DriveSafe.ly Reads Messages Aloud and Auto-Responds for You
My Clippings October 11th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from Google Starred
I know some people who just won’t keep their hands off of their telephones while they drive, no matter how much I chide them. Combine this with the fact that most states either have or are considering laws that prohibit texting while driving, and it’s clear that keeping your eyes on your mobile device when they should be on the road isn’t just dangerous for you, it’s dangerous for everyone around you.
If you’re the type who can’t resist a glance at your mobile phone while you’re behind the wheel, there’s DriveSafe.ly, a new mobile app that will read your incoming text messages aloud to you so you don’t have to take your eyes or your focus off of the road. Additionally, the app will automatically respond to incoming text messages to let the sender know you’re on the road and you’ll get back to them when you get to your destination.
DriveSafe.ly is currently available for BlackBerry smartphones and mobile phones running Android. The developers are working on versions for the iPhone and Windows Mobile, and claim they’re coming soon. The fact that the apps are free is what’s really compelling: -ou don’t have to pay to stay safe, and the fact that there’s no cost associated with downloading and running the app means more people will use it if they know about it.
The app doesn’t just work with text messages: if you’re an e-mail junkie and love to check your incoming messages at every red light or down every straight piece of road, DriveSafe.ly can also read your e-mails to you in real time as they land in your inbox. The app even recognizes common abbreviations like LOL and BRB and will read them to you in context. Once you have the app running on your mobile device, you can just sit it on the seat next to you and it’ll read everything aloud to you as you get it.
If your phone is Bluetooth-capable or you have it paired with your car’s stereo system, DriveSafe.ly will push the audio out via Bluetooth so you can hear it over your car’s speakers instead of your device’s tiny speakerphone.
Related posts:
New Motherboard Coming From Asus
My Clippings August 29th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Asus AT3N7A-I – that’s the name of the new Ion-based motherboard launched on the market. The team at BlogEee prepared a review of it:
The motherboard packs a 1.6 GHz Dual-core Atom 330 processor and supports Dual-channel DDR2 800MHz memory, 7.1 channels audio (S/PDIF also), Bluetooth, eSATA and SATA connections. The HDMI port is also present in order to benefit of the 1080p video rendering on a large screen. Displaying a Mini-ITX format coupled with all these features, the board is intended for use in Media-Centers or HTPCs.
Asus AT3N7A-I
Related posts:
Related posts:Kinpo N03 11.6? notebook packs VIA Nano, WiMAX
My Clippings August 8th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Taiwan’s Kinpo Electronics has introduced a new mini-laptop that stands out from the crowd a bit in a few areas. First, the Kinpo N03 (PDF link)has a VIA Nano processor. That’s not that unusual these days, especially on an 11.6 inch model with a 1366 x 768 pixel display. But the laptop also has integrated 3G and WiMAX support, as well as WiFi and Bluetooth.
The N03 can handle up to 2G of RAM and runs wither Windows XP or WIndows Home Basic. The laptop has a 4000mAh battery, 3 USB ports, a 2.5″ hard drive or a solid state disk, and an SD card reader. It weighs less than 2.9 pounds and measures 11.1″ x 7.8″ x 1.1″.
It looks like you can pick one up in China from Alibaba for $350, but I wouldn’t expect to see this laptop released globally at that price, (or with the Kinpo brand name still attached).
via PC World
Post from: Liliputing
27 Bluetooth-enabled Multiplayer iPhone Games
My Clippings July 20th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
The iPhone/iPod 3.0 OS allows third-party applications to utilize the device’s Bluetooth capabilities for two-player games. The first (and only) application I had that supported this in an update was Flight Control, and since then, whenever my wife and I are on a train, we occupy our time playing this.
The huge advantage of multiplayer Bluetooth compared with Wi-Fi is that you just need the two devices, no Wi-Fi access points or Internet connectivity is required. This is truly awesome, although as we cry, “Arrrgh sooo close!” loudly on public transport we can get some strange looks. We’ve loved playing Flight Control, but I thought that by now there must be a good number of other Bluetooth-enabled games. So I’ve searched the App Store and found the following games are the only ones that support multiplayer gameplay over Bluetooth. This list will hopefully grow soon with more complex quality titles.
