Unleashing the Geek Within

BodyMedia Announces’s FIT Armband BW

January 13, 2011

There were a lot of cool, crazy, futuristic gadgets at CED 2011 this year. You decide which category this one belongs to.

BodyMedia, a company in the Health sector focusing on Body mentoring and health solutions, introduced it’s latest high-tech gadget : The BodyMedia FIT Armband BW.

The BodyMedia FIT Armband BW is a body monitor device that you need to strap-on on your upper arm. It is specifically designed to be worn perpetually, be it working out, going to work or even while sleeping. It monitors and measures your bodies activity levels, skin temperatures , conductivity and other health-related measures.

The beauty of this product is that it connects with an iPhone or Android application viz Bluetooth t help you keep track of all these measurements. The application , Activity Manager, displays your activities throughout the day and with inputs like your calorie intakes and sleep activities it helps you realize your fitness goals.

The device with a built in 3-axis accelerometer, is prices between $229 to $249 , which might be a little steep depending upon … how high your fitness goal and body fat is.

However, the fact that the device is already in back-ordered state (sold-out ?) makes one think of not only the number of desperate, unfit people out there but also the credibility of this device’s usage.

If you are a fitness freak and had $250 to blow, would you invest in BodyMedia’s FIT Armband BW ?

iOS 4.2 Released with New Features and Updates

November 23, 2010

The much awaited iOS 4.2 has been released by Apple.
If you just plug-in your “iDevice” to your PC and run iTunes, you should get the pop-up for the new update. If not, just click on “Check for updates”.

Here are some new features in iOS 4.2 :
AirPrint : To wirelessly print photos, docs, etc. from your device to an AirPrint-compatible printer

I’m pretty sure I saw a similar App already on the App Store. Or was it on the Cydia store. Anyways, if there wasn’t one, I think this is pretty awesome … but only if you have a compatible printer.

AirPlay : Wirelessly stream your videos and music to AirPlay-enabled speakers, recievers and even AppleTV.

This is a pretty cool feature since usually you will carry most of your favourite media content on your phone. The only hitch, as with AirPrint is, that you have compatible devices.

Find my iPhone : This is a MobileMe feature that let’s you find your missing device.

Once you set it up, you can locate your lost device on the map, send a distress message on the screen, remotely set a password lock and even remotely delete all your data. And the best part is, once you retrive the data, you can restore everything back from your backup.

Find Text on WebPages : Search for terms on the current web page on your Safari Mobile browser using the search field next to the address bar.

I really wanted this feature. It’s surprising Apple didn’t have this form the start. Typical Apple , eh ?

New Dock Controls : Among other things, double-tapping the Home button will bring up a list of all open applications.

This was something Nokia devices already had and was much needed in iPhones/Touches since a long time. However, I think this feature is available only on the modern devices that support multi-tasking , like, iPhone 4, iPhone 3GS, iPod Touch 4th Generation.

The above-mentioned are just some of the major features. iOS 4.2 also has the following features :
Notes with Fonts : Marker Felt, Helvetica and Chalkboard.
Thank God for small mercies !! I hated the native Notes’ fonts.

Keyboard and Dictionary enhancements : Support for over 50 languages and 30 new international keyboards and dictionaries.

Custom Message tones : 17 new alerts you can assign to people on your contact list.

For a complete list of features, check out the official iOS 4.2 page on Apple’s website.

Just be wary of two things :
1) Not all features are supported on all devices. So be sure to check if your device is supported before you get excited about a feature.

2) Don’t hold your breath for the update. History tells us that it’s difficult to update to the latest firmware in the first couple of days since everyone is busy downloading at the same time. And anyways, considering the iOS 4.0 fisaco, I would definitely wait a few days and read the reviews for my iPhone 3G device before going for the update.

iOS 4.2.1 Gold Master jailbroken a few hours after Developer Release

November 20, 2010

Apple announced the developer release of iOS 4.2.1 Gold Master edition, for iPhone 4 , 3GS, 3G and iPod Touches, a few hours ago.

And already, Redmond Pie has announced that this version can be jailbroken using Redsn0w 0.9.6b2. However, there is a heads-up for those of you who plan to do this immediately.

Cydia, the un-official App Store in Jailbroken devices, won’t work on the jailbroken iOS 4.2.1 . This is mainly becase Apple has changed a few APIs that Cydia uses, because of which you will find that all the application does is , crash.

However, the new and improved Cydia is already ready and will be available to “jailbreakers” as soon as iOS 4.2.1 GM is available to mere mortals (a.k.a. general public)

Now, from personal experience, I can say that make sure you have Redsn0w 0.9.6b1 handy with you when you make the release alongwith 0.9.6b2.  This is because when I tried to jailbreak my iPhone 3G running iOS 4.1 with Redsn0w 0.9.6b2 as per the Redmond Pie site, it gave me an error … something about “unable to patch the Kernel”.

After reading a few forums, I dug out the fix : Jailbreak with Reds0w 0.9.6b1 rather than 0.9.6b2 !!!

Smartphone comparison

November 1, 2009

iPhone 3GS ? Motorola Droid ? Palm Pre ? HTC Touch ?

For those of you who are quite unable to make your mind on which Smartphone to go for, here’s a detailed chart listing the features and cost for the top Smartphones currently in the market.

Thanks to Bill Shrink for producing this chart

It is interesting to see that three out of these four smartphones are based on Open Source technologies.

However, the iPhone has about 100K, that’s right… a Hundred thousand applications (on last count) available for download at the app store. This phenomenon is again a testimony to the superlative marketing skills by Apple. Although the number of developers for the iPhone must surely be far less compared to all the open source developers out there, the Applications for the iPhone beat those for the open source Android platform in an almost 10:1 ratio.

What I would like to see is, with Giants like Google and Nokia backing open source mobile platforms like Android and Maemo respectively, will the iPhone be able to sustain it’s top spot in the Smartphone market ?

Need a reason to jailbreak your iPhone? Here’s ten of them

September 23, 2008

A jailbroken device can provide much more functionality than a standard iPhone. There is a number of exceptional Apps that are not available through the iTunes App Store, but through Cydia and Installer, both of which are accessible through jailbroken iPhones.
Below are ten Apps we think are worth jailbreakng your iPhone for.

read more | digg story

iPhone/iTouch Rulz

May 30, 2008

Yet another example of the Awesomeness that is the iPhone/ iTouch