

1. Set any image as the lockscreen’s background and select a single point within it, tapping which will unlock the screen, or pick multiple points on the image that you must touch in some order to do the same.
2. Press and hold a specific point on the image for a desired time duration. You can also add an invisible line within the image and swipe across it to unlock.

Precision is the key with iLockit’s custom unlocking mechanism. As an additional security measure, it automatically logs out of your default Google account after subsequent unsuccessful attempts.

App also lets you configure a valid email address and a recovery PIN that you can use to unlock your device, if you forget your unlock pattern.

From preferences, you can configure the number of attempts before it will disallow you to make any further attempts at unlocking your device, along with timeout between unsuccessful attempts.

iLockit is available at Google Play Store for $0.99. The app has tight sense for security.

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Linkin Park’s new Song “Burn it down” brings out two different meanings which can be interpreted differently by different people. It can be interpreted in terms of:

• Love & Broken relationship
• Humanity & its unlimited selfish, ruthless nature

Linkin Park – Burn it Down Lyrics

The cycle repeated,
As explosions broke in the sky,
All that I needed,
Was the one thing I couldn’t find,
And you were there at the turn,
Waiting to let me know,

Chorus:
We’re building it up,
To break it back down,
We’re building it up,
To burn it down,
We can’t wait,
To burn it to the ground.

The colors conflicted,
As the flames climbed into the clouds.
I wanted to fix this,
But couldn’t stop from tearing it down.

And you were there at the turn,
Caught in the burning glow.
And I was there at the turn,
Waiting to let you go.
We’re building it up,
To break it back down,
We’re building it up,
To burn it down,
We can’t wait,
To burn it to the ground.

You told me yes,
You held me high,
And I believed,
When you told that lie.

I played solider,
You played king,
Struck me down,
When I kissed that ring.

You lost that right,
To hold that crown,
I built you up,
But you let me down.

So when you fall,
I’ll take my turn,
And fan the flames,
As your blazes burn.

And you were there at the turn,
Waiting to let me know.

We’re building it up,
To break it back down,
We’re building it up,
To burn it down,

[We can't wait,
To burn it to the ground.
So when you fall,
I'll take my turn,
And fan the flames,
As your blazes burn. ] x2

We can’t wait,
To burn it to the ground…

Love & Broken Relationships:

The song is about a bad relationship that jumps back and forth between being good and bad.

The first two lines “The cycle repeated, as explosions broke in the sky” shows the cyclic nature of the relationship but that its always in turmoil. There is a want to “fix it, but couldn’t stop from tearing it down.” So the singer feels that he is “Building it up, to break it back down.” No matter what they try to do, they always end up burning down their relationship into ashes. This is further seen in Mike rap, where he says that they try to “I play soldier and you played king,” but that it doesn’t work because they end up striking each other down no matter what they do.

You told me yes,
You held me high,
And I believed,
When you told that lie.

This relation is broken because of lies and abandoned trust. One of them had been hiding the truth in the purported relation.

“And you were there at the turn, to let me know that we’re building it up to burn it down.”

So in the end they come up with the solution, they will burn it down once and for all.

“And I was there at the turn,
Waiting to let you go.”

No more attempts at trying to fix the relationship, its time to let you go.

Humanity & its unlimited selfish, ruthless Nature:

This could have a perfect relation with Humans and their selfish motives. The best hint comes from the chorus of the song: “We’re building it up, To burn it down”.

Its human tendency to come up with technology that can make skyscrapers but eventually, its again the same technology that makes nuclear bombs to burn it back to the ground. Humans turn out to be ruthless, impatient and selfish.”We can’t wait, to burn it to the ground”.

“So when you fall,
I’ll take my turn,
And fan the flames,
As your blazes burn”.

In above lines, Mike Shinoda goes deeper saying that human instinct is destruction driven. If given a chance, they bring out their worst by helping the fire grow, while the others suffer in pain.

