Until now, augmented reality has been mostly used as a way of giving you more information about the world around you, but a new iPhone app uses your surroundings to remix the music you're listening to. "Sadly by your side" is an interdisciplinary art project encompassing an album, a book, and an iPhone app. It's written by David Cairo and produced by Fabrica, a design and communications strategy firm based in Italy. There are two different ways to listen to the album using the iPhone app, both of which require that you use the iPhone's camera. To hear the album exactly as Cairo intended it, simply hold the camera up to the $17 dollar book, it'll lock on, and playback the original version. (Or if your arms get tired, you can check out the unremixed version on SoundCloud for free.) The more experimental route is to use the information hitting the camera sensor as the basis for a remix of the music. As you can see in the video above, the app breaks up the image the camera is seeing into a mixture of black, blue, and red, each of which controls different parameters of the music. The underlying code for each track is programmed so that the data visualization affects the harmony, melody, and rhythm of the track differently. The work is an intriguing proof of concept for musical apps that could later be developed in the future. The effect of the visual remix is subtle because there aren't too many parameters being controlled and because the music is of the chilled out, meandering instrumental variety to begin with. It's kind of disorienting and odd to point your phone at different stuff to try to discern how it's changing the music. Sometimes you think you've figured out just what increasing the amount of a certain color will do—only to discover that you're totally wrong. [iTunes and Fabrica and SoundCloud]
The FCC has just launched a new app to test data latency and speeds for iPhone, following the release of its Android version a few months ago. This will allow users to monitor their data speeds of both broadband and mobile networks. The FCC Speed Test app is a government based substitute to the popular Speedtest application by Ookla which has been around for quite some time now.
FCC has launched this app in an effort to further assess and understand the network speeds provided by broadband and wireless carriers across the United States. As far as user privacy is concerned, FCC says that the testing is totally anonymous, and no personally-identifiable information is collected whatsoever.
Privacy is paramount. The FCC has taken significant measures to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of volunteers for this program. Using privacy measures developed and reviewed by a diverse team of privacy experts, any data that could potentially identify specific smartphones is analyzed and processed to ensure privacy protection.
One of the other advantages of the FCC Speed Test app is that it doesn’t come with ads.
The app is only compatible with iOS 7 devices. So hit the iTunes AppStore from the link below to download the app on your compatibles iOS device.
When it comes to home and office security, the cutting edge technology is in video surveillance applications for mobile devices. In fact, many experts have called such apps the fastest growing security solution available in the market. People can use their iOS and Android devices to connect to their security systems remotely, view live camera streams on-the-go, record videos and even get motion detection alerts via email. Mobiscope is one of those apps that make home and business security easier to monitor at any time and from anywhere in the world.
The best choice for small businesses and homeowners
If you look for a simple yet efficient way to secure your property and protect your family, then you need to consider several things to make the best choice. First, there should be some way to alert you when motions were detected. Next, it should be portable enough to run on any smartphone, tablet or laptop. And what’s more important, it should allow you to connect to your security camera system at any time and view live video stream from any location. Mobiscope app gives you everything you need to keep an eye on entryways of your residence and ensure optimal security in your office. It lets you sync with your remote surveillance cameras over Internet and view real-time video streams.
Peace of mind and security with motion detection
Mobiscope app features a built-in motion sensing capability which automatically sends you push and email notifications when it detects motion events. That means you can go about your business or even get some sleep easy knowing that Mobiscope will keep watching your home or office. Very convenient and reliable solution.
Several camera feeds on one screen
Obviously, using one IP or web camera for home/office security monitoring is not enough. There should be a network of surveillance cameras as well as a convenient way to view them all on one device. Mobiscope supports multiple camera feeds allowing you to view up to 4 cams on your iPhone or iPad at once.
Cross-platform
Mobiscope is a cross-platform app. It is compatible with any mobile device operated under iOS and Android. The software also works fine on Windows and Mac OS X, giving you the ability to use just about any desktop computer or laptop with a connected web camera. Sign up today for absolutely free and get a 7-day full-featured trial to test the app on your device and see how it works with your IP and web cameras. And everyone in your office or home can connect to your cameras even without iPhone or Android – they just go to Mobiscope web client, enter your cam’s name and view live footage in their browsers.
