Blog Posts by Tori Floyd

  • New door lock turns your iPhone into a house key

    By Tori Floyd | The Right Click – Thu, 9 May, 2013

    It seemed inevitable that we’d soon move from using keys to a more high-tech means of opening doors. However, that doesn’t make a lock you can open with your smartphone any less cool.

    T3 reports that Kwikset, a maker of electronic locks, has come up with a way to let you unlock doors with your iPhone. The Kēvo includes a standard lock you can use with a key, as well as an electronic mechanism called UniKey that can be unlocked with an app on an iPhone 4S or an iPhone 5 via Bluetooth.

    Here’s a look at the lock in action:

    But what makes the lock really different is the ability to send a key to another person. If you have a babysitter, neighbour, or someone else stopping by the house when you’re not there, you can create a temporary key for a limited amount of time. You can also let anyone close the door behind them without a key (physical or digital) by triple-tapping the lock on their way out the door.

    Engadget adds that while the app is only available for iOS at this point, it does include

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  • Guests are silhouetted at the launch event of Windows 8 operating system in New York.After months of complaints from users about the new Windows 8 operating system, it is now confirmed that we’ll get a glimpse the first major update to the OS, codenamed Windows Blue, this summer.

    Tech Crunch reports the first public preview of Windows Blue will be happening in late June, Microsoft Windows chief Julie Larson-Green said during the Wired Business Conference this week. She said that the update will be available to everyone that has Windows 8 in the Windows 8 store, but that’s about all the details she would share.

    [ Related on Y! Finance: Windows 8 may be an idea whose time will still come ]

    We know slightly more about Windows Blue from an interview Microsoft’s Tami Reller, Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Windows, who was interviewed by the corporate blog Blogging Windows. While she wasn’t much more forthcoming with details, she did hint at some of the changes we can expect to see:

    “It will deliver the latest new innovations across an increasingly broad

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  • Film director Steven Soderbergh, who is probably better known for his work on Magic Mike and Ocean’s Eleven than his literary career, is releasing a novella in a very unconventional way.

    Starting April 28, Soderbergh began posting pieces of Glue, a crime-suspense-thriller, in single tweets to his Twitter account, @Bitchuation.

    Here’s a sample of the first few tweets:

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  • (Screengrab from creative.adobe.com)It’s been almost ten years since Adobe first launched its Creative Suite, and now, it looks like CS6 was the last boxed version we’ll ever see.

    At this week’s Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles, California, the software giant that has become renowned for everything from Reader to Photoshop to After Effects delivered attending developers quite an unexpected surprise: instead of unveiling Adobe Creative Suite 7 as many expected, the company announced that it would no longer be making the boxed suite of software for users.

    Instead, Adobe is focusing its efforts on its Creative Cloud service, which connects its customers to its full suite of programs through a subscription-based model. Launched just over a year ago, users pay a monthly fee to use the apps, and also receive 20GB of cloud storage. Monthly subscriptions range from $19.99 USD for students and teachers to $49.99 USD for new Creative Cloud users.

    [ Related: ‘Inkling’ pen lets artists sketch anywhere, then convert to digital ]

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  • New Xbox 720 won’t need to be always online: report

    By Tori Floyd | The Right Click – Mon, 6 May, 2013

    According to an email, certain functions will require an Internet connection, but it won’t be an ‘always-online’ scenario.Despite early reports that the new Xbox, codename “Durango,” would need an always-online Internet connection, it appears that this may no longer be the case.

    According to an email obtained by Ars Technica that they report was sent to Microsoft employees, certain functions will require an Internet connection, but it won’t be an ‘always-online’ scenario:

    “Durango is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today's Internet.” Ars reports was said in the email. “There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game.”

    [ Related: ‘Always online’ Xbox system requirement defended by Microsoft’s Adam Orth ]

    Microsoft wouldn’t comment on the alleged email, or even confirm that it was actually an email sent within the company,

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  • (Getty Image)
    Prepare yourselves, social media users: your Twitter feed, Facebook timeline and pretty much every interaction you have with a fan of Star Wars on May 4 will likely begin with the same greeting: “May the Fourth be with you.”

