Dropcam Pro Available Now!

I just placed my order for Dropcam's newest product the Dropcam PRO. The upgraded camera offers 2x sharper image quality, 8x zoom, 130 degree field of view, and an enhanced two-way talk compared to the previous model now simply called Dropcam. With the previous year old model having over 1100 reviews on Amazon including the numerous best sellers rankings such as:

• #10 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• #4 in Camera & Photo > Surveillance Cameras
• #5 in Electronics > Security & Surveillance
• #5 in Baby > Safety > Monitors

It's also no brainer that with only a week on the market, the HD model has already shot to the top!

• #1 in Home Improvement > Safety & Security > Home Security & * Surveillance > Complete Surveillance Systems
• #1 in Electronics > Security & Surveillance
• #1 in Camera & Photo > Surveillance Cameras

I should be receiving it tomorrow and will let you know how easy the setup is in real life, host an unboxing video and some sample real life pictures. I also opted in for the 7-day CVR for an additional $99 providing me a 1-year contract. I'm excited!

For a further in-depth, turn to Dan Desilva on 9to5mac.

The new Dropcam Pro is a tremendously easy to setup and offers great audio/video quality for consumers and small businesses. The addition of Bluetooth LE, dual-band Wi-Fi, and a wider field of view are all worthy updates that help make the Dropcam Pro one of the best Wi-Fi video monitoring systems available. It truly makes >checking in on any location as simple as can be thanks to the iOS and Android mobile apps.

It's Nest Protect for Me and My Family

I've been enthralled with the Nest Thermostat since its debut but have had no reason for one since our heater is the sole provider in my central air system. I've been actively looking for excuses to purchase one and yes, that does include installing a full-blown system replacing our 32-year-old furnace and installing air conditioning. Money isn't quite there yet so that option will have to wait but that brings me to the first exciting Nest product that I can purchase: The Nest Protect Smoke and Carbon Monoxide Detector. I posted about its debut a few days ago but I've since had many deep thoughts leading me to preorder three devices.  Use the video below to get re-acquainted. http://youtu.be/QXp-LYBXwfo

From researching online and looking up various building codes, I've come to the conclusion that I do not need to have my system hard-wired (being built pre 1992 with no major reconstruction and upgrades since the original construction) and that I'm okay with how my current two detectors upstairs system works. Both are mounted in the main hallway immediately outside of the sleeping quarters.  I would love to go all the way and install one in each bedroom, but once again, that's quite a huge increase in expense.  I want to say that my current smoke detectors are hard-wired but since the Protect has the ability to connect via WiFi, crosstalk and monitor each other, I would love to make sure that I have the power to provide to these little guys.  There are a few limitations to having the battery-powered versions, but nothing that subtracts from the feature set.

The third Nest Protect is to accommodate a new installation downstairs for the family room primarily for CO leaks coming from the garage area.  Once again, at $129 a piece, it's no easy decision.  What makes it more palatable is the fact that it's primarily for my daughter and future kids. Knowing that this system is that much better that every current product out on the market, my family not only deserves the best but it'll provide me the peace of knowing that they are taken care of when I'm out away on a trip.

For some current laws, I've posted them below for your viewing and educational pleasure. You can also reference the California Registry website which provides more details into all the various building codes.

1) New Construction If the house has undergone any major additions, renovations, or repairs since August 14, 1992 that exceeds $1,000 in cost and for which a permit is required, a smoke detector must be installed in each bedroom in addition to being centrally located in the corridor or area outside the bedroom. In newly constructed areas, the smoke detector must be hardwired with a battery backup. (California Building Code § 907.2.10.5.2.)

2) Wiring or Batteries For homes built before 1992, smoke detectors may be battery operated. Newer homes or homes that have undergone major construction require hardwired smoke detectors with a battery backup, as stated in the California Building Code.

3) Sleeping Areas In homes built before 1992, smoke detectors must be centrally located outside each sleeping area. Depending on the floor plan, one or several smoke detectors may be needed. For instance, a two-story house with bedrooms upstairs and downstairs will need two smoke detectors, one centrally located outside each area. On the other hand, a two-story house with bedrooms on the second floor will need only one smoke detector if the bedrooms are all in the same area. If the home was built after 1992 or has undergone major repairs or construction, the California Building Code requires the installation of smoke detectors in each bedroom, and in each corridor or hallway near each sleeping area.

