phones

With all of the recent talk about PRISM, the NSA, and Big Bro Obama following you around the Internet and reading all of your precious e-mails containing links to those "all-critical" YouTube videos your dad keeps sending you, it's great to see a company taking a stand for personal privacy.

Starting this Tuesday, June 25, the folks over at AnchorFree are giving away 50,000 free codes for their Elite Hotspot Shield VPN services, good for six months. These codes will unlock cross-platforms and will work on PC, Mac, and iOS (Android not supported yet), on up … Read more

The iPhone 5 may not be quite as hot as its precedessors, at least according to a new report from Oppenheimer analyst Ittai Kidron.

In an investors note out Tuesday, Kidron cited retail checks that indicate "steady demand for the iPhone 4/4S and mixed demand for the iPhone 5." And the analyst predicts the trend will continue. As a result, he now expects iPhone sales of 26 million for the current quarter, down from his prior forecast of 27 million.

The September quarter may also be a bit dicey. Though Kidron still believes a new iPhone will … Read more

Microsoft's Xbox and PC games may be coming to Apple's iPhone and Android devices sometime this year, according to a report by Nikkei via Reuters.

The tech giant is allegedly working on a licensing deal with Japanese mobile game maker KLab to bring its games to other smartphone platforms, according to Reuters. One of the first games said to be released is Age of Empires, which reportedly will be free and available on iOS and Android smartphones by the end of this year.

There are 70 apps accessing my Facebook account. I did not know that before I had MyPermissions scan my account. With this free app for iPhone or for Android, you can keep track of the apps that have access to your various online profiles, including Facebook, Twitter, Google, Yahoo, Dropbox, Instagram, Foursquare, and Flickr. The app doesn't do anything that you can't do directly on the permissions page of a given account, but it acts as a convenient dashboard to monitor and control which apps have access to your accounts.

To check the permissions of one of your … Read more

Your reputation as a tough, hard-nosed business go-getter may take a hit if you spend a lot of time using your little smartphone. A study conducted by researchers at Harvard Business School suggests that using devices with small screens can cause people to behave less assertively than those using larger screens.

"Grounded in research showing that adopting expansive body postures increases psychological power, we hypothesized that working on larger devices, which forces people to physically expand, causes users to behave more assertively," reads the abstract of the paper, titled "iPosture: The Size of Electronic Consumer Devices Affects Our Behavior."… Read more

Apple on Monday released the second beta of iOS 7, exactly two weeks after the first iteration of the software was doled out to developers.

The new version promises only to fix bugs and contains other undocumented "improvements."

But the big new thing in this release is a version of the software for iPads -- both the regular and Mini models. The first version of the software only came for iPhones and iPod Touches, with Apple promising to add support for other devices as time went on.

The software requires developers to sign a privacy agreement, but that … Read more

With game controller support headed to iOS 7 in just a few months, the lineup of third-party hardware is already starting to take shape.

The latest: the Flipside, an iPhone case that can expand out to add buttons and controls for games. It's also got solar cells that can recharge the case itself.

If this looks and sounds familiar, it's because the same product was pitched on Kickstarter in December though was halted before it could be completed. Nonetheless it raised a little more than $8,000 of its $135,000 funding goal. Things are different this time, … Read more

Apple may trim its iPhone build orders for the rest of 2013, at least according to a new report from analyst Peter Misek.

In an investors note released Sunday, Misek said Apple has already revised its build plans. iPhone orders for the calendar third quarter will be cut to 25 million to 30 million from 40 million to 45 million previously. And orders for the fourth quarter will drop to 50 million to 55 million from 60 million to 65 million.

Why the downturn? The analyst cited a few reasons, mostly notably iPhone inventory checks at the stores of three … Read more

I have had the impression for some time that Google has thought of everything.

This impression was mainly fostered by Google, which seems intent not merely on knowing everything I do now, but everything I will want to do in the future.

But then I saw this footage of a man talking into his pinkie finger and thought: "He must be British."

This did, indeed, prove to be the case. For Sean Miles of Designworks in the U.K. decided that the true joy of wearable tech was a driving glove that you can talk into.

At least … Read more