BlueBiped: A human-like walking robot that requires no power source!

Today’s groundbreaking entry into the Uncanny Valley is a pair of mechanical, robot legs that are propelled entirely by their own weight: they can walk with a human-like gait without motors or external control. If this sounds too good (or crazy) to be true, watch the first video at the end of the story, wipe the tendrils of drool off your chin, and then find your way back up here for an explanation.

Without making this accomplishment any less awesome, these robot legs — called BlueBiped, and made by researchers at the Nagoya Institute of Technology in Japan — are basically just an imitation of human physiology. There are thighs and lower legs made out of aluminium that are the same length as their human counterparts, and ankles and  knee joints for articulation, but… that’s it. No sensors, no computers, no “musculature” — the legs are completely passive, you just give them a push… and they carry on walking. As long as there’s a slight downwards slope, anyway — there has to be some source of energy, after all, and in this case it’s gravity.

BlueBiped uses the “principle of falling,” much in the same way that humans walk by falling forward. As long as the robot’s weight is pitched slightly forward, the momentum of each step is enough to throw it into another step, and so on. Presumably, with the addition of motors, BlueBiped could also walk horizontally and up hill, but then you’re into MABEL or AlphaDog territory — and that doesn’t seem to be the purpose of this project.

Last year, BlueBiped successfully walked for 13 hours continuously — 100,000 consecutive steps, 9 miles (15km) — without human intervention. Now the researchers seem to be thinking of actual, commercial applications for BlueBiped. They have tested a modified version that can be worn like an exoskeleton, which apparently can help people walk. In the video, “sports equipment” is also mentioned, though we’re not sure what that means — robot tennis instructors, perhaps?

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Can Google Siriously compete with Apple? Apple iPhone 4S Repair and Unlock News by drmobiles.co.nz

Apple’s release of iOS 5 and the unveiling of Siri has everyone talking excitedly about the benefits of a digital assistant that can understand natural language. Having seen the demo of what Siri is capable of, though, I cannot help but think of how much better Google’s implementation of a similar service might be. More than that, with the raw data Google has access to, there’s no reason Big G shouldn’t unveil a competing service — and a couple reasons it should.

Google already has the infrastructure glued together at the seams of your interaction with the web. How much work would it be for them to utilize that data? If you look at Google’s history, it hasn’t exactly been amazing in the field of social media. Google Buzz was an absolute flop, and social services like Orkut that Google ran never really got off the ground worldwide. With that being said, the opportunity is there. Google Plus looks pretty close to social media done right (mostly), which might finally mean Google’s ready to break out of the impartial, robotic search space and into something a little more personal.

Let’s take a closer look at the pieces of the Google-Siri puzzle.

Search

The cornerstone of Google’s offering is, of course, search. So ubiquitous that it’s become a verb in common parlance, users “google it” millions of times a day, and those searches help Google as much as they help the user. Google saves searches for 18 months, and what you search for is as critically important to Google as is how you frame the searches. With instant searches and location-based services working on both mobile and normal searches, Google has the capability to save what you’re looking for and where, as well as what you end up clicking on.

This is an incredible advantage from any advertising or sales perspective, as tracking user habits is more or less money in the bank if you can place your product correctly and in a timely fashion. If you’re using your mobile phone to perform the search, all the better; Google knows exactly where you are and what you’re looking for. Who’s in a better position to offer you products and services than a company with that information?

Location services  

Touched on above, this bears a further mention. Companies like Yelp, Foursquare, Gowalla and others all desperately want to know where you are and what you’re doing in order to offer you targeting advertising and services. It’s said that losing a star in your rating on Yelp can cost a company thousands of dollars in revenue, and extra stars will benefit in the same fashion. With the number of smartphone users exploding worldwide, location-based services should expect the same sort of popularity increase. It’s yet an untapped market.

