Apple

Given that Apple now sits on well over $144.7 billion in liquid resources, there's lots of discussion about how the company could or should be spending it. What Apple is already doing with its cash is actually more interesting.

There will come a time when you would like to simply transfer a file from one iOS device to another or to a Mac; it's inevitable. When the time arises, you will discover as most of us already have that the process is not as straightforward as one would think, considering how powerful these devices are. The most common methods used up to this point have been emailing oneself, cloud services like iCloud or Dropbox, file sync with the USB cable and iTunes or pleading with the always capricious Camera Connection Kit. Thankfully the developers at TwoManShow have developed a wonderful app to take the pain out of cross device file transfers with their Instashare app. Instashare for iOS is like AirDrop for mobile devices as it quickly and painlessly copies any file from one device to another over WiFi or Bluetooth without a direct connection to the internet. Instashare for OSX currently in beta, adds the ability to send files to and from your Mac and your iOS devices. Both versions of Instashare are free; however, the iOS version is ad-supported and the ads can be removed by a $0.99 in-app purchase. Instashare for Android and Windows are currently in development. Share between devices painlessly with Instashare originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 May 2013 17:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Do you want to keep your iPhone screen safe from scratches and damage? And why do so many people have iPhones with cracked screens? The Glass Guard screen protector by Good Gadget may be the solution. Good Gadget says the screen is 5x stronger than most plastic protectors, and it’s bubble-free. The tempered glass has optical nano anti-glare coating for a clear, sharper image that doesn’t reflect much in bright conditions. While the surface glides smoother than the glass of the iPhone itself, the touch screen responsiveness is unaffected. The bezel of the phone screen comes in black, white, blue, red and pink. There are two types of…Continue reading Good Gadget’s Glass Guard screen protector for iPhone 5 reviewRelated posts:V-MODA introduces VAMP iPhone amp and DAC caseSurfacePad for iPhone 5 reviewiPhone 5 skins from DecalGirl review

Seth and Mark were traveling back from Google I/O this week, but Scott and Zac sat down to discuss what Google’s announcements mean for Apple and next month’s WWDC. Subscribe now on iTunes!

Do Not Disturb is one of the best and often ignored features in iOS 6. If your iPhone is home to multiple social network apps, email, messaging and more, I’m guessing it buzzes and beeps plenty throughout your day. While not uncommon, this sort of thing can be extremely distracting when night falls and you’d like to get some well deserved rest. In the past, that mean switching on Airplane mode, which is like taking a hacksaw to a dandelion. With Do Not Disturb enabled, and customized to your preferences, calls and alerts that you designate will be silenced if your iPhone is locked. Read on for how to use do not disturb on iPhone. When you wake up tomorrow, you’ll be well rested and you will not have missed anything important. Basics To enable Do Not Disturb, follow these easy steps: Navigate to Settings Toggle Do Not Disturb to ‘On’ This will enable the feature immediately, using the default settings. This works if you want to be tasked with enabling it each night. Let’s dig a little deeper and personalize the settings that work best for you. Once you enable the feature: Tap on the ‘Notifications’ option just below it. Select Do Not Disturb Here is where you can customize your preferences. The first setting allows you to set a schedule for when Do Not Disturb is active. I typically set my DND, as the cool kids call it, to enable between the hours of 11:00 pm and 7:00 am. What About Calls? If someone is calling you during your prescribed hours, chances are that it is important or heck, maybe it’s a wrong number. If someone is calling from your family or friends, it probably falls in the important call designation. The default setting is to Allow Calls From > Everyone. If you tap on that row, you can select a group from your Contacts or your Favorites. Of course, if you are set on not being disturbed, you can select No One. If you have groups that might fit the bill, you can also select a group. To further refine the group, I have created a Contact Group titled Disturb Me. This is the list of people who can call me at all hours. Point here is that you have a number of options that include no calls, everyone or a specific group that you designate. As granular as you might get in the previous step, calls that are allowed to come through are based on the contacts and phone numbers on your iPhone. It’s entirely possible that a good friend changed their cellphone number or they lost their iPhone and calling from a pay phone. They still have pay phones, right? Don’t worry, Apple has got your back. The last option in settings is ‘Repeated Calls’. If someone is trying to get in touch with you, chances are pretty good they’ll continue to call your cellphone and your home phone. If they call your iPhone more than once within three minutes, it will not be silenced if you have this option set to ‘On’. When you have finished your setup, your iPhone will go into Do Not Disturb mode during the scheduled time. You’ll know you’ve set it up correctly when you see a half-moon icon to left of the time on your iPhone. I should note that while you can customize call settings, the same cannot be said for notifications from apps. Your iPhone will continue to receive them, but they will be silenced. If you are obsessed with notifications, this feature is not for you. If you would like to silence incoming calls, the Do Not Disturb feature is an excellent option. Using the custom settings, you can still ensure that the most important people can reach you and if someone calls repeatedly, your iPhone will ring. If you’ve ever been woken up for a rogue Facebook alert or a wrong number, take a few minutes and setup Do Not Disturb on your iPhone. How To Use Do Not Disturb On iPhone is an article from everythingiCafe.

