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BitTorrent makes offline messages on Bleep more secure
The biggest thing BitTorrent's Bleep messaging app can offer users is privacy, so it's rightly beefing up that feature even more. In BT's latest engineering blog post, senior software engineer Steven Siloti explains how his team has improved the security of asynchronous offline messages. The feature, which made its way to the app in December 2014, allows a recipient to receive offline messages even if the sender hasn't connected to the internet yet. Previously, both users had to be online for messages to be exchanged -- remember that Bleep doesn't have servers, so that update was a big deal. Anyway, BT's engineers were apparently not content with the security level of offline messages, because if someone manages to steal a user's "offline key," he could unlock every offline message he intercepted from the same user in the past.
BitTorrent's messaging service goes wide, adds ephemeral options
Last we heard of BitTorrent's chat client, Bleep, it was just debuting. Today the news is that the secure messaging client is moving from open alpha to a release aimed at the general Android and iOS owning public. With it comes peer-to-peer messaging with the ability to communicate -- even sending messages to friends who are offline -- no servers required, which theoretically means no threat of hacking. Perhaps the biggest new feature is an ephemeral option called "whispers" for evaporating messages. Unlike Snapchat, though, you can choose on a message by message basis which texts or photos you send will evaporate after 25 seconds. It isn't an all or nothing affair here. And to further distance itself from the ghostly messaging service, you can even send these from a computer. BitTorrent says with whispers you can swap back and forth between them and normal messages seamlessly without breaking the flow of conversation too.
Crowdfunding Roundup: OpenHome Labs, Starfish, and Bleep
Each week, TUAW provides readers with an update on new or significant crowdfunded Apple-related projects in the news. While our policy is to not go into detail on items that haven't reached at least 80 percent of their funding goal, this update is designed to give readers a heads-up on projects they might find interesting enough to back. We start off this week with a fascinating announcement from Indiegogo, which announced a partnership yesterday with OpenHome Labs, "a program that helps connected home start-ups succeed by accelerating their development and go-go-market process." OpenHome Labs was developed by Icontrol Networks, a company that is going places in the connected home market. You may remember their Piper security cam and home automation hub from our review earlier this year. There are currently three Indiegogo campaigns running under the auspices of OpenHome Labs: Bttn, an internet-connected push button that triggers an action or chain of actions Reemo: a wrist-worn product providing gesture control of devices Zen: A new connected thermostat Kudos to Icontrol and Indiegogo for creating OpenHome Labs, and best of luck to current and future crowdfunding campaigns. Here's a funded project with a little over a day to go. Starfish is a weight-activated child seat sensor that connects to a smartphone to alert parents who may -- and it does happen occasionally to the best of parents -- leave their infants in the car. 111 percent funded with about 30 hours to go! And then there are the Kickstarter campaigns that fill us with an overwhelming feeling of deja vu. In this case, the ACE-1 UltraClean BioMass Cookstove reminded me of something... like the very popular BioLite camp stove. Uses available grass, sticks and twigs as fuel? Check. Generates electricity while cooking to power your devices? Check. Gives back by providing stoves for use in Africa? Check. The only thing the ACE-1 may not have in common with BioLite is funding. It's 6 percent funded with 45 days to go. If you've read the TUAW crowdfunding roundups for any period of time, you know that there are bazillions of campaigns seeking money to develop the perfect iPad stand. I've generally found mod tot them to be either too look-alike or too weird, but here's one that is absolutely stunning. It's called YOHANN, and it's the brainchild of two Swiss designers. It's 163 percent funded with three weeks to go. Here is another funded project on Indiegogo. The Bleep smart charging cable includes a built-in flash drive so whenever you plug in your iPhone. A lot of people must like this idea in addition to me; it's already 142 percent funded with 51 days to go. Everyone seems to want us to stop sitting down at our desks to work. Stand Stand lets you take a standing desk anywhere. Want to look like a total tool in your local Starbucks, standing