connected

Simple puzzler gets challenging quickly as gameboards get bigger

Flow Free: Bridges is an easy-to-learn puzzler with satisfying touch-screen controls, but be ready for a challenge once you hit later levels.

Many people will remember Web-based pipe games where you connect pipes to complete a circuit so water can flow from a starting point to a goal. Flow Free: Bridges is a similar concept, but instead you're trying to connect multiple color-coded start and end points together without crossing the lines. Fortunately, there is an exception to the rule about crossing the lines, with bridge tiles you can make one pipe pass over another to get to the … Read more

Unlock your Hyundai with a tap of your smartphone by 2015

In the future, you'll be able to unlock your Hyundai car, start its engine, and more with little more than your NFC-enabled smartphone. Using the new Hyundai i30 (known here in the States as the Elantra GT) as its Connectivity Concept test platform, Hyundai showed off a variety of wireless technologies that it hopes to implement as early as 2015.

According to Hyundai, "the Connectivity Concept allows the user to lock and unlock the car by placing their smartphone over an NFC-tag (near-field communication), negating the need for a traditional key fob." Upon entering the vehicle, placing … Read more

IDC device maker ranking shows Apple value, Samsung volume

In the brave new world of connected personal computing devices, Hewlett-Packard is a distant No. 4, with Samsung and Apple leading the way.

Think of IDC's "Worldwide Smart Connected Device Market" report as the 21st century equivalent of PC maker rankings.

Personal computing today includes tablets and smartphones, not just the laptop in your father's home office.

That global smart-connected device market grew 27.1 percent year-over-year in the third quarter to a record 303.6 million shipments valued at $140.4 billion, IDC said today in a research note.

"HP, which is virtually non-existent … Read more

How to enable metered Wi-Fi connections in Windows 8

One of the new features of Windows 8 is metered wireless connections. In the past, you could run Windows programs to monitor your data usage, but they didn't do anything to actually reduce data usage. With mobile hot spot and broadband card usage on the rise and unlimited data plans nearing extinction, every kilobyte of bandwidth saved is a penny earned. Enabling metering in Windows 8 will limit your PC or tablet's data usage by preventing nonessential data transfers.

According to Microsoft's FAQ on metered connections, the effects of enabling a metered connection are:

Windows Update will … Read more

MirrorLink turns cars into dumb terminals

LOS ANGELES -- Modern cars play digital music, guide us to destinations, and respond to voice commands. But so do our smartphones. Through a technology called MirrorLink, the Connected Car Consortium (CCC) hopes to rid us of this duplication, using the car's LCD and interface to show navigation and play music from a smartphone.

The MirrorLink initiative turns the car into a dumb terminal, lacking much in the way of its own computing power and relying on the phone as its processor. One advantage of this system for the user is that the same data stored on the phone … Read more

Nokia's soon-to-be-ex camera chief heading to car company

How does one switch from developing smartphone cameras to working on cars? Maybe it's that they both have to do with going mobile?

Damian Dinning, head of imaging and photography for Nokia for almost a decade, told mobile-photography blog PureView Club (which is, of course, focused on Nokia's PureView technology) that he's leaving the phone maker and heading to Jaguar Land Rover. Dinning said staying on at Nokia would've required a move to Finland, which wouldn't have jibed with his family situation.

PureView, you may recall, is the technology involved with Nokia's 808 PureView phone, … Read more

Take control of your car's tech with these six apps

OK, so you you can't remotely drive a BMW with a phone like James Bond does in "Tomorrow Never Dies," but there are plenty of real apps that will let you take control of your car and its tech with little more than your smartphone and a data connection. From beaming destinations to your Toyota's navigation system with Entune to remotely unlocking your doors with GM's OnStar RemoteLink, we've rounded up a few of the best car-controlling apps. … Read more

GPS pioneer takes aim at the future of navigation

The pace of modern consumer technology has been so swift in recent decades that you can still meet the people who helped change the world, and find that they're still at it and working on what's next. Bob Rennard is an example.

He was one of the developers of the GPS technology we rely on today, and is a co-founder of TeleNav, a provider of GPS-related software and services. The company called me and offered to have Rennard explain its Scout platform. I'm normally reticent to come do a story on a product pitch, but the key … Read more

Sprint to offer landline-cutting device to its wireless providers

Sprint's Phone Connect device will now find its way to more people anxious to get rid of their landlines.

Known as Sprint Phone Connect, the "plug and play" device operates via Sprint's 3G network. Users can simply plug their home or office phones into the device, and calls are then carried over the network instead of the traditional landline.

Sprint already sells the product directly. But now the company is offering it to its MVNOs (mobile virtual network operators), wireless providers that buy network services from the major carriers and then sell them to customers. This … Read more