You told me yes,
You held me high,
And I believed,
When you told that lie.

This one may refer to Politicians and liars dwelling in any community. Corrupt citizens & leaders reach the higher positions with promises that are meant to be broken.

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As of the time of launch, Galaxy SIII is the most powerful smartphone, however, this is to change soon.

Galaxy SIII Specs

• CPU: Quad-core 1.4 GHz Exynos 4 processor (a Cortex A9 design, so essentially the same CPU core as found in the NVIDIA Tegra 3, Texas Instruments’ OMAP 4, and Apple’s A5, among others)
• GPU:  ARM Mali 400 GPU (Same as galaxy Note)
• RAM: 1 GB RAM,
• Storage: 16, 32, or 64 GB of flash
• Screen: 4.8″ 1280×720 HD Super AMOLED screen.
• Camera: 8 MP rear camera with LED flash & 1080p video, front-facing 1.9 MP camera capable of 720p video,
• Sensors: accelerometer, GPS and GLONASS positioning, compass, gyroscope, and barometer.
• Connectivity: 802.11abgn, Bluetooth 3.0, NFC
• Data: 4G LTE, 3G HSPA+.
• Battery: 2,100 mAh.
• Thickness: only 8.6mm thick. Slimmer than any smartphone, 133 grams.

The Gorgeous Screen & Size: HD Super AMOLED+

The screen uses a Pentile matrix: each pixel is made up of a pair of either red and green or blue and green sub-pixels, instead of the traditional red/green/blue trio.

Samsung has cut the size of the bezel down, so the Galaxy S III’s footprint is only a slightly larger than that of its predecessor SII. The narrow bezels, combined with the light weight (133 grams), and that thinness, make it comfortable enough in the hand, though those with particularly small hands may struggle.

Galaxy SIII Handson: Apps, design

The Phone is comfortable in hands if you don’t mind slightly larger device.

The shape of the phone is all curves; no sharp corners or edges. The “organic” aspirations can be seen in TouchWiz 4.0 as well. ITs buil on Android 4.0.4 ICS and comes packed with bunch of new Samsung apps that are worth mentioning.

S3 Apps

Camera app is one notable feature of this phone. You can shoot photos with almost no delay, and also shoot photos in burst mode: 20 pictures at 3.3 frames a second, and automatically pick the best picture of the burst.

Samsung apps include S Beam and a pair of AllShare programs, Hubs.

S Beam is new way to share files: quick and easy sharing of files, say, between Galaxy S III handsets, similar to Google’s Android Beam feature, with some differences: share using slow NFC, or use fast Wi-Fi Direct.

AllShare: A Feature that lets you share media via DLNA to TVs, now gets AllShare Play and AllShare Cast. Play lets you play media on TVs via Wi-Fi Direct; Cast duplicates the phone’s screen on the TV. For TVs that don’t support Wi-Fi Direct, Samsung is releasing a dongle that plugs into an HDMI port to make the wireless experience better.

Samsung Hub: Music, Books, Videos
Samsung Music hub offers iTunes equivalent for music. It’s extending this with a scan-and-match feature, similar to Apple’s iTunes Match; it’ll search your hard disk for songs, and allow you to play anything it finds from the cloud. Samsung offers music from 17 million available titles. Video Hub is also being offered for Video, movie rentals.

The OS/ TouchWhiz software felt fast and responsive for the most part.

Official SIII Commercial:

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RIM is changing the approach it has followed for smartphones, they are finally moving away from clunky trackballs to full touchscreen gestures. Gestures can be used for multitasking – switching between apps. BB10 phones definitely look to have been polished, but it draws lots of inspirations from Android, iOS & WP7.

The core home screen experience appears to be up to four “tiles” (or widgets). Here the clear inspiration is from Android and WP7. You can tap on any tile/widget to launch the app and to go back to home screen, you just swipe up. RIM also claims that there would be a grid of icons you can access on the home screen. These are  just a swipe away from the home screen.

