Iphone Rush

For generations of blind people, braille has been a vital link with the sighted world. But now, the array of raised dots representing letters and numbers read by virtue of touch via the fingertips is being upstaged by modern technology.

Recently, U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) told the story of 19-year-old Rolando Terrazas and his iPhone.

He uses most of the same functions a sighted person would, and then some. For example it allows him to ‘see’ the denomination of paper money and he’s installed an app that reads text out loud.

The downside? He’s using less braille, and “if you don’t use it, you lose it and that’s what happened to me,” Terrazas told NPR. So, he’s registered for a braille refresher course at the Colorado Center for the Blind near Denver.

The Center’s director, Julie Deden, is concerned that the growing use of technology like smartphones is eroding braille literacy. As well, the U.S. National Federation of the Blind reports school districts cutting back on braille teachers in favour of high-tech devices. As a result, the Federation estimates only one in ten blind Americans are now fluent in braille.

If your iOS device is decidedly lacking in stories of girls dressing up as boys in order to charm other girls; fox ninjas with nine tails and frogs in tow; or unbelievably clumsy students who just really want to get into Tokyo University already, then you’ll want to download a copy of Manga Rock 2.

This universal app is like having an entire manga section of a (good) comic shop right on your device, for one ridiculously price. Actually, comparing Manga Rock 2 to a single comic section doesn’t quite do it justice, because you can take your pick from three online repositories, each with thousands of titles. You can consume the manga as you like: either stream as you read, or pick and choose issues to download for offline reading.

We get to see a number of cases and accessories here on Phones Review as owners of smartphones and tablets have a vast choice of products to choose from. Today we have news of the clever looking Aeris Rail+ iPhone case that allows attachable accessories.

The Aeris Rail+ is the first polymer iPhone case that can be completely customized, and is another innovative product that can be found on the Kickstarter project. The case allows the attachment of many other Aeris accessories that can be based on what activity you are planning. If you need to use your handset for Face Time or watching videos you can simply attach the kickstand.

If you want something to add some extra protection to your handset the sliding front and back Visor cover will keep your iPhone safe from the elements. The clever rail system allows you to accommodate future accessories that allow owners to further integrate the iPhone into their daily life.

Google Chrome is coming to the iPhone, or at least that’s what one group of analysts say.

Macquarie Equities Research sent out an email titled “The Browser Wars Part Deux; Google Chrome Browser for iOS is Coming,” saying Google’s browser, known for its simplicity and quickness, is coming to Apple’s iOS for the iPhone.

Chrome could arrive on the iPhone as early as this quarter or “very likely” this year, the group said. Tom White, one of the analysts, said there’s reason to believe Google is developing the app and may have already even submitted it to Apple for approval for its App Store.

Macquarie said Chrome’s move to the iPhone would launch the latest chapter of the so-called browser wars, this time shifting the battlefield to mobile — which people are using more often to access the web.

Apple Inc plans to use a larger screen on the next-generation iPhone and has begun to place orders for the new displays from suppliers in South Korea and Japan, people familiar with the situation said on Wednesday.

The new iPhone screens will measure 4 inches from corner to corner, one source said. That would represent a roughly 30 percent increase in viewing area, assuming Apple keeps other dimensions proportional. Apple has used a 3.5-inch screen since introducing the iPhone in 2007.

Early production of the new screens has begun at three suppliers: Korea’s LG Display Co Ltd, Sharp Corp and Japan Display Inc, a Japanese government-brokered merger combining the screen production of three companies.

1. Enable character count.
As Business Insider points out, every time you exceed 160 characters in a text message, your service provider charges you for another SMS message. If you’re on a limited SMS plan, you can keep track of your character count as you compose your messages.

Head to Settings > Messages > Character Count ON. From now on, you’ll see an active character count above the Send button.

2. Use AutoText shortcuts to quickly type phrases.
There are some phrases you might use over and over again, like “On my way,” “How’s it going?” or even things like your e-mail address or signature.

To type these words and phrases faster, customize your own shortcuts. For example, typing “eml” would prompt your full e-mail address. Access the feature by going to Settings > General > Keyboard > Shortcuts.

Check out Rick Broida’s very useful post, Ten handy AutoText shortcuts you should create.

3. Get the hidden Emoji keyboard.
Once upon a time, you had to go through a set of complicated steps to get emoticons like smilies, hearts, and other clip art symbols on your iPhone. Now, the feature is built in to iOS 5 and can be enabled in a few steps. Check out the guide here.

However, know this: only fellow iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch users will be able to see the emoticons. Everyone else will see garbled symbols, so beware of using emoji in fields like Twitter or Facebook status updates.

4. Skip Siri, but use speech-to-text.
In my experience, it is not easy to go through the entire process of sending a text message via Siri. It’s frustrating, time-consuming, and has a (non-scientific) 50 percent failure rate. (To be fair, you can make Siri more efficient with some configurations.)

