Doctor Who TARDIS Projection Alarm Clock

The Doctor is in… especially if you are a huge fan of the Doctor Who series. Well, I am quite sure that you will not find it difficult to wake up from your sleep in order to catch an episode of Doctor Who on TV, but sometimes, getting up from your bed so that you can arrive at your office on time is far more of a Mission Impossible than anything else. Perhaps you would need something from the world of Doctor Who to help you be fully awake, and what better way to do so than with the $39.99 Doctor Who TARDIS Projection Alarm Clock?

Yes sir, you will be able to face a brand new day in style with this TARDIS-shaped timepiece, where you can tell the time after it has been projected against wall or onto a ceiling, bringing it well into the 21st century. In order to up the realism ante, it will flash some light, while TARDIS noises will play for the alarm. Just make sure you have a trio of AAA batteries on hand always to keep this bad boy going, otherwise you will still be late for work as the alarm fails to go off – simply because it ran out of juice. That’d be a bummer now, wouldn’t it?

Withings WS-30 WiFi Scales

You know something? Back when I was a kid, I never would have figured out the day would come when computers could surf on this thing called the “Internet”, and that we would be toting around wireless devices everywhere we go. Well, I guess things can change a whole lot in just a couple of decades, and it is going to be an exciting ride to be on this train that is gonna ride for a good half decade more, assuming all goes well with my health before I call it quits in the game of life. Still, it amazes me that something as basic as a bathroom scale would be on the receiving end of WiFi connectivity, no? The 99.99 Withings WS-30 WiFi Scales can be said to be a “sequel” of sorts from the original, where it has obviously gone to the fat house and lost some weight, while being faster and looking all the more fabulous – just like you should, when you have shed off all those accumulated pounds over your holiday feasting.

The Withings WS-30 WiFi Scales comes in a tempered-glass and aluminum body that will automatically record your weight, fat mass and BMI (body mass index) each time you step on it. Your efforts (or lack of it, depending on which side of the disciplinary fence you’re on) will be stored on a secure website, social network or smartphone app, allowing you to access such data at any point in time – as long as there is a decent Internet connection around, of course. Do expect this puppy to be able to keep track and store data for as many as eight users simultaneously, where it will rely on previously recorded data to identify each user. I would assume you would not mind sharing your results over a social network if they have been encouraging, but otherwise, it would be best to keep on working at your fitness regime.

Man reportedly trademarks ‘Steve Jobs’ in Turkey

“Apple legal may have some scrambling to do in Turkey on Monday morning, if a report out of that country has a shred of truth to it,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.

“According to a Turkish blogger, a businessman by the name of Kamil K rek i has been granted the trademark ‘Steve Jobs’ by the Turkish Trademark Office,” Purcher reports. “The trademark is to be used in context to a textile brand, likely for a line of clothing.”

MacDailyNews Take: Turkey has a trademark office?

(Just kidding, we love our Turkish readers!)

Purcher reports, “A rough translation of the owner’s statement concerning the granted trademark: ‘Opening overseas with this name will be an advantage for us considering that we will be mainly exporting. We think that Steve Jobs is a worldwide known brand that will never be forgotten. It is also obvious that it will facilitate our work on overseas advertisements of our products.’”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: If true, this K rek i guy is a real turkey. Wah-wah-wah waaaahhh.

Evasi0n jailbreak nearing completion, still appears on course for Super Bowl Sunday release

We told you earlier in the week that the new jailbreak would be called Evasi0n and at that time the team behind the jailbreak were still working on the GUI (graphical user interface). The good news is that it is still on target for a Super Bowl Sunday release and the jailbreak has now entered its private beta testing phase and that means it is 80% complete.

The jailbreak progress has been rapid since iOS 6.1 was released; with versions already completed for Windows, Mac ad Linux too. The next step after the private beta testing is what the Evad3r team are calling “extended beta testing”, we assume that will involve rolling the jailbreak out to a select few for final testing.

Although things can change especially if bugs are discovered, it is still looking highly likely that the Evasi0n jailbreak will be made available sometime this Sunday. The jailbreak will require no more than five minutes of your time and will need to be done by tethering your device to a Mac, PC or Linux machine for one time only. Your device will need to be running a minimum of iOS 6.0. The Evasi0n jailbreak will cover all iPhone, iPod touch, iPad and iPad mini models capable of running iOS 6.

