Good news for jailbreakers! New store called iMods will feature upon iOS 8 release

The recent jailbreak of iOS 7.1.1 has received mixed reaction. While some are happy with cydia on their iOS 7.1.1, prolific jail-breakers fear, as the exploit has paved path for Apple to fix the kernel in iOS 8. However, the climate is midly same and there is high probability for a iOS 8 jailbreak too! But yes, time has to answer that.

Meanwhile, here a group of developers are found working on a new jailbreak store called iMods. Well, iMods could soon be an alternative for cydia! When will it be available? Will existing cydia repos be supported? Will it come along with the jailbreaktool? And many more questions!

So, without any delay, lets get into detail about the upcoming store.

What is iMods? When can you expect the official release?

As already mentioned iMods is an upcoming jailbreak store; and finally a way to find tweaks for iOS apart from cydia. The iMods team state that they are working intense to develop a jailbreak tool for iOS 8 that will also install iMods on the device. The store is expected to be having a neat and easy to use UI, so even new iOS owners who are not sure about jail-breaking will find it easy to use iMods.

Other things you need to know about iMods

The team touts that the store will be user-friendly and will have continuous monitoring. For example, if a tweak does not work as desired, or if it crashes the system after install, it will be immediately removed from iMods. This ensures better control and trust.

And yes, cydia repos will not be supported in iMods.

Some images of the iMods store

We spoke about the UI and here are few sample images. Check them out!

Featured list iMods store

Categories of tweaks iMods store

App page iMods store

Hit or Miss?

iMods would definitely be a hit. With jailbreaking gaining more importance, and winning more hearts recently. iMods would also bring a healthy competition and encourage more people to jailbreak. But will it live upto what it promises? Will it be better than Cydia? Well, lets wait to know!

The watch of the Future “Ritot”- World’s First Projector Watch

Watches have evolved a great deal since their discovery, from sundials to sandglass to clock-tower to grandfather clocks and then to wrist watches. A transformation from a meager time piece to a style statement, it has come a very long way but we are not stopping just now. Continuing the tradition a group of youngsters have designed the watch of the future the all new Ritot.

Ritot as claimed by its makers, is the ‘world’s first projector watch’. A one of a kind wearable having an inbuilt projector that projects whatever data the watch holds, onto the back of your hand and an innovative technology allows the watch to project during day and night as well. Shedding a display unit makes it very compact and also enhances the wearability factor.

Ritot- Projector Watch

Compatible with phones and also projects notifications on a larger screen: Ritot not only tells time but is also a hands-free device to alert you about notifications. It can project facebook and twitter notifications, post weather alerts, emails, reminders, etc on the back of your hand and to keep you connected at all times it offers an option of vibration notification.

Ritot smart watch

Connecting Ritot to your cell-phone is easy and currently it supports popular platforms such as Android, Windows and iOS and all notifications are easy to set, turn on and off. You can also choose for the watch to display the time either by pressing a button or by shaking the watch.

That’s not all, every piece comes with a Base charger which allows the user to access the settings of the watch. One can set the time, change the colour of the projection by simply placing it on the base charger and tapping a few buttons here and there. The watch utilises an energy efficient technology, it can last 1 month in stand-by mode and 150 hrs if projecting.

Base Charger

Some of you may be concerned about how it looks, or would it suit your style or not. Stop worrying as Ritot comes in 2 designs, one is a ‘Bracelet’ which has a high quality leather over an aluminium ring. Another is the ‘sporty’ version which is made completely of rubber and plastic making it appropriate for physical activity, also both the designs come in different colours so the users can choose as per their taste.

Ritot “Sport”

Ritot “Bracelet” 

As of now Ritot is only a prototype trying to get crowd funding through a collaboration with Indiegogo. It has surpassed the expectations of its makers by achieving 664% funding with 37 days still left for the campaign to be over. The response it has received in a very short span of time is overwhelming owing to which the makers are planning to stretch their goals to increase usability. The compact, easy-to-use and futuristic watch has attracted a lot of people and seems to be a potential competitor to leading wearable manufacturers like Samsung and Sony.

MIT’s “FingerReader” converts Text to Speech – As Speech to Text is too mainstream

According to the WHO there are 285 million people estimated to be visually impaired worldwide (39 million blind and 246 with low vision).