A more useful feature is speech-to-text within the Messages app. So, you do the work of selecting the recipient, but instead of typing your message, you speak it.

Go to a message thread and tap the text field. Then tap the microphone icon by the space bar, wait a beat, and begin speaking your message.

5. Turn off preview and badge notifications.
There’s little as heart-stopping as an awkward text message popping up onscreen for your nearby friend to see. The badge alert also happens to be annoying when you’re in the middle of another task.

To fix this, you’ll need to tweak two things: message preview settings and notification type. Head to Settings > Notifications > Messages. Turn Notification Center ON, Alert Style: Banners, and Show Preview OFF.

Last year Facebook shuttered its deals business in an apparent forfeit of the market to Groupon among others. But since closing its first day of trading at $26.11 per share, Groupon’s stock has plummeted to $9.90 as of Friday’s close. And the rest of daily deal industry hasn’t fared any better; 798 deal sites didn’t survive the second half of 2011, according to Fast Company. So why is American Express doubling down on its deals business?

“Our goal is not to bombard customers but to give them relevant offers so that you’ll use the offer,” said Ed Gilligan, vice chairman of American Express. “It’ll be meaningful to you, and the merchants will see more business as a result.”

All daily deal providers claim, or at least should claim, to surface relevant offers for consumers, but AmEx’s cardmember data gives the company a leg up. “We know a lot about our cardmembers. We know who they are, where they spend. In effect what we have is a spend graph,” Gilligan said, likening the spend graph to Facebook’s social graph and Foursquare’s location graph.

Kogeto Dot

The Kogeto Dot is a stylish and durable attachment that clips onto the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S allowing you to shoot 360° videos (or “dotspots”) from the palm of your hand.

Olloclip

The Olloclip is a quick-connect lens solution for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S that includes fisheye, wide-angle and macro lenses in one small, convenient package that easily fits in your pocket.

iPhone SLR Mount

This case-adapter combo lets you mount a Canon EOS or Nikon SLR lens to your iPhone, giving you access to powerful photographic techniques, such as depth of field and manual focus.

RainBallet

The RainBallet surrounds every inch of your iPhone with waterproof protection. This case is IPX7 certified to endure up to 30 minutes underwater without adverse effects, so it brings out the best of the your iPhone even when completely wet.

Steadicam Smoothee

Based on the same technology as the big $60,000 rigs used in Hollywood, the Smoothee allows you to capture incredible video and still images without the shakes normally associated with hand-held video shot on the go — right out of the box — the very first time.

iPro Lens System

The iPro Lens System comes with a fisheye and wide angle lenses that easily twist on and off and let you capture more in every shot.

mCam

The mCam is an aluminum frame for the iPhone that features grips for better stability, a 37mm wide angle/macro combo lens and a 180° external microphone.

Holga iPhone Lens Filter Kit

A simple case that slips over the iPhone which offers nine different effects and filters without the need for any apps or post-processing of the images.

Gilf+

A handy solution that allows you to attach your iPhone to a keychain, backpack, purse, or pretty much anything else for that matter.

iPhone Telephoto Lens

A fixed 8x telephoto lens for the iPhone that is like having a 500mm lens attached to your iPhone, yet fits easily into your pocket.

When Flipboard hit the App Store last year, the personalized news app for the iPad turned out to be a revelation. There were already plenty of Twitter clients, Facebook apps, and RSS readers available for download—there were even apps that combined those streams of information into one. But none did it quite so elegantly, creating the sensation of effortlessly flipping through the magazine. Overnight, Flipboard reinvented the category.

A year later, Flipboard is still the class of “personalized news” apps—those offerings that take links from the user’s selected social networks and news sources to provide a one-stop-shop of news aggregation. (These apps are different from news discovery apps like Zite, which use your preferences to seek out information from new and unexpected sources.) Because you can view the information sources anywhere, presentation is what really matters when it comes to these personalized news apps.

Little by little, we are slowly putting the pieces of the iPhone 5 puzzle together. On Saturday, Hong Kong-based components supplier SW-Box claimed to have gained possession of a group of new components, including a headphone jack, ear speaker, and a Wi-Fi cable part, which are all allegedly being built for Apple’s sixth-generation iPhone.

If SW-Box’s claims are true, the iPhone 5′s hardware arrangement signifies a major change in the component organization from every previous iPhone model. In the iPhone 4 and 4S, Apple grouped the headphone jack, mute switch, and volume buttons onto a single component; SW-Box’s part pairs the headphone jack with the earpiece speaker into one part — this makes sense, as they generally serve the same function — but attaching the Wi-Fi cable means Apple has likely moved the Wi-Fi components from the back panel to near the call speaker. There was no ruler next to the components, so it’s difficult to estimate the size of these components — are they smaller to fit into a smaller or thinner device? — but hopefully we’ll get an update from SW-Box on the exact specifications.