A word of warning, there are a few fake sites popping up claiming to host the jailbreak or that the jailbreak is already available. None of these sites should be trusted; the only place to find the jailbreak will be Evasi0n.com.

Source: Evasi0n

Activist who faced police harassment in China is in US

Lu Haitao is said to be in Washington as dissidents in China face clampdown before key political meetings in Beijing

A prominent Chinese activist is now living in the United States, US officials have confirmed, amid concerns that Chinese authorities have ratcheted up pressure on dissidents to maintain social stability during two weeks of important political meetings in Beijing.

Lu Haitao, a 38-year-old writer and blogger, was repeatedly harassed, detained and interrogated by police last year for vocally supporting Chen Guangcheng, a blind activist-lawyer who escaped house arrest and sought refuge in the American embassy last spring.

The state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland confirmed that Lu was in the US but refused to give further details, including whether Lu had been granted political asylum. “We don’t confirm or deny asylum issues,” she told Voice of America.

Lu arrived in the US via Taiwan on 3 December and is currently living with his wife in Washington DC, according to Hu Jia, a prominent dissident in Beijing who spoke with Lu via phone on Thursday. “The American state department has been giving them guidance, teaching them how to enrol in school and how to study English with other new immigrants,” Hu said in a phone interview.

According to Amnesty International, Lu was evicted from his residence last year after visiting two of Chen’s family members in rural Shandong province; he faced “incessant police interrogation” after the lawyer escaped. “Sustained police harassment” may have caused his wife to have a miscarriage, according to the organisation.

This week, hundreds of high-level party members converged on Beijing for China’s annual “Two Meetings”, two weeks of rhetoric-laden work reports and political discussions. The Washington-DC-based NGO China Human Rights Defenders said that as part of a wideranging security crackdown during the meetings, Beijing’s dissidents have been detained, beaten at police stations, and forcibly removed from the capital to “travel”.

According to the organisation, police in Tiananmen Square seized thousands of petitioners – citizens attempting to air their grievances to the central government – on 5 March alone. “Officials or hired thugs from various parts of China have intercepted and forcibly returned many of these individuals to their home towns,” it said.

Hu said that although he had been closely monitored by public security agents since 2012, they began entering his apartment late last month without giving him any reason or warning. “I’ve never had pressure like this before,” he said.

Tsering Woeser, a Tibetan writer, was placed under 20 days of house arrest beginning on 1 March, she said in a phone interview on Thursday. Two public security officers escort her every time she leaves her apartment, even on simple errands. “I can still go out, but I need to tell them where and what I am going to, and I have to take their cars,” she said.

Woeser was awarded the US state department’s international women of courage award on 4 March as “the most prominent mainland activist speaking out publicly about human rights conditions for China’s Tibetan citizens”. Last May, Chinese authorities confined her to her home to prevent her from receiving a Prince Claus award at the Dutch embassy.

“The government always uses big words, like strength or rejuvenation, but actually, it is weak and autocratic,” said Woeser. “I don’t think what I’ve said about Tibet is excessive, and I am telling the truth. But the government doesn’t want the truth, and they dread to hear – and do not allow – different voices.”

On Tuesday, Chinese authorities announced plans to spend 82bn on domestic security this year, about 3bn higher than the projected defence budget.

Sweet like Scandi-pop: six of the best acts

This may be the year the pop landscape is overrun with Scandinavian singers of the female variety, so we present six of the best

M

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

M , AKA Karen Marie rsted, first plonked Pilgrim online last October, causing certain music bloggers to contort into spasms of pure wonder. By channelling elements of the dreaded ‘indie-pop’ sound – there are nods to the likes of Purity Ring in the eerie, cut-up vocals – and bolting on a huge chorus (“holla, holla, holla”), M and producer Ronni Vindahl have managed to utilise elements of something boring and dry and turn it into something uniquely heartfelt and unshakeably catchy. She’s also just released a Denmark-only single called Glass which features the line, “Oh dear one turn the lights off, so our horny souls can have some private time”. You can’t say fairer than that, really.

Cry/dance factor: 56/100. Likelihood of ‘doing a Robyn’: 78. Likelihood of song appearing in an episode of Girls: 79. Relevance of adjective ‘glacial’: 65. Average BPM: 50.

