Free Republic

A WUSA-TV news van was burglarized in Washington, D.C., Friday while the news crew was interviewing locals nearby, the station reported. The robbery happened as they were reporting about a “sketchy neighborhood” app. The crew said they had locked their van in D.C.’s Petworth neighborhood, but someone popped the lock and absconded with “the gear of photojournalist James Hash, the backpack of reporter Mola Lenghi, and the purse of intern Taylor Bisciotti.”[snip]

In Boston, parking’s been a nightmare for ages, with spaces capped by the federal Clean Air Act and further state regulations. Funny enough, that means MORE air pollution as frustrated drivers circle around the city looking for a place to put the car. So when free-market capitalism and technology ride to the rescue, you might think Boston would be quick to embrace the instant reduction in idling traffic. But if you’ve seen this movie before, you’ve already spotted the error: “free-market capitalism”. THAT’S a bigger no-no than smog!

They might not admit it, but a new app designed to give constituents easier access to their elected officials might just give your congressional member nightmares. Countable is a new social media app that gives voters a simple, concise and fast way to interact with their representatives. Countable “seeks to give citizens a greater voice in national politics,” Wired reported. “The company’s online service, which launches to the public today, gives you a simple and concise overview of the bills your national representatives are debating, and it lets you instantly send emails to these representatives, telling them how you would...

WEST COVINA, Calif. — After a boozy Saturday night, Sarah Maguire awoke the next morning to find that her iPhone was gone. Her roommate’s phone was gone, too. Were they at the bar, she wondered, or in the cab? Using the Find My iPhone app on her computer, she found that someone had taken the phones to a home in this Los Angeles exurb, 30 miles east of her West Hollywood apartment. So Ms. Maguire, a slight, 26-year-old yoga instructor, did what a growing number of phone theft victims have done: She went to confront the thieves — and, to...

Entrepreneur Bill Moore was in his Austin, Texas, office last Thursday, watching explosive growth for his company’s walkie-talkie app, Zello, inside Venezuela. Zello had become the favorite app of protest organizers there after recently hitting the mark as the most popular app in Ukraine. Over the past few days in Venezuela, the protests ballooned following rapidly rising food prices, controversy over President Nicolas Maduro’s economic policies, public dissatisfaction over crime and multiple other factors. Moore was finding that in Venezuela that popularity had a price. Shortly after 9 p.m., his Twitter feed blew up with messages from users inside the...

It's a secret agent's dream: one single piece of software that lets you into all of a 'target's communications, their movements and their personal notes. But this isn't some piece of top-secret NSA infrastructure. mSpy is a smartphone app that works on Android, Apple, Blackberry and Nokia phones - offering a staggering array of surveillance options. The app - which works on a subscription basis starting at £24.99 a month - is described as being able to 'run undetected on your child's or employee's cell phone and provide all of the necessary features for complete monitoring.'

New app for Apple lets users see if satellites are overhead If you’ve ever been curious about whether you’ve ever been seen by a satellite, there’s now an app for that. Orbit Logic has just created SpyMeSat, a mobile app available for Apple devices that alerts users when they are within range of an image or spy satellite that might be photographing them. A company that normally provides apps for the military and defense communities, SpyMeSat is Orbit Logic’s first app for the common man, according its president Alex Herz. SpyMeSat provides users with a satellite map that shows orbit...

In case just looking at food photos on your smartphone isn't drool-inducing enough, a new Japanese app and plug-in phone cartridge allows users to actually smell food images. According to Foodbeast, the app is called Scentee and was originally created to help college students save money and dieters save calories by allowing them to smell the foods they were craving without actually eating anything.

St. Peter's Square. Credit: Camille King (CC BY-SA 2.0). Vatican City, Sep 20, 2013 / 07:47 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A pontifical council is preparing to launch a new app on the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to help promote and better expand Church teaching throughout the world. “Catechesis is important for the church first of all because it is the attempt we had from the beginning of our faith to put together the knowledge, the content of our faith, and the coherent witness that we should have,” said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, head of the Pontifical Council for the...

Standing in a security line at O'Hare International Airport seven years ago, the Rev. Bobby Gruenewald wished he had a Bible in his pocket to pass the time. Then the tech-savvy pastor raised in central Illinois had a thought: Wouldn't it be grand if anyone could have their favorite version of the Bible within reach anywhere at any time? "Could we be at one of these moments in history where technology, if we leverage it correctly, could transform how we engage in the Bible?" Gruenewald, 37, recalls thinking that day. "Drawing from the story of the printing press, for centuries,...