RIM takes inspiration from Android & iOS and maintains icon dock at the bottom of the screen to provide quickaccess to most used features. These are Phone, Search, and Camera. The standard notification bar is at the top. However, to bring up the notification drawer, a gestures is required. Blackberry OS 10 still carries the notification LED.

Swipe left from the right edge within any app to reveal notifications.  A “half-swipe” will simply show unread count and a full swipe will take you directly into the messaging and email app. With in any app, you can swipe from left to right to go up in the hierarchy. The behavior is quiet similar to PlayBook messaging app and UI is highly inspired from HP’s  webOS 3.0.

Multitasking

As mentioned, Multitasking is a gesture away. A swipe to the right when you’re at the top level of an app will reveal the app you last had open, which fades in from behind your current app. A half-swipe will give you a preview as it fades in rather than fully switching to it.

Keyboard

The  new Multitouch keyboard is a fair improvement to all existing softkeyboards on other platforms. While typing,  swipe up on a letter to automatically type a suggested word. Blackberry Keyboard is powered by SwiftKey.

BB10 will eventually replace QNX as a powerful and pervasive OS for complete Mobility: not just smartphones, tablets. This could be a point where RIM starts licensing OS to third part manufacturers and we could see BB10 as an OS platform rather than RIM manufactured device. What this means is that soon we might have LG, Samsung, HTC manufacturing BB10 phones. Who knows what is coming.

Multimedia

RIM showcased wireless streaming video, a long awaited dream for RIM, already pioneering on other platforms. Camera is able to cleverly stay “live” when open and after you take a shot you can move forward or back in time to get it just right in case you missed a moment.

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802.11ac is the new Wireless standard poised to change it all. Even though we saw MultiGigabit technology like WiGig,WHDI, SiBEAM, with WiGig offering upto 7Gigabit, its not happening anytime soon.
Netgear would be the first manufacturer to build next-generation router which can achieve speeds of up to 1.3Gbps in the 5GHz band. This is at least 3x times faster than the current 802.11n standard.

How Gigabit Routers work

Netgear R6300 runs on a WiFi chip from Broadcom and uses a number of new techniques to achieve gigabit wireless speeds. 802.11ac uses 5Ghz spectrum which is relativelty less crowded and results in better efficiency. This Netgear Gigabit router combines its channels to access up to 80MHz of bandwidth at once. To further improve the throughput, it uses “beam forming” which maximizes the signal strength.

Also coming Gigabit Routers are from Buffalo and TrendNet within this year.

As per Netgear:

With an elegant new design that fits perfectly in consumers’ living spaces, the router increases the coverage area for HD streaming in the home. The NETGEAR R6300 WiFi Router has speeds of up to 1300 Mbps on 5GHz and 450 Mbps on 2.4GHz enabling consumers to download web content from any device in the home in a fraction of the time it would take on a similar 802.11n device.

Even though you can buy a Gigabit wireless router today, there are no CPE clients compatible with it i.e. there are no 802.11ac-compatible devices (phones, laptops, etc). However, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Quantenna are manufacturing chips to make devices 802.11ac-compatible by 2013.In Q1 2013, we will see official IEEE standardization of 802.11ac. Even thought standardization is far off, there’s no harm in getting Netgear R6300 Gigabit router today, since, its fully backward compatible.

Netgear R6300 will be available in May 2012 for $199. Grab it and secure your future with MultiGigabit.

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We know the next version of Galaxy is going to be called Galaxy SIII, and Galaxy SIII is getting Exynos 4 CPU which would be a 1.4ghz Quad-core processor.

Galaxy SIII is being announced on May 3rd. Dubbed the “Exynos 4 Quad,”  based on the ARM Cortex A9. Exynos 4 Quad is manufactured using 32nm High-k Metal Gate technology, that improves power management, and per-core dynamic voltage and frequency scaling.