Enter Latitude; Google’s answer to these services, tied into Google Maps and prominently seen in Google searches. The integration with Maps makes it seamless enough that you might not even know it’s there — you’re just looking for a place to eat. Google knows, though, and it remembers where you’ve been — and you can be sure it’s paying attention to where you’re going, too.

Social networking

On the face of it, Google Plus doesn’t seem like it would tie into the sort of service being discussed, but you’d be leaving out an incredibly important facet of Google’s growing clout out of the picture: the power of social media and free advertising. Google’s fledgling social media creation has netted some 40 million users at this point, and it’s not a coincidence that Latitude check-ins post to your public Circles by default. The best advertising is free, and as more and more users rank and check in to businesses using Google, everyone wins.

Purchases

This seems obvious. It doesn’t get any more basic than tracking your purchases viaGoogle Wallet. By itself it might seem an innocuous convenience; an escape from having to carry a bulky wallet. From Google’s perspective, though, it’s filtering your money through their services. It’s another facet of your life that becomes data on a Google server. Marketable data, when correlated with other services. 

Gmail

Again, putting this together with Google’s other services might seem odd. But if you think about how Google improved search to learn from your input, the advantage of having your email available for data mining becomes an invaluable tool. Google can already read enough into a message to say things like “You’ve mentioned something was attached to this email, yet nothing is. Do you want to attach a file?” This means Google is already scanning your email for important words and phrases. Expanding those search terms to include, well, everything, is what Google does best.

Minority report

Make no mistake. Google isn’t going to use this data to simply catalog what you do, where you go, or what you buy. It’s going to put all of this information together into a big heap and then squeeze it through computations to try and figure out what you’re going to do next.

The real money is in Google as a predictive service. For example, Google Latitude has an option that allows “auto check-in” at any location. That might not seem like much at face value, but it means your phone is obviously keeping track of where it is most of the time. Latitude already knows the location of thousands of businesses, and it has all of the data to know your routine. Knowing that you go to a particular gym three times a week is one thing. Being able to take that data and turn it into specialized deals and incentives are what’s going to separate Google services from the likes of Apple. Google intends to know what we’re going to do before we do, so it can be there to offer us whatever we need, whether it be products, services, or a helping hand.

Think about it from Google’s perspective of “Don’t be evil.” Taking all of this data and turning it into a goldmine of your personal habits will make Google the best possible personal assistant. Everything you’ve ever wanted, as long as you searched for it, Google knows. Everything you’ve purchased, via Google services, Google knows — and it knows when, and where. Things you’ve talked about in your daily dealing with social media or email, Google can parse. Everywhere you go, what route you take, and how long you stay Google will also know.

Apple’s Siri can tell you the weather. It can take dictation to send text messages. It can even setup calendar appointments and configure alerts and reminders. What it can’t do is spin years of search habits, purchases and information into a road-map of where you’re going to go, and react appropriately, effectively ahead of your own wants.

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Five (5) Ways Apple iPhone 4S iOS kicks Android in the Teeth! drmobiles.co.nz

Yesterday, at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference, iOS 5 was announced. Out of 200 new features, just 10 were shown, but the implications are clear: Android has been sucker punched into submission, and if it doesn’t rise quickly, Google might be out for the count. Of course you will point to Android’s zealous adoption by carriers and the platform’s swelling market share, but that doesn’t mean that people want to own Android smartphones: it just means that they’re more easily obtainable.

With yesterday’s keynote, Apple outlined a slew of features that outstrips Android’s current and prospective offerings — and best of all, with a fall release date, Cupertino might just squeeze out iOS 5 before Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich. While Google struggles to consolidate the rushed tablet-specific Honeycomb and its next smartphone OS, Apple has simply grabbed iOS and started running. Apple, which has always been a fan of gentle evolution over revolution, has thrown off the chains and begun beating a new mobile computing trail.

Here are five ways in which Apple, iOS 5, and iCloud have utterly punished Android and Google.

