This cooking pot can charge your iPhone Mike Wehner | Dec 13th 2013 5:00 PM EST
There aren't many things that can't charge your iPhone these days, and now we can add cooking accessories to the list of smartphone-powering accessories as well. The PowerPot X is currently being funded on a Kickstarter campaign, where it has already reached its goal with a further 33 days of its project remaining.
The PowerPot X uses thermoelectric power to generate 10 watts of power for charging any portable electronic gadget, including an iPad or two iPhones at once. The pot can be used on any heat source you have available, including a range or campfire, which I'm guessing would make it perfect for a remote camping trip.
As with most Kickstarter campaigns, there are different levels of funding, but the smallest pledge that will get you one of the pots is US$189, which doesn't actually sound that outlandish considering its ability to both cook you a meal and charge your iPad at the same time.
How to protect your phone in cold weather
By Heather Kelly, CNN
(CNN) - Smartphones are not built for the extreme cold. But since that snowball fight didn't really happen unless you Instagrammed and tweeted it, here are some tips for using your device during the cold of this winter.
Cold weather touchscreen tips
Winter gear is important to keep your extremities warm and cozy, but those mittens and gloves won't work on capacitive touch screens, which is the technology currently used on most smartphones and tablets. These screens depend on your body's ability to conduct electricity to work, and a thick insulating layer of wool prevents the screen from registering your taps and pokes.
There are inexpensive gloves that include special, conductive fabric on the tip of the index fingers so you can touch your screen without fumbling around to take off protective gear. To make your own gloves touchscreen compatible, thread the fingertips with conductive thread using this Make tutorial.
Another option for smartphones and tablets is a handheld stylus, which is better than a fuzzy finger if you need to do any volume of typing or work in the cold.
In a pinch, you can sometimes use the tip of your nose -- but precision navigation is tricky, and typing is a nightmare.
What happens to a chilly phone
Some smartphones list the optimum range of temperatures in their technical specs. For example, when it's turned off, the iPhone 5S can withstand temperatures between -4� and 113� Fahrenheit. When it's turned on, the range is much more narrow. Apple suggests 32� Fahrenheit as the lowest operating ambient temperature. Other phones are rated for much lower temperatures, and some can go as low as -4� Fahrenheit while in operation.
When lithium-ion batteries are exposed to cold temperatures, their performance suffers. When cold, a phone battery can drain faster than normal or it might say it has ample power remaining and then suddenly go dead. The problems are only temporary and the battery should behave normally when the device is brought back up to warmer temperatures.
"In the event that your phone does shut down, do not restart it until you're inside and give time for your phone to warm up. Restarting your phone immediately could actually cause more harm to your phone and actually shorten your battery life," recommends Jeremy Kwaterski of CPR Cell Phone Repair.
It's not just the battery, says Kwaterski. Smartphones are made up of other delicate electronic parts, like their LCD screens, that can malfunction in extreme temperatures.
Freezing temperatures can also make a phone's glass surfaces more sensitive to cracks and breaks, especially if there's already a flaw or nick in any of the glass. There have been reports of the glass on the back of the iPhone shattering in extreme cold temperatures. In Finland, where the average high temperature in the winter is 1�C, the government Consumer Agency has warned citizens that the phones might suffer performance issues in the cold weather.
Prevent phone freeze
To keep phones from getting too chilly, don't leave them alone in the elements, like in a parked car. Stashing them inside pockets closest to your person, where they can absorb some of your body heat, is best. If you do need to leave it behind, turn the phone off instead of just putting it to sleep.
Cases also help to keep phones warm. There are even cases especially built to regulate a phone's temperature in extreme situations.
Still a Kickstarter project, the dapper-looking Salt Case claims it refracts the heat given off by the device back to the phone to keep it warm in winter weather. It also adds on some additional layers of insulation. The makers say they based the technology on the thermally protective materials NASA developed for its space craft.
If you're depending on the phone to make outgoing calls in case of an emergency, say while driving on icy roads, keep a back-up power source with you.
I don't know if this has already been mentioned but argh you phone and gadget people have messed up the glove world! I'm a bit annoyed by the new 'gloves' out there with the 'touch' fingers grrrr. It is getting harder to find ones that don't have the darn little ET fingers. Cases in point:
Handy, but the Samsung galaxy S4 has an option in the settings for normal gloves. So basically the touch sensitivity increases. So no need for special gloves!
New 'smart' ring sends smartphone updates to your finger
If a user walks more than 30 feet from his phone, the ring will beep to alert him that he has left something behind.
WASHINGTON: Often miss out on important calls and texts because you don't notice your ring-tone? A new bluetooth-enabled wearable ring allows users to check smartphone alerts and manage incoming calls right from their finger.
Users can manage the settings of the gadget called Smarty Ring from a mobile app, and can even use the device as a watch, timer or phone finder, 'Mashable' reported.
If a user walks more than 30 feet from his phone, the ring will beep to alert him that he has left something behind.
The gadget keeps users updated with incoming & outgoing call notifications and alerts for text and e-mail messages.
It also gives them real time updates from Facebook, Twitter, Hangout & Skype, according to the project website.
The stainless-steel ring has a 24-hour battery life. It is compatible with both android and iOS devices, as long as they have Bluetooth 4.0 capabilities.
World's cheapest tablet hits UK for just �30 by Jamie Hinks, 16 Dec 2013NEWS
UK consumers are in for a cheap treat as a tablet computer costing just �30 is set to hit the shops and in the process significantly undercut the budget offerings currently on offer.
