No doubt we live in dangerous times, and with the recent news of the kidnap victims in Cleveland, not to mention horror stories of attacks and crimes against the person appearing in the news with frightening regularity, I’m sure a lot of us have considered downloading one of the various safety alarm and alert apps in the App Store. One such app, Bipper’s bSafe, is supported by Jada Pinkett Smith, who appeared on Piers Morgan Live this week talking about the app, which she has personally invested in so that it can be marketed internationally, and which forms part of her campaign work and activism to end human trafficking and slavery. bSafe combines text, video and GPS-Tracking features, all designed to keep the user safe and alert the authorities should anything untoward happen. The Follow Me feature looks particularly good, where you can get your appointed guardians to “follow you” if you have to walk home alone, for example. Jada discovered the app after her daughter Willow started using it last year, and was impressed enough to want to back it.

"bSafe is a safety service that can easily be used by anyone," says Jada. "Users can ask for help, provide important information about their location and preserve evidence through video recordings with one click on their mobile phone. Everyone needs a service like this."

Click here to download the free app: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bsafe/id459709106?mt=8

Source: https://www.facebook.com/bsafeapp
http://neverwalkalone.com/

The iPad is a great device to have in your life, but a recent study presented at the Heart Rhythm Society in Denver, Colorado, by an unlikely speaker, might prove otherwise. GiannaChien is a 14 year old student from Stockton, California and her father is a doctor, so she has taken an interest in medicine from an early age.

Her study revolves around 26 volunteers who live with defibrillators. Defibrillation is a common treatment for patients suffering from cardiac dysrhythmias, ventricular fibrillation or ventricular tachycardia. These conditions can usually be life threatening, so the patients usually resume daily normal functions with the help of defibrillators. These devices deliver doses of electrical energy to the heart, just enough to restore the normal balance. Defibrillators can be external but to maintain the normal activity range, patients often opt for implantation within the body.​​

Gianna Chien showed in her research that the iPad 2 can intervene in the activity of defibrillators, and potentially cause serious damage. For example, if a patient falls asleep with the iPad 2 on his/her chest, the device can “accidentally turn off” the heart device. The study only observed the potential effects the iPad 2 could have on patients, but one could assume other iPads might have the same effects.

"I definitely think people should be aware. That's why I'm presenting the study."

Out of 26 of the people involved in the study, only 30% presented problems when an Apple tablet was put on their chest. Medtronic, one of the lead producers of defibrillators, stated that it found no risky connection between its life saving technology and iPads. Apple also declined to comment the research.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

If you’re someone that loves to read well-sourced and credible Apple news (which is hopefully why you’re at this Forum as well!) then you’ll be interested to learn from iDownloadBlog today that the excellent Loop blog, which features the well-sourced Apple news and opinions of Editor-In-Chief Jim Dalrymple, among others, is launching a digital magazine for iOS devices, which is now available via the Newsstand app. Called The Loop Magazine, it is instantly recognisable from the lush purple art scheme, and very basic layout, just like the web blog. You can share stories that you read in the magazine via Safari, Twitter, Mail, and Messages, and it also has a built-in web browser so that you can open links. The magazine will be published bi-monthly, and the first free edition has six articles, including “a personal look at disruptive problem solving from Flexibits co-founder Michael Simmons,” and “an autobiographical piece from Dream Theater keyboardist Jordan Rudess talking about the impact of technology and how he has embraced it in his work.”


Excellent pic of Jim with Slash courtesy of iDownloadBlog!:

Click here to download: http://click.linksynergy.com/fs-bin/...rtnerId%253D30

Source: Popular Apple blog ?The Loop? launches bi-monthly iOS magazine on Newsstand

AppleInsider reports today that we may have to wait a little longer for Apple’s forthcoming iRadio service, due to problems with ongoing negotiations with Sony. Apparently the ever-thorny issue of licensing fees is once again the sticking point, according to the original story in the Financial Times, which says that Apple has already struck a deal with Universal Music, and is on the verge of inking a deal with Warner Music. However, it seems that Sony Music has yet to sign a deal with Apple, apparently wanting more concessions, according to the report. It is thought that Sony wants Apple to pay more, seeing as Apple looks set to make lots of money from any streaming music service that it might set up. AppleInsider says that Apple originally offered just 6.5 cents per 100 tracks streamed, which is half of what Pandora pays. The labels turned this down, so Apple then offered 12.5 cents per 100 tracks, which some of the labels appear to be happy with, but clearly not Sony!