Frida Sundemo

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

Perhaps Scandi-pop’s biggest asset of late has been its ability to make people dance like idiots while rivulets of tears and dollops of snot pour over creased cheeks and ugly grimaces. Sad lyrics packaged in happy melodies is nothing new in pop, of course, but it’s an art form the Swedes especially have started to dominate, and Gothenburg resident and former medical school graduate Frida Sundemo has two proper cry-at-the-disco anthems up her sleeve. While the bittersweet Indigo encases an entreaty about not giving up in a souffle of sparky synths and pogoing beats, the gorgeously melancholic Snow finds Sundemo wishing the winter would frankly just piss off: “Goodbye Mr Cold, I’m begging you to go”.

Cry/dance factor: 92/100. Likelihood of ‘doing a Robyn’: 75. Likelihood of song appearing in an episode of Girls: 41. Relevance of adjective ‘glacial’: 83. Average BPM: 140.

Elliphant

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

“I’m like a finger up your ass, now why not give it to me?” muses mysterious Swede Elliphant on the clattering Ciant Hear It, a song that seems to have been built around an old rave siren, a dog barking and a disintegrating Commodore 64. Elsewhere on her recently released self-titled EP she channels Arular-era MIA on the frantic TeKKno Scene, the sound of a panic attack on Make It Juicy and Swedish reggae on Down On Life (opening line: “We are waking up in a pile of shit”). While Frida Sundemo can act like a soothing balm to life’s woes, Elliphant’s skull-rattling agit-pop – which has much in common with Icona Pop’s shoutier material – is a pretty good way of kicking bullshit into touch before it all gets out of hand.

Cry/dance factor: 6/100. Likelihood of ‘doing a Robyn’: 36. Likelihood of song appearing in an episode of Girls: 83. Relevance of adjective ‘glacial’: 0. Average BPM: 90.

Margaret Berger

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

In 2004 Berger auditioned for the second series of Norwegian Idol (or Idol: Jakten p en superstjerne to be precise) only to be dumped before the live shows. Luckily, one of the judges brought her back as a wildcard (she finished second), and her 2006 album Pretty Scary Silver Fairy explored electropop (think a lighter R yksopp or the Knife). She’s been quiet for a couple of years, but recently won Melodi Grand Prix (the Norwegian version of Your Country Needs You) and will represent Norway at Eurovision. Her song, I Feed You My Love, is spectacular – all big farting synths and dark lyrics like, “You put a knife against my back and you dare me to face the attack”. Jade Ewen this ain’t.

Cry/dance factor: 66/100. Likelihood of ‘doing a Robyn’: 68. Likelihood of song appearing in an episode of Girls: 32. Relevance of adjective ‘glacial’: 59. Average BPM: 95.

NONONO

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

When it’s really yes, yes, yes? Formed in Stockholm, NONONO, AKA singer Stina W ppling and production duo Astma & Rocwell, make the kind of percussion-heavy, gloom-tinged pop Niki & The Dove brought to the ‘masses’ last year. While Astma & Rocwell have previous, having worked with Icona Pop and Beatrice Eli (whose 2012 single The Conqueror is a glowering synth-ballad), it’s Stina – who’s just finished a three-year psychology course, education fans – that steals the show. While their debut Like The Wind ticks all the right boxes, production-wise (rattling percussion, spidery guitars similar to the xx, delicate synth flourishes), it’s all anchored by Stina’s vocal, which boosts it all with genuine character. Check out the “wha ah ah ah” bits if you don’t believe us.

Cry/dance factor: 44/100. Likelihood of ‘doing a Robyn’: 49. Likelihood of song appearing in an episode of Girls: 63. Relevance of adjective ‘glacial’: 51. Average BPM: 80.

Faye

Reading this on mobile? Click here to view

As a teenager, Stockholm-born Fanny Hamlin (no sniggering at the back) was in the Swedish girl band Play alongside Rosanna Munter (please, guys, concentrate) and two other singers with less interesting names. Play released the excellent single Waterfall in 2010, and at one point toured with Destiny’s Child, with Beyonc imparting her vast amount of wisdom to Fanny by suggesting she steer clear of the music industry altogether. Thankfully she didn’t listen. The newly christened Faye recently set about making the kind of elegantly poised electropop torch songs that make you clutch at your chest in overdramatic anguish. Her first single, Water Against The Rocks, was one of 2012’s best music moments.