1. iCloud Photo Stream
If you take a lot of photos — and the iPhone camera is the most popular digital camera in the world — then Photo Stream will be a complete life saver. Emailing photos to yourself is clunky, and Dropbox is a stopgap solution. With Photo Stream, when you take a photo on any device — your PC, iPhone, iPad or iPod — it is automatically synchronized with every other iCloud-connected device.

Similar functionality can be achieved with Android and Picasa, but it’s a lot messier — and because it isn’t baked into the OS itself, no one actually uses it. As usual, Apple hasn’t exactly invented a crazy new idea — it’s just executed it properly.

2. iCloud API
Ironically for a developer conference, there was only one developer-related utterance — but boy was it a big one. iCloud, Apple’s free cloud storage service, will have an API that developers can freely tap into. Apps will be able to store their data and preferences in the cloud, easing both device transfers and cross-platform compatibility. You’ll be able to save your Angry Birds progress on your iPad, and continue from the same place on your iPhone.

 

It’s not that Android app developers don’t have access to a cloud storage API, but you can’t guarantee that a user will have the requisite Dropbox or Box.net account. With iOS 5, every user will have their own piece of free, service, and easily accessible cloud storage — a utopian situation that will have almost every iOS app developer salivating. Again, Apple isn’t introducing a new concept; it’s simply bringing cloud storage to the masses — it’s making cloud storage part of the overarching experience.

It’s also worth noting that the iCloud API might also be available outside native iOS apps, which would mean Android and web apps can also use the iCloud API…

3. Post-PC freedom
The single biggest change in iOS 5 is the fact that it will be Apple’s first standalone mobile operating system. When you turn on an iOS 5 device, you won’t have to install iTunes on your Windows or Mac PC and plug in your iPhone, iPad, or iPod — you’ll simply be greeted with a welcome screen and proceed to use your iDevice. Instead of backing up to iTunes, you will back up to iCloud.

Android already stores a lot of your data in the cloud, but it doesn’t back up photos or videos, and app developers have to do some leg work to make sure their apps are backupable. Furthermore, data backup to Google’s cloud services is not guaranteed to exist on all Android-powered devices. Switching between Android devices, in short, requires a PC go-between and a fair bit of manual labor.

With iOS 5, app developers will be able to write apps that completely free from their PC oppressors. After all, not every house owns a PC — but almost everyone wants an iPhone… and now they can!

4. iMessage
With the introduction of iMessage, Apple is making a leap into relatively untested waters. A unified TCP/IP-based guaranteed-QoS replacement for SMS and MMS isn’t new — RIM has done it for years with BlackBerry Messenger — but this is definitely a bold ploy. Will iOS users relish being further locked into the system? You will only be able to iMessage other iOS 5 users, too — and as Android gains in market share, that might be more of a hindrance than a gain.

It might not matter, though. iMessage will be built into the current Messages app, which could mean that iMessage is seamlessly and transparently used when communicating with other iOS users, with SMS and MMS acting as the fallback for cross-network communication. Everyone can be have their fill — except for RIM and its failing market share, of course.

Both Android and iOS have unified messaging solutions in the form of third-party apps, but Google hasn’t shown any inclination towards building a first-party solution that sidesteps carrier-based messaging. The mobile form factor desperately needs a unified, cross-platform messaging protocol — and with iCloud, Apple could provide it! If only iMessage didn’t use a proprietary protocol…

5. Safari and iCloud

Android’s stock browser has always been a bit of a joke, especially with Google sinking truly insane amounts of time and effort and money into Chrome. The story is a little rosier with the Honeycomb browser, but third-party offerings are still a lot more powerful. To be fair, though, Mobile Safari has always been rather gimpy, too — and third-party alternatives don’t exist on iOS. With iOS 5, Safari finally gains its surfing legs with support for multiple tabs and a faster rendering engine. Exact details and benchmarks aren’t available yet, but iOS 5 should make web apps a lot more viable on older iDevice hardware.