That mean a large section of the world’s population consists of people who are missing out on many moments of life because of their disability, people who have never witnessed the beauty of a full moon night, people who are unable to read and write.

And only 7 % of the total number books published in the world are in Braille.

Braille Text

What is FingerReader?

A group of researchers from MIT have developed an amazing wearable gadget which can read aloud printed text – FingerReader. Basically a ring with a mounted camera connected to a microphone & backed by a modified open-source software, and all you need to do is to point your finger at the text you wish to read aloud.

FingerReader

All you need to know about FingerReader

Don’t worry about going astray, the device constantly gives a feedback of the scanning process and if you are starting to deviate from the text, a dial tone like sound increases. It is also empowered with haptic feedbacks to convey messages like end of line or paragraph, new paragraph, etc to the user.

The voice although, is not exactly something that you would describe as pleasant, the FingerReader team is aware of it and is working to get rid of this shortcoming. The device itself is very compact, light-weight and weighs almost equal to an ordinary ring which justifies the device being classified as a wearable.

Is FingerReader a substitute for Braille?

The device is not meant to be a substitute for Braille, rather it is a connecting link that can fill a huge gap, newspapers, magazines and those 93% of total books in the world are not published in Braille creating a barrier for the growth of visually impaired peopleand also shatters their belief and any hope that may be left deep down in their hearts.

FingerReader with an aid for the users to stay on one line.

Ís it only for the visually impaired?

That’s not it, FingerReader is not intended to serve only the visually impared but also for people with “ability and superability” as well.  Roy Shilkrot, a member of the research team behind FingerReader suggested its use in translating text written in languages unknown, imagine reading a book written in Spanish without having to learn Spanish or maybe learning a new language just by reading something.

Another implied benefit is the joy it brings for those visually impaired people who can now at least read, for some people  this experience is empowering as it adds a dimension to heir lives, gives them something to look up to in life.

As for the researcher, the response that the FingerReader has received worldwide is overwhelming yet they haven’t planned about commercialization in any way and instead are working to improve the experience trying to make it more seamless and natural.

There’s a new Human Right in Town – the Right To be Forgotten (RTF)!

Just imagine. You awake one morning to find that you don’t exist anymore : your best friend doesn’t know you, your girlfriend fails to remember you, your credit cards are all registered to someone else – heck, even your dog growls at you! In a last bid, you’d probably turn to Google and prove your identity, right?! Now, what if I told you even that data on the sacrosanct and untouchable Google servers has been deleted ?

If you think the aforementioned is straight outta the plot of some Hollywood movie and too far- fetched, you’re probably wrong! At least partially.

EU and Argentina have recently allowed  their citizens to exercise the Right to be Forgotten (RTF) wherein one can provide links referring to their acts in the past, which they feel can be adverse to their present/future.

To help one exercise this RTF, there is a site called Forget.me which was launched almost immediately after the historic judgement in May, 2014. In fact, the site got Google to accept about 12000 requests on June 3, 2014 itself!

Forget.me Home Page

The site has a few unique features which appear to be quite useful – like you just have to provide your name and it jots down a few links which may be related to you – like your LinkedIn, Facebook and other social networking profiles. Once logged in, you will two options - one to provide links to be forgotten by Google and the other to follow on requested links. Quite a well thought feature one can reckon.

Forget.me Features

Having once found and selected a link to a page/article/photograph, one has to justify the reason for removal of the same. This has to be broadly classified into one of the following nine categories :

• Criminal Procedure – related to proceedings for which one has been convicted/has not yet been convicted
• Presumption of innocence – related to suspicions which never materialized into proceedings
• Misuse of Identity – Identity theft
• Invasion of Privacy
• Privacy – further classified into Defamation and Insults insinuating someone/oneself.
• Image – the most prominent and harmful of the lot, this is probably the basis of most. It can be further disintegrated into harmful or old photos,videos uploaded by you, malicious and maligning photos uploaded by someone else, unauthorized photos/videos disseminated by another, images/videos relating to drugs/alcohol or of a sexual context and last, but certainly not the least, pictures and videos of a demeaning nature.
• Death
• Homonyms – being associated with some Homonym is affecting your current life (commercially or privately)
• Other

Forget.me Dashboard

Whilst this may seem like a cool new concept, especially for that cynical little voice at the back of your brain, I must point out that this ruling is quite abstract in it’s nature and currently only pertains to websites available/established in the EU and Argentina. Innovative and out-of -the-box thinking has already found numerous loopholes to theruling. One such loophole is the posting of the article on a server not based in countries which allow the RTF, like google.com instead of, say, google.co.uk as the content is only removed from European search engine results and not the websites, per se. 

