Mobile Archives - Page 3 of 15

NQ Mobile Vault For iPhone Is The Ultimate For Privacy And Security

NQ Mobile, the leader in mobile security, announced today via their US headquarters in Dallas Texas that they’ve launched the NQ Mobile Vault for iPhone. This privacy locker app for iOS devices is also available for Android smartphones and provides the ultimate amount of security and protection for files that you want to keep away from prying eyes.

The addition of the iPhone version of NQ Mobile’s Mobile Vault, comes on the heels of 3 million downloads for Android and a rating in the Google play store of 4.5 out of 5 stars.

While some might jump to the conclusion that this app is for people who have things they shouldn’t have stored on their phone, on the contrary there are hundreds of legitimate reasons to keep your photos secure and private. First of all, if you’re a startup or working on something involving intellectual property you wouldn’t want those photos to leak into the wrong hands.

You may also be hesitant about having your personal family photos resting on your phone to see, whether you let a friend borrow your phone to make a phone call or you leave your phone on your desk all day. NQ Mobile’s Mobile Vault will give you an extra piece of mind.

Heck if you’re married or in a relationship and travel a lot you may want to protect some photos that some may think are inappropriate out of your general gallery.

Mobile Vault is the most robust app of its kind and includes:

Private Album: Easily transfer photos and videos from the iPhone album to Vault’s secure and password protected album.
Vault Camera: Helps to eliminate any possibility of leaving private content out in the open with its built-in camera, which will automatically secure any photo and video it takes behind Vault’s password protected album.
Break-In Attempts Monitor (premium feature): Catch intruders in the act! Automatically photographs anyone who enters the wrong password into Vault (requires a front facing camera).
SecureCam Login (premium feature): SecureCam login is an innovative security tool that uses the main camera of the iPhone to unlock and access NQ Mobile Vault content. To anyone attempting to snoop, when NQ Mobile Vault is first opened, it will simply open up to what appears to be a simple camera app. But when the camera is pointed at a solid background (like a hand or desk surface), a numeric keypad will appear, allowing users to login.

“Our smartphones have become portable picture frames that we put into the hands of our friends, family members and colleagues every day,” says Gavin Kim, Chief Product Officer, NQ Mobile. “To date, it’s been an all or nothing proposition — either you choose to share your phone and expose all your content or you keep it to yourself. NQ Mobile Vault offers the best of both worlds, allowing consumers the ability to create two distinct albums on their iPhones — one for openly sharing and another, more private album, that is kept safely behind a password.

NQ Mobile is known for their widely used security products and Mobile Vault was developed with the same attention to details and features that the NQ Mobile team has been known for, even before they were at NQ Mobile. Kim, along with co-CEO Omar Khan and PR Executive Kim Titus were all part of the Samsung Mobile team when Samsung was burning up the charts with Android devices.

Linkage

iPhone users can get Mobile Vault here

Android users can get it here

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Next Generation iPhone Strongly Rumored For September 21st Launch

Most everyone who has even a murmur of a pulse about technology knows that we are expecting the announcement of the next generation iPhone to come out of a press event Apple is holding on September 12th. We won’t even go with calling it the “iPhone 5” at this point in time because of the stunt Apple pulled with “the new iPad”. However, whatever you call it, it’s expected to be announced in a few short weeks.

We’re not even going to speculate as to what features this next generation iPhone will have. I am personally switching, provided it has 4G/LTE, without that though, I’m sticking with a 4S. If you want to keep track of the rumors and the track records of the rumor mongerers we highly suggest you check out Cincinnati startup Tracour here.

As for the relevance of the next iPhone here at nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, well the design for one is of great concern to any startup in the iPhone accessory space. The brains, speed, and guts of the next iPhone also weigh heavily on the conscious of the thousands of startups who rely on iPhone apps. And of course, because we’re smart enough to know you’ll read this piece just because of the headline.

As for the source, every major tech site is reporting off a tip that originated at TechCrunch and has been confirmed by just about every site with a connection to a middle manager at Verizon Wireless. Apparently Verizon Wireless has a vacation freeze on the 21st of September. The barely under 10 day spread from announcement to release date, fits conspicuously well within Apple’s normal pattern and routine.

It’s also heavily rumored that Apple will release a 7″ iPad at the same event. For many this is great news. The 7″ form factor fits in your pocket very nicely but aside from that I think I’m going to stick with the 10″ version myself. As Cameron will tell you, I’m quite good with the 10″ iPad keyboard.