Cry/dance factor: 89/100. Likelihood of ‘doing a Robyn’: 71. Likelihood of song appearing in an episode of Girls: 57. Relevance of adjective ‘glacial’: 85. Average BPM: 50.

Airblow 2050 Realizes The Concept Of An Invisible Umbrella

Our days of fighting the wind with our umbrellas might soon be over. We might actually be able to use that situation to our own advantage. You have to admit that you have at least on one occasion fought the wind with your umbrella. Sometimes it’s tough to find the right direction to hold it in order for it not to go inverted. It’s a problem that a lot of people have experienced, but there could soon be a better way. The peopleworking on a product called Airblow might just have a clever solution.

The Airblow is a futuristic concept umbrella which uses a powerful stream of air to cover you from the rain instead of using a textile. This concept could prove to be both more effective and a whole lot more casual. The basic concept behind Airblow is that the umbrella rod shoots air out through its nozzle which deflects the rain, keeping it from hitting you. It’s an interesting concept that reminds me of Blade Runner for some reason. There are no umbrellas in that movie that do this, but it’s still one of those science fiction gadgets that could totally reinvent how we use our umbrellas.The concept comes from French designer Quentin Debaene, and it received a nomination for theJames Dyson Award. The Airblow 2050 (as it is really called) uses a powerful Dyson motor that can silently draw in and push out air in speeds that would keep its owner from being hit by the rain. Whether this futuristic product will ever become reality is of course hard to say. However, our technology is definitely advanced enough to realize this new and quite amazing umbrella concept. I can’t wait to pick one of these up instead of an ordinary textile umbrella. It will be nice not to have an invisible battle with the wind every time it’s raining. Hopefully this Airblow umbrella will be available before 2050 – that number that seems to be indicating a year. We all need this now! Get innovating!

Marvel Comics Launches New ‘Marvel Unlimited’ Comic Subscription Service for iOS

Marvel Comics have been available on the iPad piecemeal for quite some time now, at a cost of approximately $3.99 per comic. Marvel has also offered free digital downloads with print copies, but now there’s an even better way for comic addicts to get an affordable comic fix on the iPad – the new Marvel Unlimited comic subscription service.

The Marvel Unlimited app offers iOS users access to Marvel’s full catalog of 13,000 comics for just $60 per year or $10 a month. That’s 70 years worth of comics for the cost of a few lattes, which is not a bad deal for those of you who like to read a whole lot of comics.

TechCrunch, however, points out that there are a few limitations on the service. Apparently, the titles available in the app are all older comics. The newest available comic is from mid-2012, which is a bit of a bummer if you don’t want to read your comics on a six month delay.

The app’s subscription service is only going to provide comics after they’ve been out for six months, as a way to encourage potential comic buyers to purchase new comics at full price. Brand new comics can be found in Marvel’s other app, Marvel Comics.

Six comics for offline reading is also a bit restrictive, as that’s not a lot of content if you have a long plane or road trip planned. Still, Marvel’s subscription service is a decent deal if you are new to comics or if you want to re-read some of your old favorites. According to a Marvel spokesperson, the app in its current form is “Phase 1” of Marvel Unlimited, with additional improvements coming later this year.

Marvel Unlimited can be downloaded from the App Store for free.

Introducing the new iMore for iPhone 2.0 app, with comments, landscape, favorites, video podcasts, and more!

The official iMore for iPhone app has just gone 2.0! That’s right, we’ve taken everything you loved about the original, listened to all your super-smart feedback, carefully selected the new features we knew we could hit out of the park for you, and made them all so!

• Free – Download now

Commenting

You can now log into iMore and leave comments right from the app. It’s been the number-one most requested feature, and now it’s here. And it’s awesome. You can see comment counts right next to the articles in the main list, and you can view the comments from the bottom of any article. The + button lets you add a new comment, or you can hit “reply” beneath any existing comment to join the thread. Love it.

Landscape mode

We get it, some of you like wide-screen. Well, now you’ve got it. Pretty much everything you can do in the iMore app in portrait mode now works in landscape mode as well. Enjoy!

