Tag Archives | Apps

App Scans Grocery Store Items To Identify Monsanto Products

By on May 17, 2013 in News 0

Identify MonsantoSpecifically intended to point out items linked to the vast and nebulous tentacles of Monsanto and Koch Industries, the smartphone app uncloaks the corporate family tree behind a given barcode. Via Forbes:

The app itself is the work of one Los Angeles-based 26-year-old freelance programmer, Ivan Pardo, who has devoted the last 16 months to Buycott.

Pardo’s handiwork is available for download on iPhone or Android, making its debut in early May. You can scan the barcode on any product and the free app will trace its ownership all the way to its top corporate parent company, including conglomerates like Koch Industries.

Once you’ve scanned an item, Buycott will show you its corporate family tree on your phone screen. Scan a box of Splenda sweetener, for instance, and you’ll see its parent, McNeil Nutritionals, is a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson.

 

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Hacker Demonstrates Android Smartphone App To Hijack A Plane Midair

By on April 15, 2013 in News 0

hijack a planeOn your next flight, you may want to look over your shoulder at what the person next to you is doing. Help Net Security reports:

An extremely well attended talk by Hugo Teso, a security consultant at n.runs AG in Germany, galvanized the crowd attending the Hack In The Box Conference in Amsterdam. Teso showcased an Andorid app, PlaneSploit, that remotely controls airplanes on the move.

Teso has been working in IT for the last eleven years and has been a trained commercial pilot for a year longer than that. By creating an exploit framework (SIMON) and an Android app (PlaneSploit) that delivers attack messages to the airplanes’ Flight Management Systems (computer unit + control display unit), he demonstrated the terrifying ability to take complete control of aircraft.

His testing laboratory consists of a series of software and hardware products. But the connection and communication methods, as well as ways of exploitation, are absolutely the same as they would be in an actual real-world scenario.

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Using Smart Gadgets As Tools Of Social Control

By on March 5, 2013 in News 14

How devices will soon begin pressuring us to “fix” our behavior. Via the Wall Street Journal, Evgeny Morozov writes:

Many smart technologies are heading in a disturbing direction. A number of thinkers in Silicon Valley see these technologies as a way not just to give consumers new products that they want but to push them to behave better. The central idea is clear: social engineering disguised as product engineering.

Last week in Singapore, Google Chief Financial Officer Patrick Pichette restated Google’s notion that the world is a “broken” place whose problems, from traffic jams to inconvenient shopping experiences to excessive energy use, can be solved by technology. The futurist and game designer Jane McGonigal, a favorite of the TED crowd, also likes to talk about how “reality is broken” but can be fixed by making the real world more like a videogame, with points for doing good.

Insurance companies already offer significant discounts to drivers who agree to install smart sensors in order to monitor their driving habits.

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Chubby Checker Sues HP Over Penis Size App

By on February 15, 2013 in News 7

WIKI CHUBBY CHECKER 2Some men might be flattered if a penis size app was named after them, but not Chubby Checker, reports WebOS Nation:

Attorney Willie Gary of Stuart, Florida, has filed a federal lawsuit in the United States District Court, Florida’s Southern District, against HP and Palm on behalf of performer Ernest Evans over the Silicon Valley firms’ hosting of an app titled “The Chubby Checker” hosted in the webOS App Catalog. The app, a play on the stage name of Mr. Evans – Chubby Checker, was created by developer Magic Apps, was designed as a calculator for estimating the penis size of a man given the input of his shoe size.

The app was downloaded 84 times before being removed from the App Catalog in September of 2012 and no longer available in the store on device or in the App Catalog web listings. “Chubby Checker” is held as a trademark by the Ernest Evans Corporation.

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Silent Circle, The New Encryption App That Is Terrifying The Government

By on February 7, 2013 in News, stories 25

The idea is to “democratize encryption” by making it available to the non-tech-savvy with the push of a button. Will this be used for good or evil? Slate‘s Ryan Gallagher explains:

The startup tech firm Silent Circle’s groundbreaking encrypted data transfer app will enable people to send files securely from a smartphone or tablet at the touch of a button—photographs, videos, spreadsheets, you name it—sent scrambled from one person to another in a matter of seconds.

The technology uses a sophisticated peer-to-peer encryption technique that allows users to send encrypted files of up to 60 megabytes through a “Silent Text” app. The sender of the file can set it on a timer so that it will automatically “burn”—deleting it from both devices after a set period of, say, seven minutes. It’s a game-changer that will almost certainly make life easier and safer for journalists, dissidents, diplomats, and companies trying to evade surveillance.

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Apple Rejects Drone Strike Notification App

By on August 31, 2012 in News 5

Drone+, which drops a pin on the map whenever a U.S. drone makes a kill, was rejected by Apple first as “not useful,” then as “objectionable.”  Because the whole point of drone killings is that we don’t have to know or think about them. CNET writes:

Apple has rejected an iPhone app designed to keep track of fatalities caused by U.S. drone strikes for its “objectionable” content.

Drones+ sends text messages to iPhones whenever the media reports casualties resulting from a drone strike and shows users the locations of drone strikes on a Google map.

Apple has rejected the app three times this summer, the most recent of which cited App Store guidelines that prohibit “objectionable” content, according to Josh Begley, the app’s creator. “I totally understand it from Apple’s perspective,” he said. “They don’t want to have anything that could be considered controversial by anyone. I get that, and I understand that.”

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iPad Painting App For Cats Unveiled

By on July 29, 2012 in News 3

Most of the pet-oriented phone apps have been dismal as one would expect (chasing a virtual mouse bouncing across the screen, et cetera), but Paint for Cats should be cherished for allowing the expression of nonhuman creativity. Art of the future should not be restricted to humans. Metro UK writes:

A ball of string used to keep cats entertained – but it seems an iPad is more appealing to the our feline friends these days after a US company opted to develop some new tablet Apps specifically for them.

The app [Paint for Cats] makes a colourful paw imprint when a cat touches the screen. It was recently tested at an animal shelter where it received a positive response, with bigger cats such as lions and tigers even taking to it.

Creator TJ Fuller said: ‘I had seen so many YouTube videos of cats playing with iPads but of course they were playing games designed for humans… I would love to do a game for dogs but they generally don’t react to that sort of stimuli like cats do.

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ACLU Phone App Lets You Secretly Record Police Interactions

By on July 6, 2012 in News 4

An adorable animation unveiling the ACLU’s free Police Tape app, available initially for Android and soon for iOS. You too can be a watchdog!

Citizens can hold police accountable in the palms of their hands with “Police Tape,” a smartphone application from the ACLU of New Jersey that allows people to securely record and store interactions with police, as well as provide legal information about citizens’ rights when interacting with the police.

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‘See Something Say Something’ Phone App Unveiled For Mass Transit

By on June 21, 2012 in News 13

 Did you know that Big Brother is a crowdsourcing project? The ELERTS Corporation on their See Say App, which the greater Boston area’s Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority is urging commuters to adopt:

The app is designed to let riders easily and instantly report suspicious activity to Transit authorities with their smartphones – crowdsourcing public safety with thousands of eyes and ears on the ground. When people see something, they can send something – with photos, text and incident location details that go directly to Transit Police.

“If you see something, say something” is a public safety campaign widely promoted by railway transit systems and airports worldwide. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is promoting “See Something Say Something” to urge citizens to be alert and to help keep each other safe.

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