Well I get a 7″ iPad. Probably.

Are you getting the next gen iPhone? Are you getting a 7″ iPad? Tell us below in the comments section.

Source: TechCrunch via PCWorld

Apple Drops Their Preloaded YouTube App Leaving Google To Finally Bring Their Own YouTube Experience To iOS

As many of you know already, Apple has just announced that they would not include their 1st-party YouTube app in the next iteration of iOS. Plenty of sites have taken this opportunity to show the fact that Apple and Google are opposing forces, and with that comes a dissociation of products and services. However, this can actually be a very good thing for Apple, Google, and all iOS users.

Up until the release of Google’s new version of Google+ for iOS, almost every single app Google put into the App Store sucked. For instance, Gmail. But after we got a glimpse of Google’s beautiful work on the new Google+ app, many became believers. If Apple had announced their dropping of the YouTube app before we saw Google+ for iOS’s makeover this reaction would have been a completely different story, but because of Google’s latest efforts, I am a believer.

Apple’s move to drop their 1st-party YouTube app leaves Google in a position with two possible outcomes: develop a YouTube app for iOS or let iOS users deal with the mobile site. Now that Google has decided they would like to make quality apps for iOS, it doesn’t worry me that they will have to develop their own app, and leads me to believe that they will. And this will be a good thing for iOS users, because the YouTube app Apple was supplying was pretty bare. You could watch videos and leave comments, and that’s about as far as it went. Sure, there were a few other features, but it was nowhere near as robust and Google’s YouTube app for Android. This means that if Google follows their recent iOS app development patterns (and I mean very recent), the iOS community should be anxiously awaiting a beautifully developed YouTube app.

Google hasn’t actually said they will develop an iOS app yet though, and if they don’t many iOS users will be hurting for a native app. But Google knows how big YouTube is, and even if they were so blind as to say a native app isn’t necessary, the community will make sure El Goog knows its mistake. This also will relieve the duty of developing a third-party app for a service they don’t actually own, much like they’ve done with Google Maps. Now all we can do is wait to see if Google can bring us the YouTube app that we want to see, and if they do, the world of iOS will be ready to finally get a proper YouTube experience.

Google Officially Updates Google Wallet To 4 No Wait 3 No Wait 2 Credit Card Brands

Earlier this week nibletz.com Co-Founder and Google extreme loyalist Cameron Wright, was bragging to me while we were on the road in Ohio, that Google Wallet was now a game-changer. He was finally excited that you could add any major credit card to Google’s NFC enabled “Google Wallet” product.

Today that is still the case however Google has come under fire by TechCrunch and SAI after it was learned, that they actually had no definitive agreement with American Express, and one other credit card carrier. They haven’t named the other credit card carrier but our sources tell us it starts with a D and ends in an R and has iscove in the middle.

While both American Express cards and the other cards are still available for use with Google Wallet either company can pull the plug at anytime. This TechCrunch story points specifically to American Express.

American Express is concerned with the transparency that Mastercard’s Pay Pass program provides to the customers. Currently Mastercard Pay Pass terminals are still the only terminals that are able to accept Google Wallet, regardless of which credit card provider your transaction goes to.

This isn’t meant to alarm anyone as Google Wallet is essentially a safe mobile commerce payment solution. American Express (and we will assume the other company as well), doesn’t like the amount of data that Mastercard Pay Pass provides. Mastercard’s Pay Pass terminals only provide location and transaction amount back to credit card carriers outside of Mastercard.

While American Express has long been a partner of Google’s “Google Checkout” payment system, they never signed an agreement with Google specifically for Google Wallet. Earlier this year Google merged all of their payment products together under one umbrella, perhaps thinking that this merge would allow them to arbitrarily just use all four brands.

American Express’ Social Media VP Scott Minor told Chris Velazco at TechCrunch:

“We want to make sure Google’s mobile wallet product meets the standards we set for our Cardmembers in terms of transparency and clarity about transaction detail,” Minor said. “Right now, American Express does not have an agreement with Google for our cards to be used in the Google mobile wallet.”

It took a good part of the day yesterday, but Google finally replied to Velazco’s request for a statement and said:

For many years, we’ve accepted American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Discover for online and mobile transactions. The latest version of Google Wallet extends these same benefits to people who choose to use the Google Wallet app to make purchases in-store. We are in active discussions with American Express and look forward to working together as partners as the world embraces digital payments.”