Font resizing

Some of our eyes aren’t getting any younger, and they certainly aren’t getting any stronger. That why we’ve added big, bold font resizing buttons at the bottom of every article. Just tap and change the font size to whatever best suits you and your eyes. (We’re working on a system-wide font size setting for a future update, stay tuned!)

Favorites

You can now Favorite any article in the iMore app simply by tapping the star button at the bottom. When you Favorite an article, not only does it save it for off-line reading, but it adds it to the all-new, all-special Favorites tab in the app so you can easily find it again later. To un-Favorite, simply tap the star button again. (A golden star means it’s Favorited.)

In-article navigation

Gone are the days when you had to tap and article, tap back, and tap the next article just to keep reading. Now handy, dandy arrow buttons can be found at the bottom of every article. Tap them and you can move back and forth through all the articles in a given category.

And if that’s not fancy or fast enough, we’ve added a new gesture shortcut as well. Simply swipe horizontally and you can page right through, same as hitting the arrow buttons. Time saver!

Sharing and read-later

We’ve added an all-new iOS 6 share sheet to the iMore app, and it includes options like sharing via Mail, Twitter, Messages, and Facebook, copy to the clipboard, save to Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability, and open in Safari.

An accounts tab lets you login or logout of Instapaper, Pocket, and Readability right inside the app. It makes it easy to share and save your favorite stories any time, and anywhere, you like!

Video podcasts

Not only have we updated the podcast player to make it even better, and better looking, we’ve added support for video podcasts. Any of our shows that have video versions will now show up with video as an option. Just choose it and hit the play or download button at the bottom. (Sadly, we haven’t been able to get cellular streaming approved, but we want it too so we’ll keep trying!)

And, of course, we have all the new podcasts, and podcast art. Snazzy!

Rebuilt for speed

The entire iMore app has been rebuilt. As in new project in Xcode, start fresh rebuilt. That was done for speed. We wanted it to be fast. Screaming fast. We also went all-in on iOS 6. Even the custom pull-to-refresh we had has been replaced with the standard world-of-goo-to-refresh Apple provides.

The article view has also been updated to be edge-to-edge awesome.

That’s all thanks to Tammy Caron’s coding ninjary, Seth Clifford’s pixel-perfect project management, and Nickelfish’s overall outstanding-ness.

And to top it all off, the amazingly talented Marc Edwards of Bjango made us a brand new app icon that’s beyond even Apple-level gorgeous.

Your turn!

So now it’s your turn. We’ve built it and Apple’s put it in the store. We’d love for you to download it and give it a whirl. Make sure you leave a rating and review on iTunes. Anything over 11 stars is fine! Joking! Not really!

• Free – Download now

And If you find bugs or have additional feature requests (or are wondering why certain things we wanted to do, we couldn’t do) head on over to the iMore Forums and let us know!

• iMore app 2.0 feedback and bug reports

How to comment on a post using the iMore 2.0 for iPhone app

With the release of the all new iMore 2.0 app, we’ve added a ton of new features to make using iMore on your iPhone and iPod touch even better. One of these new features is the ability to leave comments on articles directly within the app.

Here’s how to start leaving comments in-app on your favorite iMore articles.

Register for a Mobile Nations Passport account

Before leaving comments, you’ll need to make sure you’re registered for a free Mobile Nations Passport account. It’s super easy to set up and the best part is you’ll be ready to go across any of our sites including iMore, Android Central, Crackberry, wpCentral, and WebOS Nation. You can utilize your existing social media logins or make your own. Whichever you prefer.

Register Here

Once you’ve got your username and password, go ahead and continue on.

How to leave a comment in the iMore app

1. Launch the iMore app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPod touch.
2. Find the article you’d like to leave a comment on and tap into it.
3. Scroll all the way to the bottom and you’ll see a section labeled Comments. Tap on it.
4. Here you can read existing comments, create a new one, or reply to someone else’s comment. Choose to either create a new comment by tapping on the + sign in the upper right hand corner, or hit the reply button on any comment you’d like to reply to.
5. You’ll be asked to sign in, so go ahead and enter your Mobile Nations login info.
6. You can now type your comment. Once you’re done, hit send and that’s it. You’ll now see your comment appear in the thread as well.

Now what are you waiting for? Get to commenting!