Whilst this ruling seems to be quite beneficial in certain cases – like ‘revenge porn’ , breakups or the neighborhood stalker/psycho, we have already seen a misuse when applied to numerous articles pertaining to sites like BBC, as recent as the first week of July! Case in point is Robert Peston, a renowned and prestigious BBC journalist whose 2007 article ‘Merril’s Mess’ would no longer be shown in search results within Europe, as someone had filed a request for it to be ‘forgotten’! The Guardian also had six articles taken down, in a similar manner, that week for the same reasons, and all by anonymous plaintiffs. BBC later reported that all of the Guardian pages were back in search results.

Thus, this ruling brings to the fore the question as to whether data privacy is a boon or a bane. While many will tend to help throw weight behind ‘boon’, we must remember that those few notorious and antisocial elements who misuse such tools ensure that the scales get balanced out. To help answer this question, the EU has asked Microsoft and Google to come and debate on the issue of RTF. Let’s wait and watch what this thorny issue yields!

Forgetting Vidyut! :p

The future of music is now here – lay your hands on the world’s tiniest earphones!

Earphones have come a long way along with civilization. The huge headsets with chords dangling on both ends in the process of evolution became sleeker and smaller, then came a time when they could be fitted right into the ear lobes, some were rad looking earphones which made their way around ones neck, then others had one sided wire to let users move around with ease, did I mention the oh-so-cute-colorful earphones, all in all they come in all shapes and sizes these days.

And yes, prices, as well!  So what’s next? It seems we would soon be stepping into the era of earphones without wires, headbands, neckbands or other frills to boast of, earphones which can be plugged into the ears like an ear bud.  And this is no prophesy on my part, Earin is all about wireless earphones and much more.

What is Earin?

Music lovers gotta love it. It is pure music with no frills. It doesn’t even come with a microphone attached to it, they say they could have provided the users with one, but their aim is to enrich the aural experience of one, which means they go wireless, microphone-less, light-less, sensor-less and a lot of-less. Just plug it in like a pair of ear buds, switch on your device’s Bluetooth and step out of your place looking über cool (some would think you are fool for bobbing your head without a reason) and of course, enjoying the music, as well.

Small things often get misplaced. Do you need to charge them?

Yes, small things get misplaced, but this wouldn’t.  It comes in a cylindrical case which makes it easy to store and carry around. The case looks like a capsule box, but you know better what’s in there. The case charges the earphones every time one stores them in there.

The case can be charged via a USB cable beforehand. Battery life? Three to four hours at a go, then place them back into its rechargeable case.

Other specs and details

If you have an eye for details, then this one is for you-

• Earin uses a 50 mAh Lion battery which can be recharged.
• The storage capsule also comes in fitted with a Lion battery of 100 mAh.
• The storage capsule is as light as 25 gram and the earphones weigh a mere 5 grams.
• The earphones come in with foams of different sizes to fit into different types if ears.

Is the future of music finally here?

Seems to be the case here. Earin has pledged £99 (US$168) on Kickstarter, if you want to see the future of music then help them raise the funds by booking yourself a pair of world’s tiniest earphones today. If you book now, then expect your order to reach you early next year.

Staring at the computer for longer duration? Wink Glass will make you wink!

Everyone is addicted to computers in this era. Whether you’re using it for your work, or your personal accounts, playing games to social networking, it is tacitly agreed by everyone that we need to stare into these digital screens for majority of the hours we are awake to keep life going. In particular, gamers and readers use the digital screens with more intensity than anyone else. It is said that staring into screens for such long periods of time, makes our eye lose its reflexive ability to blink.