Google has been struggling with Google Wallet since they first launched the product via the Samsung Galaxy S and then the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. When it was released Google Wallet supported their own in-house prepaid credit card program along with Citibank MasterCards. While American Express and the “other” credit card carrier hash out the details of an agreement with Google, all four brands are still able to connect to Google Wallet and use via NFC.

We are well into the summer of 2012 and still waiting for the rollout of ISIS, the mobile payment service developed in concert with Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile .At South By Southwest earlier this year ISIS indicated that they would have markets up and testing during the Summer of 2012.

Linkage:

SAI Story

TC Story

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Ballistic Unveils New Rugged “Shell Gel Maxx” Cases For The Samsung Galaxy S III

The Samsung Galaxy S III is quickly turning into the most popular Android phone in the world. This follow up to the highly popular Galaxy S II and original Galaxy S III has features that every Android enthusiast (and some iPhone enthusiasts) have been dreaming about. It’s also a pretty expensive piece of hardware if it’s not subsidized. So now you need a case worthy of holding the precious Galaxy S III. That case is the new Shell Gel Maxx from Ballistic Cases.

The Shell Gel Maxx provides maximum protection without the immense bulk of a case like the Otterbox. Not only is your Samsung Galaxy S III going to be protected from corner to corner but Ballistic has revolutionized the screen protection on the case as well. Rather than having a thin overlay film cover like an Otterbox case Ballistic has equipped that Shell Gel Maxx with a molded screen protector.

The Ballistic Shell Gel (SG) Maxx is a beefed up version of the original Shell Gel. Similar to the original, this case integrates an outermost layer, which is made of soft rubber (TPU) for shock absorption, a second layer which is crafted with impact resistant polycarbonate, and a third layer built with soft outer TPU. The Maxx collection, however, “ups the ante” by incorporating stronger corners for increased drop protection, a horizontal holster, and integrated port covers.

The Ballistic Shell Gel Maxx is available now for the Samsung Galaxy S III and coming soon for the iPhone 4/4S. You can get one today by clicking here.

Booq Introduces Zipperless “Viper” Case For Macbook Air

Booq, a manufacturer of high end backpacks, laptop cases, and other gadget holding devices aimed at the tech enthusiast has done it again, combining form with function. Taking a cue from the magnetic cases of iPads, available since the iPad 2, Booq has come up with the all new Viper case for the Macbook Air.

The Viper case securely holds your Macbook in the sleeve without the use of velcro, buttons or zippers. With the Macbook air firmly in place at the bottom of the pouch like sleeve the top locks with a magnet. No worries the small, yet forceful magnet, won’t damage your computer or the contents on it’s hard drive..We asked.

“The MacBook Air is a beautiful, well-designed device,” says Thorsten Trotzenberg, Founder & CEO of Booq LLC. “There is no reason to add weight and unnecessary bulk to your MacBook Air. A sleeve should provide enough protection for everyday use, but still be slim and sleek, making it just as at home in a laptop bag as it is on its own . Viper sleeve keeps a low profile, makes zipper scratches non-existent, and the natural fiber style looks good from the coffee shop to the boardroom.”

The Viper features include:

Snug fit with hassle-free zipper-less magnetic closure
Made from natural fiber
Fits 11 and 13-inch MacBook Air
Available in sand, gray, black and purple

The case is available now direct from Booq here and at other electronics retailers

New Gear: Satechi Introduces Amazing New 10,00mah Portable Energy Station

Satechi, a San Diego manufacturer of sleek looking, useful accessories has introduced one bad ass portable battery charger.

For most tech people, gadget geeks and early adopters, long gone are the days where one simple little portable charger will work. Juice Packs, and Power Skins are great for the average user but for people like us we need power, and lots of it.

We always travel with a PowerBag and some other big charging apparatus.

Satechi has found a way to answer that need while keeping a sleek design, something that they are known for, form and function.

The Satechi Power Station is a 10,000mah portable battery. Not only is it well designed from a style perspective but for function as well.

Satechi has included the traditional 1amp outlet but also the more powerful 2 amp outlet which means YES your tablet or iPad can charge as well.

At just under 6oz and only 5.5″ long the Satechi Power Station isn’t too big or too heavy.

Linkage:

For more info or to buy one click here

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Los Angeles Startup: 80sBrickphone Bringing Back Iconic 80’s Motorola Dynatac

A Los Angeles startup founded by designer Brad Helmink, is bringing back one of the 1980’s most iconic pieces of mobile technology.