One little feature that iOS really needs is the ability to natively “print to PDF” directly on the iPad and iPhone, a popular trick on the Mac and in the PC world that allows you to digitally print anything and, in this case, save the contents of any web document or web page as a self-contained PDF document, allowing it to be read later, printed, or used for whatever other purpose. Since this great feature isn’t around on the iPhone and iPad at the moment, we can use a nice bookmarklet trick combined with a free third party web service to be able to add a “Save as PDF” option to Safari in iOS, which allows you to ‘print’ or convert any web page to a PDF file that is then accessible to apps like iBooks. Let’s walk through the process of setting this up: 1: Create a “Print to PDF” Bookmarklet in Safari First we’ll create a bookmarklet that provides the PDF conversion service, this is easy and free: Open Safari and go to any web page – this one doesn’t matter, it’s going to be modified anyway Copy the following javascript text exactly as it appears so that it resides in the iOS clipboard: javascript:pdf_url=location.href;location.href='http://pdfmyurl.com?url='+escape(pdf_url) Tap the Share button and then choose “Bookmark”, name the bookmark something like “Save as PDF” or “Convert to PDF” and choose “Save” – ignore the URL for now Now tap the Bookmarks button, and tap the Bookmarks tab at the bottom, and now choose the “Edit” button Select the “Convert to PDF” bookmark you just created/saved and then tap into the URL feed Delete the existing URL, paste in the javascript code you copied in the first step, making sure it appears exactly as intended Tap “Done” and then close out of the bookmarks menu Creating the bookmarklet is now finished and you are ready to use it. Optional Web-to-PDF Converter URL: Though there shouldn’t be any issues with the above javascript and PDF conversion service, we’ are going to provide an alternative web-to-PDF conversion Javascript just in case the aforementioned one stops working or is problematic for you. javascript:void(window.open('http://www.web2pdfconvert.com/convert.aspx?cURL='+escape(location.href))) Everything is otherwise the same, except that this uses a different service, and the javascript will launch the converted webpage into a new window where it can then be saved. In testing, they both worked the same and thus we don’t have a preference one way or another, but considering they are free services there could be some limitations on one and not the other that we don’t know about. Anyway, use whichever you like. 2: Saving the Web Page as a PDF Now to save a webpage as PDF all you need to do is visit the webpage you want to save as a PDF document, then select the bookmarklet that was just created. Visit any web page (OSXDaily.com is always a good one, right?) and now pull down the Bookmarks menu and choose the “Convert to PDF” bookmarklet you created to instantly convert the web page to a PDF file Select “Open in iBooks” to save the webpages PDF into the iBooks library, or choose “Open In” to select another destination app iBooks will launch and you’ll then have direct access to the webpage as a PDF file stored locally on the iOS device. If the document is multipage, it’ll be broken up into unique pages with thumbnail browsing access. Depending on how often you use this, you may want to set the Bookmarks bar to always be visible in Safari on the iPad, thus allowing you to always have access to the “Print PDF” bookmarklet that was created. The only real downside to showing the bookmarks bar all the time is a slight reduction in available viewing space of webpages, and it does clutter the screen slightly. Don’t forget