Already in production, the Exynos 4 Quad is scheduled to be adopted first into Samsung’s next Galaxy smartphone that will officially be announced in May. Samsung’s Exynos 4 Quad is also sampling to other major handset makers.

Samsung is basically announcing two new chips, which will be pin-to-pin compatible: Exynos 4 Quad and Exynos 4 Dual. This makes it easier for the phone manufacturers to switch. Both dual and quad are capable of playing full 30fps 1080p video playback and recording, includes an interface for HDMI 1.4 and also an embedded image signal processor interface. The new 32nm chop would offer double the processor power using 20 percent less power. Too ambitious? no not really, this would be real.

Exynos 5 is also in the pipeline, samsung talks about Exynos 4, Exynos 5 is the video below:

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Location is often most accurately determined using GPS aided by Wireless networks in the vicinity. From Self-driving cars, GPS navigators to portable smartphones, the Global Position System is not flawless, it has one fundamental flaw: It never works indoors.

Low power, Long distance GPS Operation

Well, GPS is satellite driven and its impossible for the signals to travel 20,200km and still penetrate through walls. The signal gets degraded by the time it reaches the surface of earth, going a little further would require a very high transmitting power for a solar charged satellite feeding millions of devices simultaneously — you can’t seriously expect a 50-watt signal traveling 12,000 miles to do the same. To give you a rough idea, detecting a GPS signal on Earth is comparable to detecting the light from a 25-watt bulb from 10,000 miles.

GPS to measure Altitude

GPS and, the Russian standard, GLONASS can measure altitude, but its inaccurate and too low-resolution (~10-25 meters). But such a precision is good enough to determine various factors about a locale and helping develop further suggest tips for farming to tracking a friend.

Indoor Navigation

A year before today, Indoor navigation was something way too ambitious. Indoor Positioning was not possible, but with Google Maps for Android, we finally saw Indoor Navigation taking shape. Google’s Indoor navigation has information about floor plans of shopping malls, airports, and other large commercial areas. Broadcom has also been  working on a new chip (BCM4752) that supports indoor positioning systems. This will soon be available in modern Smartphones.

GPS is a standard way of positioning outdoors, however, Indoor navigation is entirely different domain. Google chose track Wifi approach. — Using smartphones,  it already knows where the WiFi hotspots are in a given building, and through Wifi signal strength triangulation it can calculate your approximate proximity inside a building.

Nokia also has developed a similar solution but is less resilient since it uses Bluetooth rather than Wifi. Researchers have also suggested that among other methods, Infrared and acoustic analysis can help detect indoor location. However, none of the suggested ways is reliable and accurate. All these signals can be dispersed, interfered, converted to noise depending upon the shape and objects inside the building.

Standardizing Reliable Indoor Position System (IPS)

It could be years before we see a standardization in this, but Broadcom might be taking the very first step towards it. Broadcom’s chip supports IPS through WiFi, Bluetooth, and even NFC.  The IPS chip also interacts with Phone’s gyroscope, magnetometer, accelerometer, and altimeter. Acting like a glorified pedometer, this Broadcom BCM4752 chip could almost track your movements without wireless network triangulation. It simply has to take note of your entry point (via GPS), and then count your steps (accelerometer), direction (gyroscope), and altitude (altimeter). Together, it all starts making sense. It knows the absolute position, and then onwards all moments are tracked to create delta of movement: Direction, distance.

Indoor Positioning / Navigation systems are just around the corner, and they will change the way we navigate inside the buildings.

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Lets just take a step further by talking about a Universal Unlock for iPhone 4, 4S.

It’s quiet easy. All you need to do is Jailbreak your iPhone, (you can follow Jailbreaking tutorials here) and follow some simple steps after that get any iPhone unlocked.

As per MuscleNerd, a Chinese researcher by the name of Loktar_Sun has made it possible to unlock any jailbroken iPhone with the help of the Subscriber Artificial Module (SAM) by Sam Bingner.