Security experts are warning us all over the place. The digital life used to be a cubicle and workstation. Now it's well, life. Everything is connected, and Internet is everywhere. That means criminal intruders along with pranksters can also broaden their reach from computer malware to home connections such as smart appliances and meters. Last week, there was one more proof that this was so: According to a warning by the information security firm Trustwave, a Satis-brand toilet by the Japan-based company Lixil can be controlled remotely by an Android app. According to Daniel Crowley a managing consultant with information...

This is the first problem I have had with any IPad. On the App Store logo, when Apps need updating, there will be notice on the upper right corner of the App Store button indicating the number of App needing updating. I have an indicator of 5 Apps needing updating, but when I press the App button and go to the upgrade page, nothing shows to be updated. Help! Many Thanks.

For millions of readers around the world, a wildly successful free Bible app, YouVersion, is changing how, where and when they read the Bible. Built by LifeChurch.tv, one of the nation’s largest and most technologically advanced evangelical churches, YouVersion is part of what the church calls its “digital missions.” They include a platform for online church services and prepackaged worship videos that the church distributes free. A digital tithing system and an interactive children’s Bible are in the works.

Think you know what's in your grocery cart? Think again. Or use the Buycott app to check. Know where your consumer dollars go with the free Buycott app. Supermarkets are labyrinthine behemoths laid out in a convenient linear fashion. So where's the maze? On the supermarket shelves, of course. Food products galore stare back at us, silently appealing to our penchants for sugar, salt, and fat. We pick and choose, knowing full well what we are getting into. But it's the hidden components that are increasingly becoming a salient issue. If supermarket shelves are overwhelming due to the sheer diversity...

Only in Israel: a new app for android phones lets drivers know if they are about to drive into a mob of Arabs armed with firebombs and rocks. Such ambushes have killed and maimed many Israelis over the years, including a baby girl, Adelle Biton, who has been barely clinging to life in the Schneider Children's Hospital since last month. As reported exclusively on the Tamar Yonah Show, .....

Tampa – A man living in New Port Richey, Florida, phoned into the nationally syndicated Schnitt Show [Click Here for Audio] after he was dismissed from nursing school, all because of a gun app on his smart phone.During a routine break in a five-hour long sociology class at the Ultimate Medical Academy in Tampa, 33-year old “Dan”, who has asked that his last name be withheld, showed his recently downloaded “Gun Club II” app to a fellow classmate. The app supplies detailed pictures of various firearms, and produces the sound each gun makes when you hit the screen. Dan says...

**SNIP** The result is an app for the Apple iPhone called Obamacare411; a website at http://www.obamacare411.info; and a Facebook page, Obamacare411_Info. (Do not confuse the Facebook page with www.facebook.com/Obamacare411, which is maintained by a separate group in Virginia.) Developed on what Pinto called a "shoestring budget," the app was available to be downloaded for free from the iTunes App Store as of Wednesday. Because of budget limitations, the application is not yet available for other smartphone platforms. "That's why we developed the website, so people who couldn't download the app could still have access to the information through their browser,"...

There's an app for just about everything these days. Well, now there's an app that correctly detects skin cancer 98% of the time, Christopher Weaver of WSJ reports. Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center tested four apps to analyze images of 188 moles, including 60 melanomas. All of these moles were pre-evaluated by a dermatologist. The best-performing app forwarded the images to board-certified dermatologists to review at cost of $5 per mole, while the other three used algorithms and cost less than $5. The worst of those apps determined that dozens of swollen, discolored moles were benign. During...

As Republicans try to explain their Election Day losses in terms of policy, tactics, and strategy, one factor is emerging as the essential difference between the Obama and Romney campaigns on November 6: the absolute failure of Romney’s get-out-the-vote effort, which underperformed even John McCain’s lackluster 2008 turnout. One culprit appears to be “Orca,” the Romney’s massive technology effort, which failed completely. ... Likewise, Twitchy recorded widespread real-time complaints and criticisms on Twitter by Project Orca volunteers. At one point during Election Day, the system had malfunctioned so badly that desperate volunteers wondered if the program had been hacked. ......

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) November 04, 2012 Mobotory today announced the availability of VoteStand, a voter fraud reporting App. The free App, which allows registered users to report instances of suspected voter fraud, is available on the App Store for iPhone and iPad and through Google Play for Android. Mobotory was selected to develop VoteStand based on its expertise in creating in-the-field incident reporting technologies.