Tim Cook Charitybuzz lunch auction ends with $330,000 bid

Tim Cook’s charity auction for a one-hour meeting with the Apple CEO at the company’s Cupertino headquarters ended today with final bid of $330,001. This auction is Tim Cook’s second fundraiser for Charitybuzz, with last year’s coffee meeting bringing in $610,000.

The winner of the auction will be able to meet with Tim Cook for a one-hour luncheon meeting at Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California. The auction includes the cost of the meal, but the winner must provide their own transportation to the event, which will take place on a “mutually agreed upon date” within the next year. To sweeten the deal, Tim Cook also offered the winner the opportunity to be a VIP guest at an upcoming Apple event.

Join me for lunch and advance human rights @rfkcenter.You can also be my VIP guest at an Apple event. https://t.co/02aONVPQM9 #RFKauction

— Tim Cook (@tim_cook) May 10, 2014

Proceeds from this year’s auction will go to the RFK Center for Justice & Human Rights, a charity that “strives to achieve Robert Kennedy’s vision of a just and peaceful world by partnering with human rights leaders, teaching social justice and advancing corporate responsibility. This year’s event earned significantly less than last year most likely due to a new credit card requirement for all participants who wanted to bid on the auction.

[Via MacRumors]

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How to mute user on Twitter for iOS

Twitter recently rolled out the ability to mute accounts, letting you mute tweets from someone you follow. In this post, we tell you how to mute tweets and retweets from annoying users using the Twitter iOS app.

Mute from a Tweet

See an annoying tweet? Here’s how to mute the person who posted it:

• Tap on the tweet you want to mute


• Tap the ••• icon


• Tap Mute and Yes, I’m sure to confirm.

Mute from a Twitter user’s profile

You can also mute a Twitter user from his or her profile:

• Go to the Twitter user’s profile


• Tap the gear (settings) icon


• Tap Mute and Yes, I’m sure to confirm

Unmute a Twitter user

If you’ve muted someone, but want to read their tweets in your timeline again, here’s how you do it:

• Visit the muted user’s profile on Twitter


• Tap the red mute icon to unmute

Apart from mute, you could also consider unfollowing, blocking or reporting a user for spam. The difference between mute and block is that with mute, you just mute the user’s tweets, while in block, along with muting tweets the user also won’t be able to interact with you. A user won’t know if you have muted their tweets, while with block a user is told that you’ve blocked him or her. It is sort of like hiding a user from the news feed in Facebook, and the user has no clue. They can continue to favortie, retweet, and reply to your tweets, and you’ll still see their interactions in your notifications tab, but their tweets and retweets won’t appear in your Timeline.

Twitter still hasn’t completed rolling out mute to all users, so if you don’t see the option to mute, you might see it in a few weeks. Let us know if you’ve got the feature, and if so, how you’ve found it till now.

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Hoax EarPods with built-in sensors rumor turned into reality with LG’s Heart Rate earphones

Earlier this month, a crazy rumor predicted that a new version of Apple’s EarPods will come with inbuilt Heart Rate and Blood Pressure sensors, but that rumor was found to be a hoax. LG however is turning this rumor into reality with its Heart Rate Earphones, that were originally introduced in January at CES.

LG’s Heart Rate Earphones is the latest product in the health and fitness wearables market, that offers real-time biometric information for use with a companion accessory like a wristband or a smartphone. Much like the rumored iWatch-iPhone combo, the Heart Rate earphones sends this information via Bluetooth for use with LG Fitness App available on iOS and Android. The earphone has sensors to measure blood flow through the inner ear, and a Voice Guide keeps telling you about your workout progress.

Here’s how LG describes the Heart Rate earphones:

This LG FR74 monitor comes with earbud headphones, so you can easily listen to music while keeping track of your heart rate, heart rate zone, time, distance, speed, cadence, pace, consumed calories and cardiovascular fitness (VO2Max).

The earphones are quite expensive, at $180, and the companion wristband accessory called the Lifeband Touch costs $150.