up and working? Stand Stand's portable, so you can accomplish your wildest dreams. It's about half funded with 46 days to go, so it looks like you'll start seeing hipsters lugging these around soon. And we have another winner, and another project this week that really shows some amazing innovation. Mozbii is a stylus for kids that has a sensor built into it so it can pick up colors from the real world. It comes with a coloring book app, and hopefully when the campaign is successful the developer will come out with even more apps. Frankly, I think this capability might be useful for designers... adult designers. Mozbii is 136 percent funded with just over three weeks to go. You know what the world could use more of? Fitness trackers! Fitness trackers that you wear on your wrist! That's a really innovative idea that nobody has thought of, right? Now there's Jaha, a fitness band designed to locate and challenge other Jaha wearers in your vicinity. Of course there's an iPhone app that goes along with this all, so you can use the magic of GPS to track your walks and runs -- and nobody else does that. Sigh. Surprisingly, this campaign looks like it will be successful and bring yet another meh fitness band to the world. Help us, Obi-Wan iWatch -- you're our only hope. It's 77 percent funded with just less than three weeks left in the campaign. Today's world is full of nifty neat new products that are smartphone controlled. You can get air conditioners, slow cookers, and a ton of other products that can be remotely adjusted via apps. Table Air is an idea whose time has obviously not come -- a desktop air purifier with a controller app. It's currently standing on a tabletop in embarrassment of having only raised $1 of a $5,000 goal. But that's OK, Binky -- there are still 25 days during which clean air fanatics can vote with their dollars. Let's end this week on a high note. If you wear glasses or sunglasses, you know the frustration of not being able to remember where you left the damned things. Me? I probably lose two or three pairs of sunglasses a year. With LOOK, you'll have a small Bluetooth-equipped sticker that you can attach to those glasses as well as an app with which to search for them. I like this project, which just started yesterday. It's got a ways to go, though -- only 1 percent funded with 60 days to go. Please help a middle-aged man -- me -- to find his sunglasses. Back this campaign. And that, my friends, is another week's worth of the good, the not-so-good, and the downright stupid in the world of crowdfunding. We'll be back next Thursday for another roundup of crowdfunded projects that you can support or ignore. Many thanks again to Hal Sherman for providing some tips about new and exciting projects, and if you're aware of any other crowdfunded Apple-related projects, be sure to let us know about them through the Tip Us button at the upper right of the TUAW home page for future listing on the site.
BitTorrent's Bleep messenger is a secure, decentralized chat platform
There's a distinctive sound your computer makes when an online friend is trying to get your attention. Sometimes its high pitched, other times its a low, warm tone, but regardless of your chat software, the onomatopoeia probably reads something like "bleep" which -- by no coincidence, we're sure -- is what BitTorrent is calling its new messaging platform. Unlike Google Hangouts, AIM or Skype, however, Bleep is a decentralized communication platform, design specifically to protect user metadata and anonymity.
How do you like your TiVo, with bleeps & bloops or without?
This isn't one of our polls but it's a worth question: TiVo users, do you leave your unit's distinctive bleeps and bloops on, or turn them off? Our friends at TV Squad want to know, claiming that once they turned off the menu's audio cues the DVR seemed hollow and lonely. So let us know if you keep the sounds on, Sex & the City style, even if it's just to lord them over your cable DVR owning friends, stuck timeshifting in silence.
Microsoft patents real-time audio obscenity mask
We can call it the real-time audio obscenity mask, or we can call it the autobleep, the cursekiller, whatever. The point is Microsoft's patented a unique system for bleeping out (actually just munging or silencing) combinations of phonemes it identifies as obscenities in audio streams without making use of time shifting, or otherwise requiring manual human intervention to make sure the FCC doesn't stick them with some harsh fines. Would this theoretical system be able tell the difference between the real f-bomb and funk, or even homonym swears like those synonyms for a donkey and female dog? You know the ones. Tell you what, let's put it to work on a satellite radio hip-hop station or an old George Carlin record and see how we do.[Via Ars Technica]
