Ben the Bodyguard is a new app being developed for iOS that will protect passwords, photos, contacts, and anything else that you want to keep away from the prying eyes of anyone else.
What’s really neat about Ben though is his website, which features a really innovative navigation method to ‘walk’ you through the features.
Make sure to check it out before the release in January, though I’d imagine they’ll replace it with something equally amazing at that time as well.
Google Goggles is the future. But not the ‘eventually we will have something that can do that’ future, since it already exists, but the ’10 years ago, we thought we would have something that could do that in 100 years, but now we have it today’ future.
To use Google Goggles, you just take a picture of something with your Android phone using the Google Goggles app, and it automatically searches Google for the thing in the image. For instance, snap a picture of the Golden Gate Bridge, and it will automatically show you the search results for that landmark:
You can take pictures of landmarks, books, business cards, artwork, places, wine, or even a logo, and it will do its best to figure out what you’re trying to search for. And while that’s a neat trick on its own, the future part comes into play when you think of what this could enable with a few small tweaks.
Imagine if you had a pair of glasses with a camera in the front and screens on the inside. (See the Vuzix Wrap 920 for an example.) Then imagine that the camera is connected to the Google Goggles app, so that whenever you look at something, it automatically pulls up additional information from the web and displays it right in front of you. Suddenly you’re walking around like the Terminator with an augmented reality style display giving you extra information about the world around you in real time.
That might sound futuristic, but the technology to make it happen exists today, and all that’s needed is for someone to put the pieces together and get everything to play nicely with one another. Throw in a machine gun and add some Michael Bay to the mix, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a party!
The iTunes 8.1 update includes a new feature that I think has gone unjustly unnoticed: The new iTunes DJ. Now, in addition to acting as the world’s cheapest Sonos, the iPhone and iTunes combo can help turn you into the world’s best DJ.
The iTunes DJ playlist builder, which is designed to keep the music flowing at any party, allows you to collaboratively build a playlist with any of your friends that have an iPhone and the Remote app installed. With the app, they can log into the iTunes DJ playlist builder, view your library, suggest songs that should be added to the playlist, vote on upcoming songs, and generally help match the music to the mood of a party.
It’s easy to set up, with just a few check boxes and a welcome screen to enable, and once you’re up and running, the music you play will always be what a majority of the party-goers want to hear. (Hopefully…)
There’s something about Macs that just makes the app developers want to bundle, and the latest offering is the Mac Bundle Box (their fourth!), a collection of thirteen apps worth more than $333 that is selling for just $49.
In addition to the great deal they’re offering buyers, they’re also offering to do some good too, with 5% of each sale is going to Charity:Water, an organization that’s helping to build wells for the more than 1.1 billion people who don’t have safe drinking water.
The included applications are Relationship, Code Collector, DrawIt, Espionage, Cover Stream, DEVONnote, QuickScale, Project Calculator, Transcriva, Magnet, Involer, Stuf and Blog Assist, so if you’ve been looking to pick up any one of those, then perhaps now’s the time to pick up all of them and do some good while you’re at it.