DoorBot Wi-Fi doorbell camera lets you see visitors on your smartphone

DoorBot Wi-Fi doorbell camera lets you see visitors on your smartphone | Digital Trends: "Seeking at least a quarter of a million dollars in project funding on Christie Street, a company called Edison Junior has developed a wireless doorbell called DoorBot that transmits an audio and video feed over Wi-Fi when someone rings the doorbell. The homeowner will be able to see who’s standing at the front door and communicate over audio to find out what they want. However, there’s no video display on the DoorBot. The person standing at the front door can’t see where the homeowner is located. Conceptually, it can provide the illusion that the home’s resident is currently in the house even if they are at work or on vacation. For instance, if a delivery driver is dropping off a package, the resident could use DoorBot to let the driver know that the package can be safely left on the doorstep. It could also help people avoid someone standing at the front door by simply looking at the video feed and choosing not to communicate. . . . "

Apple Takes 27% of Global LTE Market - Mac Rumors: "The iPhone 5, Apple's first LTE smartphone, was only released in September but it hasn't taken long for Apple to nab 27% of the global LTE market, according to new data from Strategy Analytics (via Yonhap News). Apple is second in marketshare to Samsung, which registered 40% marketshare, although Samsung's share actually dropped from 50.9% in the previous quarter as Apple in particular entered the market. LG and Motorola also saw their marketshare take a hit, dropping from 15% each to 9.1% and 6.7% respectively. The only gain other than Apple was Pantech, who moved from 5.7% to 5.8%. "

My Dumb Phone Experiment: Week Two | MIT Technology Review: " . . . . Readers have been responding to my month-long experiment in technological regression: I’ve decided to replace my stolen iPhone, for a spell, with an old-fashioned Alcatel feature phone. My hope was to reclaim a corner of my life as saner and less constantly connected. So far, the experiment hasn’t been going great; as I mentioned in my last post on the topic, I miss my iPhone quite a bit. I whined about the indignities of having to type out SMS’s on nine number keys, for instance. One reader wrote something very perceptive: that my problem was that I was trying to fit a smartphone lifestyle into my new “dumb” phone existence. One thing I’ve realized more vividly, in the few weeks that I’ve been a smartphone abandoner, is that the smartphone isn’t just a product; it’s a societal phenomenon. No man is a technological island, and just because I’ve given up on my smartphone doesn’t mean that my friends and coworkers are necessarily willing to join me in my attempt for a more casual relationship with connective technology. Back when everyone had feature phones, a kind of abbreviated caveman speak (“meet bar 5 min”) was in wide currency. It’s the kind of caveman speak that I’m reduced to now. But my friends, with their iPhones’ virtual keyboards and their (let’s face it, more-helpful-than-not) autocorrect, are spouting small novels. I remember conducting SMS repartee as fluently as many an in-person conversation. That’s not possible on a dumb phone, but until I condition my friends not to expect that of me, I just come off as a jerk. . . ."

The 20 Best iOS And Android Apps Of 2012 | TechCrunch: "Google Maps (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, Android free) While Tim Cook was a runner-up to President Obama for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year 2012, the app of the year comes from Apple’s primary nemesis. Google Maps was far from broken when Apple, for business reasons, elected to go with its own Map app for iOS 6. When the iPhone 5 came out, users tapping into the iOS 6 Maps app couldn’t see the Statue of Liberty. This was just one of countless Apple Maps fails. Of course, it’s easy to lambaste Apple for laying an egg here. Yet the larger point is that we take for granted the reliability, clarity, and ease of use of Google Maps. This stuff is hard. That is why we are thankful that Apple earlier this month approved a brand-new version of Google Maps for iOS 6 devices. New competition from Apple, which will inevitably improve its mapping capabilities, pushed Google to develop the best map app yet for any device."

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