This unlock method has now matured into an application. The method produces a ticket that is valid only for the SIM card that is used during the procedure. Hence if you happen to use multiple SIM cards with your iPhone, you will have to repeat the procedure for all of them.

Pre-Requisites: Before you begin with the tutorial, make sure that your iPhone’s IMEI is not blacklisted. A computer with a fully working internet connection and the latest version of iTunes installed is also required, as is the original carrier information of the locked device in question.

Step 1: Add the repo to cydia: http://repo.bingner.com. This contains the latest official SAM package and all the possible dependencies.

Step 2: Launch SAMPrefs from Springboard. Make sure that the SIM card is already inserted into iPhone.

Step 3: Select the ‘Utilities‘ option followed by ‘De-Activate iPhone‘. The device ActivationState should now show as ‘Unactivated‘.

Step 4: Keep SAM enabled and choose ‘By Country and Carrier’ in the Method options. Look through the list and locate your carrier. Be aware that some networks work with more than network ID, i.e. you may have to select the ‘SIM ID’ option.

Step 5: Navigate to ‘More Information‘ and keep a note of the IMSI under ‘SAM Details‘ section before tapping ‘Spoof Real SIM to SAM’. Go to the main SAM screen and change ‘Method’ to manual and paste or enter the IMSI string that you noted down in Step 4.

Step 6: Connect the iPhone to your PC/ Mac & let iTunes to re-activate the phone. Next, double click the Phone Number section of the device details and make sure that the displayed ICCID matches that found on the SIM card. If the strings do not match, start the process from the start.

Step 7: Unplug the device and disable the SAM package. Re-connect the device to iTunes and ignore error messages that might appear. Re-Open iTunes if you wish to be satisfied. Within couple of seconds, your iPhone would display those blue signal bars, a sign of relief.

Troubleshooting: If your iPhone’s push notifications have ceased working, don’t worry about it yet. You can fix this by selecting ‘Clear Push‘ option in SAM and then connecting the device to iTunes.

Note: If you’re looking for multiple SIM unlocks for the same iPhone, below section is for you:

Manually saving each valid unlock ticket
Step 1: Run through all the steps above for each SIM card once. SSH into the jailbroken device & Navigate to /var/Root/library/Lockdown and make a copy  of everything that is found in that directory for each SIM card.

It worked for us all fine for Unlocking iPhone 3GS, 4, 4S.

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Adding Multiple monitors to your setup definitely increases productivity. But it can get all tricky without use of the right software. That’s why we had prepared a list of Best Dual, Multi-Monitor Software for your PC, Mac.

ScreenSlider allows you to utilize your Android display to extend the monitor and drag your cursor through the air rather magically from display to tablet/smartphone. All you need is a Windows PC (mac osx soon) and Android tablet /phone connected to same Wifi.

How to Install & configure ScreenSlider on Android

Step 1: Purchase ScreenSlider ($1) from the Android Market. Once installed, request a download link for the ScreenSlider desktop client by giving them your  e-mail address.

Step 2: Launch ScreenSlider on your Android Tablet, phone and enter a unique device name. And on the PC, Right-click the ScreenSlider icon in the System Tray and select Find devices. Double click your device in the list once it appears.

Step 3: Next, you’ll be prompted to pair your device. Enter the code displayed on your Android in order to pair device and PC.

The app is not perfect, there are glitches and its bit laggy.  However, it should improve over time.

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How Gyroscope RC Helicopters fly

We showed you How Analog, Digital Gyroscopes Work,  they essentially are the digital components that give the helicopters sense of stabilization within the air, while flying, taking turns or rotating. The basic physics of how Helicopters work is explained in the videos below but we’ll try to summarize it in minimum amount of words.

