This is nice! Kevo’s keyless lock uses the iPhone 5 or 4S to wirelessly gain entry. And just incase that pesky iPhone 5 battery dies on you, you still get a real key. But the real winner here is the ability to send temporary ekeys to other people when ever you want. Nice! The lock runs on AA batteries and should last up to a year.

The good ol’ iphone boys get all the fun again. Check out Kevo’s website for more info on yet to be announced price and release dates.

If “Lefty’s Bar” makes you think of a virginal middle-aged man in a leisure suit (and if you’re old enough to know what a leisure suit is…), then I have a good chuckle for you: Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded is almost here!

Replay Games of Austin, Texas, successfully funded a Kickstarter program to re-do the original, LSL in the Land of the Lounge Lizards, from scratch. They had a goal of $500,000. They’ve made over $650,000! And now they’re aiming for $750,000 to add more content. They’ve even gotten some of the original game creators on board. Oh, and they’re going to make all 7 original Sierra games. I may be female, but I am SO THERE! Those games were funny as all out!

LSL:Reloaded will be available on May 31, 2013 on the following platforms: PC, OS X, iPhone, iTouch, iPad, Android phones, and Android tablets (please, oh PLEASE let this run on my Fire…).

Yeah, baby!! Now, someone bring back the old Infocom games!

You rely on your smartphone for many things. One area that is lacking is integration with your TV watching. At best, the smartphone was used as a simple remote control to change channels. New apps make use of your phone as a search tool and scheduler. Finally, the phone and TV might really work together.

DirecTV Taps Into Your Phone

This summer, DirecTV will release into beta its latest app, DirecTV Voice. They have been working with Nuance, creators of Dragon Naturally Speaking, to create a voice controlled app to search DirecTV channels for your favorite shows. Their goal is to finally get rid of scrolling through the program grid displayed on the TV screen to find programs.

By using voice recognition, they are trying to also get away from pushing buttons or sliding through nested menus. Nuance is the county’s premier voice recognition specialists so they plan this release to have a high rate of success with this voice-driven application. Think of it as Siri with infinite knowledge of TV shows and movies.

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There is no doubt that iOS is in desperate need of upgrading. It has been around too long in it’s current state. Android and more specifically Windows Phone have a much more intuitive and modern look. Apple even borrowed some of Androids notification goodness in iOS 5. Now it seems that Apple may borrow some of Microsoft’s Metro UI flava for it’s own in the upcoming release of iOS 7. 9to5Mac is stating that multiple sources are claiming the new interface and general design will be “very, very flat”. While other sources are stating that the new design "loses all signs of gloss, shine and skeumorphism"

Jony Ive, who is now in charge of the iOS design team is said to favor the Metro minimalistic style and bring elements of that UI into Apple’s new UI that should be previewed at the WWDC 2013. Macrumors has a pretty cool mockup of the new UI and I can already tell you I am not a fan. What makes the “flat” style work on Windows Phones is that it is now tunable to your own desire by being able to make the truly live tiles bigger or smaller and move them around at will.

If these formerly called icons could be more like Android widgets and have the scalability of Windows Phone I think it would be more of a hit. It is also being stated that the "new panels [that] swipe from the left and right side of an iOS device’s display."

So it could very well possibly be that iOS 7 falls flat in a good way, but Apple better have something more up it’s sleeve than the mocked up image or it could find it’s not so shiny new UI falling flat in a bad way.

The popular Android personal assistant has not come to the iPad and iPhone but I don’t look for it to replace Siri anytime soon. Even though I have a love hate relationship with Siri there is a deeper integration that with Google Search which is where Google Now is buried. First thing is to fire up your iOS device and head to iTunes and either download or update Google Search. Once downloaded and you fire it up, the Google Search screen is pretty boring. At the bottom of the screen there are some notifications that you can lift up (swipe) and will display multiple cards. The cards will appear based off your location results and selections for example with sports and teams. When you are done with a card you can swipe it the heck out of there. Which is kind of neat. I’m still working with Google Now for iPad but so far I am pretty underwhelmed and the Android experience with Google Now is much better.

