Ever wanted to learn how to play the guitar, but never had a great way to learn? A new Kickstarter project may just have what you need. Kickstarter is home to all kinds of weird, wonderful and plain old whacky things. Technology-related toys are always popular on the project backing site though, and the gTar is proving to be just another exciting venture that is capturing the hearts and minds of the technological elite.
While the user interfaces of technology found in futuristic TV shows and movies aren't necessarily practical, but they can often be cool. One example of this is the interactive UI of the computer in Minority Report, a movie in which mutated humans are able to predict - and thus, prevent - crimes from happening. The film is set in the year 2054, so obviously the computer that they're using must consist of what appears to be either a fairly translucent screen or hologram, and a UI that's manipulated by hand and finger gestures.
Panoramic photography has experienced a rather staggered start in the mobile spectrum, and although Apple toyed with the idea of implementing a panorama mode as a native feature to iOS 5, it never made the final cut. Much like 3DTV in a way, it yields some awesome results, but the jury remains out as to whether it has a large-scale future.
While Apple has single-handedly brought legal digital music downloads to the masses with the iTunes Store, plenty of rivals have tried to get in on the act. None have come closer than Spotify, and while its monthly subscription-based, music "rental" service may not be suited to some, it has enjoyed a great deal of success across much of Europe, recently earning it a launch throughout America.
While we don't officially know what Microsoft will be introducing to the major Windows Phone 8 Apollo update that the company plans to drop later this year, people are as usual making mockups of what the future OS could look like. Now normally, I dismiss concepts as they are usually either impractical, ridiculous, or both, but this one is actually a pretty simple idea that can help boost the consistency between Microsoft's desktop and mobile OSes.
With the introduction of iOS 5, Apple dramatically re-imagined the way that their mobile operating system handles user-facing notifications. On the whole, users were extremely happy to see the change considering that the old method of presenting a bland and intrusive alert provided a negative user-experience and interrupted whatever the user was doing on the device.
Today sees something of an oddity, for two high-powered CEOs and an army of legal help will sit down and try to thrash out an end to one of the longest, most tedious legal battles we can think of. There may be blood!
Google's Chrome web browser has been taking the geek world by storm for some time now, even spawning Google's somewhat failed attempt at making the browser the whole operating system with Chrome OS, but the truth is that what many would term 'normal people' just don't use it.
Earlier today, Pod2g took to his Twitter timeline to confirm to the world that his upcoming untethered jailbreak for devices running iOS 5.1.1 is in its final stages, and will be released in the coming days, but no exact ETA was given. And now, Xvolks, who is a part of Pod2g's jailbreak team has shown off the untether in action on video using an updated version of the tool which gained a lot of fame and attraction a few months back, Absinthe.
If there are two pieces of technology that have come about in the last five years that have the power to change the way we work and play, the Apple iPad and Microsoft Kinect top the list. Both promised to add a new dimension to both the mundane and the enjoyable things in life, and whether they have managed just that is very much up for debate.