An airplane by its nature wants to fly. Helicopter does not. It is maintained in the air by a variety of forces and controls working in opposition to each other, and if there is any disturbance in this delicate balance, the helicopter stops flying, immediately. There is no such thing as a gliding helicopter. Helicopters have two rotos, one that lifts it up and other one that prevents it from rotating itself. The chopper’s top wings are designed to push a full throttle in verticale direction to hold the chopper against gravity. The rear wing makes sure that Whole chopper doesn’t start rotating instead of rotating fan and also helps the navigator move the helicopter in designated directions.

The other main component of any Helicopter design is the Gyroscope, component responsible for detecting any minor imbalance and react to it with an opposite force immediately to cancel out immbalances before they knock of the helicopter.

Helicopter is controlled by something called a swash plate on the main rotor, which in short translates a linear action into a rotational one. The same thing is done with the tail rotor, but you’ll have to check out the videos after the break for a full explanation!

An explanation of gyroscopic precession is given in the fourth video.

The video has to be seen to be believed or even explained, but one of the simpler tricks involved taking off a few feet, doing a forward flip, and flying off backwards and upside-down.

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You can now Mount dSLR camera Lens on iPad 3, iPad 2 & iPhone with Padcaster / Lenscaster accessory.

We always thought shooting video from iPad would look ridiculous, but this goes a step further. Well, why would you still want to do that? Obvious reasons are 1080p video capture, built-in LTE and a on-board editing suite, such a device makes for an excellent on-the-go all-in-one, letting you shoot, cut and transmit video with a single package.

However, iPad 3 or iPhone 4S doesn’t excel at emphasizing details with blurred backgrounds, along with magnifying your subject with optical zoom.

Lenscaster is a universal lens mount that lets you use a standard 35mm adapter to attach any SLR/ dSLR lens  to the iPad camera. If your dSLR lens has wide open aperture, you can do a lot with shallow depth of field, manual focus. If you mount a zoom lens, possibilities are many.

With a Cinevate 35mm lens adapter, 85mm f/1.4 Carl Zeiss lens and a Sennheiser MKH-60 shotgun mic, mounted to the new iPad, video was shot in NYC. Of course the setup on the tripod is not visually pleasing, but the resulting video is not that bad.

Checkout the Video below that describes the Mounting setup for iPad:

There will be a ‘designed for iPhone’ case soon. The Padcaster for iPad will be available sometime soon for around $200 + $60 for Lenscaster attachment. In addition, you’ll also need to have a Factor to compensate distance between iPad & the lens along with a 35mm adapter. You will have to buy those separately.

Here is the video shot & edited on iPad with SLR lens:

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Logitech has come up with a new Cover for new iPad that has inbuilt keyboard Dock, yet being ultra thin — as thin as the SmartCover itself.

Logitech’s Ultrathin Keyboard Cover for iPad 2012 sounds like the perfect combo. Its a full Bluetooth keyboard with function keys that will last up to six months on a single charge. The keyboard really comes handy when you’re upto typing savvily.

On the other side, it also protects your iPad’s Retina display and turns it offjust like SmartCover does. It also has the Magnetic clip that sticks to the side of your iPad.

We usually avoid keybaord docking system with tablets coz they are bulky and non-handy. But we hope this new “ultrathin” keyboard will change our minds about these types of accessories. Logitech would also be manufacturing similar covers for Android tablets like transformer prime, Galaxy tab and Acer.

It works well with iPad 2 and iPad 3 (New iPad). It would cost just $100, when announced in late April 2012.

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Samsung has announced Officially that they would be organizing a Galaxy SIII press conference in London on May 3rd 2012. Other than that, several images for Galaxy SIII have been leaked, all indicating a Ultra slim form factor and a large, yet, usable display size.

Galaxy SIII Full specs look promising. The device would be available in Asian markets: Korea, China, Japan, India around May 22nd and it could be the same time when UK receives it. However, there can be delays in US launch, meeting the ugly locking scenarios and contracts. The phone will be the Official Olympics partner this year at London olympics.

There are chances that Samsung launches another phone in between before Olympics and name it something else rather than S3. However, Samsung would want to release galaxy SIII before iPhone 5 launch under all means, which falls for June.