Beyond tabs, Mobile Safari includes deep Twitter integration, “save to reading list” functionality, and a Reader button that strips ads and formatting to make websites more readable. In other words, Safari now builds in the functionality of Instapaper — and yes, you can save your reading list to iCloud for future reading on your other devices; and no, Apple didn’t ask web property owners if they liked the idea of every iDevice owner surfing with a built-in ad blocker.

All of this functionality is available to Android users via third-party apps and bookmarklets, but as always, it’s too clunky and the barrier to entry is set a little too high. The initial release of iOS and Mobile Safari revolutionized mobile surfing, and even today, despite its smaller share, Safari is still the most popular mobile browser. iOS 5 will completely change and empower the mobile surfing experience yet again, while Android wallows with a stock browser that has a nifty bookmark and data sync, but that’s about it.
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What is Apple iPhone 4S' Siri, iOS5, and will anyone use her? www.drmobiles.co.nz

The Apple “Let’s Talk iPhone” event has concluded. Tim Cook and a slew of Apple execs have taken it in turns to tell us about the latest and greatest Apple goodies, and rather underwhelmingly there’s no iPhone 5 and just significant takeaways: a cheaper and faster iPhone 4S, and an interesting software package called Siri. You can read all about the iPhone 4S on our sister sites Geekand PC Mag — here we’re going to talk about Siri.

If we look past the rather Indian (and feminine) name, Siri is a portable (and pocketable) virtual personal assistant. She has a speech-recognition module which works out what you’re saying, and then a natural language parser combs through your words to work out what you’re trying to do. Finally, an artificial intelligence gathers the possible responses and works out which one is most likely to be accurate, given the context, your geographical location, iOS’s current state, and so on.

Siri is, in essence, a computer that you can interrogate for answers, kind of like a search engine that runs locally on your phone. If you’ve seen IBM’s Watson play Jeopardy, Siri is basically a cut-down version. She isn’t intelligent per se, but if she has access to enough data, she can certainly appear intelligent. Siri’s data sources are open APIs, like Wikipedia or Wolfram Alpha, and in theory there’s no limit to the number of sources that can be added (though it does require significant developer time to add a new data set). For now you can ask Siri about the weather or the definition of a word, but in the future, if Apple links Siri up to United Airlines, you’ll be able to book a plane ticket, just by talking. Because Siri runs locally, she can also send SMSes or set reminders, or anything else that Apple (or app developers) allow her to do.

Artificial intelligence isn’t cheap in terms of processing power, though: Siri is expected to only run on the iPhone 4S, which sports a new and significantly faster processor than its predecessors, the A5. Siri probably makes extensive use of Apple’s new cloud computer cluster, too, much in the same way that Amazon Silk splits web browsing between the cloud and the local device.

Noise

That’s enough about what Siri is and how it works. Let’s talk about whether anyone will actually use Siri, which is fundamentally a glorified voice control search engine. Voice commands have existed in some semblance since at least as far back as the Nokia 3310, which was released in 2000. Almost every phone since then has had the ability to voice dial, or in the case of modern smartphones, voice activate apps and features.

When was the last time you saw someone talk to their phone? Driving and other hands-otherwise-occupied activities don’t count. When was the last time you walked down the street and heard someone loudly dictate “call mom” into their phone? Can you really see yourself saying “Siri, I want a kebab” in public?

It might lose its social stigma if everyone talks to their phone, but isn’t it already annoying enough that people swan down streets with hands-free headsets, blabbing away? It’s not like voice recognition is at the stage where you can whisper or mumble a command into your phone, either: you’re going to have to say, nice and clearly, “how do I get to the bank?” in public. Now imagine that you’ve just walked past the guy who’s talking to Siri — is he asking you for directions, or Siri? Now imagine what it would be like if everyone around you is having a one-sided phone conversation or talking to Siri.

