features

Siri headed to iPad with iOS 6, report claims

Apple's Siri voice assistant is headed to iPad users with iOS 6, according to a new report.

Citing "trusted sources," Apple-centric blog 9to5Mac says the voice assistant will land on the tablet this fall with nearly all the features currently found on the iPhone 4S, short of making phone calls.

"Music playback, iMessaging, Calendar managing, Reminders, Weather, Maps integration, E-mailing, Notes, Contacts searching, Safari integration, Wolfram-Alpha searching, and more are all present," the report claims.

As for the timing on all this, the report offers nothing concrete, saying that Apple could either take the wraps … Read more

Google Docs facilitates finding facts and doing research

While making a travel itinerary, writing a term paper, or creating a budget in Google Docs, users no longer have to leave the confines of the word processing program to find specific facts or do research.

Google announced today the launch of a new feature called the "research pane" that lets users find information in Google search directly from within the documents program.

In a blog post, this is how Google software engineer Sarveshwar Duddu explained how to use the feature:

You can access the research pane from the Tools menu by right clicking on a selected word … Read more

Google+ comments to appear in Gmail

Google announced today that it's bringing "a better Google+ notification experience in e-mail" -- one that, among other things, will drop various commenting features directly into your in-box.

The "notification experience" entails a bunch of changes that makes Gmail "completely interactive" with the social network. The updates include being able to view, comment on, and +1 posts from inside Gmail's in-box, seeing comments appear in the Google+ stream in real time in a sidebar, and seeing responses from others "instantly appear" in Gmail as part of the notification message.

"… Read more

Smartphones now account for half of all mobile phones

Market research firm Nielsen today announced that half of all mobile phone subscribers in the United States now own a smartphone.

According to data compiled through February 2012, smartphones have grown to account for 49.7 percent of all mobile phones, up considerably from 36 percent just one year ago. What's more, in the last three months alone, two-thirds all handsets purchased were smartphones.

Neilsen also tracked which mobile platforms are popular. Of the handsets sold in the last three months, Android remains the top draw for new buyers with 48 percent of the market, but it's followed … Read more

Samsung Brightside review: This ain't no killer

All week reviewing the Samsung Brightside, I've had that Killers song, "Mr. Brightside," running through my head. It's a great soundtrack to review by, but I hate to say it: the phone just doesn't deserve it.

The Brightside is a feature phone, which isn't a crime in itself. Conceptually, feature phones satisfy the need of bringing functionality like e-mail and a larger-than-flip-phone screen to the segment of people who don't want to or can't afford to pay a monthly recurring data fee.… Read more

iPad 3: What we didn't get

The dust has finally settled, the rumors have been replaced by facts, and now we know what the new iPad is all about. So what's missing? Or what fell a little short of expectations?

Here's the quick rundown. Feel free to add to the mix with your own take in the comments section.

New design: When the iPhone 4S came out, a lot of folks were disappointed Apple didn't deliver the iPhone 5. Instead, we got a souped up version of the iPhone 4 with a better camera and no real design changes (Apple did move the … Read more

Site briefly let people bet on expected iPad 3 features

You may be familiar with Apple keynote bingo, but have you ever heard of Apple keynote gambling?

Correctly guessing whether Apple's next iPad will have a snazzier display, or even be called the iPad 3 could have resulted in a cash prize as part of a now-defunct contest.

Sky Bet, the U.K.-based sports betting group, today briefly offered a way to place wagers on features that may or may not come to Apple's next tablet. That tablet is largely expected to be unveiled at the company's press event on March 7.

The betting page, which … Read more

iOS security loophole lets apps grab user photos

An iOS security feature that lets users share information about their location can also be a conduit for those applications to surreptitiously grab user photos, according to a new report.

The New York Times' Bits blog today details how developers can gain access to a user's entire photo library through the same user dialog window that requests access to a user's current location. When users click the OK button, the report says, the developer can then copy photos--complete with GPS metadata--to a remote server, without alerting users to the fact.

Before wrapping your iPhone in tinfoil and throwing … Read more

Social goes big on Opera Mini

BARCELONA, Spain--The maker of the second-most popular mobile browser in the world has given its feature-phone fans something to tweet about, as Opera Mini Next debuted and brought several smartphone features to "dumb" phones.

The big new feature that's kicking off the inaugural build of Opera Mini Next, the developer's preview of the browser, is "smart" page called Home. Home will live next to Opera's Speed Dial, its customizable collection of regularly visited Web sites that occupies top billing across all Opera browsers, and it serves a similar function. It will let you … Read more