The EarPods rumor predicted a lot of features in addition to heart-rate monitoring, including iBeacon integration to ensure earphones don’t get lost, and an extra mic for better noise cancellation. While that rumor was clearly a hoax, Apple has applied for a couple of patents dealing with sensors embedded in earphones, suggesting that this was an area of interest for the company as early as 2007.

While LG’s earphones are priced high, do you think you’d be interested in a similar offering from Apple? Let us know in the comments.

[via MacRumors]

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Verbatim: New Tweak is a Modern Text-Based Lock Screen Replacement

A new jailbreak tweak by the name of Verbatim was released to the public today, and it brings a classy, clean, and modern text-based lock screen to replace the default. By way of Cydget, this tweak presents a variety of information on your lock screen including missed calls, charge status, weather information, and more.

As you can see in the screenshots above, the tweak’s easily readable text lock screen includes a redesigned clock which shows the seconds as well as many lines of valuable information regarding the current status of your device. Similar in concept to the text-based lock screen clock Timely that we covered recently, Verbatim is a verbal display of unread email count, unread text and iMessage count, the number of apps that need be updated, the current charge status or your device, and basic temperature information.

Unless you already have Cydget installed, installing the tweak and respringing will present you with a new lock screen and a Cydget welcome message. The first step to getting started with Verbatim is to head over to the Settings app and reorganize your Cydgets. Open the Cydget settings panel and tap “Lock Cydget Order” to access a menu that will let you put Verbatim on the top. Disable the other options, leaving Verbatim the only item enabled.

Head back to the Settings main page and tap the “Verbatim” section. To get started, you need to input a weather code for your region. To find this, head over to this weather location code finder and type in your city. After you’ve found your code, insert it in the “Weather City Code” box. Below this you’ll see an option to choose Celsius or Fahrenheit, an option for the text display animation, and a toggle to choose between 12 and 24 hour format time.

Additionally, there are options to hide a variety of lock screen elements including the Status Bar, Grabbers, the “Slide to Unlock” text, as well as the ability to set a custom slide to unlock text string. Finally, there’s a slider for selecting the lock screen dimming time. After you have the tweak configured, you might want to use a tweak such as HideMe7 to hide even more lock screen elements to ensure a clean and glitch-free experience.

You can get Verbatim on the Cydia Store for $1.99, and it’s compatible with both iPhone and iPad. Would you prefer Verbatim over the default lock screen?

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Future iPhones May Have Virtual Sidewall Buttons as Described in New Patent

A new patent discovered today reveals that Apple, on the brink of announcing the next iPhone later this year, is already planning some exciting features for iPhone revisions in the years to come. Apple was recently granted a patent that outlines technology for interactive sidewall displays, allowing for virtual buttons to replace hardware buttons currently found of the side of Apple mobile devices.

The patent, No. 8,723,824 as seen on the United States Patent and Trademark Office Website, is titled “electronic devices with sidewall displays” which is more accurately described within itself as being a method wrapping flexible displays around a device’s sidewalls. As noted in the original report at Apple Insider, this isn’t the first time Apple has patented this kind of technology; the technology is less ambitious here, though, and could potentially be implemented soon.

Interestingly, the document outlines that at least one side of the wrap-around display would have a bezel screen as well, attaching the sidewall display to the device’s main screen. The patent describes the side screens as running down the entire side of the device, but potentially being covered by paint or otherwise in places where the sidewall touch panel wouldn’t be used. Locations where virtual buttons would be placed would be left uncovered of course, leaving openings for the active touch sensitive areas.

The most exciting part of technology like this one day landing on our devices is that putting screens like this on the side of the device would free up screen real estate on the main touchscreen. Additionally, the sidewall screens would be customizable, which would allow the most efficient use of the space depending on applications being run and tasks that need to be accomplished. Physical buttons are incapable of this, and can only be used for one purpose in most cases.

 

The patent outlines many of these potential additional use cases, including app icons displayed on the sidewalls for various uses, scientific operations when using the calculator app, and many different camera buttons to be used when the camera app is in use. Gestures can also be used on the sidewall displays just like the front-facing display to allow many other use cases including slide-to-unlock, caller ID and system controls, and many more.

