Why Your Clothes Need a Mobile Upgrade

By Mike Elgan, 16-Apr-2013

Wearable computing glasses and wristwatches? What about the computing you're already wearing?

Clothes should be designed to enable the easiest and safest use of our touch-screen devices.Mike ElganContributor, Computerworld (US)

Wearable computing will soon go mainstream thanks toGoogle Glass and the rumored Apple iWatch.

But I've got news for you: Wearable computing is already here. We carry powerful smartphones and accessories in our pockets and on our person everywhere we go. We "wear" them in our clothes.

ScottEVest's Fleece 7.0, shown in a faux "X-ray view" makes it looks like you're carrying nothing, when you've really got everything.

Although we carry the gadgets of 2013, our clothes are designed for the gadgets of 1913. For example, that tiny pocket in jeans above the right front pocket? That's for a pocketwatch.

It's time to upgrade our clothes.

Why We Need Mobile-aware Clothing

We live in a mobile world now. We carry tablets, mobile phones and a universe of accessories go to with them -- or, we would if we could.

Yet the clothing most of us wear hasn't changed to keep up with the new reality. Mobile tech isn't mobile if we can't carry it.

Buildings have been upgraded with Wi-Fi and more outlets. A world of cases, bags, backpacks, briefcases and purses have emerged to accommodate the new mobile reality.

But clothing isn't keeping up.

Pockets need to be redesigned. They need to be sized and shaped and placed for today's huge smartphones and tablets and the accessories we carry for them. We need more pockets for making gadgets more accessible in all situations -- but not to thieves.

Clothes should be designed to enable the easiest and safest use of our touch-screen devices.

We need clothes that help us protect our expensive gadgets from damage, loss or theft.

Clothes can even help us get and stay powered up and connected and do other things that enhance mobile computing.

Clothing that does some or all of this will become much more common over the next few years. But I need it now, and so do you.

Wardrobe Malpractice

After traveling and living as a digital nomad in Greece, Turkey, Kenya and Spain for the past nine months, I've come to the conclusion that my clothes are not up to the task.

I've worked in planes, trains, cars and boats; hotels, motels, hostels, apartments; coffee shops, restaurants; indoors, outdoors; day and night; rain or shine.

I've been both nearly stolen from and actually stolen from. I've carried awkward backpacks, left my tablet or keyboard behind when I really could have used it and wasted all kinds of time because I couldn't bring the stuff I needed. And all because of my clothes.

While enjoying the Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain, last month, for example, I asked my wife to hold my iPhone while I captured some video. She put it in a zipped compartment in her purse. But a pick-pocket unzipped the purse and stole the phone without either of us knowing.

So how did clothes fail me? First, I advertised the possession of an expensiveApple product with my white earbuds. I could have painted a target on my back for similar effect. I need clothes that hide my earbuds.

Second, my wife dropped my phone in her insecure purse because women's clothing generally lacks secure pockets. My wife needs secure pockets in her coat, at least.

Apple Sold 35-38 iPhones

Apple Sold 35-38M iPhones Last Quarter, Analysts Say

Apple sold approximately 38 million iPhones in the first quarter, an 8% increase over what it sold in the same quarter a year ago, an ISI Group analyst said today. Other analysts pegged the sales number at 35 million.

Apple sold approximately 38 million iPhones in the first quarter, an 8% increase over what it sold in the same quarter a year ago, an analyst said today.

Brian Marshall of the ISI Group said today he was sticking with his estimate of 38 million iPhones for the January-March quarter.

Others, including Brian White of Topeka Capital Markets and Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray, have placed their bets on lower numbers -- 35 million and 35.5 million, respectively -- for the quarter that ended March 31, flat or just 1% above last year's number.

According to Fortune the median from forecasts of 48 analysts was 37 million, a 5.5% increase year-over-year.

The experts, however, are looking ahead more than they're revising recent history.