Flight Control — 99 cents
Direct planes so they can land without crashing into each other. Each player controls different colors and needs to send the other player’s colors off screen to the other player’s device.
F.A.S.T – Fleet Air Superiority Training — $1.99
For great graphics and a true dog-fighting two-player experience.
Bomberman Touch 2 – Volcano Party — $2.99
Play the classic Bomberman game against a friend in either head-to-head mode, or co-operative mode.
Attack From the Dead — 99 cents
Play with a friend in zombie killing, co-operative mode action.
iSamurai Bluetooth — 99 cents
Swing your phone around like a samurai sword and have a sword fight with a friend.
Showdown Poker — 99 cents
Play poker against a friend.
Showdown Quickdraw — Free
Have a Wild West-style gun-slinging match with a friend.
Tank War – Bluetooth Battle — 99 cents
Battle a friend with tanks in a bitter neon colored war.
Attack – Wireless Bluetooth Space Battle — 99 cents
If you don’t like tanks, maybe you prefer to fight in spaceships instead. Battle head-to-head.
Tic-Tac-Touch: FS5 — Free
It’s Tic-Tac-Toe; what else is there to say?
Touch4 FS5 — Free
Remember playing Connect 4 from your childhood? Relive the experience.
It Must Be Nice to Be Verizon
My Clippings July 20th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
It must be nice to be Verizon right now. Free from the intense scrutiny AT&T receives by having the hottest and “smartest” smartphone, it can appear to rise above it all. It can have TV ads to claim the best network on the planet, and it’s done. It can have legions of people claiming they’d drop AT&T in a heartbeat, or snap up an iPhone tomorrow, if only it could be on its network.
Even setting aside that the iPhone on Verizon would not likely be the iPhone we recognize, this is ridiculous.
Before we get into it, let me first say that if you live where there’s little or no AT&T coverage, then obviously Verizon or another carrier is what you need. But every carrier has holes in its coverage. Every. One. This article isn’t about that.
No, what this article is about are those places (and there are many) where either carrier is an option. In that case, there are general perceptions where Verizon seems to either have people fooled, or it’s no different than AT&T but it isn’t noticed.
- It must be nice to sell phones with less usability than the iPhone so your customers don’t hammer your network, and then sit back and let people assume you could handle the load under which AT&T is straining.
- It must be nice to utilize the same pricing and subsidy strategies as AT&T, but get to remain above the fray while AT&T takes the heat for what the whole industry is doing.
- It must be nice to charge for carrier cash cows like SMS and tethering, but have everybody only complain about AT&T doing it.
- It must be nice to brag about having visual voice mail on some phones, while quietly hiding that it’s an extra $3 a month.
- It must be nice to not allow convenient syncing of data, media, bookmarks, etc., via the excellent iTunes environment, instead using clumsier tools if anything is allowed at all, and have your customers just take it in stride.
- It must be nice to disable hardware features on many phones, such as Bluetooth, GPS, and Wi-Fi, with little complaint from the masses.
- It must be nice to avoid GSM, still using CDMA-based technology that the rest of the world (and AT&T) has abandoned. Its rollout to a 4G network could come with headaches as a result.
Eee PC hack: Adding an LED for Twitter, IM, Email notifications
My Clippings July 6th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
Most netbooks have a handful of status LEDs that let you know when the computer is charging, when the hard drive is active, or when the WiFi or Bluetooth are turned on. But honestly, how often do you need those indicators? Wouldn’t it be more useful if you had an LED that lit up when you received a new email or instant message?
That’s exactly what netbook hacker Justblair decided he wanted, so he added an extra LED to the top left corner of his Eee PC 901 and wired it to light up when he receives incoming messages. The project uses an AtMel AtTiny45 microprocessor, a 5mm red, green, and blue LED, and a few other electronics components including diodes and resisters that should make it clear this hack is not for beginners.