What can be more comfortable to a cat than a pillow that blows warm air out of an optical media slot and vibrates ever so gently? That appears to be why Biru (Indonesian for Blue) loves to rest on a Mac mini owned by reader Peter Stagg and his wife. Peter says, "Biru is my wife's British Short-haired and constant companion, especially when she is working in her study or on her laptop. He has claimed the lives of two laptops so far and is working on the Mac mini, very slowly. When he's not enjoying the warm air expelled from the optical media slot he lies across the front of the keyboard and doubles as a wrist support." Biru also seems to be keeping a Logitech headset nice and warm for his owners! So there you have it! A cat who not only forces equipment upgrades from his owners, but who is also a working Mac accessory! If you've got a Caturday nominee to share, let us know via our feedback page. For security reasons we can't accept inbound attachments, so you should host the photo (Dropbox, Flickr, iPhoto Journals, etc.) and send us the link. Thanks, Peter!Caturday: Mac mini is Biru's pillow originally appeared on TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 18 May 2013 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments

From 9to5Toys.com: 9to5Toys scours the net each day to bring our US readers the best deals in consumer electronics. Below are the absolute hottest deals going on right now. Most of these promotions are only available for a limited time, so be sure to lock in these savings if you see something you like.  Check back often as we are constantly posting new deals. Also bookmark 9to5Toys.com/Daily-deals for 35+ of the top daily deals across most of the biggest shopping sites in the US including Amazon, Best Buy, Walmart, Target, and many more. For the first time ever, Gameloft is offering two of its top-rated iOS games, N.O.V.A. 3 and Gangstar Rio, for free. N.O.V.A 3 – Near Orbit Vanguard Alliance its a fast-paced firstperson shooter sporting console-like graphics while Gangstar Rio puts gamers in the shoes of a gangster having to kill and steal their way to the top of the gang world.  After this weekend, both games will go back to their retail prices of $5-6 each. Today only, Amazon is chopping up to 60% off Apple iDevice accessories.  Included in today’s deal is a Kensington KeyFolio Pro 2 Bluetooth keyboard case for just $34 shipped and an Apple certified Lightning car charger for $11. Today only, Best Buy and Amazon are offering the Toshiba Canvio 1.0 TB USB 3.0 Portable Hard Drive for only $65 shipped. Features include super fast USB 3.0 connectivity with support for USB 2.0, 1TB storing capacity and an internal shock sensor to help keep your data safe. Moshi, launched some of the nicest Lightning cables we’ve seen yet. Moshi’s new Lightning cable is aluminum-encased and made to match the black and slate and white and silver tones of the iPhone 5. The best part is the fact that Moshi is selling the 3.25ft cable for just about the same price as Apple: $20 Meanwhile, Specials.9to5toys.com has 50% off Slickwraps Apple device covers. We reviewed and loved them for iPhone and MacBooks. Other great deals on gear we love: Logitech Bluetooth keyboard for Apple iDevices $30 Shipped Apple MacBook Pro with Retina display 13” 2.9GHz i7, 512GB storage: $1800 shipped ($300 off) RCA 32” Class 1080p 60Hz LCD HDTV (Refurb) $150 Shipped (25% savings) Amazon ‘Digital Games Mayhem’, save up to 80% off hundreds of PC Digital Downloads Virgin knocks 15% off of iPhone 4 8GB ($297) and 16GB 4S ($382) with $30/month unlimited data plans Madden 25th Anniversary Edition preorder w/ 1 year of NFL Sunday Ticket free $100 Save 60% on Monster Jamz, the ‘virtually indestructible’ earbuds: $35 shipped Nest Learning Thermostat (1st Gen.) $179 shipped (Reg. $250) Dead Space 3 $30, Nintendo 3DS XL $180 OtterBox iPhone 5 Armor Series water/drop/dust/crush proof case $65 Shipped (35% savings)

A filing at the FCC suggests that Google is not letting go from its television plans, with the appearance of a new device. The item, described in the filing as a "media player," has been submitted for various tests, though there is little in the way of details for the device to be found inside the multiple PDF documents on the FCC website....

T-Mobile customers wanting to use Google Wallet are out of luck, as the carrier confirmed this week that it's blocking the mobile payment solution. Instead, T-Mobile wants its customers to use ISIS, a carrier-backed standard that is currently only available in two metropolitan areas. The confirmation marks T-Mobile as just the latest of the major carriers to block Google's standard as they prepare to roll out their own....