    A play on the famous farewell of Jedis (“may the Force be with you”), May 4 has now come to be unofficially recognized by fans as Star Wars Day. Some say that the origin of the day is loosely tied to the election of Margaret Thatcher as the U.K. Prime Minister. In a document about the making of The Empire Strikes Back for the Lucasfilm archives, Nerdvana reports, the greeting is said to have been used in a 1979 newspaper ad that congratulated Thatcher on her election win on May 4:

    “May the Fourth Be With You, Maggie. Congratulations.”

    [ More Buzz: Company gives raise to employees who get its logo tattooed ]

    Fans will be celebrating with movie marathons and parties around the world, and corporations have started to cash in on the oronym, too. Disney, which recently

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  • (Image courtesy UNICEF Sweden)In an effort to try and get well-meaning Facebook users to help their cause, UNICEF has launched a campaign with a very clear message: Facebook ‘likes’ won’t help, money will.

    Last month, UNICEF Sweden began airing a series of commercials that target this issue of “slacktivisms,” the act of doing something so minimal you feel like you’re doing something for a good cause, when really, you’re contributing very little. While there is something to be said for awareness of an issue, doing nothing else, i.e. not contributing any time or money to a cause, won’t actually help carry out the work of the organization.

    That’s exactly what this commercial by UNICEF Sweden hits on:

    The Verge says the other two commercials, also both in Swedish, take a more lighthearted approach with the same message: you can’t pay for anything else in likes, and charitable donations are no different.

    “We like likes, and social media could be a good first step to get involved, but it cannot stop there,” UNICEF Sweden

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  • If you’ve been mulling downloading something from Apple’s App Store, today would be a great day to do it: Apple will be awarding a prize to the person who gets Apple to the 50-billion download milestone.

    Apple currently has a counter running on its website, and just after 11:00 a.m. ET, nearly 49,300,000,000 apps had been downloaded, with that number growing all the time. If you’re the person who downloads app number 50 billion, you’re be rewarded with a $10,000 App Store Card, so you’ll never have to debate whether to buy that in-app downloadable content ever again.

    [ Related: Man gets $10,000 gift card for downloading 25-billionth App Store app ]

    Unlike previous times Apple has awarded a gift card for downloading a milestone app, the first 50 people to download the first 50 apps after that will get a $500 App Store gift card.

    It seems that Apple has started reaching these milestones faster and faster as more people adopt the iPhone and iPad devices. Apple announced that 10 billion apps

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  • On November 5, first-person shooter fans everywhere will be calling in sick so they can play the brand new Call of Duty: Ghosts, the newly-confirmed tenth game in the Call of Duty series.

    In a May 1 announcement, Activision unveiled its early plans for the latest Call of Duty game, which will be coming just in time for holiday shopping. The announcement was made alongside the release of this trailer; while it doesn’t show much in the way of gameplay, it should serve to excite first-person shooter fans about the upcoming release.

    [ Related: Activision summons 'Call of Duty: Ghosts' as next 'Call of Duty' video game installment ]

    Here’s a rundown on what we know about the game so far:

    It’s not Modern Warfare 4

    Despite being developed by Infinity Ward, the same company that worked on the first three Call of Duty: Modern Warfare games, Ghosts will be based on a new story with different characters and setting than any previous CoD game.

    “Everyone was expecting us to make Modern Warfare 4, which

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  • Thorsten Heins speaks at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills (Reuters)As the new BlackBerry Q10 device is being delivered into the hands of the BlackBerry faithful, amongst many asking why anyone still needs a physical keyboard, the company’s CEO is predicting that it’ll only be a few more years before tablets are no more.

    During a conversation with Richard Ditizio at the Milken Institute on Monday, BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins made a comment that tablets would eventually become less useful as people get more use out of their smartphones. The Washington Post reports Heins as saying that smartphones will become the main source of computing power in the next few years, when people can plug in peripherals like monitors and keyboards directly into their device.

    “In five years, I don’t think there’ll be a reason to have a tablet anymore,” Heins said in the interview, Bloomberg reports. “Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model.”

    [ Related on Y! Finance: BlackBerry’s Q10 launch puts typing

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