For details and background on the project, make sure to check out Justblair’s blog.
Post from: Liliputing
Best of the Best: Hive Five Winners, March through June 2009 [Hive Five]
My Clippings June 29th, 2009 by System
Automatically pulled from My Clippings on NewsGator Online
The year is flying by, and so are our readers’ picks for software, hardware, and other tools. Come on in to see the winners of our Hive Five polls for the second quarter of 2009.
Every week we pose a question to you, the saavy and experienced Lifehacker readers. Pulling from current trends, popular reader suggestions, and our own brainstorming sessions, we search out the next “Which is best?” question to put before the collective knowledge of the Lifehacker readership. We read all your comments, tally all your votes, and summarize the top five contenders for you. You vote on the best of the best and we return the next week with the champion.
The following list showcases the winners in each of the categories we covered in the second quarter of 2009. If a particular category catches your eye and you’d like to see the other contenders, click on the name of the category to to jump to the original Hive Five post; clicking on the name of the winner takes you directly to the web site for the software.
Best Image Editing Tool: Adobe Photoshop
Photoshop has achieved such status in the design community and such widespread recognition by the general public that even non-designers recognize what someone is saying when they exclaim, “That’s photoshopped!” Many of the techniques and methods that are standard across photo editing software were pioneered in Photoshop, like layers, slices, and image correcting macros and filters. On its own Photoshop is a titan of photo editing power, but thanks to a nearly complete dominance in the graphic editing industry, there are entire companies devoted to creating plugins for it. When it comes to manipulating images, if you can’t do it in Photoshop, there’s a strong chance you won’t be able to do it at all. Photo by HVarga.
Best Portable Operating System: Ubuntu
The same qualities that make Ubuntu so popular as a desktop operating system and live CD bring it a lot of popularity as a portable operating system. Ubuntu isn’t the smallest portable OS in the portable operating systems Hive Five, but thanks to a number of factors, including strong saturation in the Linux market and an easy to use tool built right for flash-drive installations, Ubuntu makes a great addition to your portable drive.
Tags: amazon, Bluetooth, Build, flash, Linux, Mac, module, Photo, Ubuntu, video, wind, XP
How-To: Proximity Automation
Uncategorized June 11th, 2009 by Shai Perednik
Would you like to be able to use the magic of Bluetooth to automatically pause iTunes, set your away message in Adium, and lock the screen simply by standing up and walking away from your desk? Of course you would — it’s future-tastic (jetpacks not included)! Let’s take a look at how to pull this off.
What You’ll Need
First you’ll need a copy of Proximity, a handy (and free) little application which monitors your Bluetooth-enabled device and fires off AppleScripts when it leaves and enters connection range. As an added touch, we’ll also use a copy of DeskShade to lock and unlock the computer with style, leaving a nice away message displayed on the screen and opening a “Hacker Log” to display what activity took place while you were away.
DeskShade actually does a lot more than just allow AppleScript to lock and unlock your screen. I won’t go into a full review of it here, but essentially, it will also help keep your desktop clean, your wallpaper fresh, and your mind uncluttered. If, however, you want to forgo the use of DeskShade, you can instead lock and unlock the computer by having AppleScript launch your screensaver and adjust the security settings required for waking it up. AppleScript files for both approaches can be downloaded here (8kb, ZIP).
Getting Set Up
Install Proximity, and from within the preferences pane select your Bluetooth device. I used my iPhone, but any “discoverable” device should work. In the AppleScript section link to OutofRange.scpt for when the device moves out of range and InRange.scpt for when it moves back in range. Make sure that monitoring is enabled and set a frequency for proximity checks — I used 60 seconds. If you decided not to go the DeskShade route, then just swap in the second set of scripts for that step above and skip ahead to the testing.
Install DeskShade and on the DeskLock tab set a password, enable AppleScript to unlock, set the Hacker Log to open after unlocking and set the away message to something appropriate. I used the same “More than 30ft away from my computer” message that is set in Adium via the out-of-range script.
