Useful Google Glass

Adi Robertson at The Verge posted an article about a half-serious interview of Eric Schmidt on NPR’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me. About Google Glass Adi wrote:
>Schmidt also half-jokingly confirmed what some of us already suspected about Glass: that nobody has a clear idea of how to use it.

I was recently talking with a friend that pointed out Glass will be great for one thing, it will identify the people in a room that you want to avoid. We will have to wait and see about that, but I was thinking about some acceptable use case scenarios. Many people have likened Glass to the Segway. Continuing with that comparison, I think that there are people who use the Segway in a way that is useful. Security and Police officers come to mind. Imagine if all Police officers were required to use Glass. All interaction with civilians could be recorded. Imagine if they could simply look at a license plate or a drivers license and quickly access all the information they want on a particular person. In situations where privacy is already nullified, Glass could be very useful.

WWDC Tickets

…and they’re gone.

WWDC 2013

Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 10 AM Pacific. I kind of feel bad about all those folks who paid for notification services. This is definitely a fairer solution.

Analysts estimate nationwide rollout of Google Fiber would cost 11 Billion dollars.

Google, take my money, please.

Facebook Home

Love some of the UI choices on the new Facebook launcher. I don’t use Facebook at all, so my thoughts are limited, but I do wonder how adoption will effect Facebook stock. By not producing the hardware it seems like they are hedging their bet here. I wonder if adoption numbers will be actually be reported on, or if they will go the Kindle route and be very vague. I also wonder if they will separate device sales vs app downloads.

Helios- Open Source iOS App Backend Framework

Open source framework with an awesome feature set; push notifications, data synchronization, track and verify in-app purchases, Passbook, and logging and analytics.

We are excited to announce that our newest app, Gramatica, is now available in the iOS App Store. We love Instagram, but we don’t love seeing #selfies, textgrams, and hundreds of photos of our neighbor’s cat. Gramatica puts you in control of your Instagram feed. Filter out unwanted photos by user, photo, or tag. Focus your attention with simple lists of users or tags. See the big picture with pinch to zoom. Here’s a sample of what you can do with Gramatica:

  • FILTERING: curate your gallery - hide people, photos, or tags you don’t want to see
  • SIMPLE LISTS: make lists of users or hashtags
  • MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS: fast-switch between all your (or your family’s) accounts
  • POWERFUL GALLERY: like, comment, view on a map, and filter all without leaving the gallery
  • ISOLATE AND ZOOM: tap a photo to isolate it, then pinch to zoom
  • UNREAD COMMENTS INDICATOR: quickly find new comments
  • LAST VIEWED PHOTO INDICATOR: know where you left off
  • URL SUPPORT: URLs in comments are tappable
  • THUMBNAILS: view any gallery’s thumbnails, even in your feed (iPhone-only)
  • UNIVERSAL APP: view your gallery on iPhone and iPad
  • ICLOUD: all of your filters, lists, unread comment and last viewed photo information are synced.

Gramatica is available on the iOS App Store now.

We would love to hear what you think of Gramatica. Send us a tweet @thinktapwork 

Security researcher sentenced to 41 months in prison

I’m not a big fan of releasing usernames and email addresses, but contrast this sentence with Donté Stallworth. Donté served 24 days of a 30-day sentence on DUI manslaughter charges.

Developer Tool: Deploymate

I’m evaluating Deploymate right now. Seems like a super-smart idea: analyze your Xcode projects to see if you’re methods are writing checks your deployment target can’t cash. Basically it checks to see which APIs you are using that are not supported by your minimum iOS version. Once you realize how brilliant that is you wonder why Apple doesn’t include support for this in Xcode proper.

The interface is familiar and easy to navigate. Only complaint so far is that you can’t mark a problem as resolved. For instance, I had already properly encapsulated a call to SLComposeViewController with an if block to verify it’s existence. Deploymate still raises this as an issue. Their FAQ says they’re working on it. Definitely an app to watch.

Dropbox + Mailbox

Mainly, I’m curious what this means for the Mailbox app. Acquisitions like this don’t usually have great long-term results (see: Sparrow) but their intentions seem good.

The obvious idea is Dropbox integration into Mailbox: attaching files without actually attaching them. This isn’t entirely new or exciting but I’m sure Dropbox loves having an email client that will prominently feature them. How likely are Google or Apple to integrate Dropbox when they have their own file hosting services?

For those who were concerned about Mailbox privacy this may make you feel better. If you trust Dropbox you can probably now trust Mailbox. Of course, if you didn’t trust Dropbox (or only with your own encryption layer on top) then it doesn’t help that they want your email, too.

I wonder if this signals a potential entry by Dropbox into email as a service, backed by a huge amount of data storage. Without a doubt they’ve just acquired some good talent that could lead them down that path.