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Form’s smart swimming goggles get refined for 2024
The Smart Swim 2 is smaller, has optical heart rate monitoring and a live compass.
Form's Swim Goggles display heart rate data in the pool
You might have thought Form already perfected the Swim Goggles, but the company is about to add another welcomed feature: heart rate tracking. Today, Form announced that it's teamed up with the fitness wearable company Polar to introduce the heart rate tech. Beginning in November, a free software update from Form will make the Swim Goggles compatible with Polar's OH1 and OH1+ heart rate sensors.
Form's Swim Goggles are the first great wearable for swimmers
What you're looking at sells why you'd ever want a pair of Form's new Swim Goggles more than any spec sheet or press release. Its transparent display sits over one of your eyes, serving up real-time stats about how well you're swimming, including your times, distances and splits. This is the same kind of data you see on TV during the Olympics, but now you're the superstar worthy of tracking. And it's all beamed straight to your face.
Adobe Document Cloud easily handles forms and PDFs on any device
Adobe rebranded its creative software back in 2012, and now, it's changing the way it handles forms and documents. The company just announced Document Cloud: "a modern way" to tackle those files in your home, office and on the go. Combining key features from several apps, Document Cloud (DC) includes the redesigned Acrobat DC for tweaking PDFs. What's more, its handy scanning feature will allow you to snap a picture and convert it to an editable PDF, where you can make changes to both the text and any images. Adobe's EchoSign tools are baked in too, so filling out and adding your signature to forms is an easy task on either the desktop or a mobile device. Speaking of mobile devices, new apps, like Acrobat Mobile and Fill & Sign, wrangle all of those files on phones and tablets. The pair ensures that you can resume editing right from where you left off, and that signing a permission slip in a pinch is never too much to ask.
Google's EU-only form can help the internet forget about you
Google has now complied with a European court ruling that it must remove links to personal data if requested. It has just put up a "right to be forgotten" form to help you remove links about yourself from its search results -- but not the pages themselves. To apply, you'll need to explain why the pages you want de-listed are "irrelevant, outdated, or... inappropriate" and supply valid ID like a driver's license. If your submission is accepted, Google will then strike the link from its searches and replace them with a notice similar to those it uses for takedowns. Google was not at all happy with the ruling, telling Re/Code earlier that it went too far by sacrificing the public's right to know for the right to privacy. Meanwhile, it's in the process of setting up a committee to evaluate requests with luminaries like Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales. Unfortunately, if you're in the US or anywhere else outside the EU: Fuggedaboutit.
Help family members keep track of Apple ID/iCloud details with TUAW's fill-out form
Now that the gift-giving season is winding down, you may have a less tech-savvy relative who has suddenly found themselves with a shiny new Apple product. Whether they're getting started with an iPhone, iPad or MacBook, there's one thing they'll be needing (aside from apps): their Apple ID and iCloud account setup information. iCloud will help them keep track of their contacts, calendar, email and documents; an App Store account (which, of course, uses the same Apple ID credentials) will allow them to load up that iPad with great apps. But setting up an account requires first providing quite a bit of personal information. That information -- including easily researched or guessed answers to security questions, which, for safety's sake, should be faked anyway -- is something your family may need again someday, even if your relative has forgotten it or is no longer around to provide it. Apple even lets you include a rescue email address, which could be set to go to the "family IT lead" if that person is willing to take on the responsibility of screening password reset attempts. To that end, we've created a small PDF form; print it out and go over it together with your family member to keep track of all the important account setup info. Then, you may take a photo of it or scan it to hold onto (put it on an encrypted disk image, if you like) and your relative puts their copy in a paper file in a locked drawer or cabinet, with the house deed and the passports. You can't hack a piece of paper, and in the unlikely event that a password is forgotten or a security question misremembered, you can easily get back into the iCloud/App Store account with a minimum of heartache and recriminations. You can preview and download the form right here. Best of luck! Apple ID Account Details This post was inspired by J. Thanks!