I do wish that Nest would provide an estimated shipping date. I'll of course gladly take a sample unit too to review =)

Transfer Cash via Square for Free

I've find myself at dinner on more than one occasion, semi-embarrassed, without cash, out of all places at a cash-only restaurant requiring a temporary loan. I don't know about you but I simply don't carry that much cash on my person these days. Repaying that short-term loan can be awkward when it comes to writing a check and / or finding a far away ATM which always leads to dark alleys plus the extra charges so I try to avoid that as much as possible. I don't know too many friends that have used Wells Fargo or Chase's application to send and receive cash because not too people actually bank at the same place and when it comes to credit unions, forget about it.

For all those awkward moments, we now have Square Cash. It's a free service (no hidden charges) that allow individuals to send and receive cash via e-mail. Yup, seriously. Money is transferred via one debit card to another up to increments of $250 on a weekly basis but with a simple verification of identity, you can send up to $2500 a week! No password or account setup is required and the app is available on either iOS or Android. Deposits happen fast within one to two days but Square is promising faster service in the near future.

The only caveat is that you have to trust Square to handle your transaction. So if anything, make sure your e-mail account password is a tad bit more secure when using the service but either than that, Square has had an awesome track record with their merchant business in detecting fraud through strong security measures and close human and machine monitoring. Start e-mailing cash today!

Square Cash is the quickest, simplest method I’ve seen for sending money from one person to another.

via Walt Mossberg for Wall Street Journal

Austin Mann chooses his iPhone 5s over his Canon 1DX

Austin Mann takes Apple's iPhone 5s, and only the iPhone 5s as his primary camera on a trip to Patagonia.  Okay, he actually also brought along an iPhone 5 for comparison sake but he did leave his $6,800 Canon 1DX DSLR at home.

Now, after a full week of testing the iPhone 5S in Patagonia I'm beyond impressed with what it can do. We had our hands on two iPhone 5S's just minutes after they were released… a couple days later, we were bound for Patagonia to field to test the iPhone 5S camera against it's predecessor the iPhone 5. All the fancy new features like fingerprint scan are nice and nifty but as a travel photographer, all I really care about is what this camera can do.

He shows off a quite few impressive panoramic shots depicting the enhanced dynamic range capabilities of the iPhone 5s and this alone, in my opinion, is reason for the upgrade.  Arghh... looks like the next time I'm around an Apple store, I'm trading in my iPhone 5.

via Austin Mann

Don't bother with the Finger Print Scanner

The Verge reviews the HTC One Max and where it fails with its new "gimmick."

Equally enervating is the fact that you have to wake the One max from sleep before swiping to unlock it. The whole point of these fingerprint sensors is to speed up security processes, not make them more finicky, and that’s exactly where the HTC One max fails.

via The Verge

Nest Introduces its Smoke Detector "Protect"

Since I've been unable to take advantage of Nest's first product, I'm rather excited about their second! Introducing the Nest Protect! It talks, doesn't annoyingly chirp, communicates to your smartphone and of course it's priced at a premium for $129. (approximately 6x the average selling price of today's smoke / CO2 detectors)

“We’re about creating the conscious home,” Fadell says. “To take a truly important device that has had no great innovation and make that device really, really great.”

http://youtu.be/gByupKn8-Mg

via Wired and The Verge

iPhone 5s / iOS 7 Tips & Tricks

Whether you've bought the new iPhone 5s or merely upgraded to the redesigned iOS 7, Apple has published a Tips and Tricks page with a wide array of well, tips and tricks. Take a peak!

I personally enjoy the built in level built right into the Compass app. Just swipe left.

via Apple

iPhone 5s for $99

With the latest discounts applying to Apple's iPhone 5c at Walmart and Best Buy, Sprint is rounding up customers near and far by aggressively selling the iPhone 5s for $99 with a 2 year contract + new line activation.  I've also confirmed that this applies to current customers off of contract.  It's the cheapest price that I've seen around the web so if you've been thinking about switching to the $80 unlimited everything plan, now's your chance to get a brand new phone.

Celebrating Touch in 2007

It's been two years since the passing of Steve Jobs. If there's one thing to read today in memorial, it's this piece. A recount of the preparation behind the introduction of one of the most influential devices of our lifetime from senior engineer, Andy Grignon.

By the end, Grignon wasn’t just relieved; he was drunk. He’d brought a flask of Scotch to calm his nerves. “And so there we were in the fifth row or something — engineers, managers, all of us — doing shots of Scotch after every segment of the demo. There were about five or six of us, and after each piece of the demo, the person who was responsible for that portion did a shot. When the finale came — and it worked along with everything before it, we all just drained the flask. It was the best demo any of us had ever seen. And the rest of the day turned out to be just a [expletive] for the entire iPhone team. We just spent the entire rest of the day drinking in the city. It was just a mess, but it was great.”

http://youtu.be/t4OEsI0Sc_s

via NYTimes

1Password Updated to v4... on sale too!

