Touch

A keyboard that rises up from flat touch screens

A few weeks ago, right before the new BlackBerry 10 phones were announced, I dragged a cameraman to San Francisco's Financial District during lunch hour and asked random strangers to name BlackBerry's best feature. Care to guess what the results of my highly unscientific poll were? Even iPhone and Android users agreed -- the famed keyboard is BlackBerry's top trait.

Increasingly, we "mobile device addicts" are favoring our smartphones and tablets over our traditional computers to meet our digital demands. Trouble is, a lot of us still despise typing on these beloved touch-screen devices. One Silicon Valley startup has created a new kind of keyboard that could help reduce typos and other fat-fingered mistakes.

Fremont, Calif.-based, Tactus Technology uses microfluidics to make physical keys bubble up from the surface of a touch screen when you need to type and disappear, when you don't. Microfluidics may sound foreign, but if you've operated an inkjet printer you've used the technology. … Read more

EyeSight's gesture technology turns your finger into a TV remote

Thanks to smartphones, tablets, and Windows 8, touching and swiping are commonplace ways to interact with TVs, computers, and mobile devices. But what if you want to do the same without touching the screen at all?

That's exactly the experience EyeSight Technologies, an Israel-based company that focuses on digital interaction, announced today that it's found a way to provide with its new fingertip tracking technology. The company calls this the "world's first commercial gesture technology to allow users to control digital devices with a fingertip" -- remotely, that is.… Read more

Evasi0n iOS jailbreak version 1.1 pops up with bug fixes

The evasi0n jailbreak team is already out with a new version that resolves a couple of persistent glitches.

Available from the evasi0n Web site, version 1.1 fixes one problem of long reboot times for any jailbroken device, according to blog site iPodnn. It also squashes a bug that caused the default Weather app to crash.

Both fixes had been posted earlier on the Cydia app store for jailbreakers, the evasi0n team tweeted today. Users who've already jailbroken their devices can grab the fixes from Cydia rather than installing the new version of evasi0n from scratch. People trying out … Read more

Set Tweetbot to open links in Chrome, 1Password

Apple's Safari browser on iOS isn't for everyone. If you prefer to use 1Password's built-in browser, or Google's Chrome browser on your iOS device and you just happen to also use Tweetbot, you'll be happy with the recent update.

The latest update to Tweetbot, version 2.7, now allows you to set your default browser when opening links in your timeline. You can select to open a link in Chrome, Safari, or 1Password.

To set your default browser, navigate to the Tweetbot settings page. Under the General section you'll see a Browser option; tap … Read more

Shipments of ultraslim notebooks to fatten in 2013

Ultraslim notebooks -- defined as x86-based PCs with screen sizes between 10 and 17 inches and thicknesses of no greater than 21mm -- are seeing shipments squeezed by display technology, a new study from NPD DisplaySearch has revealed. But that won't be enough to keep them down.

"The high-end specifications for touch on Windows 8 PCs, and the unproven consumer demand for touch on notebooks has touch-screen suppliers leery of shifting capacity from the high volume smartphone and tablet PC markets to notebook PCs," Richard Shim, senior analyst with NPD DisplaySearch, said today in a statement.

According … Read more

iOS evasi0n jailbreak used 1.7 million times in first day

A new jailbreak that targets all of the latest iOS devices has proven a hit with the public.

Launched on Monday, the evasi0n tool is capable of jailbreaking every iOS 6 and 6.1 device on the market, including the iPhone 5, the iPad Mini, the fourth-generation iPad, and the fifth-generation iPod Touch. The tool itself is considered relatively simple to use, certainly in comparison with other jailbreak methods.

As a result, evasi0n had already been used at least 800,000 times in its initial six hours, according to Jay Freeman, who runs the Cydia app store for jailbreakers. Speaking … Read more

Use Find My Friends to alert anyone of your location

Find My Friends is a handy app for families who want to keep tabs on each other. Of course it has a downside for couples who aren't always honest with each other, but that's to be expected.

Previously, I had shown you how to set up alerts for your Find My Friends contacts. Once set up, you'd receive an alert on your iOS device when they either arrived or left a location. But I neglected to show you how to send alerts to a Find My Friends contact, or to anyone else, regardless of if they have … Read more

iOS 6.1 wins over 22 percent of iOS users, says report

Apple's iOS 6.1 has lured in a hefty number of users, at least according to data out yesterday from Onswipe.

Released on Monday, Apple's latest OS update was downloaded by 21.8 percent of iOS users within just 36 hours. Among the iOS users tracked by Onswipe, 24 percent were iPhone owners and 21 percent iPad owners.

Further, Onswipe data sent to CNET showed that 11.3 percent of users had already upgraded to iOS 6.1 within the first 24 hours. Based on the stats, the latest iOS version hit a record for the quickest adoption … Read more

Get a 5th-gen iPod Touch for $249 shipped

First it was an unusually cheap deal on MacBook Airs (since expired, alas). Now there's a solid savings to be had on the new iPod Touch.

And I mean new, not refurbished. For a limited time, you can get the 5th-gen iPod Touch (32GB) for $249 shipped. Just click on over to your local ShopRite.

Wait, what? ShopRite? The East Coast grocery-store chain? Oooookay.

I have no idea why ShopRite has the single best price on iPod Touches anywhere on the planet, but I'm not complaining. And I don't think it's a price mistake, as this … Read more

You can jailbreak iOS 6.1, but there are some catches

Released just yesterday, iOS 6.1 can be jailbroken via the program Redsn0w, but only in tethered mode and only for older iDevices.

As detailed by the Microsoft-focused tech site Redmond Pie, Redsn0w version 0.9.15b3 can jailbreak Apple's latest OS. The jailbreak requires that your device be tethered, meaning you'll have to connect it to your computer each time you restart it.

Further, the latest version of Redsn0w supports only older iDevices with an A4 chip or earlier. That means it'll work on devices like the iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, and 4th-gen iPod Touch but … Read more