Switched On: Form in the USA
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology. The Mac Pro might have been worthy of the "One More Thing" kinds of reveals that Steve Jobs used to do at Apple events. Despite being foreshadowed by Tim Cook as a product the company was going to make in the US, it was virtually carted in from left field at an event that focused broadly on new operating systems before a crowd of developers that could appreciate its power. That said, it will likely require OS X Mavericks, a thematically fitting release for a product that represents a new wave in Apple's design. Some have said that iOS 7 may be the company's New Coke. The Mac Pro, though, is the new can. Its cylindrical form represents a new design for Apple, albeit one that jibes with the company's affinity for simple, rounded, iconic shapes. Like the new AirPort Extreme, it has a significant vertical profile, but is a fraction of the size of its predecessor designed to accommodate multiple optical drives and hard drives.
Rapid iOS app development with FormEntry
FormEntry Touch, a recent release from WidgetPress (makers of ModelBaker), makes setting up form-based systems on iPads and iPhones easier than ever. The universal app is static, in that it requires no coding; it reads forms from the application you build with FormEntry for Mac and runs on the FormEntry Server. Put it all together, and it looks like a pretty great setup for rapidly creating form-based applications that interact with a central database. There are a lot of possibilities for something like this, across a variety of applications. You could build a menu and ordering system for a restaurant [or a wine list –Ed.], and let iDevice-toting customers place their orders at any time (or provide every table with an iPad, if you could justify the cost). Teachers and professors could easily build quizzes and tests with the available array of form field types (we're looking at you, ACU). It has a signature field form type which allows people to use the touch screen to sign submissions, so it has legal applications as well. It even handles photo uploads, which adds myriad possibilities for inventory, real estate, and insurance applications. FormEntry for Mac starts (for a single developer) at US$39, FormEntry Server at $79, and FormEntry Touch is a free download from the App Store. For a base price of $118, you could start rapidly developing applications and remote databases. Academic pricing drops it to $19 and $39 for FormEntry and FormEntry Server. For larger business applications, you can also get a Private Label version for $4,999 and white-label the whole setup. I'm curious to know if anyone has tried FormEntry out, and what they think. If you have, share your experience in the comments!
Macworld 2010: iPad mockup hands-on
The other day at Macworld Expo 2010, we did a quick interview with Tim Hickman, CEO of Hard Candy Cases. During that interview, in which they showed off an already-made iPad case, I asked him how they knew what the iPad would be like. He said that they had heavily researched the dimensions, including stats from Apple's site, information from over 300 pictures of the keynote (in which they compared the iPad's dimensions to things like a wristwatch band), and even some not-quite-public plans from an unnamed Chinese manufacturer. With all of that information, they had actually simulated and constructed an "as-close-to-real-as-you-can-get" mockup of the iPad's size and form. Then, on Saturday, the folks from Hard Candy Cases came back by the booth, and their VP of products, David Adam, said he'd actually brought the iPad mockup to the show, and asked if we would like to see and hold it. Considering that there wasn't actually a working iPad at Macworld this year, we of course gladly said yes. You can see what it looks like above, and hit the link below for our impressions of what it's like to finally hold and touch the closest thing to an iPad that money can buy.
Druid epic flight form is live with patch 2.1
Patch 2.1 brought many treats to the adventurers of Azeroth, but one of the sweetest is the Epic Druid Flight Form quest. Unlike its predecessor, Flight Form, this ability isn't handed out to every high level shape shifter with the appropriate riding skill. The quest to fly at epic speed is long and complex. Revered reputation grinding, Heroic instance running, escort quests, exploding foliage and much more await the intrepid druid. Oh, and they have to pay the 5000g riding skill upgrade before they can even start the quest. When they finish, druids not only get the Swift Flight Form ability, but also a relic that works for any druid spec: Idol of the Raven Goddess - Increases the healing granted by the Tree of Life form aura by 20, adds 9 critical strike rating to the Leader of the Pack aura, and adds 9 spell critical strike rating to the Moonkin form aura.An excellent walkthrough, Wiki style, can be found here at the Servants of Seagis guild site.EDIT: Another reward received in the quest chain: Charm of Swift Flight, Trinket, Equip: Increases speed in Flight Form and Swift Flight Form by 10%. Thanks to Felixia from the Uldum Server for the heads up!