The Motorola DynaTac was first introduced in 1983 for a price tag around $4000 in 2012 terms it would be closer to $9000. The phone was one of the first mobile phones that didn’t require a bag to be attached to it. The DynaTac had about 30 minutes of talk time and 8 hours of standby.

The phone was spun into popularity by the savvy Wall Street tycoon Gordon Gecko, played by Michael Douglas in the movie Wall Street. Our readers, just a little younger may recall the phone having a prominent place at Bayside High School where saved by the bell’s main character Zack Morris (played by Mark Paul Gosselaar) carried one to school.

If you’re too young to remember either, well just trust us, it’s freaking cool.

The new 2012 model is not an actual phone but rather a bluetooth speaker system that Helmink insists, sounds far more superior than the original during a call.

The Bluetooth version will give you the average bluetooth battery life, about 5 hours of talk time and tons of hours of standby. It also works with any Bluetooth enabled smartphone.

You’ll be the talk of the office, trading floor, party, pool,mall or wherever you go when people see you actually making and receiving calls on the new 80sBrickphone. In this day and age where the “coolest new” Android phone is released every two weeks and hundreds of millions own an iPhone 4s, the 80sBrickphone will be a status symbol of epic proportions.

To get the project off the ground Helmink took to Indiegogo. He’s looking to make $55,000 to cover the costs of an initial production run. He’s collected a little over $4000 just enough to buy an original back in the 80s.

If you want one (and we know you do) there’s a link below.

Linkage:

Want an 80sBrickphone? here’s it’s Indiegogo Page

You can find more info on their website

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T-Mobile Stores Prepare For Samsung Galaxy Note

Although it still has yet to be officially announced by the powers that be at both Samsung and T-mobile, T-Mobile stores across the country have started displaying these co-op advertising posters which prominently display the 5″ Samsung Galaxy Note.

The Samsung Galaxy Note released earlier this Spring and exclusively on AT&T and their new 4G network.

The Galaxy Note was actually announced last year at the IFA trade show in Berlin Germany last September. Samsung introduced the device as a disruptive new category between phone and tablet which were affectionately called Phoneblets or Phablets by the mobile tech media.

The Samsung Galaxy Note was the last Android device that I personally carried and quickly found it was a breeze to post blog posts from it. In fact we used it exclusively to publish content on our old site and this one from SXSW back in March.

Many Android and mobile sites have showed leaked pics of the T-Mobile branded device, however this picture isn’t even a poster in a tube or a back room. Our source snapped the picture directly from the wall of their Texas based T-Mobile corporate store.

AT&T Branded Galaxy Note And Galaxy S II Skyrocket Are Receiving ICS Today

AT&T Galaxy users shall be rejoicing as of today, because Samsung announced that both the Galaxy Note and the Galaxy S II Skyrocket will be receiving Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Now, ICS isn’t even the newest version of Android anymore, and the devices will only be getting 4.0.4 and won’t get the upgrade to the newest version of TouchWiz, but it’s still ICS. Android 4.0 will bring a slew of improvements from lessened visual lag to ICS-only apps and app updates.

The Note and the GSII Skyrocket have been some of AT&T’s best devices to offer for quite a while, and really have only been best by the HTC One X and of course, the Galaxy S III. The Note will be receiving a better deal from this upgrade than the Skyrocket though, with its “premium suite” of apps. A specialized S Memo and S Note app will be coming, both updated to newer versions, My Story will be receiving an upgrade as well. It’s good to see Samsung still supporting these devices after the launch of their new flagship phone, and users can grab the update today via the Samsung Kies desktop application.

Apple Fixes Issue With App Store That Caused Thousands Of Apps To Crash

Apple is a company that usually doesn’t have very many issues when it comes to iTunes or the App Store–at least as far as malware and large coding errors are concerned. However, this week has been a tough one for Apple, users, and developers alike as one of Apple’s servers had an issue delivering DRM code to the apps updated or downloaded. This faulty coding caused apps to misbehave and crash upon opening in many cases–nearly thousands in the App Store were affected. While this was just for a very brief period of time, a lot of uneasy customers were afraid their iPhone was either being attacked by malware or completely malfunctioning when it came to third-party apps.

