Create template events and paste ‘em in when needed

Calendar Paste is a calendar events templating app for iOS. It’s a place where you can store calendar events that don’t repeat in a predicable patten, or that only need to be in your calendar at certain times. It’s one of those apps you never thought you needed.

Calendar Paste is perfectly suited to those events that keep cropping up, but not so regularly that you can set a repeating calendar item to keep track of them.

They’re things that happen every now-and-again, things that crop up unexpectedly but repeatedly. Things you have to add to your calendar and it bugs you every time because arrrgh you wish there was a quicker way.

Calendar Paste is it. You set up templates for events and save them in here. When you need to add them to your actual calendar, a couple of taps will do it.

Your templates have a title, a location and a duration. There’s optional alerts, URLs and a notes field too. Set them up and forget about them until the time comes.

When it does, you can add one of your templates as a new event to your primary calendar with a couple of taps. It will work seamlessly with the built-in Calendar app in iOS, which means your event will get synced through iCloud or with Google Calendar or any other extras you normally make use of.

Adding a template as a scheduled event still means that you have to specify the date and time it needs to happen, so you’re not saving all the steps needed to add an event in Calendar. But you are saving some of them.

I think Cal Paste will have limited appeal, mainly to people who find themselves constantly setting up new items in Calendar. Maybe it’s work meetings, maybe it’s rehearsals, maybe it’s meeting friends for a drink, maybe it’s many variations of all of those and more. If you inwardly groan every time you open up Calendar and start typing the same thing for the 200th time, Calendar Paste is definitely for you and worth spending a dollar on. It’s not the only app of its kind on the Store, but is certainly one of the better-looking ones amongst its rivals.

Source: App Store

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The iOS lock screen is a boring place. It displays the time, any notifications you’ve received since you last unlocked your device, and a shortcut to the Camera app. But that’s it. When you compare it to Android’s lock screen, which now has support for all kinds of cool widgets, it’s clear there’s room for improvement.

One way Apple could start improving it for iOS 7 is with this awesome concept from Jean-Marc Denis.It simple, but it would make the lock screen a much more functional place. By introducing a pull-down tray with some basic toggles for frequently used features, users could toggle Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Airplane Mode, and Hotspot without even having to unlock their iOS device. Check it out in the video below.

What would make this feature even better is if the user could customize the toggles in that tray. For instance, I hardly ever use the Hotspot feature on my iPhone, but I frequently find myself adjusting its brightness, or flicking Do Not Disturb on and off.

Apple has shied away from features like this in the past, but I think iOS users are beginning to want more from the company’s mobile platform. The basics have remained largely the same for the past five years, while rivals like Android have caught up and even overtaken in some areas.

What do you think?

Source: YouTube

Via: Macgasm

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Aubrey Johnson, a former Color employee, shares two stories behind the scenes at Apple's acquisitions of both Color and Lala -- both firms were founded by Bill Nguyen before being acquired by Apple for two very different reasons.

Like Pandora, Lala's music was streamed from the internet rather than stored locally. This allowed users to listen to a catalog of over 7 million songs for free as a stream over the web -- much like Pandora or Spotify today. Songs could also be purchased and downloaded, typically for a lower price than iTunes was offering.


Johnson writes that Lala's biggest strength was that it was at or near the top for many Google searches of particular songs, thanks to a search placement deal with Google. As a result, the firm was siphoning sales away from iTunes. As well, Google and Lala had partnered on Google's Music service. Both Nokia and Google made lowball offers for the firm, and Nguyen headed to Apple to see if they'd be interested in buying his company.

In late November [2009], Nguyen was seated at the dinner table in Steve Job’s home on Waverly St in Palo Alto. Also present were Eddy Cue and Tim Cook and other Apple executives. Steve led the conversation while eating a beet salad:

“I’m going to give you a number, Bill, and if you like it, let’s do it and just be done with this whole thing. Okay?” Bill agreed.

Jobs passed a piece of paper to Nguyen and Bill nodded. The deal was done.

