The folks of the XDA-Developers forums are old hands at solving problems and limitations with mobile devices, particularly those of the Android variety, and in the latest, one member has come through with a nifty wireless charging solution. The mod, which costs around $25 in supplies, can be completed in around ten minutes, and the final result is a fully-functional, wirelessly juiced Samsung Galaxy S III.
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The release of Windows 8, has, quite inevitably been followed by the release of Office 2013 and Office 360, but this time around, the Redmond company has been hard at work on several other apps as it tries to establish its new-look operating system across its vast user base. The Windows Store needs as many decent new apps as it can get, and today, another in-house offering arrives in the form of My Server.
When the camera first met the mobile phone, it was seen as a gimmick, but nowadays, many consumers look for a snapper in some way representative of some of the higher-end standalones in terms of performance and quality. A vast portion of smartphone users can take high-resolution images and shoot video in full HD, and naturally, the amount of supplementary apps offering advanced editing features has soared over the past year or so. But while the likes of Instagram have managed to secure a solid user base, the popularity of video editing is comparatively low, and it's a trend music creation company UJAM wishes to buck with its VJAM offering.
Concept designs of future iterations of our favorite products keep us dreaming of what one day may be, and given their reputation among the design elite, it's fair to say Apple gadgets get a lot of attention from designers and concept-makers. Ricardo Afonso envisions the iPad eventually taking on a transparent look at some point in the future -- a simple pane of glass which, as he puts it, "blends perfectly with the surrounding environment". Check out the images and video below for more.
The smartphone and tablet sales and shipment figures churned out by our resident numbers firms make for particularly intriguing reading, since different companies tend to draw differing, oft conflicting conclusions regarding which vendor enjoys a stronghold on the market. One such company unafraid to wade into the Apple-Samsung debate is Strategy Analytics, and according to its latest research, Apple has overtaken Samsung to stake its claim number one phone vendor in the United States. While the Korean consumer electronics giant managed to shift an almighty 16.8 million units in the last quarter, Apple appears to have piped its bitter rival, managing an impressive 17.7 million iPhone sales. Meanwhile, LG took third spot with a comparatively meager 4.7 million.
The Evasi0n untethered jailbreak for iOS 6 / iOS 6.1 is tantalizingly close now, and with Sunday's almost certain release date fast approaching, the Evasi0n website has been updated once more. Touting the process of preparing the jailbreak tools for public consumption as 75% complete, the Evad3ers team has now begun rolling the Windows and Mac tools to a private pool of beta testers.
Although its original, digital gifts solution went down like a lead balloon, Facebook has placed much emphasis on its intention to offer a streamlined gift services to its 1.06 billion active user base. The social network enjoyed a very successful last quarter, and although there was little in terms of an update on the state of play of the Facebook Gifts during yesterday's earnings report, Mark Zuckerberg and Co. have been busily preparing the foundations for a fully-fledged assault on the associated market, manifested by today's launch of the Facebook Card.
Temple Run, like the vast majority of mobile success stories of the past five or six years, is an incredibly simple, yet challenging and addictive title which sees an Indiana Jones-type run through a temple, evading various obstacles in order to achieve the highest score possible. Not only has it ranked highly in terms of playability and popularity, but is is also free of charge, and with the sequel - Temple Run 2 - getting 2013 off to a great start on the mobile gaming front, it was always going to be an instant hit. However, the second installment has exceeded all expectation, having been downloaded an incredible 50 million times in two weeks, and on the way to becoming the fastest-selling mobile game in history.
Google's Android ecosystem has made a spectacular amount of progress over the past year or so, and one of the key enhancements from Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0) through Jelly Bean (4.1 and up) has been that of the task manager. Switching and killing tasks is a lot easier now than it was on older firmware, and thanks to the work of XDA-Developers member hamzawi, the recent apps menu is now available for those on Gingerbread, Honeycomb, Froyo, and other older Android ROMs.
Facebook has today shared its financial stats for the fourth quarter of last year, and in doing so, has dropped yet another installment of its ever-impressive user statistics. As has been the case consistently over the past few years, Mark Zuckerberg's Facebook has exceeded quite a few milestones, and the world's most popular social network of all time has has now passed the 1.06 billion monthly active user (MAU) mark.