The amazing password generator and vault program by Agilebits, 1Password, received an update to  version 4 this morning!  It's offered on the Mac App Store and if you bought it in 2013, you're also entitled to the free awesome update!  It's a huge upgrade redesign to the already award-winning password software and if you've been missing out, get it while it's 20% off!  You might have heard me saying that 2013 has been dubbed as the year of the password hackers so this is the best way to generate that 16 character-symbol-number-ascii password that you can't remember and store it now!

What’s new?

Everything. Yes, really. From an entirely new interface to the return of Wi-Fi Sync for those who don’t want their data in the cloud, 1Password 4 for Mac has over 90 new features that allow “security” and “convenience” to coexist in the same sentence without tearing a rift in the space-time continuum. Check out the highlights:

• Completely redesigned interface - crafted by Dan V Peterson with Mavericks and simplicity in mind
• Multiple and Shared Vaults - create separate vaults to share with business or family members that each get their own sync preferences and locations (take 1Password > New Demo Vault for a quick spin!)
• 1Password mini - a full-featured menubar utility with vault search, item details, vault switching, window anchor options, and more
• All-new extension with Opera support - the front-end for our JavaScript extension and 1Password mini is now built on Cocoa, giving you a unified experience across every browser
• Shared Items - if sharing an entire vault is overkill, you can share individual items (Logins, Secure Notes, memberships) with another person via email or obfuscated iMessage, just like iOS! If your recipient makes changes and shares the item back to you, 1Password will update your existing item
• 256-bit Authenticated Encryption, PBKDF2 with HMAC-SHA512, and other major security enhancement - 1Password not only keeps your data private, but also tamper-proof. This forestalls many attacks that haven’t even been dreamt of yet
• Wi-Fi Sync is back - many of our customers asked for a way to sync with 1Password 4 for iPhone and iPad but keep their data out of The Cloud, and we delivered
• iCloud sync - naturally
• Favorites - also just like iOS, quick access to your most important and frequently used items
• Third-party App Integration - You can choose to enable support for Alfred, LaunchBar, and Quicksilver, allowing you to quickly search and open Logins from the Mac’s great productivity utilities

Check out our brand new Mac site to see all the ways 1Password can make staying secure more convenient. Grab 1Password 4 in the Mac App Store today, and here on our website soon!

It's great that they have been able to take advantage of iCloud sync too.  Way to go Agilebits!

via Agilebits

Thinking About Everyone

Not only do Apple's engineers think about everything, the try to accommodate everyone as well. Simply amazing. http://youtu.be/EZ_nyIwep0k

Great Sleuthing by Ars Tehcnica on the Artificial Note 3 Benchmarks

Once again, Samsung inflates their numbers by artificial boosting their devices and going so far to as trick the applications running the tests to max itself out. Caught in the act again.

Above is a picture of Geekbench and of Stealthbench, which is identical to Geekbench in every way except for a different package name. With Geekbench, System Monitor shows the CPU is locked into 2.3 GHz mode and all cores are active, but in Stealthbench, the CPU is allowed to idle, shut off cores, and switch power modes, the same way it does in any other app. We have successfully disabled the special benchmark mode.

"Geekbench" is a popular benchmarking app, so the Note is programmed to give it special treatment. It has never heard of "Stealthbench," though, so despite being the exact same app, it does not get the special benchmark boost. The Note will run this benchmark like 99.99999 percent of the other apps on the device. The next step then, is to run the two benchmarks and compare the CPU's benchmark mode with non-benchmark mode.

The file we ended up with is called "DVFSHelper.java," and it contains a hard-coded list of every package that is affected by the special CPU boosting mode. According to this file, the function is used exclusively for benchmarks, and it seems to cover all the popular ones. There's Geekbench, Quadrant, Antutu, Linpack, GFXBench, and even some of Samsung's own benchmarks. The two functions applied to this list seem to be "PACKAGES_FOR_BOOST_ALL_ADJUSTMENT," which is no doubt the CPU booster, and "PACKAGES_FOR_LCD_FRAME_RATE_ADJUSTMENT," which makes it sound like the phone is also altering the display frame rate.

via Ars Technica

Samsung's Galaxy Gear

Save $300 dollars and read the review.

As it stands today, though — unintuitive, oversized, overpriced, and in constant need of a Galaxy guardian — the Galaxy Gear might have been better off staying on the drawing board.

via The Verge