Realmac Software, developers of Clear, the popular touch friendly to-do list app have announced that the app will be free today. The developers say that they’re trying to make things right. Here’s an excerpt from the open letter they had written few days back: As many of you know, late last year we released a new version of Clear. This new version called Clear+ was built for iOS 7, and a universal app for iPhone and iPad. It was also a new app, in effect a paid upgrade for our customers. Believing that this new app was the best thing for our customers – after all, a universal app was our biggest feature request – we removed the original version of Clear from the store. Shortly after the launch, it became obvious we’d made a huge mistake. Our existing customers were understandably upset that we were no longer updating the old version of Clear, and that we wanted to charge them for an update. So after much deliberation we changed our plan: we updated the old version of Clear for iOS 7 and put it back on the store. Our sole aim was, and remains, wanting to do the right thing for users. Since then we’ve heard from customers that they are excited to pick up Clear but uncertain which version to buy – or even worse, users mistakenly buying the iPhone version when they want the universal version. To avoid the confusion, they are removing Clear+, and keep the original version of Clear in the App Store. This version will be a universal app, so it will include support for the iPad. They’re offering the app free for 24 hours so that users who paid for Clear+ can move to Clear without spending any more money. If you had purchased the original version of Clear then you can download an update which includes iPad support. Realmac will be doing this twice in the next few weeks to ensure that most Clear+ users move to Clear. They have also revealed that they’ll be releasing an update shortly featuring Reminders Realmac had received a lot of backlash when they released Clear+ and abandoned early adopters who had bought Clear. So it is good to see the developers making these changes, as having two apps in the App Store, one with only iPhone support and other with both iPhone and iPad support, just didn’t make sense.
Free iPhone apps for iPad, iPod Touch worth getting today start with a new iPhone app for “The Tonight Show” that brings a free, new interactive experience to an old television show format—as an old communications signal comes to the current iPhones, according to dnaindia.com (Feb. 18).
“The Tonight Show” app builds a twenty-first century interactive community around the new host, Jimmy Fallon, of a twentieth-century show. How? By giving this free app's users a unique hashtag (#) to tweet, as well as, the ability to read popular tweets about Fallon, his monologue, guests and the show. Users can also send videos directly to “The Tonight Show” for inclusion in the television show (or this app) and also play four retro games about Fallon. This free app is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
In another trip back to the future, the iPhone can now communicate by sending up free smoke signals rather than sending text, audio or photos, thanks to a German hacker. His invention is called S.M.S. for Smoke Messaging Service and brings the ancient art of smoke signals to modern iPhones. At the push of a button, a little oil lamp that's attached to an iPhone sends a puff of smoke in the air in front of the iPhone's camera. Check out the above video.
Topping the download charts today is the cool role playing free iPhone app, “Second Chance Heroes”. Your aim here is to help liberate a mall, a kingdom and a secret government bunker in a world dominated by zombies, werewolves and cheeseburgers. In this intense action game app you lead a band of historical clones like Cleopatra and Lincoln—each with his or her own abilities.
“Walkmeter GPS Pedometer” (Reg. $4.99) is free today is a big app deal. This awesome app is designed specifically for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and turns them into powerful fitness monitors. This app tracks running, walking, cycling and more—and records unlimited workouts—which this app shares with your other iDevices via iCloud. With this app you can even race against yourself and design your own training plans.
“Threadflip: Buy and Sell Fashion” is an easy and fun way to sell and shop brands that you love—and connect with woman who love the same brands you do. You sell brands by simply snapping a pic of what you want to sell and then uploading it (bye Coach, hello Kors). Shopping is just as easy with browsing by category, size, brand or style and getting discounts of up to 70 percent.
“The Tonight Show staring Jimmy Fallon” requires iOS 6.1 and is rated 9+ for fantasy violence. This free iPhone app is compatible with iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Second Chance Heroes” requires iOS 6.0+ and is rated 12+ for horror themes, realistic violence, and references to drug, alcohol and tobacco abuse. This free app supports Game Center and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Walkmeter GPS Pedometer – Walking, Hiking, Running, Cycling, Walk Tracking” requires iOS 6.0+, is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Threadflip: Buy and Sell Fashion” requires iOS 7.0+, is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
Free iPhone apps for iPad, iPod Touch worth downloading today begin with “Bug Heroes 2”, a free iPhone app action game about a bug's life, as “Pandora” reveals it knows if you're a Democrat or Republican—and it's telling campaign operatives how you'll probably vote, according to a Feb. 19 report in KVUE.com.
The free iPhone app, “Bug Heroes 2”, is a cute game about the life a bug and his friends as they search for food, build homes, go on missions and fight predators. There are 25 bug heroes to master, endless mode game play and a multiplayer option. Add these features to 360 degree camera views and cool 3D graphics and it's no wonder this free iPhone app is topping the download charts today.
The free online music streaming app “Pandora” knows more about you than you think—like who you're likely to vote for—and it's selling this information to both Democratic and Republican campaigns. “Pandora” can tell your political bent by the music you listen to. Do you listen to country? You're probably a Republican. Jazz? You're likely a Democrat. Hip-Hop? A swing voter. This music info, added to your age and zip code that you provided when you signed up for the popular streaming service, gives “Pandora” all the data it needs to predict how you'll vote. “Pandora” is now selling these projections to Democrat and Republican organizations—giving campaigns what they need to target their advertising. So, if you listen to Country and live in a zip code that went for Romney in the past election, you're not likely to hear an ad on “Pandora” from Obama endorsing a Democrat candidate in the upcoming mid-term elections, on the other hand....well, you get the idea.
You can flip and rotate your videos to change the orientation or just turn the image upside down for hilarious effect with the app, “Video Rotate & Flip” (Reg. $1.99), which is free in a super app deal today. With this app you can also add a mirror effect. Also, in another free app deal on “Video Crop & Zoom” ($1.99), which is super-hot today, you can crop and zoom any video you shoot.