Source: iRadio stalled again as Apple, Sony can't agree to royalty terms

iDownloadBlog reports today on new findings by research firm Canalys, which provide data for first-quarter smart mobile device shipments, which Canalys says achieved 300+ million new units, representing 37.4% year-over-year growth. Fifty-Nine percent of those devices were Android, and 19% were iOS, with Android beating iOS in the smartphone market, and iOS remaining dominant in the tablet market, as laptop demand continues to fall. iDownloadBlog points out that smartphones, tablets and laptops all come under Canalys’s description of “smart mobile devices.” iDownloadBlog also points out that Canalys only posts stats for shipped units, rather than units sold. In terms of overall figures, Samsung shipped 82.2 million units, representing 26.6% share of the total shipments, with Apple shipping 59.6 million in total, or 19.3%. Smartphones came out on top of all smart devices, with 216.3 million shipped, showing 47.9% quarterly growth. It was tablets, though, that showed the most growth of all, with iPad shipments growing by 106.1 % year-over-year. However, iDownloadBlog reports that Apple’s supremacy in the tablet market could soon come more and more under threat as more cheap Android tablets are released onto the market.


Source: Canalys: one in five smart devices are Apple

iDownloadBlog has a very interesting story today that revolves around comments made by Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng in an email to Fortune’s very credible Philip Elmer-DeWitt, regarding a story published by Bloomberg about the iPad mini the previous day. Basically, Bloomberg’s original story came from the Pegatron investor conference, and saw writer Tim Culpan spinning his report on the conference with the headline, “Falling iPad mini demand to push Pegatron electronics sales down.” After reading this, and believing that the headline contradicted what he had learned from his own sources on the matter, Fortune’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt decided to investigate further and emailed Pegatron CEO Jason Cheng for a quote. Cheng replied by saying that Bloomberg’s Culpan made up the claims in his story when Cheng had not provided him with the figures he had wanted.

“I clearly refused to comment on specific products, nor customers, even though he continued with other questions,” wrong Cheng in his email. “I did say those words that he quotes me in the article ‘more on demand, while price has been stable’…, ‘almost every item is moving in a negative direction’…; ‘not just tablets, also e-books and games consoles.’ No indication, nor hint for specific products or customers has been our principle and guideline for any public events such as investors conference. There are always speculation about these meetings.”

iDownloadBlog notes that The Loop’s Peter Cohen also writes about the Bloomberg article, saying,

“It’s pretty clear that Tim Culpan at Bloomberg went into the conference with an agenda and was going to write a damning article about Apple by hook or by crook,” before calling Culpan something very uncomplimentary! Feelings seem to be running very high on this story; maybe people are just fed up of the negative spin that Apple seems to get on certain websites?

Source: Pegatron CEO: Bloomberg is lying about ?falling iPad mini demand?

The Worldwide Developer Conference is closing in fast and a lot of people are waiting for Apple to reveal its latest iOS version at the event. Apple has officially confirmed that the new version of its iconic operating system is going to be unleashed upon the world in San Francisco, the event being scheduled for 10-14 June 2013. Apple marketing chief Phill Schiller actually stated the following:

"We can’t wait to get new versions of iOS and OS X into (developers') hands at WWDC,"

AppleInsider has tracked some unidentified devices that have been apparently running the new iOS. And, according to them, traffic from these particular devices has intensified for the past week or so. How would one know these are actual devices that run the latest Apple operating system? Well, the team has been checking the IPs of the iPhones and iPads spotted using iOS 7 and turns out that they all lead straight back to Apple.

The tablet optimization site Onswipe has also delivered some news concerning iPads running iOS 7. It seems that in the tablet sector, the trend is similar, as reported by the AppleInsider. iOS 7 activity has spiked over the week. The highest traffic was recorded on May the 2nd when 23% of the visitors to the websites under the umbrella of Onswipe were using iOS 7 enabled devices.

The iOS 7 is the first operating system to be released from Apple under the guardianship of new Human Interface lead Jony Ive. It will be interesting to see if he really left a mark on the end product.

Source: AppleInsider

After privacy scandals regarding carriers selling phone numbers to advertisers, another huge one seems to be in the making. An Australian researcher has just revealed he designed a tool that can be used to uncover the exact location of iPhone and iPad users.

How could such a security breach occur, you might wonder? Well, it turns out that Apple collects certain information when you connect to a Wi-Fi network. The tech giant stores the information in a private database, that’s not supposed to be shared, as it’s used for location services purposes. Independent penetration tester Hubert Seiwert explains how this sensitive information might be uncovered, by using t​​he tool he entitled iSniff GPS:

"You can send Apple a single MAC address of a wifi router and they will send back a result set including the GPS coordinates of that MAC address and about 400 others. You can plug that MAC address into Apple's location service through iSniff GPS and you will get very precise information back from that.”

