Technology and Body

2 Apps to Lock Other Apps Using Touch ID on Jailbroken iPhones Ads by Google While talking about the iAppLock sometime ago, I promised to come up with an app for the iPhone 5s and above that enables you to use Touch ID to lock individual apps. I know I’m a bit late with making good on that promise and I apologize, but the whole time I was waiting for a free app that I could discuss with my readers. There were a handful of paid apps available on Cydia, but just a few days back a free app was released that actually worked . A free app, no matter how basic it might be, always gets the upper hand. So keeping that in mind, today I am going to talk about two jailbreak tweaks you can install on the iPhone to get Touch ID security for individual apps. So let’s check out the features of both of them. AppScan Once you install the AppScan module from the Cydia store, the phone will respring. The module doesn’t appear on the Spring Board as a regular app and you wil...

Zendo Is My New Favorite Secure Messaging App This is Zendo, my new favorite messaging app. Now you might well ask who needs (yet) another way to ping, poke, prod or otherwise pester their friends? The answer is simple: anyone who cares about privacy. If you don’t think privacy is important, ask yourself whether you’d be happy to share your online banking password with strangers. Or your social security number. Or your medical history. Or your physical address. Or, ehem, some of those personal/intimate photos you have on your phone… There are lots of types of data that most people care about safeguarding. And even the other stuff you might not think is so sensitive — where you go, what you like, who you talk to, what you buy, and so on — is being systematically collated and data-mined by mainstream social media services to build an increasingly detailed profile of you and your life to sel...

Facebook F8 App Appears To Leak Messenger As A Platform, Parse For IoT A notification just sent out by the official app for Facebook’s F8 conference later today reads “The Garage and Demo areas are now open! Just revealed: Parse for IoT, Messenger as a Platform, and the Teleportation Station.” The alert seen by Multiple people seems to indicate that Facebook will reveal a version of its mobile app building suite Parse for “Internet Of Things” devices. It also appears to confirm my scoop from last week that Facebook will announce a Messenger platform at F8. We’ve reached out to Facebook about the exact meaning of the notification. Facebook previously said that all its major products would see announcements at F8, including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus, along with Parse and Messenger which the notification hints at. Judging by the notification’s text, it may have accidentally been sent early when it should have gone out mid-day tomorrow after the F8 k...

How to Schedule Instagram Posts on iPhone and Android with TakeOff Ads by Google If you’re a social media manager, there are tools like Buffer and Hootsuite to make your life easier. You can schedule a week’s worth of posts in advance and they’ll go out to Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and even LinkedIn without any issue. One name that’s always absent from this list is Instagram. From all the above social networks, Instagram is the only one that’s still considered “cool”. Naturally, marketers want to use Instagram to reach a larger audience, but Instagram doesn’t seem to care that much. The reason it’s not supported by the likes of Buffer is that it doesn’t have an extensive API. Meaning that a third party app can’t plug into your Instagram account and post anything on your behalf. So if there’s no automated posting for Instagram, how exactly can you schedule ahead? By using 1 cup of automation with a teaspoon of old-time manual labor. Schedule Instagram Post...

Quip vs Google Docs: Which is the Better Tool for Writing? Ads by Google Google Docs is currently the king of web based collaborative writing. It’s so popular that Microsoft had to come out with its own web based product (it’s essentially a lightweight version of the Office Word you’re used to). But outside of MS, no one is really competing with Google Docs. Editorially tried and failed. Draft seems to have picked up Editorially’s mantle but I’m not a big fan of how Draft does a lot of things. But Editorially and Draft went to the extreme end of online writing, with heavy reliance on Markdown and ditching rich text. As much as I’d like it to be, Markdown is not for everyone. But it is awesome. This is where Quip comes in. Quip doesn’t take an extreme, text-only route like Draft. It sits somewhere in the middle. Does that mean it’s good? Let’s find out. Quip is Clean and Fast Google Docs is supposed to be the writing suite for the modern world ...

How to Downgrade Samsung Android Devices from Lollipop to 4.4 KitKat Ads by Google Change is the only constant, and yet we find it hard to embrace. Wouldn’t you agree? Here’s a ‘techie’ example: Windows XP. Definitely the longest lasting operating system in history (or Microsoft’s history). Vista was a disaster but Windows 7 wasn’t. And yet people didn’t want to leave their XP comfort zone. Windows XP continued to thrive (and still does in many parts of the world). Today I am going to show you how to downgrade most Samsung devices that got the Lollipop update back to KitKat 4.4. The thing to note here is, we will be flashing the official firmware and none of the devices will lose their warranty. Root is also not mandatory. Downloading the Firmware To get started, back up all the data on your device. Your droid will be a clean slate once it’s flashed and the system files will be erased. The contents of the SD cards, however, both internal and external, will...

FTC report: Google caused ‘real harm to consumers’ A 160 page FTC report from a couple years ago has made the light of day through an open-records request, and in it we see Google held in a harsh, often damning light. The report reveals that it was recommended that the FTC sue Google over three of the Internet giant's practices, something that would have -- had it gone through -- ended up being one of the biggest antitrust cases since the similar suit against Microsoft in the 90s. Among other things, the report says Google both has and will harm consumers and innovation with some of its actions. The information comes from the Wall Street Journal, which got its hands on the report. According to the WSJ, the...