In another big app deal today, “Palm Kingdoms 2 Deluxe for iPhone” (Reg. $5.99) is going free today. In this awesome game with beautiful graphics, you gather resources, command knights, attack castles and conquer new lands.
“Bug Heroes 2” is rated 12+ for violence, references to alcohol, tobacco or drug abuse, requires iOS 5.0+, is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5. This free app also supports Game Center.
“Pandora” is rated 12+ for mature themes, mild profanity, sexual content and references to alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse. This free iPhone app is compatible with iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Video Rotate & Flip” requires iOS 5.0+, is compatible with iPhone 4+, iPad 2+, iPad mini+, iPod Touch (4G+) and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Video Crop & Zoom” requires iOS 5.0+, is compatible with iPhone 4+, iPad 2+, iPad mini+, iPod Touch (4G+) and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Palm Kingdoms 2 Deluxe for iPhone” is rated 9+ for violence, requires iOS 5.1+, is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
For those who use BiteSMS, upgrading to iOS 7 was a painful decision that you likely agonized over for days. On one hand, iOS 7 makes iOS 6 look old and boring so updating your handset is a must. On the other hand, BiteSMS! Those who chose to pull the trigger and update to iOS 7 despite losing BiteSMS can now finally dump Apple’s Messages app and go back to using the jailbreak tweak they love. As of Wednesday, BiteSMS for iOS 7 is out of beta and available to all jailbroken iPhones running iOS 7 or later, including the iPhone 5s.
For those unaware, BiteSMS completely replaces iOS’s standard messaging app with a much more full-featured solution. Users can schedule messages, read and compose messages in a small window on the iPhone without leaving whatever app the might be using at the time, automatically forward messages, use message templates and much more.
BiteSMS for iOS 7 is available immediately on jailbroken iPhones for free in the Cydia app store. The app is ad-supported after a 7-day trial, and users can pay a one-time $7.99 fee to remove ads permanently.
Nokia plans to release a Bluetooth and NFC-enabled “Treasure Tag” keychain device that works with an app on Lumia Windows Phones to sound an alarm when someone walks out of the house without their phone or their keys (or whatever else the tag is attached to.)
The device, slated to be available in April for $29.90, also will allow users to locate lost items on a map.
Nokia announced the Treasure Tag device tonight, confirming longstanding rumors. It will work with Windows Phones that have the Lumia Black update. Nokia says there will also be third-party apps to use the tags in conjunction with Android and iOS devices.
As many as four of the Treasure Tags can be connected to a phone at one time. Users can assign preset icons or use pictures in the app to identify the attached items. The alarm can be muted with a long press on the button on the top of the tag.
Microsoft is in the process of acquiring Nokia’s devices and services business for $7.2 billion in a deal expected to close this quarter.
is an essential component of our "ultimate mobile darkroom," offering no shortage of ways to edit, crop, and filter photos. We liked the app because it focused almost exclusively on making photos look their best — a refreshing perspective in a time when every mobile app has a friend feed of its own. But today, VSCO Cam is joining the social fray with version 3.0 for iPhone, which introduces a feed of your friends' photos edited inside the app. When I spoke with VSCO co-founder Joel Flory back in August, he said that VSCO Cam was for editing, and Instagram was for connecting with others around photos. Apparently, Flory changed his mind — but don't worry, he's done it without changing VSCO's tune. The app's new "Home" section is now composed of a feed of photos from profiles you follow on VSCO Cam, and also includes a link to your own profile — but offers no way to like photos, make comments, or see how many followers you have. VSCO 3.0 is social, but that doesn't mean it's competitive like Instagram, where users add dozens of hashtags to their photos in hopes of increasing their likes and followers.
"It would be odd to walk into a museum and write comments or put gold star stickers on the wall next to artwork you like, and we apply this same mentality to Grid," Flory says. "VSCO Grid has not, and will never be, about numbers. It is not a social clout platform." The reason VSCO added profiles and a feed to the app was because it was the number-one request from users, who are increasingly turning to apps like VSCO and Exposure to exhibit their work. The focus here is still on photos, thankfully, and VSCO's full-bleed and minimalist profiles are an elegant way to experience them. After a few minutes trying it out, a social feed feels right at home inside the app — in part because it's not just your friends' photos that appear. The Grid section in the app's sidebar includes a feed of photos VSCO has handpicked, and they are often stunning. Instead of displaying a bizarre mix of celebrity photos and odd memes like Instagram's Explore page, Grid offers inspiration from strangers.
Back in the early days of Instagram, I remember voraciously following dozens of strangers who took beautiful photos. As Instagram evolved into a social network which let you tag friends and share in small groups, I unfollowed most of these strangers. Back then, Instagram was solely about the photos, and this is the place where VSCO now finds itself. Yet, VSCO doesn't let you plug in Facebook and Twitter to add friends en masse. You'll have to add them one by one. That encourages you to carefully add your friends to the equation without jeopardizing the content that makes VSCO Cam great, but it also means you'll need to manually type people in. "People are discovering that a camera phone can be used for more than selfies or latte art — that creating powerful, beautiful imagery is possible," Flory says, jabbing at Instagram stereotypes.