Finally, there’re practical implications to consider, which Apple usually ignores in its press events. For example, will Siri only recognize my voice? What if I leave my phone in the living room and my girlfriend shouts out “honey, we should go to that Italian restaurant” — will Siri then make a reservation? On a more nefarious note, will my wife be able to say “Siri, show me my husband’s hidden email.” When walking down a street, will Siri overhear other conversations and react accordingly?

Siri will be fantastic in the car, that’s for certain. She will also be very accommodating when you’re on your own — imagine shouting across the room “Siri, do I need to wear a jacket today?” or “Siri, download the latest episode of Glee.” Siri will be unusable in public, though, while on the move — and that’s the one time where you really don’t want to be looking down at that darn on-screen keyboard.
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5 Siri-like apps for your Apple iPhone 4, iPod, and iPad (power user tips for iPhone 4S users)

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One of the biggest puzzlers surrounding the release of iOS 5 is the iPhone 4S’s exclusive ability to use Siri, the voice-controlled virtual assistant. At first we had assumed that Siri requires special hardware — the A5 processor and oodles of RAM, perhaps — but it turns out that the iPhone 4S and iPad 2 are virtually identical. Then there’s the fact that Siri, the standalone app that Apple acquired earlier this year, worked just fine on every iOS device, including the iPhone 3GS and 4, and iPod touch. Still, Apple undoubtedly has its reasons, and who are we to question a higher power?
Fortunately, thanks to a thing called the App Store, there are a few Siri alternatives that you can install. By virtue of being apps, rather baked into the OS like Siri, these alternatives won’t be quite as smooth or fast as Apple’s new wunderkind — but they should be more than capable of sending an email or text while driving, or looking up directions while on the move.

Vlingo (Free)

By far the closest comparison to Siri is Vlingo, an app that has its own voice-recognition engine, a powerful cloud-based back end, and almost all of Siri’s functionality, including booking restaurants. The two caveats are that it can’t set reminders (though a new release might fix that), and unlike its Android brother there doesn’t seem to be a voice-activated mode for hands-free in-car mode.
As an added bonus, there’s also a Vlingo app for just about every platform under the sun, including BlackBerry and Nokia phones, and even Windows; but not Mac, unfortunately.

Google Search (Free)

You probably already have it installed, but the Google Search app for iOS includes the same Voice Search feature found on Android devices. As the name suggests, the app only lets you search using your voice, and there’s absolutely no integration with any other services — but it’s a nice stopgap until Safari innately supports voice searching. Just like mobile website, the Google Search app uses your location data to make sure that the results it returns are contextual, too.

Dragon Go! (Free)

Here’s a fun one: Siri herself doesn’t actually manage voice recognition — a module provided by Nuance does that, and then hands your utterances along to Siri once it’s worked out what you’re trying to say. Dragon Go is made by Nuance, and thus it is just as accurate as Siri… but it’s no where near as polished or full-featured.
Dragon Go is basically a voice interface to a bunch of web services, including Wolfram Alpha, Google, Yelp, Google Maps, and so on. It also interfaces with Pandora, Spotify, and Netflix if they’re installed. There’s also Dragon Diction, which is all about dictating messages or longer notes. You can then send your voice-recognized musing via email, Twitter, Facebook, or SMS.

Built-in Voice Control (Free)

If you want to make (almost) hands-free calls in the car, iOS’s built-in Voice Control is your best bet: press and hold the Home button (or the equivalent on your headset), you’ll hear a beep, and then speak your command. If you want to call someone, say “call” or “dial” followed by their name or number, or you can even initiate a FaceTime connection by saying “FaceTime” and then a name and location (iPhone, home, and so on).
Built-in Voice Control can manipulate your music playback, too (but only the iPod app). Use “play” followed by the name of a song, album, playlist or artist — and you can also “what” and “who” to find out what song/artist is currently playing, or “genius” to have your iDevice pick a new, similar song for you.