With the amount of concentration that we put in, the lesser we blink. This can lead to the dry eye syndrome, which basically means you have to face health complications due to the dehydration of your eyes. Not only for gamers and readers, even for those of you who are poor blinkers and who run out of moisture in your eyes, here comes a solution. Wouldn’t you be happy to have your own glass that cares so much for you and keeps you away from dehydration of eyes?

Yes, Wink glass is nothing like an ordinary glass, although it looks like one. If a person wearing the wink glasses doesn’t wink for a maximum of five seconds, the glass becomes opaque forming fog over its surface. All you need to do is, just wink, which removes the fog off the surface and the glass becomes transparent again, ie., the wink is detected by the glass to remove opaqueness. These glasses were invented by a Japanese firm, Masunaga Optical Manufacturing Co. Ltd., that specializes in eye-wear.

The Wink Glasses 2013 is black-framed and light weighted, (surely not lesser than your average spectacles, but it is about 33 grams which is tolerable for the face to hold without much effort),  powered by a small battery which can be replaced, this battery is entranced to power by the press of a small button on the right arm of the glasses. It is said to fog up for 0.2 seconds for every 10 seconds.  The fogging can also be adjusted to 0.1-second intervals from 0.2 seconds.

Paying a little more than the cost of these glasses ( USD150), the customers can have the glasses fitted with lens of the foci of their power, in case they are already using glasses or contacts. How convenient!

This is one of the coolest inventions of time, and found to have been receiving tremendous response from the public. If IT companies were super concerned about the impact of computer screens, which are overworking their eyes, on their employers, they’d probably make this eyewear a part of their dress code.

BY:TECHNOLOGY

Humane technology- Keepod is trying to bridge the gap named disparity.

When it comes to technology, city dwellers have always been spoilt for choice. Even the nooks and cranny of India have now tagged along. IT boom bridged those gaps which seemed to be a mountain-shifting task at one point of time. But we cannot rave about it all. We are well aware of a world where disparity is a bitter yet real part of life, a world where IT is a faraway prospect and far-fetched dream.

Mathare in Nairobi Kenya is one such place where the far-reaching tentacles of IT are yet to evade its space. For those of you who just said, “Ah! It’ll be there in no time”, would find information like its non-existent sanitisation, an equally non-existent school system and many absent elements of civilization pretty disturbing. College is still an alien concept in this part of the world. Whom do we blame?

While a substantial chunk of the civilized crowd set out on a mission to find a suitable party who can be blamed, a small group of people, in the meantime, decided to bring about an air of change. Keepod Unite took a giant step to change the IT scene of Mathare in a small way.

What is Keepod?

It is a United Kingdom based initiative which decided to provide the natives of Mathare USB sticks loaded with an OS. But then, this can be plugged onto specific systems, right? Well, wrong! This can be plugged unto any shared system (i.e. PC).

But that would be an expensive affair, right?

It sounds to be one, but one would find it to be otherwise. The USB is predominantly built on Linux and comes loaded with a number of pre-installed apps with an available space of 8 GB for storage. Yes, the PC onto which the USB can be plugged into needs to boast of certain specifications such as an x86 processor, 1GB RAM, 1024*768 resolution display and a USB port of 2.0 or higher. It is officially claimed to be not compatible with a Mac.

The idea behind handing out an OS in a USB stick instead of distributing personal PCs is that of economic feasibility. If one loses a USB stick it can be instantly replaced at a meagre rate as compared to that of a PC.

Apart from all these, Keepod has launched itself on various portals which would financially keep them afloat throughout the project.

For a place which sounds like this where in the world would they arrange a public  PC?

Keepod is not just another foreign campaign with unrealistic imaginations and goals. The team plans to build a team with local manpower who would be specifically trained to deal with hubs set right in the midst of the slums which crowds Mathare.

But how can an IT boom change the scene in Mathare?

For now, they aren’t aiming for an IT boom; they are aiming to introduce the inhabitants of the region to a life which is human reside worthy. With projects like HIV, education, sanitisation, human rights and other pressing issues making noise in Africa on its mind, this is responsible technology at it best. Their associate partners are aptly called LiveInSlums.

Let’s make this world a better place! A browse through their site would restore you faith in humanity.

BY:TECHNOLOGY