The "world's cheapest tablet" is the UbiSlate 7Ci that is manufactured by Datawind and was previously made for an Indian government education scheme and comes with a set of apps that befit a tablet costing just �29.99.
"With recent ONS figures showing that in the UK, 29% of the poorest households have no computer and 36% no internet, we're working to bring affordable technology to the hundreds of thousands of households excluded from the digital revolution", Datawind's chief executive Suneet Singh Tuli told The Guardian.
The cheapest tablet in the range of three is the Ubislate 7Ci that comes with a 7in touch screen display with a capacitive resolution of 800 x 480 pixels, 4GB of storage space and a microSD slot that allows expansion up to 32GB.
Very low screen resolution, no mention of RAM, no mention of battery life. This is vital along with the speed. If the battery lasts an hour, what's the point, it won't be very "mobile" Budget items will tendto die very quick, unless this company can guarantee long lasting life.
The battery must last long, speed must be there, operating system is vital, if it's something UN heard of, what will we do with it apart from run the built in programs.
Today I personally find phones have a much faster spec then normal computers and laptops. For this reason, I find it a lot quicker to do my work from the phone. Everything just loads much faster.
I'm sure you will agree about the speeds, pc's and laptops are really becoming a major slowdown!
It's true, working from the mobile phone is much quicker and convenient than using the pc or laptop which I hardly use anymore unless it's for writing, seems like the specs and features on the mobile phones have become so advanced in technology that they are outdoing the pc's and laptops.
Wifi could be killing plants, a school experiment found
Cress seedlings die when placed near wifi routers, a group of schoolgirls found, adding weight to previous experiments which suggested the radiation was damaging trees
A group of schoolgirls have found that plants die when placed near wifi routers adding to concerns about the potentially damaging effect of the radiation on human health.
The five teenagers decided to carry out the experiment after noticing they had trouble concentrating in school if they had slept near their mobile phones the previous night.
They placed six trays of garden cress next to two wifi routers and the same number in a radiation-free room for 12 days and recorded the results.
The seeds placed near the routers either hadn't grown or had turned brown and died while those placed away from the radiation blossomed into healthy plants.
The girls, from Denmark, believe the results could affect millions of people around the world.
Pupil Lea Nielsen said: "We all thought we experienced concentration problems in school if we slept with our mobile phones at the bedside, and sometimes we also found it difficult sleeping."
They initially wanted to test the effects of mobile phone radiation on human brain activity but this was ruled out due to limited resources so they opted for using plants near wireless routers, which emit similar radio waves to mobile phones.
But critics claim that the cress seedlings left next to the wifi routers could have died because they were dried out by heat given off by the devices.
Kim Horsevad, the students' biology teacher at Hjallerup School, said: "This has sparked quite a lively debate in Denmark regarding the potential adverse health effects from mobile phones and wifi equipment."
According to Ms Horsevad a professor of neuroscience at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden was so impressed with the experiment that he is interested in repeating it in a controlled scientific environment.
The results appear to support the findings of researchers in Holland, who found that trees exposed to wireless radio signals suffered from damaged bark and dying leaves.
There is little evidence wireless emissions pose a threat to human health.
Wifi signals use very low frequency radio waves, 100,000 times less powerful than a microwave so remaining in a wifi hotspot for a year would only expose you to the same dose of radio waves as making a 20-minute mobile phone call.
Wireless radio waves also diminish quickly with distance so people who want to minimise their exposure to wifi should sit more than 3ft away from their router and place their computer on a table rather than on their lap.
Good Alhamdulillah, but my fone still works fine, and has the essential services (imap email, youtube, whatsapp, opera) - but read that Nokia is ceasing support to symbian fones from jan 1st 2014 - if that affects in any way in day to day performance then will change, honestly don't like touch and large screened large sized phones, not practical and because i'm a nokia loyalist not want to buy any other, i mean come on, nokia apple ericcson are specialists, samsung lg etc they don't have class - don't mind, they even build washing machines and what not..just imagine samsung LG would have continued to build vaccum cleaners & not existed with regards to phones had Nokia decided to adopt android as their OS, had they had class they wouldn't have had to spend $400 million on advertising (samsung) and samsung still can't match the basic call quality of a Nokia. Anyways, will inshaAllah wait until they settle down with Microsoft and then buy.
Looks like dream of Nokia fans will just be a dream.
No Android devices from Nokia, wearables planned instead
Talk that Nokia is working on Android-powered devices was met with great excitement, even when the rumors stated that the company is looking to fork Android. Chinese site CTechnology has some insider info about the status of the project, though, and the news isn't good.
The Android development was led by Peter Skillman, former VP MeeGo UX and Services Design and current Head of Design for HERE. Skillman was also VP of Design at Palm until 2010 around the time the Palm Pre came out. All in all, if we had to pick someone to do a fork of Android, Peter Skillman sounds like the guy for the job. And Nokia was reportedly working on several Android devices, including a 7" tablet powered by Snapdragon 400.
These developments were done separately from the division that is going to Microsoft, but as part of that deal Nokia can't sell Nokia-branded phones for two years and a new brand may be hard to push now that Nokia has lost the magical clout it had a few years ago.
So phones are out of the picture for now, Nokia will instead focus on wearables - augmented reality and flexible displays, wireless power transmission and electromagnetic energy generation are quoted as the things that will set a Nokia wearable apart from the competition.
A Nokia smartwatch may not be part of the package though as that project is reportedly headed to Microsoft. Keep in mind that this is not official info, so there's no way to tell if it's true. The whole Android-powered thing is just a rumor so far.
This cannot be undone and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.
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