Voice Camera Pro ($1.99)

Finally we have the only non-free app on the list: Voice Camera Pro, which does exactly what you think, plus a little bit more. First, you can say “camera” to turn the camera on and “shoot” to take a photo, but you can also say “double,” “triple,” and “quad” to take a series of sequential photos.
You can’t avoid the fact that you have to launch the app before you can use it, though — this isn’t going to let you whip your phone out and magically take photos from the lock screen by shouting “TAKE A PHOTO!” Also, it doesn’t seem to have the ability to shoot video, which seems a little weak for an app that costsmoney.

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Apple iPhone, iOS 5: Hidden gems and features (iPhone 4 repair, drmobiles.co.nz)

Apple has just released iOS 5. If you have an iPhone 3GS, 4 (or 4S), iPod touch 3rd or 4th generation, or an iPad, simply plug it into your computer, make sure iTunes is updated to version 10.5 (iTunes > Check for Updates), then just select your device on the left hand side and click “Check for Update.”
By this stage, if you regularly frequent technology websites like ExtremeTech, you will already be intimately familiar with the key features that adorn iOS 5: Siri voice-controlled assistant, Notification Center, iMessage, Reminders, deep Twitter integration, access to the camera from the lock screen, and perhaps most importantly PC-free activation; you no longer have to plug an iOS 5 device into iTunes to set it up, and you can also sync via WiFi, too. You will also know all of the ways in which Android 4.0 beats iOS 5, and vice-versa.
All told, though, iOS 5 includes more than 200 new features, many of which you would never notice unless you knew where to look. Fortunately, we moles here in the ExtremeTech bunker have been playing around with beta builds of iOS 5 for months, and we’re more than happy to point out the few hidden gems that we’ve discovered.

Text macros and improved formatting

In Settings > General > Keyboard you can now specify Shortcuts. Shortcuts are simply text macros: you enter a short phrase (btw, omg, etc.) and the iOS 5 input editor (SMSes, emails) will automatically expand those short phrases into full sentences. Whether this will prevent kids from typing in txtspk is another question entirely.
When composing an email, you can select a word or phrase and apply bold, italic, or underline formatting from the pop-up menu.

Safari is faster, tabbed, and more secure

Except for the Notifications Center, the most noticeable change in iOS 5 is a significantly-improved Mobile Safari. You’ve probably heard about Reader and Reading List — own-brand versions of Instapaper — but Safari is faster (rendering- and JavaScript-wise), has a new Private Browsing toggle that works as you’d expect, and on the iPad you can now use tabs!
There’s also an interesting option that forces links to open in the background, which is handy if you’re reading through an article and want to check out the pages it links to later, once you’re finished.
Finally, Mobile Safari is now by far the most HTML5-compatible smartphone browser — though we’d be surprised if the Ice Cream Sandwich stock browser doesn’t at least match it.

More finger-crippling gestures on the iPad

Actually, they’re no where near as bad as the five-finger-pinch-and-flick that OS X Lion uses: with iOS 5 and iPad, a four- or five-finger flick up reveals the multitasking bar. Pinch returns you to the home screen. Swiping left and right switches between apps (at last!)

Improved security

No doubt as a reaction to the odd and iffy security record that smartphones have had over the last year, iOS 5 includes more granular control over which apps can access Location Services (Settings > Location Services), and the General > Restrictions area now lets you set a password for in-app purchases.

Custom alerts and improved accessibility

Also joining the “at long last!” club is custom alerts: you can now pick a different ring, bleep, or tune for new mail, sent mail, tweets, calendar alerts, and more.
In General > Accessibility you can now make the camera’s (rather bright) LED flash when you receive a message, call, or alert — and there’s also a neat feature called Assistive Touch, which lets you create a custom gesture on the screen, and then bond that gesture to an action, such as turning off the screen.

