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Instagram surpasses a hundred million active users

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 26, 2013

Facebook-owned Instagram, despite negative publicity surrounding the controversial terms of service brouhaha, continues to grow its installed base. Today, the company announced a major milestone: Instagram now has over a hundred million active users across mobile platforms. That's ten million more active monthly users since it announced the 90 million milestone on January 17. By comparison, Twitter over a six-year time span hit 200 million active users, as of end of 2012.

Commenting on the development, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom shared an anecdote in a blog post about how he realized Instagram was going to be different when fans at the Giants Stadium starting posting their Instagrams after another co-founder "with a few quick commands at his terminal" filled the service with images of the game...

Apple is ‘a little less arrogant than they used to be,’ says carrier exec

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 26, 2013

Faced with intensifying pressure as it vies for supremacy in the highly competitive smartphone market - fighting chief rival Samsung and other vendors left and right - Apple has reportedly softened its stance on carriers and has shifted in how it goes about doing business with the world's wireless carriers, or so thinks one particular wireless industry executive.

Instead of putting on the 'our way or the highway' posture in its dealings with the people who are pushing the iPhone to wireless subscribers, Apple is "a little less arrogant than they used to be," according to France Telecom-Orange CEO Stephane Richard. Here are some choice quotes...

How to change your folder icons layout with 2×2 Folder Icons

Sébastien Page ∙ February 26, 2013

Surenix, the designer/developer behind the hugely popular ayecon theme has just released a simple tweak for iOS that changes the layout of your folder icons. Normally, a folder icon shows a preview grid of up to nine icons for apps that are placed in a given folder. With the 2x2 Folder Icons tweak, you can change this 3x3 grid of icons to a 2x2...

AT&T LTE expands, Wi-Fi network growth doubles

Christian Zibreg ∙ February 26, 2013

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_729aD7CfA0

U.S. carrier AT&T announced an expansion of its fourth-generation Long-Term Evolution (LTE) radio technology in Tunica, Mississippi; Athens and McMinn County; and LaFollette and Campbell County. The company has also flipped the switch on 4G in Tallahassee, Florida; Lawrence, Kansas; and the Salinas and Monterey areas. AT&T says its 4G network covers more than 285 million people and includes 3,000 more 4G cities and towns than Verizon. Letting us in on the latest on its network expansion, the telco underscored its Wi-Fi network doubled in 2012 versus the year-ago period...

Buddy crowdfunded smartwatch claims a battery life of 10 days

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated June 13, 2016

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hirm_ie6IkI

One of the challenges smartwatch makers face deals with the tiny batteries that power these things. That's why Bluetooth Smart (or Bluetooth 4.0) technology is so great. It consumes only a fraction of the power required by previous Bluetooth implementations and can wake up devices nearly instantaneously.

Enter Buddy, a crowdfunded Bluetooth smartwatch with a claimed battery life of as much as ten days, or an impressive two weeks on standby. Besides telling time, the Buddy also relays notifications from your iOS, Android or Windows Phone devices, lets you control music playback, place calls, receive and display data from your device like turn by turn navigation, display your media like pictures and more...

iTap: Keep your iPhone power on tap

Oliver Haslam ∙ February 26, 2013

There's nothing more boring than an iPhone wall charger. It's a plug, and it charges things when a USB cable is attached to it. That's about as glamorous as it gets. Until now.

Meet iTap, the latest and greatest thing in the world of charging. It quite literally keeps electricity on tap. Well, not a real tap. That would just be silly! The photo above should be able to sell the idea of the iTap much more successfully than any text we can put together, it is a tap plugged into a wall after all...

LG saw 90% drop in iPad panel shipments in January

Cody Lee ∙ February 26, 2013

A new report out of China claims that LG Display saw shipments of its 9.7-inch iPad display panels drop 90% in January, from 6 million units in December all the way down to 600,000. The drop-off is said to be a main factor in LG's poor performance in the month.

The reason for the order cuts? Well according to supply chain sources, it's a combination of a few things including the fact that January was the first post-holiday month, the growing popularity of the iPad mini, and a general shift in the market to lower-priced tablets...

Angry Birds Toons premiering March 16

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 26, 2016

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5px1IbyAjw

Determined to milk the Angry Birds franchise for all its worth, Finnish developer Rovio is bringing the birds and the pesky pigs to the world of animation with Angry Birds Toons, an all-new animated series premiering on the weekend of March 16 and 17. The animated shorts take place on the Piggy Island and invite fans to get up close and personal with their favorite characters. Rovio says it will air a brand new episode featuring the latest adventures of the birds and pigs every week starting the weekend of March 16...

Staples US web store starts selling Apple accessories

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated January 28, 2019

After test page ads for an Apple TV and other Apple gear appeared on Staples’ United States web store, and following hints Staples execs dropped which pointed to the retailer partnering with Apple on carrying various products in its Stateside locations, the new Apple-focused mini-store has gone live over at the Staples web store.

The company is offering a range of iPad, iPod, iPhone and Mac accessories and peripherals, including mice, keyboards, Apple's Smart Covers, the $99 Apple TV set-top box, as well as Airport Express, Airport Extreme and Time Capsule wireless appliances...

HTC targets iPhone users with new data migration software

Cody Lee ∙ Updated April 11, 2018

If you're HTC, I'd imagine you'd try anything at this point to drum up buyers for your new flagship handset. After suffering steep losses over the last several quarters, the Taiwanese electronics giant desperately needs the HTC One to be a hit.

And it's latest effort isn't a half-bad one. In an attempt to make it easier for iPhone users to make the switch to the One, HTC has enabled it to extract data from backup files. This will allow for automatic transfers of photos, videos and more...

PlanetBeing: evasi0n jailbreak likely killed in upcoming iOS 6.1.3 update

Jeff Benjamin ∙ February 25, 2013

We knew that the fun wouldn't last forever, and it looks like the vulnerabilities used for the evasi0n jailbreak will be fixed in an upcoming iOS update. PlanetBeing, one of the founding members of the evad3rs team that brought us the long awaited iOS 6.x untethered jailbreak, reports that Apple has patched one of the five exploits that evasi0n uses to accomplish the jailbreak.

PlanetBeing, known as David Wang among close associates, briefly sat down with Forbes writer Andy Greenberg, and confirmed what everyone knew was inevitable. The evasi0n jailbreak will most likely be patched in iOS 6.1.3.

Another iOS 6.1 trick to bypass the Lock screen

Christian Zibreg ∙ Updated May 16, 2018

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKOj0GMf810#at=49

So what's up with Apple and the iPhone's Lock screen? I mean, the various Lock screen vulnerabilities have persisted in iOS since the first passcode flaw was discovered in iOS 2.0 - and that was way back in July of 2008. And now, in addition to a simple passcode bypass trick a YouTube user detailed on Valentine's Day, another method of circumventing the Lock screen passcode has been discovered and highlighted in a video above...