After the acquisition, a number of Lala employees left the company with Nguyen, leaving millions in options on the table. Later, Apple apparently bought back some of those same engineers when the company purchased the remnants of Color, getting more experienced personnel for a significant savings.

Apple CEO Tim Cook must provide a deposition in a lawsuit that claims the Cupertino company, along with other major firms in Silicon Valley, violated antitrust rules by entering into an agreement not to recruit each other’s employees. Apple’s lawyer, George Riley, had objected to the order handed out by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose, California, on Thursday.

Other companies included in the lawsuit include Google, Intel, Adobe, Walt Disney, Pixar, and Intuit. The case, which was brought on behalf of employees, claims that all seven parties had agreed to refrain from placing “cold calls” in an effort to lure workers away from one another. The plaintiffs claim that as a result of this, worker mobility was restricted, and companies were able to keep salaries low.

Koh told lawyers on Thursday that Apple co-founder and former CEO was copied into emails that had been issued in the case, and that she found it “hard to believe” that Cook — then Apple’s chief operating officer — would have been unaware of such agreements. Koh added that she was disappointed that senior executives at the companies involved hadn’t beed deposed before yesterday’s hearing.

Koh also requested that Google chairman Eric Schmidt be deposed on February 20, while Intel CEO Paul Otellini will be deposed later this month.

Robert Mittelstaedt, a lawyer representing the companies, argued that there was no evidence that everyone in the proposed class was hurt by the alleged “no-hire” agreement — which is required for the group to be certified as a class.

“You can’t assume that if someone got a raise from a cold call” that the effect of that negotiation would “ripple to everybody else,” Mittelstaedt told Koh. “Why would a company give a raise to someone in a negotiation if it knew it had to turn around and give a raise to everyone else?”

A Justice Department investigation into this issue back in 2010 said that the companies kept do-not-call lists to avoid competitive recruiting, and that this hurt employees. It also found that in May 2005, executives from Adobe and Apple agreed not to cold-call each other’s employees. Apple was said to have similar agreements with Google and Pixar, while Google had an agreement with Intel and Intuit.

Source: Bloomberg

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If you’ve pre-ordered a Pebble smartwatch, the first thing you’ll want to do when it arrives is connect it to your smartphone. After all, that’s the whole idea, right? Then you’ll be pleased to know that Pebble’s official apps for Android and iOS will be available before the device arrives on your doorstep.

Following its Kickstarter success, Pebble gave its first press conference at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week to announce that its device had now entered mass production, and that it will begin shipping on January 23. Before your order gets to you, however, Pebble promises the accompanying smartphone app will be ready to download from the App Store and Google Play.

The smartphone app will allow you to control certain Pebble features, and add additional watch faces. It’ll also allow you to view your smartphone notifications — such as text message and incoming calls — on your Pebble.

It’s unclear exactly when the app will arrive, but with Pebble shipping starting next week, it shouldn’t be too long before it appears. RazorianFly suspects it may arrive on the same day, January 23, but this hasn’t been confirmed by Pebble. Even so, you can relax with the knowledge that the app will be here before your watch is.

Source: Pebble FAQ

Via: RazorianFly

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Bloomberg is reporting that Apple CEO Tim Cook has been ordered by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh to give a deposition in a lawsuit claiming that Apple and five other companies entered deals not to recruit each other's employees.

Koh told lawyers yesterday that Apple founder Steve Jobs was copied on e-mails at issue in the case, and that she found it “hard to believe” that Cook, as Apple’s chief operating officer at the time in question, wouldn’t have been consulted about such agreements.

The judge said she was disappointed that senior executives at the companies involved hadn’t been deposed before yesterday’s hearing over whether she should certify the case as a group lawsuit.

The case goes back to 2005 and alleges that Apple, Adobe, Pixar, Lucasfilm, Google, Intel and Intuit had agreements not to poach employees from the companies that were privy to the agreements. Employees were free to apply at jobs at any of the companies on their own volition, however.

The agreements were investigated in 2010 by the Justice Department and the claims were eventually settled, with the companies agreeing not to enter employee-poaching bans for five years.