Setting aside profiles, the new app also introduces a few new features: tilt and level adjustments in Camera view, alphabetical preset ordering, an autosave to Camera Roll option, pinch-to-zoom in Detail view, and a revamped Crop tool. Flory didn't offer a timeline on when 3.0's features will come to Android, but we'd bet it would happen sooner rather than later. VSCO Cam has already accumulated more than a million downloads since its launch on Android in early December, and the app's reviewers are begging for more.
Free iPhoneappsfor iPad, iPod Touchworth getting today start with “Talking Larry the Bird”, a freeiPhoneapp that puts a funny talking, repeating, flying pet parrot right on your iPhone, as “Facebook” reports it knows when you're getting into a relationship, even before you do, according to an article inIndiatimes(Feb. 17).
The free iPhone app, “Talking Larry the Bird”, is a hilarious talking bird app that repeats what you say, whistles to the tunes you play—which you can share on YouTube and Facebook—eats the food you give him, plus more.
It turns out that “Facebook” knows more about love than most of us. So much so, if fact, that “Facebook” can predict when a relationship is going to start much better than any horoscope can—thanks to its vast database of users who share their lives on the social giant. “Facebook” says that relationships begin with exchanging messages, visiting profiles and sharing posts 100 days before the relationship begins. After 100 days, the number of posts diminish as the couple begins spending time together in the physical world, rather than the virtual one, but the context of these posts become more cozy and intimate. So, the next time you're looking to start a relationship—or wondering if you're already in one—check out your “Facebook” timeline.
Trending very popularity today is “Disney Magic Timer” a fun way to encourage kids to brush their teeth longer. This free app sports Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Cinderella, Iron Man, Captain America and more as they track brushing progress. After each successful brushing, this app awards free digital stickers and badges on a Brushing Calendar.
If you play chess, or would like to, “Chess Professional” (Reg. $6.99) is for you in a big app deal today that makes this iPhone app free. Designed by chess champions, this app has a unique chess engine that's only in this iPhone app (which is compatible with the iPad and iPod Touch). The Hints feature is really helpful.
If you like free music, then you'll love the free iPhone app “MB: YouTube music player edition 2” an awesome way to play free “YouTube” music nonstop. It automatically creates playlists and helps you discover new music by playing the top playlists used by your “Facebook” friends. This app also gives you a new playlist each day and provides syncing across your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
“Flappy Birds” has been plucked from the App Store, but if you're looking for a challenging and addictive free game app, look no further than “Cyro”, where the goal is help workers build a bridge to another planet. What's the challenge? Moving obstacles, slippery surfaces, logical problems, mazes and more. Once you reach the other planet, there are unlockables and surprises waiting.
“Talking Larry the Bird” comes in two flavors: one for iPhone, and the other for iPad. Each flavor requires iOS 5.0+. The iPhone version is compatible with iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Disney Magic Timer” is made for ages 6-8 and requires iOS 5.0+. This apps is compatible with iPhone+, iPad 2+, iPod Touch (4G+) and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“Chess Professional” requires iOS 6.1+, is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
“MB: YouTube music player edition 2” requires iOS 5.1+, is optimized for iPhone 5 and is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
“Cyro” supports Game Center and is rated 12+ for references to alcohol, tobacco and drug use, mild profanity and crude humor. This app requires iOS 4.3+, is compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch and is optimized for iPhone 5.
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Persistence, it turns out, does pay off. After rejecting it five times, Apple has finally approved an app that tracks every U.S. drone strike and sends a push notification to users every time a flying robot carries out a deadly mission around the world.
Josh Begley, the data artist and developer who made the app, finally got through Apple's careful approval process on Friday, more than a year and a half after the first rejection by the company's App Review Team.
SEE ALSO: Mapping the Blind Spots: Developer Unearths Secret U.S. Military Bases
It took persistence, but it took also some semantic trickery. Begley got the app approved because he removed the word "drone" from the name of the app and from its description. For the first three attempts, it was called Drones+, then Dronestream for the last two. This latest, successful time, it's called Metadata+, and Begley initially submitted it with no content or functionality, adding the archive of strikes later.
With those simple gimmicks, the app got the green light from Apple, which didn't raise any qualms about it.
That wasn't the case on the five previous attempts.
Begley created the app in the summer of 2012, submitting it on July 10, 2012. After almost two weeks, Apple rejected it, saying the app was "not useful or entertaining enough," and "did not appeal to a broad enough audience," which went against the App Store Review Guidelines, according to screenshots of the rejection message, which Begley shared with Mashable.
The second rejection, on Aug. 9, came because the app used Google Maps images without the "associated Google branding." The third time, on Aug. 27, it was because the app contained content that "many audiences would find objectionable."
At that point, Begley seemed to give up.