The fact that iPhones and iPads might slip sensitive information when connecting to a new Wi-Fi network was discovered last year by Mark Wuergler of Inc. In sync with Google location features, these facts could be then used to pin-point where the user was located at.

The above mentioned tool uses Python tool in order to locate networks and collect data. Last year, Seiwert experimented with his little tool and ended up collecting info from a total of 1337 devices.

Source: SC Magazine

Apple’s famous glass cube store in New York has come in for a bit of a soaking, according to a report in the New York Post today, via AppleInsider. It seems that the store was flooded with water at around 8 am this morning (the store is open 24 hours), with a customer reporting that what started out as a slow leak soon turned into something more serious, with water pouring into the building. “Everyone started scrambling, moving tables,” said Errol Rappaport in the Post. “It didn’t look like there were any electrical issues, otherwise they would have evacuated the store.” As it was early morning, there were only around 15 customers in the store at the time, and employees quickly mopped up the water, with the store remaining open the whole time. The blame for the incident was laid on a “drainage problem” by workers, the result of some construction work carried out at the flagship store back in 2011.


Source: Heavy rains in Manhattan breach Apple's flagship Fifth Ave store

Even if it’s trying hard to penetrate the mobile market, Microsoft is yet to become a notable presence in the portable device environment. Android tablets and the iPad especially have hogged the attention of tech lovers everywhere across the world. For example, the Apple tablet sales have swept past the 141 million threshold, keeping in mind that the total number of tablet sold, reported by IDC, is situated at 253 million. Out of those, just fewer than 2 million are Surface RT or Surface Pro tablets.

But even in the face of these facts, CEO Bill Gates remains very optimistic about Microsoft’s future in the tablet sector. He feels that even if users continue to buy iOS and Android tablets, they are secretly unful​​filled because they can’t really type or create documents and presentations, which they could be doing if good old Microsoft Office was there. He believes the market will soon be shifting towards tablets that blend the functionalities of the PC offering a lot more options. Like the Surface RT or Surface Pro of course.

He explained:

“Windows 8 is revolutionary in that it takes the benefits of a tablet and the benefits of a PC, and it's able to support both of those – so if you have Surface, Surface Pro, you've got that portability of a tablet but the richness of a PC in terms of the keyboard, Microsoft Office of a PC.”

But even if in global terms, Microsoft has a lot of catching up to do, another IDC report showcases that during the first quarter of Q1 Surface has managed to parachute itself in the tablet top five, with a 1.9% share.

AppleInsider reports today that iOS continues to make inroads into Android’s share of the mobile Web market in the US, according to new figures from Piper Jaffray. The new figures have lead Piper Jaffray to conclude that iPhone and iPad owners are more engaged with their handsets than Android and other phone users. The data was compiled by Investing Analytics on behalf of Piper Jaffray, and show impressive growth in iOS Web share during the past three months, while Android’s share is shown to be in decline. AppleInsider reports that the study looked at mobile traffic to 10 of the top 100 mobile websites, such as Answers. com, Tumblr, and Dictionary.com.

"For the second straight month in our tracking of the data, iOS gained on Android as a source of mobile traffic," said Piper Jaffray’s leading Apple expert, Gene Munster. "We believe the traffic data continues to demonstrate that iOS is not only the leading platform in the US, its users are generally more engaged with their mobile devices."

Illustration source: Investing Analytics


Source: Apple's iOS widens lead over Android in US mobile Web traffic share

This week, Fortune released its famous list of 500 top corporate companies in the country for 2012. And guess who made it for the first time in the top 10? You’re favorite tech company – Apple!

Apple managed a big leap, leaving the 17th position to take up number six. Apple replaced Hewlett-Packard, which, according to Fortune, has experienced tremendous loss in the past year – nearly $12.7 billion. So far, HP has been the only tech company to make it to the top 10, but 2012 wasn’t a good year, it seems, as the enterprise leaser fell all the way to number 15, making room for Apple. Fortune adds:

"Apple is bigger than ever ... but it's a high-pressure job, being king of the hill.”

Strangely or not, we don’t find many tech companies in the top 100. The few present are quite scattered. For example, IBM comes in at num​​ber 20, Microsoft at 35 and Amazon at 49. You might be wondering who made it to number one. The famous retail store chain spread across America, Wal Mart, won the first spot in the Fortune top. The Runner up is Exxon Mobil – a company that has received the world’s most valuable company award.

Another surprise in the Fortune top is new-comer Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg’s social network landed the 482th position. It made the list just barely.

The other companies who made up the Fortune top 10 are Chevron, Phillips 66, Berkshire Hathaway, General Motors, General Electric, Valero Energy and Ford Motor.

Source: 9to5Mac