Marshall, for example, predicted that Apple will release its next iPhone -- which many have been tagging as the "iPhone 5S" in a nod to previous Apple naming conventions -- in late June or early July. White has the same timetable in mind.

That would be a departure from the last two iterations of the smartphone -- the iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 -- which went on sale in October 2011 and September 2012, respectively.

But the return of an iPhone launch to summer, a schedule last used in 2010 for the iPhone 4, faces at least one obstacle: Apple has not yet released a preview of its next iOS SDK (software development kit) to app makers.

In the two most-recent years when Apple has launched a new iPhone in June, it seeded developers with a new SDK several months in advance.

Mac Book Pro

These graphics are so fast, smooth, and realistic, you might just forget you’re looking at a computer screen.

The power behind the pixels.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display features Intel HD Graphics 4000 — perfect for both everyday tasks and graphics-intensive creative apps. Scroll through large photo albums with ease. Play games with amazing detail. Even connect an external display or two. It’s just another way this 13-inch MacBook Pro is small on size and big on performance.

The 15-inch model has a phenomenal display — and a GPU to match. The NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M graphics processor based on next-generation Kepler architecture with 1GB of dedicated video memory provides up to 60 percent faster graphics performance than any notebook we’ve ever made.⁴ And it delivers enough power to drive the amazing 5-million-pixel Retina display as well as two external displays. All while making the most graphics-intensive tasks — like rendering HD video and editing RAW photography — fast, easy, and incredibly fluid.

Amazon opens Android Appstore in 200 more countries

Amazon has announced that it will expand its Android-based Appstore and is calling for developers to populate the new storefronts.

The Appstore will expand to cover 200 more countries, including Australia, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, South Africa and South Korea.

The storefronts are expected to open ‘in the coming months’ when the online retailer officially launches its Amazon Appstore for Android internationally. Up to now, the service was only available in the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan.

“Amazon’s platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices,” said Mike George, VP of Apps and Games at Amazon, in a statement.

“Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe.”

Apple iPad MINI

APPLE  iPAD  MINI:

Apple announced the long-awaited  iPad mini and that was a real surprise, the fourth generation of the classic full size iPad. As usual, iPad mini are quite decent electronic toys that deserve a closer look.Reduced tablet iPad mini is intermediate between the original iPad and the iPod touch. This is evidenced by the original convex design back cover made of anodized aluminum, the main advantage of a tablet, as stated by the manufacturer, is the ability to hold it with one hand, thanks to its compact size, the diagonal of the display is of 7.9 inches, and the device weighs only 310 grams. As for the technical characteristics, they are more like figures iPad 2 model 2011, is the same display resolution (1024 × 768) and the same dual-core Apple A5.

The manufacturer has prepared as many as 12 variants of iPad mini, tablet PC is available in black and white
body with hard drives of 16, 32 and 64 GB also available as a version with only Wi-Fi, and a model with built-in cellular modem, which supports a network of four generation LTE.  Its battery provides enough juice for up to 10-hour of operating time.

Hydrogen Battery For iPhone

Apple has plans to use hydrogen in batteries allowing iPhones and iPods to hold a charge for WEEKS:

Batteries as you know them may become a thing of the past for your Apple products as the company hopes to use hydrogen cells to produce lighter batteries that could last for weeks. 

The company is staying on the cutting edge as they have recently submitted applications for patents to create new energy sources for their products. 

The filings that the company submitted seem to have rather bold promises of allowing electronics to run for days or weeks without having to be recharged.

World's Most Powerful Camera..

Meet The World's Most Powerful 570MP Camera:

Handsets with the Nokia Lumia PureView cameras may boast of an astounding count of 41 MP but a newly erected DEC (Dark Energy Camera) has somewhat shaken its reputation. To make things clear, this is not a camera phone that anybody can keep in his pocket but reportedly the most powerful sky-mapping machine. The DEC has captured and recorded light from 8 billion years ago.