O'Grady's PowerPage

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  • Edward Snowden announces forthcoming prototype of device to prevent iPhone radio transmission

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    Edward Snowden may be in exile from the U.S., but that doesn’t seem to be slowing him down.

    Snowden, who once met with reporters in a Hong Kong hotel room to spill the NSA’s secrets and famously asked them put their phones in the fridge to block any radio signals that might be used to silently activate the devices’ microphones or cameras, has released plans to announce a prototype for a device that could stop this kind of surveillance.

    On Thursday at the MIT Media Lab, Snowden and well-known hardware hacker Andrew “Bunnie” Huang plan to present designs for a case-like device that wires into your iPhone’s guts to monitor the electrical signals sent to its internal antennas and they say it could offer a constant check on whether your phone’s radios are transmitting. They say it’s an infinitely more trustworthy method of knowing your phone’s radios are off than “airplane mode,” which people have shown can be hacked and spoofed.

    In short, this could stop the transmission and thus better protect the user’s privacy.

    (more…)

  • Google Translate app updated, now offers Word Lens, fast live action translation

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    It always helps to know the local language.

    According to the Google blog, Google has released a new version of Translate for Android and iOS.

    (more…)

  • Google Play Books for iOS updated to 1.6.0, adds textbook rental support

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    This is kind of nifty.

    Per AppleInsider,

    Google on Thursday updated its iBooks-like Google Play Books port, bringing in-app rentals, highlighting and note taking for scanned books, as well as other features to the iOS title.

    Now at version 1.6.0, Google Play Books for iOS now supports in-app rentals, which allows users to access select books from the service’s “millions of titles” on their iPhone, iPad or iPod.

    In addition to existing rental titles, users can choose from Google Play’s newly introduced digital textbook library. According to Google’s website, students can save up to 80 percent off the cost of physical textbooks by renting through its service.

    With the new service, users can highlight, make notes and, in some cases, copy text from textbooks during the rental period. A quick look at the Google Play store shows a number of titles are already available.

    Aside from textbooks the latest version of Google Play Books allows users to mark up books compiled from scanned pages. A new sepia reading mode and stability improvements round out the update’s changes.

    Google Play Books comes in at 16.6MB, can be downloaded for free via the App Store and requires iOS 5.0 or later to install and run.

    If you’ve tried the new version and have any feedback to offer, please let us know in the comments.

  • Rumor: Microsoft planning boot-to-desktop mode for Windows 8.1 update

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    If you’re using a Windows 8 partition, then there’s a fairly decent chance you want to strangle whoever created the Metro interface, as great as Microsoft seems to think it is.

    Per The Verge, in an apparent attempt to have its latest operating system better appeal to business customers, Microsoft reportedly plans to add a “boot to desktop” mode to its Windows 8.1 update, allowing users to bypass the Metro Start Screen.

    In current test builds of Windows 8.1, codenamed “Windows Blue”, the operating system includes an option to boot directly to the traditional Windows desktop, sources familiar with the company’s plans indicated to reporters. That’s a major change from the current version of Windows 8, which automatically boots to the new Start Screen which features the tiled “Metro” user interface.

    Windows 8 currently boots to the new Start Screen, requiring an extra step to reach the desktop.

    The new Start Screen has been criticized by PC users who feel the interface is not ideal with a traditional keyboard and mouse setup. Some believe the Metro user interface is better suited for touchscreen devices, like tablets and phones.

    While Microsoft reportedly plans to make the desktop view a default option when booting a system, the company is said to be keeping the invisible “hot corners” it introduced with Windows 8. That function allows users to bring up the operating system’s “Charms” or the Metro Start Screen by touching or dragging their PC mouse to the corner of the screen.

    Windows 8 launched last fall with a great deal of hype from the Redmond, Wash., company, which claimed the new operating system was a revolutionary upgrade from its predecessor, Windows 7. But Windows 8 got off to a soft start, and failed to turn around sales in the sagging PC hardware market.

    Continuing woes in the PC market have been generally blamed on the popularity of Apple’s iPad, which reached a new, lower entry price of US$329 last fall with the debut of the iPad mini. In comparison, many new touchscreen Ultrabooks running Windows 8 cost over a thousand dollars.

    The struggles seen by PC makers have led market watchers to predict that the industry could see a major shakeup in the coming years. Some believe that remaining companies could merge, leading to fewer options, while others see gross margins shrinking in an effort to cut prices and boost sales.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.

  • Apple patent shows interest in adjusting on-screen brightness according to content being shown

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    This could lead to some interesting stuff.

    Per the United States Patent and Trademark Office, a patent discovered on Tuesday outlines a system in which displays like the iPhone and iPad’s Retina panels are automatically dimmed based on what type of content is showing on screen, allowing for portable devices to conserve energy.

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office awarded Apple’s patent No. 8,358,273 for a “Portable media device with power-managed display,” which describes a unique method of adjusting the intensity (brightness) of a device’s screen depending on what is being displayed.

    Other techniques like photosensor-based display controls have been in use for years, but Apple’s method goes further by managing display brightness based on the monitoring of actual content. Currently, devices may auto-dim in dark-lit rooms or when they haven’t been used for a set amount of time. With the ‘273 patent, both the type and characteristics of displayed content is taken into consideration, allowing for further refinement of auto-dimming procedures that could translate to power savings.

    The method relies on identifying the type of content being displayed and setting an output intensity for the display device based on either a predetermined configuration or a set of user preferences. Content types are described as images, photos or video, among others.

    After determining what type of content is on a device’s screen, the system then takes into account the characteristics of said content. For example, if a light image is being displayed, the brightness may be lowered. This process becomes more complex for video content, which must be monitored frame by frame and weighted by metrics like contrast, darkness, lightness and color. In some embodiments, the system may sample at stepped intervals like every 10 frames to keep brightness consistent throughout viewing.

    The management system offers users more control over screen auto-dimming by allowing a set of preferences to override automatic controls. An example user-configurable setting could be “Brightness Mode,” which would act much like a modern HDTV to provide levels of brightness referenced by the control module.

    It is unclear how much processing power the system would require, though there are various embodiments that leverage software, hardware or a combination of the two to achieve the desired results.

    The patent is credited to Andrew Bert Hodge, Guy Bar-Nahum, Shawn R. Gettemy and David John Tupman.

    Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.