From the Jailbreak Community for the iPhone comes a new app that will give your lock screen some more functionality missing from iOS 6. It’s called Atom and it allows you to add 6 icons to your lock screen that you can open by dragging a grabber button over the app icon you want to open right from your lock screen. You are limited to just 6 icons on your lock screen at this time but can customize it with any app you want.

It is available at the Big Boss repository for $1.99.

[9to5mac via @the_gadgeteur]

We all know how brutal Foxconn is  with its employees, but every once in a while a disgruntled “staffer” will leak information about the climate inside the tech manufacturing giant for Apple. While this is just rumor and unsubstantiated,  The Register cites a report in China Business that anywhere from 5-8 million unidentified handsets where rejected by Apple and sent back. It’s not clear what version of the iPhone it was, whether the iPhone 5 or 4S, but at an estimated cost of $200 bucks each, Foxconn is going to have to take a huge hit worth up to $1.5 billion.

Now, there is no doubt the total hit would be that much for Foxconn as most of the components should be able to be reused. It is said that the rejected iPhone were sent back “due to appearance of substandard or dysfunctional problems.”.

With Apple stocks up 6% to 405 this morning, rumors even as shaky as this cannot help the 800 pound gorilla much.

Surprisingly quickly after the release of Facebook’s latest master piece, Facebook Home, the iOS (iPhone and iPad) receives an update featuring the super popular Chat Heads. Chat Head’s are pretty much floating icons off to the side of your screen waiting for your Facebook Chat goodness. Most with early access to Facebook Home have actually opted out of the experience, but kept the Chat Heads. They are a none intrusive way to keep your notifications up front and center.

In iOS world, no luck on the same freedom. Because of iOS sandbox nature, Chat Heads can only exist when you’re in the Facebook App itself, needless to say, it really defeats the purpose of the really nice thought out implementation. Thus, making it useless! So while you may have thought you had a celebration on its way, the Android army enjoys this candy on its own. Check out The Verge’s early video coverage of the app.

If you’re a fan of SkyDrive but unsatisfied with your iOS version of the app hopefully this will make you happy. Version 3.0 has passed certification and is available in the App Store. This update includes:

• Support for iPhone 5 and iPad Mini
• Updated app icons and user experience
• Works better with your photos:
  • Download full resolution photos to your iPhone or iPad
  • Control the size of photos you upload and download
  • Photo metadata is retained when you upload to SkyDrive
• Opening and saving files to SkyDrive works better with other apps on your iOS devices
• Many other small changes, bug fixes and performance improvements

You can get the app or find the locate via iTunes HERE

Sure enough somebody has stepped up to challenge the current king of social media photo sharing Instagram. Well, technically I’d suppose Facebook would still retain that title. Nonetheless the Instagram photo sharing app competitor Photoplay has released on Android, iOS and WP8 simultaneously delivering a much broader cross-platform play. The app runs smooth, is well designed for each platform and might be the first true challenger to Instagram’s runaway dominance. Yes it is yet another app forcing users to not be wallflowers and to mingle with the crowd but hey, I’m all for something taking the shine off Instagram and knocking it down a peg.

My advice for everyone that has been rooting for Instagram is to clue your Android and iOS friends on this “hot new” app that everyone is using. LOL, I’ve just discovered House of Lies and its influenced my spin mentality. You know what would be a keen move by Microsoft? Run ads for Photoplay on both iOS App Store and Google Play. Heck, pay a couple celebrities with huge followings to use the app and tweet from it. It would instantly trend and downloads would pour in. Overnight you’d see an Instagram competitor and Facebook would be left with eggs on its face. Can you tell I’m spiteful over Facebook’s reluctance to deliver a credible app to the platform (both FB app and Instagram)? Good it should show. They are darn lucky I don’t have the marketing budget of Microsoft.

Android Link: Photoplay for Android  iPhone Link: Photoplay for iPhone Windows Phone Link:

Source: WPCentral

Images; iTunes App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store