New Quad-core Exynos processor would be the powerhouse we had been waiting for. The processor would whooping 1.5GHz quad core, Powerful MALI GPU, and 8MP/3MP camera, 4G LTE (of course), a huge 4.8″ screen with a 1080p resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio display.

Galaxy SIII Models & Colors

The Galaxy S III is rumored to be available in two tasty color flavors: One, a mixture of blue and black, and the second in white with 16GB and 32GB storage increments. The body would be ceramic which would give it the much needed Royal look.

Galaxy SIII Pricing

Little is known about Pricing but it is rumored that it would cost around $800 for unlocked and $250 with contract in US. In asian countries, it would be slightly cheaper with optional NFC, 4G LTE features. There will also be variants with higher clock CPU.

More to come, soon.

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Lumia devices indeed deliver the best hardware design and form-factor.

Developers have been putting the efforts trying to get an Interop unlock (Jailbreak) for Nokia Lumia phones.

Some of the Nokia Lumia 800 devices shipped with an Unlocked Bootloader, good for flashing custom ROMs and attaining interop unlock.

Check Unlocked Bootloader on Lumia 800, Lumia 710

1. Disconnect your Lumia 710 or Lumia 800 from your PC and turn it off.
2. Press Volume Up and Power buttons simultaneously, soon short vibration will be felt.
3. Now is the time that you connect your phone to the PC via a USB cable. Make sure you keep holding the buttons.
4. Let the windows install drivers.
5. If your Lumia 800 is being displayed as a Nokia DLOAD, you are out of luck and your phone can’t get an interop unlock for now. However, if you are lucky and the device type is USB Mass Storage, or anything to that effect, you have an unlocked boot loader!

However, Lumia 710 users are luckier than you anticipated. You will be able to get unlocked bootloader even if the device is being displayed as a Nokia DLOAD. This can be achieved by following:

1. Download the firmware from this Russian site.
2. Using the Nokia Care Suite, flash the firmware to your 710.

This method, however, doesn’t work for Lumia 800. You’re pretty much out of luck as of now.

How to Flash Custom ROM, InterOp Unlock on WP7 Nokia Lumia 710, 800

After bootloader unlocking, its time to Flash custom ROM.

These ROMs won’t give you a full unlock, but an interop unlock. Interop unlock is good enough for running most homebrew apps, and with WP7 Root Tools, interop unlocked devices can do almost anything full unlocked ones can.

Step 1. Download from here and choose the files for your phone.
Step 2. For Windows, download this tool. For Linux, excecute:

dd if=./os-new.nb of=/dev/sdX9

“X” is the drive number.

Step 3. Perform phone hard reset (remove all data) by pressing and holding the Power button for 10 seconds, followed by holding the Power, Volume Down and Camera button simultaneously. When your phone vibrates, let the Power button go while maintaining your grip on the other two. Your phone is hard reset.

More info is available at source XDA forum.

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If you’re into Photography, you anticipate the defocussing capabilities of a fast lens with wide aperture. Post-processing images adds lots of Realism to the photos. But you don’t always carry your DSLR and that’s why you need a portable Mobile camera that can create similar defocussed photos with effects if not something close enough.

Instagram was the first app to bring Photoeffects to the masses. But there are plenty of alternatives offering a vast array of features enabling the most beautiful snaps.

MotionOne team has come up with a one stop solution to high-quality sharp focussing and defocussing Images on Android.

AfterFocus allows you to create a DSLR-style blurred-background photo. You can pick and select the focus area, add a few cool filter effects, and you’re well on your way to creating a beautiful, natural-looking photo.

App lets you select smart focus area selection, i.e. once you draw some lines within a focus area and the background, the app will automatically recognize the focus area and defocus rest of the image, smartly.

The final results depend upon how precise and intricate you are with the focus position. When you’re satisfied with the image, you can share it via social networks to your friends.