"If the content is found to be objectionable, and it’s literally just an aggregation of news, I don’t know how to change that," Begley told Wired at the time.
That's when Begley moved on to other projects, like tweeting every drone strike the U.S. has carried out, or mapping every American military base in the world.
Then, one year later, he tried again. This time he changed the name of the app to Dronestream and resubmitted it twice, on Sept. 10 and Sept. 17, 2013. That didn't work out — the app got rejected another two times two months later.
But Begley also received an email from an Apple Review Team employee on Sept. 23, asking him if he could talk on the phone regarding the app, according to a screenshot of the email.
When the employee called, she asked whether the app was about U.S. drone strikes, according to Begley's recount of the phone call. Begley answered that indeed, it was.
"If it's going to be about that specifically, it's not going to be approved," the employee answered, according to Begley. "But if you broaden your topic, then we can take another look. You know, there are certain concepts that we decide not to move forward with, and this is one."
At the beginning of 2014, Begley decided to give it another try. First, he created an empty app called "Ephemeral" and submitted it on Jan. 17 as an experiment. "The point of it was to have no content at all," he told Mashable.
The app was "quietly accepted," as Begley puts it, just five days later. So on Jan. 22 he submitted yet another empty app called "Metadata+" which promised "real-time updates on national security."
One unique feature of echocardiography as an imaging modality is the integration of both anatomical and flow data to make complex assessments of cardiac structures. To assess a stenotic aortic valve, for example, requires an appreciation of the concept of the conservation of mass with regards to flow as well as the structure of the valve and LV outflow tract. A lot can be derived about the heart based on Doppler assessment of flow and 2D structural measurements.
As such, echocardiography is riddled with formulas.
Given their relatively narrow scope, these formulas are rarely found in your typical medical calculator app or even calculator apps aimed at cardiologists.
For that reason, we took a look at Echo Lab, a calculator app designed specifically for this niche purpose.
Not only does it accomplish what it sets out to do, Echo Lab is also a great example for other enterprising clinicians and developers of a how a decision support tool should be designed.
The app opens to a listing of categories organized alphabetically. At the top is a prominentNo Data header – more on that in a moment. At the bottom is a navigation bar that offers another option for viewing the available calculators (Alphabetical) and a Favorites section for frequently used calculators. We’ll come back to the last two, Data and My Library.
We’ll use the task of calculating an aortic valve area as an example of how the app works. Navigating to the Aortic Valve category then to the Aortic Valve Area gets to our desired calculator. Note the star at the bottom of each calculator which allows us to mark favorites.
Part of the calculator includes calculating the BSA. Tapping on that line, we are taken to a linked BSA calculator. After inputting the data, the previously dull gray header and footer bars now turn bright green.
That change highlights one of the most unique and exceptional features of the app. When any value is calculated, it is saved and can be used in any other formula where it is needed. Now that we have done the BSA calculation for the AVA index, it will be automatically input into any other formula we select that requires a BSA. All active data being stored by the app can be reviewed in the Data section found on the navigation bar.
This feature reflects the insight of someone who understands the practicalities of their end-user. In this case, that someone interpreting an echo will often want to do multiple calculations on the same patient. Formulas being utilized by each calculator are available by tapping the Formula option at the bottom left of each calculator screen. References for the formula are also available there.
An additional feature of the app is the My Library category which lets users import a variety of documents into the app to help centralize relevant resources. This includes relevant papers, guideline documents, or even textbook chapters. Finally, there is a fairly lengthy users’ guide available by tapping the information icon on the top right of the screen – a feature we have not come across often.
One question any user considering using this app should ask is regarding quality control and testing. We contacted the developer, a practicing cardiologist, to find out more. He advised us that each formula is verified (after programming) by manual checks to ensure accuracy. He also notes additional safety features including the prominent green banner indicating active data as well as the clearance of all data each time the app is closed. These features were implemented to reduce the risk of inadvertently mixing data from different echos.
Price:
$4.99
Likes:
Comprehensive selection of calculators
Simple design and features like nesting of calculators make app very usable
Excellent referencing
Thoughtful attention to quality control and safety
Dislikes:
Would benefit from a search function
Would include links to relevant resources like ASE Guidelines as part of My Library
Conclusion:
Echo Lab is an outstanding resource for anyone who interprets echocardiograms. It is additionally an excellent example of a well-designed clinical decision support tool for anyone interested in designing resources for other niche areas of medicine.
There's an old philosophical experiment called the Ring of Gyges which considers how people would behave if they didn’t fear the consequences of their actions. If you had a ring that made you invisible, would you obey the normal rules of society, or would you spy and steal for your own gain and amusement?
Perhaps fortunately, nobody has invented the Ring of Gyges, so we don’t have an answer. But the latest iPhone app taking a generation of millennials by storm is becoming the social media equivalent. It’s called Secret, and it could easily become the internet’s next cyberbullying scandal.
Secret is quite simple. Users post Twitter-esque status updates to their network of phone contacts, which other people can then reply to. The catch is, Secret is anonymous – you can see posts, but you don’t know who they are from. It’s like reading through someone’s diary while oblivious as to whose it is.