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iPhone 4S: Tips & tricks for your new phone, iPhone 4S repair and unlock, drmobiles.co.nz

If you’re one of the million lucky souls who has spent a few minutes today tenderly lifted an iPhone 4S out of its lovingly-crafted, pearly white packaging, perhaps after spending hours in the driving rain outside an Apple Store, you might be stuck with a rather odd question: what now? Except for Siri — which, admittedly, you will be playing with for weeks to come — there really is nothing new. Yes, iOS 5 has a ton of neat features, and iCloud is awesome — but you would’ve had access to those even if you hadn’t handed over a fistful of dollars for an iPhone 4S.
There are still a few things that you can do to make the most of your new, super-fast iPhone, however.

Tell Siri who you’re related to

No, not so that Siri can tell your wife that you’ve been saying inappropriate things to your new, cutesy assistant — but rather so that you can tell Siri to “call my wife.” Pull up Contacts, edit a contact, click Add Field, scroll down to Related People, then add yourself and your relation (see right). Alternatively, you can simply tell Siri “Mary Poppins is my wife,” “My brother is John Smith,” and so on; a much more Applesque approach, admittedly.

Set up WiFi Sync

Not only can iOS 5 devices stand alone and be activated without iTunes, but you can now sync the contents of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod via WiFi. To do this, just plug in the cable, open up iTunes, select your device from the left, and scroll down to select “Sync with this device over Wi-Fi.” You’ll be walked through a simple setup process, and that’s it.
If you want to copy large amounts of data you’ll still want to use USB, though: it’s faster, and WiFi sucks up quite a lot of battery power.

Install some juicy games, play them on your lounge TV

Hardware-wise, by far the most stand-out feature on the iPhone 4S is its SGX 543MP3 graphics processor: it’s seven times faster than the iPhone 4, and almost twice as fast as the next smartphone(Galaxy S II). In everyday use, though, you won’t really notice the new GPU: the whole phone will just feel a little bit snappier… Unless you install some hardcore, bleeding-edge iPhone games!
Rage HD simply flies on the iPhone 4S, and Need for Speed Hot Pursuit and Galaxy on Fire 2 are good options too. Presumably the best game that will really show off the new graphics chip is Infinity Blade II, which was demonstrated at the iPhone 4S press event — but unfortunately it won’t be available to download until December 1.
It’s worth noting that you can hook these games up to your big-screen TV by way of Apple TV andAirPlay, and while the iPhone 4S isn’t quite as powerful as a video games console, it’s getting there…

Get a cheaper SIM card

While the iPhone 4S is being advertised as a “world phone,” the situation regarding its replaceable SIM card is a little murky. According to PC Mag, it sounds like Verizon users will be able to switch out their micro-SIM for another — and Sprint customers might be able to as well. AT&T customers will be forced to use the installed SIM card.
What this means is that Verizon (and possibly Sprint) users can a) switch in a SIM that gives you cheaper international calls, and b) when you’re actually travelling around the globe with your world phone, you can use a prepaid SIM card to make cheap local calls. AT&T customers will sadly have to pay for an “international package” and then suffer through extortionate roaming costs.
Of course, if you wait until November, you’ll be able to pick up an unlocked iPhone 4S for $449. Whack in a prepaid T-Mobile SIM and off you go!

Make sure iCloud is set up on your Windows or Mac PC

Finally, it goes without saying, but because it requires an update we’ll say so anyway: To take full advantage of iCloud you need to install an app on your Windows computer, or update your Mac machine to OS X 10.7.2 or later. The setup process is easy enough, but the first synchronization will take some time if you’ve taken a lot of photos and movies on your iDevice.
You may also want to customize exactly what gets uploaded to and downloaded from iCloud, which is under Settings > iCloud on your device, iCloud in System Preferences on your Mac, or iCloud in Control Panel on your Windows computer.

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