The current lawsuit is a class-action civil suit by employees who say they were harmed by the anti-competitive actions of the companies within the agreement.

Reuters reports that Sharp, one of Apple's primary display panel partners for its mobile devices, has slashed production of iPad displays at one of its plants. Sources did not indicate the reasons for the dramatic cut, but it appears to be a combination of a shift in consumer interest to the smaller iPad mini and a natural seasonal slowdown coming out of the holiday quarter.

Sharp Corp has nearly halted production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple Inc's iPad, two sources said, as demand shifts to its smaller iPad mini.

Sharp's iPad screen production line at its Kameyama plant in central Japan has fallen to the minimal level to keep the line running this month after a gradual slowdown began at the end of 2012 as Apple manages its inventory, the industry sources with knowledge of Sharp's production plans told Reuters.

Apple also obtains iPad display panels from Samsung and LG Display, with a source at Samsung indicating that there has been no production cut there and a source at LG suggesting that any production cuts there were in line with typical seasonality.

Reports of cutbacks in iPad component production come close on the heels of reports that Apple has slashed orders for iPhone 5 parts, although there have been significant questions about the figures cited in those reports and whether the decline actually represents a weakening of demand.

MIT Technology Review has dug up a job ad posted by Apple on LinkedIn appealing to writers to help make Siri more conversational.

“[S]omeone who combines a love for language, wordplay, and conversation with demonstrated experience in bringing creative content to life within an intense technical environment.”

The ad notes that writers who apply will also need "experience in writing character-driven dialog", a good vocabulary and, ideally, knowledge of more than one language. The goal of the hirings would be to "evolve and enrich Siri."

Siri has been known for her wit and personality, with Apple attempting to allow Siri to build emotional ties with users.

Apple focused on keeping Siri's personality "friendly and humble -- but also with an edge". According to their source, they were thinking "How would we want a person to respond?" while developing the software.

After scaling back Siri's original feature set for its initial launch through Apple, the company has been working to expand compatibility to new devices such as the iPad as well as new languages. Apple has also improved Siri in iOS 6 with new movie, sports and restaurant features, and is set to introduce movie ticket purchases through Fandango with the upcoming iOS 6.1.

Black Pixel today released its first major in-house app, Kaleidoscope 2. The app that helps coders, writers and others to compare the differences in folders, images, text, and more. The app was released as a beta back in November.

At the time, The Next Web spoke with former Apple employee Michael Jurewitz and the rest of the Black Pixel team about Kaleidoscope 2:

Kaleidoscope 2 is a lovely comparison app that allows you to take two or more files, folders or images and compare them to one another. The applications are broad, with benefits that swing from developers on one end to those simply looking to compare two images side-by-side. It has full integration with Git, Subversion, Mercurial, and Bazaar. The app can be used as the default conflict resolver for code with its command line integration or simply to check the changed passages in a collaborative word document. It’s beautifully designed, fast and wonderful to use. It’s become an essential part of my toolkit already.

Black Pixel acquired Kaleidoscope and Versions last year, as well as the popular RSS reader NetNewsWire. Version 2 of Kaleidoscope is the first major bit of software that Black Pixel has put its own name on -- previously, the company focused on developing apps for outside clients.

Kaleidoscope 2 is currently available on the Mac App Store [Direct Link], directly from Black Pixel or as a 15-day trial. It's available for $35 through January 30th, after which it will be $70.

Apple and Rovio have paired up to give away Angry Birds Rio for the iPhone and iPad for free this week, as part of Apple's 'Free App of the Week' promotion.

The game is normally $0.99 for the iPhone and $2.99 on the iPad.

Angry Birds Rio brought more of the same bird-flinging action that we all are quite familiar with by now, but also threw a couple of new very welcome twists into the formula. First and foremost are the boss fights, which were a first for the Angry Birds series and have you squaring off against the main antagonists from the Rio movie. The game also utilized more advanced graphics and recently was updated with tons of new power-ups and support for the widescreen of the iPhone 5.

Angry Birds Rio is free for a limited time on the iPhone and iPad from the App Store. [Direct link: iPhone/iPad]