PEDES3ANTECH

This week, Barcelona Spain is the centre of the Mobile universe. The Mobile World Congress is in full swing and manufacturers, developers and the media are in for a beautiful showcase of this years biggest innovations in mobile technology.  Although the trend recently has been for manufacturers to launch major product iterations with their own media events (Apple, Samsung, Blackberry, Windows etc), the Mobile World Congress is still expected to showcase some major advancements in mobile. Samsung will still be making an appearance and has shown the new Galaxy Note 8.0 to compete directly with the iPad mini and Kindle Fire HD. Other than this announcement, nobody is expecting anything else major from Samsung. Apple will never launch anything outside it uber hyped media events. Microsoft has decided to bask in its perceived success with Surface Pro and Windows 8, and Blackberry has decided- wrongly- that it did enough with its Z10 announcement last month.  ...

At the beginning of the new year, I posted a blog about my 2013 to do/try list (see post here ). Today I am proud to say that I am able to check off one item in the list- Try an Android Smartphone.  I have been using the Samsung Galaxy Note II for the last couple of weeks now after giving up my iPhone 4S. I did not post a blog about it right away to make sure my assessment is not biased. I had to make sure I gave myself enough time to learn and understand the OS. I had used an iPhone for over 3 years before getting the Note 2 so I had to make sure I get rid of any expectations based on what I was used to getting with iOS. It was not easy but after around 3 weeks I am fairly confident I gave Android a fair chance so here is my assessment.  Hardware Design and Feel. The Galaxy Note II is huge but highly functional even for someone with small hands like myself. The feel of the material however still has a plasticky feel w/c to me diminishes its high-end value ...

It's that month again where everyone is talking about love. The malls are full of Valentines day promos and restaurants are offering up "romantic" and "unforgettable" dinner for two. Everyone is stressing out about what gift to give their significant other, what dress to wear on the date and even what to eat. Blogs are being written about Valentines gift ideas, how to act during a date, blah blah blah. ****If you want to impress your girlfriend or wife this Valentine check out this great Valentines gift suggestion that is sure to blow her away courtesy of Zales- link* *** On the other side of the spectrum, singles are starting their own boycot of this purely consumeristic man-made celebration of love on a random date of a random month. But since it seems like everyone is talking about love, I am compeled to write something about it, this however will talk more about how technology can help keep relationships alive in the modern world.  I will be talki...

Amazon.ca Widgets A few days after Jailbreaking my iPad mini, I only managed to downloaded a handful of tweaks from Cydia. There are two reasons for this slow adoption on my end: i. Cydia sources were hammered making downloads almost impossible and ii. Not too many iOS 6.1 tweeks available mainly due to the fact that most dev teams are still scrambling to develop them. So far I have downloaded tweaks I always considered essential to a Jailbroken iOS device, namely; SBSetting, Activator, and iFile. These are tweaks I have used before and still consider essential in enhancing my iOS user experience. I have also downloaded a few new tweaks I have not used before: f.lux, Mail Enhancer and Retina Pad. My favourite of the three so far is Retina Pad. Below is my review of this tweak/ app. What it is Retina Pad is a jailbreak tweak that literally unleashes the Retina display capability of your iPad/ iPad mini. What blew my mind with Retina Pad is how it enables Retina display for...

The jailbreak community has been given new life today with the release of Evasi0n, a new jailbreak software for iOS devices running 6.x. It has been a long time coming since the last major untethered jailbreak release for the masses.  Recently the jailbreak community was hit with a big change when Hackulous decided to shut-down, leading a lot of people to proclaim that the jailbreak community was going to die a slow death. ( read my take on the Hackulous shut-down in this post ). True to this diagnosis of dying slow- evasi0n was reportedly downloaded 270,000 times after less than 8 hours from its release.  The new jailbreak software was developed by a new group of hackers who call themselves @evad3rs mostly composed of veteran Jailbreakers @pod2g @planetbeing @pimskeks @MuscleNerd. This group had announced an exploit they found on the iOS 6.x releases but decided to wait it out until 6.1 was released to the masses to make sure Apple was not able to patch the exploit they us...