The app is becoming the hottest new social network among American high school pupils (Facebook has been gathering dust for years). It is only out in North America at the moment, but a similar one called Whisper is available over here, and is climbing the download charts.
The posts on Secret and Whisper, as you’d expect when you combine anonymity with teenage angst, are highly sensitive: heartache, body issues, fears about coming out, drug use, and so on. Other submissions include housewives’ confessions of adultery, and the struggles of Iraq veterans coming to terms with civilian life.
Flicking through people’s status updates on the apps feels mildly voyeuristic, and is undeniably addictive. But the rise of anonymous social networks is bound to set alarm bells ringing very soon.
In the last few years, social media has been following a clear trajectory towards combining online and real identities. In the early days of the web, nobody used their real names; people communicated on message boards using pseudonyms. The nearest anyone got to revealing their identity was if their moniker was a combination of initials and year-of-birth: JT1989. Then came Facebook, which required people to use their real name. Now, the idea of an “offline” and “online” identity seems to have vanished.
This is generally a good thing. Compared to the Wild West of internet message boards in the 1990s and early 2000s, insults and abuse are relatively rare on social media. People are easily identified, and so face a public backlash, bans and even legal action for cyberbullying.
Secret and Whisper, however, have slipped the Ring of Gyges back on. As people have realised the dangers of oversharing on Facebook on Twitter, the demand for internet anonymity has returned, and people are returning to the message board days. Even Mark Zuckerberg – previously a champion of combining online and offline identities – has acknowledged this. He told Businessweek last month: “If you’re always under the pressure of real identity, I think that is somewhat of a burden.”
If anonymity is going to return to the mainstream, it would be nice to believe that online abuse isn’t going to return with it, but the combination of people posting about sensitive personal issues and others replying to them incognito seems like a fertile breeding ground for trolls.
Don’t believe me? A similar app, PostSecret, was shut down by its founder just two years ago due to people submitting abusive content. The issues surrounding Secret, in particular, are potentially much greater than those of PostSecret – since posts are shown to a user’s network of phone contacts, the confessions are from those in one’s social circle. In many cases, it won't take much to figure out who certain posts are from, and people are going to be unwittingly “outed” against their will.
I don’t want to be a social media scaremonger – there are far too many of those around and the paranoia is often way over the top – but it’s hard to see the rise of anonymous social networking ending well.
On Monday, the new publication First Look reported that electronically obtained metadata controls who, how, and when U.S. drones kill abroad. Journalists Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill write that that kind of information doesn’t only determine who is killed: Metadata on phone SIM cards determines how victims of the strikes are found.
“The drone program amounts to little more than death by unreliable metadata,” they write, paraphrasing an ex-drone operator.
Now, a new iPhone app lets you explore the consequences of that phenomenon. Named—fittingly—Metadata+, it catalogues and maps drone killings by the United States and is now free and available for download.
The app was made by data artist and web developer Josh Begley. Its two views variously mirror iOS’s Messages interface, displaying the date, location, and victims of each killing; it also shows a map of U.S. drone strikes across the Middle East and Somalia.
Most strikingly, Metadata+ will send users an in-app notification whenever there’s a new strike.
The app, in other words, places an experience foreign to many Americans in a context they’re familiar with: their smartphone. It isn’t the first project do so. Begley’s own @dronestream Twitter account, followed by more than 27,000 people, tweets about every new strike, interrupting their friends’ chatter with more violent news. And London-based artist James Bridle has led two similar efforts, operating an Instagram feed that posts satellite imagery of every strike’s location and painting the shadow of drones on the ground in major Western cities.
Each project tries to transplant the anxiety of those who live below drones to the everyday experience of those very distant from them.
I wrote to Begley to ask about the design decisions behind the app. I was interested in how he balanced the obtrusive—the violent content of the app—and the unobtrusive—its reliance on iOS design. He wrote back:
When I started making the Drones+ app, its core question was about interruption (Would anyone actually want these alerts? Do we want to be as connected to our foreign policy as we are to out smartphones?)
Now, it’s become more about the historical archive. How do you represent information about people you'll never know—which is effectively metadata gleaned from English-language news reports—in a way that is intuitive and chewable but also unsettling?
For me, borrowing the visual vernacular of Apple's expertly built interface opens up the potential for a different kind of seeing. If the folks on the other side of our missiles are presented to us in the same places we see pictures of our loved ones (James Bridle’s dronestagram) or communicate with our friends (@dronestream), might that nudge me to learn a little more about the contours of covert war?
I love my phone because it puts me at the center of the map. But I'm not the center of the map. I can't even pronounce the names of the places we're bombing. As much as I'm interested in apps that are ephemeral, I'm interested in apps that teach me something.
As reported by Mashable, Begley submitted his app five times before it was finally accepted. App Store representatives didn’t accept Metadata+ when it was named “Drones+,” nor when it displayed any information about drones.
“If it's going to be about that specifically, it’s not going to be approved," an employee reportedly told Begley. “But if you broaden your topic, then we can take another look.”