App is absolutely free if you don’t want to have the Pro features like double photo feature: Take a snap of one object, move the lens a fraction to one side, and take another shot of the same object. The app will automatically identify the object to focus on and defocus the background automatically. App works on almost all Android phones with minimum requirements being Android 2.1.

AfterFocus for Android [Google Play]

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A Smooth scrolling vertical page is always pleasant to watch, and its good to the eyes. If you don’t like the way your Chrome browser scrolls on windows or OS X, here’s a quick extension for you that can help you get there.

Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller is a Chrome extension makes scrolling webpages a beautifully smooth experience with iOS-like kinetic scroll. You get the power of controlling the mouse scrolling and smoothness, fine tune it to suit your needs.It also increases concentration and you rarely lose the contex while scrolling. You can play around with a number of settings like: Step Size, Smoothness, Smoothness (Forepart) and Acceleration Sensitivity options from the extension’s settings.

Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller gives you various mouse and keyboard scrolling settings that can be changed according to your preference. The settings include Step Size, Smoothness and Acceleration Sensitivity.

Not just that, you also get the power of changing the intensity of the bouncy edges, or even disabling them completely. In case you don’t wish to have a particular site scroll smoothly, you can add website URL to the blacklist.

The experience, overall, delivered by Chromium wheel smooth scroller matches that of iPhone or iPad and we can’t stop loving it.

Yet another Smooth scrolling addon delivers the same experience on Mozilla Firefox

Chrome: Get it from Webstore

Firefox: Get it from Firefox addons

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Whether these Drycells are chargeable or rechargeable, what matters the most while selecting one is their lifetime and cost-effectiveness matters the most.

Consumers are always confused about which Battery should they buy, wether its long life or cost-effectiveness. To solve this problem, Denis decided to test several brands of batteries and see which battery delivers best value and life.

He brought every single high-end drycell battery variants of AA cells. With the help of an Arduino circuit, he began testing how much energy each brand provides. Arduino was used to measure the voltage across a load every second until the battery reached 0.2V. The elapsed time, as well as the voltage, Watt hours, Joules, and ambient temperature are logged on an attached LCD screen and sent over a USB serial link to automate the data collection process.

In most cases, I bought the batteries in packs of 4. It’s interesting to take the cost of each battery (pack cost / pack size) and combine that with the measured capacity:

HEre is the full graph of per watt cost of each cell, lower being better of course:

Well, the results speak by themselves. All the dodgy names like ‘super,’ ‘max,’ and ‘ultra’ didn’t actually meant good results. The best overall battery came out to be  a random brand called RS Power Ultra and the worst being Panasonic Evolta cells that came in at about $1.50 USD per watt-hour.

Denis’s code and work is available at Github.

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On android phones, ideally you adjust the brightness from Settings app or via quick toggles widget available on home launcher or Notification area. However, they are not really readily accessible inside fullscreen apps.

In-app brightness control is now possible thanks to app called InvisiBright, developed by Dan Girshovich. The app lets you adjust the screen brightness by swiping or tilting to adjust the brightness.

Although auto-brightness is a great thing to do, but manual override definitely is a plus. It can be helpful in saving battery where you feel that you may not need the level of brightness set:

The free version offers status bar shortcuts, tilt and touch modes and “highly customizable preferences”, The Paid/Pro version does more:

• Search key hold shortcut
• Translucent Slide Pad
• Home screen shortcuts
• A[n] quick auto-brightness toggle

InvisiBright has wide set of compatibility for Android phones, Tablets alike. It would run on any android 2.2+, that makes up for >90% of the Android devices. Developers claims to have the app tested on Droid, Droid 2, Droid X, Droid Incredible, Captivate, Fascinate, EVO 4G, Galaxy S, Desire, Desire HD, Xperia, MyTouch 3G, MyTouch 4G, Nook Color, Optimus One, and the Thunderbolt.

Download InvisiBright Free[Google Play]
Download InvisiBright Pro [Google Play]

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