The patent also lists other technologies, including tactile feedback buttons underneath the virtual buttons which take advantage of the flexible display. This physical button, located beneath the surface, can allow for the buttons to remain relatively physical while their uses can be changed depending on the situation. As you can see below, a dome switch would be theoretically placed beneath the surface which would be depressed when using the virtual buttons.

The next generation iPhone, rumored to be called the “iPhone 6? isn’t expected to have any of the above described technology, but flexible displays are definitely starting to be commonplace in the industry, with Apple’s rumored “iWatch” said to be including one when it’s expected to be announced later this year. Other companies are already utilizing this technology in their smartphones, which could mean Apple may not be far off.

Would you like to have virtual sidewall buttons on your iPhone?

[AppleInsider]

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Apple may introduce High Definition audio playback in iOS 8, launch new Lightning cable and In-ear Headphones

We’ve already seen plenty of physical mockups of iPhone 6. We’ve seen it in silver, in gold and space gray, it has been compared to an iPhone 5s to give us an idea of how the larger iPhone will stack up against the 4-inch iPhone, the 5th generation iPod touch to highlight the design similarities and even compared to Samsung’s latest flagship Android phone, the Galaxy S5.  

Folks at 9to5Mac have published a new video, which compares the iPhone 6 physical mockup with latest Android flagships, HTC One M8 and Samsung Galaxy S5.

The iPhone 6 physical mockup looks quite similar to the HTC One M8. When HTC launched the HTC One smartphone in 2013, it was considered a close cousin of the iPhone 5 in the looks department. If Apple goes with the all-aluminum back casing then the iPhone 6 will look even more similar to the HTC One (M8). I like the way HTC has handled the cut outs for the antenna bands, and hope Apple takes a similar approach.

The HTC One (M8) and the Galaxy S5 come with 5-inch and 5.1-inch screen respectively will be slightly bigger than the rumored 4.7-inch iPhone 6. Apple is widely expected to unveil iPhone 6 with larger screens this year to compete with Android based smartphones that usually come with larger screens, so it is interesting to get an idea on how it stacks up against the latest Android flagships.

Apple is widely expected to release two variants of the iPhone 6 this year, with an ultra-thin design, narrower bezels, rounded edges and more. The first variant will have a 4.7 inch display, which could be launched as early as August, followed by the larger 5.5-inch model in September.

iPhone 6 is also expected to include Apple’s new A8 processor, Touch ID fingerprint sensor, and an improved 8-megapixel camera. The iPhone 6 will also come pre-installed with iOS 8, which may include new apps such as Healthbook, TextEdit and Preview, improved Maps, inter-app communication capabilities and more.

[via 9to5Mac]

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iStick is the first Made for iPhone, iPad USB drive with an integrated Lightning connector

Hyper makes accessories for Apple products, and its latest product called the iStick is the first Apple-approved Made-for-iPhone/iPad USB flash drive that comes with both a USB as well as a Lightning connector so as to work with computers and iOS devices.

The iStick is a small accessory that has a sliding switch with a USB port on one end and a Lightning connector on the other. With the USB end, you can use the iStick as a regular USB flash drive, and you can access the same data on your iOS device through the Lightning end of the switch.

The accessory has a companion app lets you play music, download photos and watch videos stored on the drive, without occupying any additional space on your iOS device’s inbuilt storage. Videos can be in almost any format, including native formats like mp4, m4v, mov as well as non-native formats like avi, mkv, wmv etc. You can even use the iStick to share data between two iOS devices.

The iStick drive comes in 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB variants and costs $129, $169, $199 and $299 respectively. The product is available for pre-order through a Kickstarter crowd-funding campaign, where you can reserve an iStick for 50% off, which makes the costs $65 for 8GB, $85 for 16GB, $99 for 32GB and $149 for 64GB.

The lack of an option to expand iPhone or iPad storage can be frustrating at times, but I’m hoping the iStick makes up for the lack of an SD card slot on iOS devices. Let me know what you think about the iStick in the comments below.

[via 9to5Mac]

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