Begley finally submitted Metadata+ as an app without content—so the app itself said nothing about drones. The app would eventually, he said, display “real-time updates on national security” and download its content—the information and location of each strike—from the web after being launched for the first time.
This time, Begley found success. Metadata+ was accepted in five days.
“The artist Paul Miller (aka DJ Spooky) had an interesting exhibition called The Imaginary App,” Begley said in an email, explaining where he got the idea to submit a contentless news application:
It asked: ‘What is the most desirable, terrifying, smart, ridiculous, or necessary app that has not been and, possibly, will never be released?’
The idea of an app without content stemmed from Paul's call for submissions. Having been rejected on the grounds that a news aggregation app contained ‘excessively objectionable or crude content,’ I was curious to see where the content line was. The idea for the drone-tracking app was always about posing a question though.
The ironic part is that most reports about drone strikes are themselves non-content. Beyond the number of people who were reported killed, the province in which it took place, and the anonymous official who is certain these folks were 'militants,' there's not much there. Hence a project to compile all the metadata. (The double meaning, of course, as Esquire's Tom Junod has noted, is that metadata is the basis on which a 'signature strike' is carried out.)
Begley says he’s next thinking about developing an ephemeral app. “When Steve Jobs announced the iPhone, one of the things he said is that the problem with phones [of that period was,] ‘They all have these control buttons that are fixed in plastic. They’re the same for every application,’” he said.
“So,” Begley asked, “what if you made an app that was designed to change? Like Snapchat, its content fades away and it becomes something else in 6 months. The act of opening a Snap is exciting to me because I'm not sure what it will be. Might you open an app more frequently if the only thing you know is that you're not sure what it will contain?”
iPhone owners would be forgiven for having a false sense of security when it comes to the safety of data on their phone. Apple has done a tremendous job of creating a locked-down operating system that keeps malicious software away from its elegant handsets and deters potential attackers.
Android continues to be the most targeted mobile operating system. Cisco’s 2014 Annual Security Report claimed that 99% of mobile malware spotted in 2013 was aimed at Google’s smartphone operating system – the report was swiftly tweeted by Apple’s Phil Schiller as his latest jab at Android.
Yet there remain some alarming facts for iPhone owners to take on board. First, its iOS software is far from flaw-free. In a 2013 report, Symantec claimed that there were 387 documented security holes in iOS in 2012, compared to just 13 for Android.
When Apple released its iOS 7 software in 2013, it patched a whopping 70 flaws. And while vulnerabilities do not always equate to threats, it’s clear from this data that iOS is far from invincible. What’s more, there are a myriad of ways outsiders can try to pilfer data from iOS. Given the popularity of Apple’s devices, attackers will be hungry to exploit them.
Target the apps
If you’ve been reading the Guardian’s coverage of online surveillance by agencies including the NSA and GCHQ, you’ll already know that one way to gather data from smartphones is to exploit vulnerabilities in apps. A variety of techniques can be employed by attackers in this respect.
One notable problem uncovered by an Israeli start-up, SkyCure, was the insecure use of what’s known as the “301 Moved Permanently” HTTP feature found in many applications on iOS, which lets developers easily switch the Internet addresses apps use to acquire data. It’s often used when services are switching domains.
SkyCure found attackers sitting on the same network as a user of a vulnerable app could easily switch those Internet addresses with their own malicious site. Even when users left that network, as iOS cached the malicious URL, when they continued to use the application they would still hit that bad site, which could be used to carry out exploits on the user’s phone.
At least three of the biggest US media outlets had such a flaw in their consumer-facing applications, says Yair Amit, co-founder and chief technology officer of Skycure. “You can persistently and remotely control how the application is working,” he warns.
“It’s possible because most applications are loading information or commands from their server to execute on the client with no indication of the actual source. I’ve been working with many pretty well-known papers as well as other big vendors on other applications, like finance and podcasts, and patches are going out.”
Amit is planning to detail some more “neat techniques” for exploiting iOS at the RSA Conference in San Francisco this month, but cannot reveal more as he works with Apple to mitigate the threat.
Insecure data
Developers, whether producing iOS applications for workers or for the wider public, often rely too heavily on the device to store data too. If done insecurely, this allows attackers sitting on the same network as an iPhone user, such as a public Wi-Fi network, to potentially scoop up information being sent to and from the app.
“It is easy to make mistakes such as storing user data (passwords/usernames) incorrectly on the device, in the vast majority of cases credentials get stored either unencrypted or have been encoded using methods such as base64 encoding (or others) and are rather trivial to reverse,” says Andy Swift, mobile security researcher from penetration testing firm Hut3.
“This mistake extends to sending data too, if developers rely on the device too much it becomes quite easy to forget altogether about the transmission of the data. Such data can be easily extracted and may include authentication tokens, raw authentication data or personal data. At the end of the day if not investigated, the end user has no idea what data the application is accessing and sending to a server somewhere.”