The company issued a fix today however, that took care of most of the issues that we know of, and a few we didn’t. First, Apple fixed all of the apps added to the App Store or updated, and then pushed an update to apps that were affected for users to download. They also took care of the developers as well, by reviewing not just 1-star reviews, but all reviews published about an app that was affected. Ensuring that both users and developers have been taken care of, Apple again shows why they have the reputation of some of the best customer service around. If you have an iDevice that was suffering from any of these crashes or issues, be sure to check the App Store and receive the necessary updates.

[UPDATE] Google Assures Us That The Galaxy Nexus Will Be Shipping Again Next Week

The Galaxy Nexus sold directly from Google Play was moved from “In Stock” to “Coming Soon” due to a preliminary injunction filed against it by Apple. Because Apple holds so many vague patents, judges will often do things such as suspend sales (like we saw with the Tab 10.1) because Apple feels there are infringements in products from Samsung and Google. Of course, the Android community was either infuriated or just disappointed by a somewhat broken patent system that allows this, and Apple fanboys either don’t care or are rejoicing over their “victory.” Either way this smartphone war has proved to be as bitter as ever, without showing any signs of less aggression.

Google said they had a fix though, through software, that would allow them to get the Galaxy Nexus shipping again without any ridiculous delays. They have just told ABC that they will resume sales and shipping next week. This is very good for both Google and the image of Android, as this is the flagship “Pure Google” experience device that is available other than the Nexus 7. At only $349 from the Play Store (GSM HSPA+ only), it’s nothing shy of a great deal either.

Specifically, the patent Apple has seen as infringed upon is its “Siri patent” that patents a single interface searching multiple sources and delivering those results back to the user in a “common sense” fashion. Again, this is a pretty vague patent, and really presses on what Google is all about: search. So whether they will change or even remove Google’s search bar and Google Now service is unknown, but El Goog has assured us things will be back in full swing shortly. Let’s hope they’re right.

UPDATE: Sales have been resumed by allowance of a federal appeals court until July 12. “Coming Soon” is still posted on the Play Store to purchase a Nexus, but we expect that to change soon.

Chicago Startup: Matador Transforms How People Invest INTERVIEW

What are the two ingredients for making a successful investment? Answer: Knowing what to buy and when to buy. Say its late 2004, knowing that Google’s stock was going to skyrocket beforehand and timely buying some GOOG shares would seamlessly make you rich (and also mommy proud). But how would you know what to buy (i.e. Google) and when to buy a stock or commodity? That’s where Matador comes in.

Matador is a advisory messaging platform that empowers investors to be informed from financial advisories and act on this information by messaging a broker.

Example, Yahoo! Finance recommends to buy gold or treasuries because the economy is tanking. Using Matador’s web and mobile platform, an investor can receive an instant recommendation from Yahoo! and then accordingly email or call their broker within the app. Hence, Matador streamlines the slow and boring process of manually receiving information from an advisory and communicating that time sensitive information to your broker.

Matador has real potential to innovate in the investing space that hasn’t particularly seen many successful apps. We like the value they offer to users, advisories and brokers. Plus, it doesn’t hurt to have a rockstar team including serial entrepreneur Jared Steffes, founder of Tap.Me

Co-Founder Andy Guinn gave us a sneak peak of how the app would work. Check out the video interview below:

Links we’ve got em:

Signup for Matador’s private beta

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Verizon Wireless Getting The HTC DROID Incredible 4G LTE July 5

HTC showed the DROID Incredible 4G LTE (yes, it really has that long of a name) at CTIA this past year, and while it isn’t technically part of the One series of devices, it definitely is worthy to be. The Incredible 4G LTE is just as much of a beast as any one of the One series devices or the Evo 4G LTE, who, like this device, has very similar specs but doesn’t carry the name.

It only has a 4-inch screen just like the Incredible 2 before it, but that’s what differentiates it from the rest of the 4.3-inch and higher devices. Under the hood you’ll find a 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor and up to 32 GB of expandable memory. 8MP is the pixel count for the rear camera, and a front-facing camera is present as well for all of your video chatting needs. Beats audio will ensure that the listening experience meets the standards of today’s high-quality music and picky ears, and that’s the case whether you’re playing through headphones (providing you have a decent set, of course) or the stereo speakers. The DROID Incredible 4G LTE will also come with Android 4.0 ICS with Sense 4 over top, and a promised Jelly Bean upgrade in the future.

This device will hit Verizon Wireless July 5 for $149.99 after-rebate, on contract of course. For anyone looking for a device with a smaller screen but very competitive specs on Verizon Wireless, the DROID Incredible 4G LTE may be for you.