TUAW Podcast #22: 1Passwd
This week's podcast covers 1Passwd, the password manager and autofill tool that brings some really unique features and multi-browser support for the Keychain to the table. For just under 8 minutes I demonstrate some of the killer features of this app that go above and beyond the norm, and the whole thing weighs in at a mere 28MB. Snag it from our iTunes Store Podcast directory, this direct link or our own podcast rss feed. Enjoy!
Wii Warm Up: Form factor
Beware its sheer immensity. Why, it positively towers over your miniature teacup poodle. The Wii is so beyond intimidating, we have created a new word for it: immonstrosifying. Add that to your SAT vocabulary.All right, so the Wii is a barely out of the microscopic range. Still, its overall polish makes it a nice eye-pleaser in your home theater setup ... or does it? How is your Wii oriented: horizontally or vertically? Do you use the stand? Is the glossy white an eyesore, and is it even in plain view? Does it look silly next to your PS3 or 360? Does Lamar really approve of Kool-Aid? Speak up, dear readers!
DS Daily: GBA stickout
The DS Lite improved upon its predecessor in almost every way. Brighter, sleeker, and smaller .. but, alas, it perhaps became a bit too small. Due to it's decreased size, the DS Lite was unable to fully house GBA cartridges, creating a veritable tumor on your system.In days of yore, we would carry around our DS permanently loaded with both our current DS game of choice, as well as a pick-up-and-play GBA game. These days, we seek to retain our beautiful form factor and simply leave the placeholder "cart" in the slot. Do you guys care about the GBA functionality at all, and are you willing to handle the eyesore? Ladies and gentlemen, to your comments!
1Passwd - password/form manager lets Firefox use the Keychain
*Oh snap!* Agile Web Solutions has created a password and form manager extension for both Safari and Firefox that fixes one of my biggest gripes about Mozilla's flagship browser: it can store website passwords in Mac OS X's Keychain Access application. For those who haven't stumbled upon the wonders of the Keychain: it's a system-wide secure password manager that most other Mac OS X apps can use to store logins for things like websites and FTP access. 1Passwd is an extension that, amongst other features, lets Firefox join the Keychain party party so you can have one secure, centralized area for managing (and backing up) your logins. This also means that if you have a .Mac account, any passwords you enter into Firefox will sync between your Macs. But 1Passwd doesn't stop at handle just your login information. Check out the full feature list to see everything else it can do for both Safari and Firefox.If beer could be sent virtually through PayPal, I'd send Agile Web Solutions a twelve pack; this brings Firefox one step closer to being a true Mac OS X browser. 1Passwd is currently in a third beta release, and those who opt to test the beta and offer their email addresses will receive a discount off its (somewhat steep) $29.95 price.
New Intel Macs are first with a new chip but not a new design
In the "random observation" category, I noticed something about the new Dual Core Macs that is a break from Apple's traditional practices: they're the first Macs, at least in the last five years or more, to receive a completely new chip (from a completely different company, no doubt) and yet not receive a redesign. The PowerBooks had one with the G4, the PowerMacs with the G5 and the iMac when it too went G5.But not this time around. From all the photographs, it seems as though both machines have retained their previous form - and no, an iSight at the top of the MacBook Pro (does anyone like that name yet?) doesn't count. I'm not saying I was hoping for a redesign - I think the present forms of these machines are at the top of their game. But with a move as huge as Intel, I was half expecting at least something.
Optimized Firefox with OS X form goodness
Sure, there are G4 and G5 optimized versions of Firefox 1.5, but neither can compare to the new OS X-style infused version. The BeatnikPad Journal picked up on the efforts of a Mozilla forum user by the name of Pu7o to build a version of Firefox 1.5 that includes the far more attractive form widgets (no, not Dashboard widgets) of OS X. This brings Firefox one (tiny) step closer to at least looking like a true OS X app, as the BeatnikPad notes that these kinds of changes might not come straight from Mozilla until Firefox 3.0. As of this writing, only a G4 build is unofficially available from the BeatnikPad post; a G5 build is coming soon.Another bonus from this modified and optimized version for all you OS X-theme users out there is that this version of Firefox actually makes the browser use the form widgets default to OS X. This should allow your theming app of choice, such as Unsanity's Shapeshifter, to finally apply its style to Firefox.