Another common problem in iOS apps, according to Cesar Cerrudo, chief technology officer for security research and consultancy firm IOActive Labs, is improper or lack of validation of data received by the application. This allows attackers to send malicious data to the app and have malicious code executed on the user device to steal information.
All of these attacks could easily be executed on public or unprotected Wi-Fi networks, so you should be especially careful when using such services, refraining from sharing sensitive data over them. And they should avoid any untrusted networks.
Using stolen certificates
Apple has been particularly good at defending iPhones and iPads from malware. Yet there are ways to game the system to get rogue apps on iOS devices.
Stolen certificates can be particularly handy. Even though they can be tricky to acquire, some are bought and sold on underground forums, others nabbed during attacks on businesses. These certificates are designed to sign applications, providing validation they were created by legitimate parties.
For iOS, they come in various flavours, the most common one being for developers who want to publish on the official App Store. But there are also certificates for signing in-house applications, where IT teams send out apps and updates via their own infrastructure, rather than using the App Store.
If an attacker can get hold of a valid certificate, they can target specific employees by enticing them into downloading malicious applications, as Michael Shaulov, chief executive of San Francisco-based firm Lacoon Mobile Security demonstrates during a one-on-one presentation over WebEx.
He shows me a mock phishing email, urging a user to download a security update. When the user clicks on the download link, they are asked by the device whether they want to install. If they click yes, as many would do if the email appeared to legitimately come from their employer, the malware downloads on to the iPhone.
In the example Shaulov uses, a fake enterprise email client is downloaded. He uses that fake app to collect information such as calendar, geolocation and contact data, or even switch on recording without any user intervention. “This is all done on a completely fresh iOS 7 non-jailbroken device. You can facilitate such an attack without much effort,” he adds.
“A lot of enterprises are now ahead of the curve with their mobility and are distributing in-house applications in such a way that it becomes a very reasonable phishing target. People are familiar with this way that IT delivers a new application, so they just click that malicious link.”
Lacoon's white paper explored jailbroken spyphones.
Bypassing App Store protections
Whilst using stolen certificates is handy for targeted hits where the hackers want to avoid all the code checking that the App Store provides, the holy grail for iOS attackers is getting malware into Apple’s walled garden - the official App Store, which has only ever hosted one rogue app.
Given Apple doesn’t allow anti-virus to work on its mobile machines, acquiring masses of malware downloads from its official market would be a major coup for a digital criminal.
There are precedents. Researchers from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center have previously shown off a way of sneaking a bad app into the store. They sent in what appeared to be a legitimate piece of software and Apple accepted it. But once the app was installed on a user device it would rearrange its code to enable more malicious features, such as stealing photos and sending emails.
Others have created nifty pieces of iOS malware. Neal Hindocha, a researcher from security company Trustwave, is planning to demonstrate a keylogger at RSA Conference that can monitor everything on an iPhone, right down to the swipes of a touchscreen. It will only work on a jailbroken device, however, where security protections stopping applications having too much power are removed.
Jailbreaking and jumping out of the sandbox
Another potentially nasty attack vector can come from website attacks that launch a kernel-level exploit, cutting right to the heart of iOS and handing user privileges to a hacker. This is one of the most difficult ways to break iOS, especially when the attacker is doing the work remotely rather than having direct access to the device.
Apple has covered off all known kernel vulnerabilities in the latest version of iOS, but researchers have theorised on possible future attacks. Tarjei Mandt, senior vulnerability researcher at Azimuth Security, has beenprobing the ways iOS allocates memory and believes he has found a potential weakness.
It lies in what is known as the new “zone page metadata structure”, which is designed to improve the performance of the operating system’s zone allocator, used for organising memory by size, dividing memory into regions, or zones.
A hypothetical attack would see the hacker trick this metadata structure, information from which is taken by the code doing the memory allocation, into writing remote code into the memory pages of the device.
“If you have a memory corruption vulnerability, the idea [for the attacker] is that you can target this structure to overwrite the information that it contains,” he says. “If you have the ability to corrupt that data structure… you’ll essentially be able to gain an arbitrary right [a privilege allowing an attacker to write to the device], which is pretty much the end goal of any exploit.”
The attacker could direct a target to a website, where a browser vulnerability would be exploited to initiate attack code. The kernel flaw would then be used to jump out of the Apple sandbox, an emulation technology that runs code to see if it’s malicious before executing it. In theory, this chained approach would eventually lead to malicious software being lumped on the iPhone.
Another way of getting root access to a phone is to jailbreak it by physically grabbing it and using known tools like evasi0n, which requires the iPhone be connected to a PC by USB, to gain user privileges. Malware could then be installed for persistent attacks.
Lacoon has data showing that iOS is the favourite target of those running spyphones, buyable software that does what it says on the tin, monitoring jailbroken devices. In an analysis of 650,000 users from a major telecoms partner, Lacoon found 57% of the 650 infected machines were based on iOS.
If all this sounds worrying, there’s one encouraging piece of advice: the best strategy for the average iPhone owner is quite simple: keep your device within your line of sight, and don’t click on any suspicious links.
