Tag: 49.99 »

The Misfit Flash is the newly-released fitness and sleep monitor from Misfit.

Similar to the Misfit Shine, Flash can be worn anywhere, including the user’s wrist, keychain, or lapel. It also has many of the same features as the Shine. The user can track their steps, sleep patterns, calories burned, and because Flash is waterproof it can even track swimming. Flash comes in several colors including lemon-lime Zest, funky Fuschia, and minimalist Frost to make matching your unique style easy.

“Flash is the only fully featured activity and sleep tracker in the world for under $50, making it an incredible value,” said Tim Golnik, VP of Product and Design at Misfit.

The Misfit Flash will be available in October, but you can pre-order yours now on the Misfit site for $49.99.

There is nothing more irritating than when your phone runs out of juice. It is even worse when this happens while on the road. But what if there were a way to constantly have juice on-hand, without needing a handful of different charging devices? The over 6,000 people who Kickstarted the new product, Jump, have felt your pain and have the perfect solution.

Available for a mere $49.99 from BiteMyApple.co, the Jump is a hybrid battery pack/charger for iPhone 5/5S/5C that can either provide a pass-through charge from an electrical source or 3 hours of talk time from the on-board 800 mAh battery. This intelligent charger even waits until the iDevice's battery is full before charging the booster.

Best of all, the product still performs perfectly as a sync cable as well. Move quick, because with impressive features like these, the Jump isn't going to stay in stock for long.

Lugging cables around can often be a bother, as can using said cables to act as a stationary charger for your iPhone. That's why Thinium has been working on a pair of portable chargers called the Thinium Charge and the Thinium ReCharge.

The Thinium Charge is only slightly larger than a credit card and is designed to fit easily into a pocket or even a wallet. Once your phone needs charging you just have to take it out, unfold it, and viola; one wall-mounted iPhone charging station. There's also a USB cable tucked away inside of it that will allow you to charge your device from a computer or any other USB-compatible energy source.

The Thinium ReCharge is essentially the same thing as the Charge with two significant differences. First, it allows you to charge to devices simultaneously. Second, it can also function as a battery backup in the event that you can't find any places to plug in.

The Thinium Charge will be out sometime within the first quarter of 2014 for between $39.99 and $49.99 (depends on the model), and the Thinium ReCharge will follow afterwards and pricing has yet to be announced.

We love to find out more about apps that are not only fun to use but provide a great benefit to their users' lives. So, when I heard about AutisMate, a new app aimed at helping those with autism develop their communication and behavioral skills, I jumped at the chance to find out just how it came to be.

The History Behind It

AutisMate has quite an interesting history, as it was created by Jonathan Izak, who was motivated by wanting to help his 10 year old brother, Oriel, who has autism.

"As with many on the spectrum, my brother was often frustrated by the inability to express himself and understand what others expected from him. I recognized that those on the autism spectrum generally have stronger visual learning abilities and that there was a huge need for a solution that could help my brother and others connect with the world around them," he explained.

"AutisMate does this by taking well-researched visual therapy interventions such as video modeling, visual schedules, and visual stories and making them interactive and easily personalized." Jonathan pointed out that while assistive speech technology is already available for some, it's "limited to sentence building."

"This starting point was too advanced for my brother. For this reason, AutisMate uses visual scenes as a starting point for communication and progresses to the more demanding sentence building. Research shows that visual scenes are more intuitive to the early communicator."

Researching How AutisMate Could Help

Jonathan's initial experiences with autism came from his brother, but he appreciated that while making AutisMate, it was "important to partner with a wide variety of parents, therapists, teachers and other autism professionals." As anyone with experience with autism knows, every person on the spectrum is unique and has their own different challenges, and that's without taking into account the different needs of caregivers and professionals working alongside the autistic person.

Jonathan worked to create a "flexible platform…designed in such a way that it can be personalized to each autistic child and caters to the needs of whoever is using it." While he explains that he wanted to help Oriel, he also wanted to "build a solution that would help him and the many other children like him who are challenged by the wide variety of developmental issues associated with autism."

Taking a year and a half to develop, Jonathan started by testing early builds of the app in local schools and private practices. "Along the way we built a network of over 300 industry experts, researchers, clinicians, educators and even parents," he said, "who provided a 360 degree view of the wide variety of needs and strategies to promote communication and behavioral development for individuals with autism. We also formed an autism advisory board that is made up of some of the leading industry experts and researchers."

Reaping The Benefits

Always wanting to create a new approach to overcoming the issues that many with autism suffer from, Jonathan was still stunned by the positive response. "It’s unbelievably rewarding to get to experience how something you are working towards is impacting the lives of so many families."

He recounted to me examples of how a child was able to overcome a fear of elevators by "[using] a visual story to prepare him for what will happen." and he's appreciated the many "heartwarming emails" from educators and caregivers, "describing how their child is communicating for the first time."

It's been good news for Oriel, too. "Beyond the apparent increase in spontaneous speech, it has also helped my brother with daily activities like tying his shoes, behaving when going to a restaurant or doctor’s office, and learning how to interact with others."

AutisMate is currently available solely for the iPad, but Jonathan informed us that besides numerous updates, they are also currently busy working on expanding to both the iPhone and Android platforms. Additional products are also in the pipeline, so things are looking very promising for those after a solution for various special needs.

Thanks to Jonathan Izak for taking the time to answer our questions.

AutisMate is available now, priced at $149.99. To learn more about it, check out the AutisMate website.

It's important to encourage communication with any child but it's all the more vital for those children with an Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Fortunately, technology is on hand to help in some cases. AutisMate is one such app that aims to help boost the social skills of people with autism by helping them communicate better.

AutisMate was designed by Jonathan Izak, someone whose younger brother and first cousin who have autism. It allows users to add their own pictures, videos and voice recordings to the app in order to create scenes that help promote positive interactions.

The app goes one step further by using the iPad's GPS functionality to provide users with scenes relevant to their current location.

This can all be set up from within the app with over 12,000 included symbols, custom voice recordings and synthesized voices to make it ideal for each child's needs. It can even be set to use multiple phrases to communicate the same idea in order to promote generalization through variety.

It's great to see such specialist apps utilizing the potential of the iPad and will hopefully make a huge difference for many families of children on the autistic spectrum.

[Source: Mashable]

Navigation apps in the app store are a plenty. But one developer that continues to push the bar is NAVIGON, who's first app was published two years ago and has received almost 10,000 four star reviews. Their newest app, an overhaul of their first app published two years ago that has seen eight major updates packed with new features, is available as of today as a free update to current NAVIGON users. For those new to the service, NAVIGON 2.0 for iPhone North America, USA, Canada, East, Central or West costs between $19.99 and $49.99 depending on the location.

NAVIGON 2.0 received a complete overhaul to its user interface with pull down menus and an easier to use POI menu. It is the first onboard iPhone navigation app that solves the issue of having to save large amounts of map data on the phone to be independent of a data connection because it allows the user to download maps by state, leaving more room for media files and other apps. Also included in NAVIGON 2.0 is an in app purchase option for quarterly map updates, which is key as every road around seems to be under construction.