Last week, the CRTC (Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission) announced a draft Canadian  Wireless Code of Conduct  that will eventually become a regulatory tool for wireless service in Canada. It seeks to create a “.. mandatory code for all mobile wireless service providers to address the clarity and content of wireless service contracts and related issues for consumers.” Throughout last year, the CRTC has been actively gathering comments and suggestions from the public about what they want to change in how wireless service in Canada is regulated. It is then safe to assume that this draft code of conduct is a direct mandate from the consumers- and I argue because of this, it is a big step towards nothing. Why a Wireless Code of Conduct? Obviously most Canadians feel that the wireless service industry is an evil corporate empire that has been bullying them for such a long time. The public obviously feels that the big 3 wireless carriers in Canada (Be...

Recently in the US, it became illegal for you to unlock your device outside the channels provided by your service provider. The  exception  from  DMCA  (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) granted by the Librarian of Congress regarding cellphone unlocking expired on January 26, 2013. So starting that day, anybody selling cellphone unlocking services can be subject to litigation under DMCA. How did this happen? If you look at the origin of DMCA, it was not even meant to regulate cellphone unlocking, it was mainly for protecting digital copyrights. However it has morphed into a tool for circumventing true mobile freedom. DMCA sets protection of copyrighted digital materials by criminalizing the circumvention of access control softwares and Digital Rights Management (DRM) tools. The key here is access control software- this is where cellphone unlock comes into the picture. Originally, access control softwares and DRMS were used to make sure nobody is able to gain ac...

The days leading up to todays announcement about Facebook’s graph search feature was filled with rumours about the company building a “Facebook phone”. All that excitement was shattered when the announcement came that facebook was not launching a phone but a “search” feature. Now while some people were disappointed that no phone came out, I myself was actually very excited about the new feature. Ever since last year, I have reached a point where I felt that Facebook was slowly becoming irrelevant. I started to spend less time on the website and I started posting less and less “stuff” on it. Most of the updates on my timeline since the last year have been about posts I have been tagged in. I felt like Facebook was slowly becoming less engaging and felt like it was just a big graffiti wall filled with my friends rants about the smallest of things. My news feed became a steady stream of irrelevant “daily quotes”, game invites (I do not want to play Diamond Dash) and narcissistic pho...

The Consumer Electronics Show goes into full swing today and companies will scramble to get the most attention from the media and the tech blog community. Although CES 2013 does not have big names such as Microsoft, Research in Motion, Apple and Samsung Mobile announcing anything big, it is still considered to be the one of the most important tech events this year. One of the areas in tech I am most interested in is Wearable technology and I believe CES will be featuring a few advancements in this field. To those of you who do not know what wearable technology is- it is any wearable clothing/accessories that incorporates computing and electronics technology that has a direct and practical benefit to the person wearing it. I also add that wearable technology seeks to enhance human activity and how we interact with our physical environment. Recently this field in technology as seen a steady rise in popularity as we have seen more miniaturization in tech without any sacrifice in c...

The news of Hackulous shutting down was met with mixed reactions- some felt that it was the right thing to do while others felt it was a let down for the jailbreak community. If you are not familiar with Hackulous, it was a very popular Cydia source for Jailbroken iOS devices- its main benefit was access to Installous which served as a source for hacked iOS apps. This source allowed you to download paid iOS apps for free! It was the nature of the service offered by Hackulous that caused the mixed reaction from the public. People who strongly opposed piracy were happy that Hackulous decided to close down. Their main argument is that the economy for mobile apps is stil in its infancy and piracy will only kill the small developers. They saw Hackulous as hurting the small developers and only making it harder for them to compete against big names such as Rovio, Imangi, EA etc. The other side of the fence felt they have been betrayed by the Jailbreak community. Some people said t...