Apple’s ’12 Days of Gifts’ App Kicks Off with Justin Timberlake iTunes Festival EP [iOS Blog]
Apple has officially started giving away free downloads on its “12 Days of Gifts” app for iOS devices, starting with an exclusive EP from Justin Timberlake made up of four live performances from the 2013 iTunes Festival. Before the official start of the giveaway, the app delivered a bonus song and video from New Zealand singer Lorde.
Apple’s “12 Days of Gifts” giveaways will run daily from December 26 through January 6 and will offer users samples of a variety of content, including songs, apps, books, movies from across Apple’s digital stores.
12 Days of Gifts is a universal app available for free in the App Store. [Direct Link]
Thanks, Luc! 
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Japanese Apple Stores Again Selling Annual ‘Lucky Bags’ on January 2
During the new year in Japan, retailers often offer a Fukubukuro, or “mystery bag,“ which is a grab bag filled with a random assortment of products sold at a steep discount.
Apple has participated in this tradition for quite some time, and will once again be offering its “Lucky Bag” in several different Apple Retail Stores across Japan on January 2.
Lucky Bags, which Apple will sell this year for 36,000 yen, or $345, usually contain items like iPods, headphones, and t-shirts. A few fortunate folks, however, have received big-ticket items in past years, like iPads or MacBook Airs, which have made Lucky Bags ultra popular in Japan.
Apple’s grab bags are sold as is, and returns are not accepted unless a product is defective. Still, the bags have been quick sellers on previous occasions, with many people lining up the night before to get their hands on a bag.
As with past years, Apple’s Lucky Bag promotion is limited to Japanese customers, though other countries, like China, may see the same traditional Apple Store sales during the new year.
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Put a box to good use with ShoeboxCNC
Oh, the lowly box. It spends most of the year being broken down, stashed away and pulped, but one day a year, it gets its moment to shine (at least in the UK and various Commonwealth Nations). Consider the ShoeboxCNC a continued celebration of the cardboard vessel, a kit you build from the box it arrives in. The router is an Arduino-controlled CNC fabrication machine you can put to use for all sorts of things that require an arm that moves on the X Y and Z axes – from cookie frosting to picturing painting (with varying degrees of success, of course). It’s not exactly a heavy duty router or miller – more the sort of kit you’d expect from something made out of cardboard. Still, it looks to be a fun weekend activity for burgeoning makers – or a nice classroom project. The company’s just opened up its Kickstarter, hoping to harness a bit of that spirit of giving. $250 will get you a kit scheduled to be delivered around this time next year, for an early Boxing Day celebration.
Filed under: Peripherals
Source: Kickstarter
Android 4.4 For LG G2 Rolling Out Now In Korea
If you own a LG G2 and you live in Korea, you’ll be happy to know you may have another Christmas present waiting for you under the proverbial tree. Reports are saying that Android 4.4 for LG G2 is hitting the airwaves now, in particular from Korean carrier, KT. The update is a pretty hefty one at 637.39MB and will bring the G2 from its decidely outdated Android 4.2.2 to Android 4.4 ahead of its Snapdragon 800 competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and Sony Xperia Z1.
This actually comes a little ahead of schedule as it was announced by LG Canada that the update wouldn’t be hitting till the end of Q1 2014 i.e. around March. That’s not to say this still won’t be true; it’s entirely possible that LG is doing a soft launch of this update in its native Korea to suss out any glaring issues (as Samsung embarassingly experienced with its Android 4.3 release for Galaxy S3), which would still mean that everyone else with G2′s around the world would still need to wait a few months to get Android 4.4. Even so, it’s nice to see LG is on the ball for once.
Are you excited to hear about Android 4.4 for LG G2 being spotted in the wild? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
Source: Ruliweb, Phone Arena via Overclockers Club News
Android Never Ceases To Amaze Me; My Personal Mind-Blown Moment On Christmas Day
I don’t pretend to be an expert at Android; I haven’t even rooted my Samsung Galaxy Note 2 and I still use TouchWiz. But I do like to think that I know most of the functions of Android, enough to be able to pick up any phone and use it quite extensively. So when I came across something on my Note 2 yesterday that I’d never seen before, I had a bit of a ‘mind-blown’ moment. Time for a story…
It was Christmas Day, the night was winding down and I was at the table with friends playing word games. One of my friends commented that Siri on her iPhone was configured to Cantonese and that it would always detect that she was saying something, even when she wasn’t. To counter this, she needed to find the menu to change Siri’s native language, a feat which was only accessible through the search menu, which in iOS 7 is now ‘hidden’ unintuitively (preditable, really). As it turns out, you access it by swiping down in the middle of the screen, but before arriving at this conclusion, another friend was convinced that this menu could be accessed by swiping down with two fingers. Naturally, this was incorrect, but I thought to myself “does swiping down with two fingers even do anything on an Android phone?”. As it turns out, it does.
Many of you will be familiar with this screen, or at least a variation of it, on your Android device. This is just the standard navigation menu when swiping down with one finger from the top. Lo’ and behold, if you swipe down with two fingers instead, you are greeted with this instead:
Now, I did consider that this was specific to the Note 2 running Android 4.3 as this second menu as seen above is just all the quick menu buttons on the one screen, but I tested this on my friend’s Nexus 4 as well and swiping down with two fingers brought about a different menu as well.
The question here is not if you have this functionality, though it would be nice to know which phones and software builds can actually do this; rather, I’d like to ask everyone whether you’ve had a similar ‘mind-blown’ moment where you realised how amazing Android is or been surprised that there’s actually been a function you’d not known existed before and is very useful. Let us know your stories in the comments below. And Merry Christmas to you all!
Evernote for BlackBerry 10 updated with sharing, offline notebooks and more
Yearning for more from BlackBerry 10′s Evernote experience? You got it. The service just updated its native BB10 app with improved performance, more security and a small collection of overdue features. Namely, Evernote has given users the ability to share notes from within the app, both to friends and with other apps installed on the device. The reverse works too: data from other Apps can be shared and saved to Evernote using BB10′s regular share dialogue. Premium users can also save their notebooks for offline use, and the introduction of a new lock feature secures content with a four-digit passcode. Oh, and the team has enabled Universal Search too, which lets users search their Evernote account from anywhere on the device. Game changing features? Maybe not, but we won’t scoff at the update. Check out the company’s official blog for more details.
Source: Evernote
Apple Fined by Taiwanese Regulators Over iPhone Price Fixing [iOS Blog]
Apple has been fined 20 million New Taiwan dollars ($670,000) by the Taiwanese Fair Trade Commission after the company was found to be unlawfully influencing the price of the iPhone on the country’s cell phone carriers, reports The Wall Street Journal.
Under article 18 of Taiwan’s Fair Trade Act, an enterprise is not allowed to decide the prices of their goods after handing them over to a third party for resale. The company reportedly asked Taiwan’s three major service providers to adjust iPhone rates, including Chunghwa Telecom, Far Eastone Telecommunication, and Taiwan Mobile.
“Through the email correspondence between Apple and these three telecom companies we discovered the companies submit their pricing plans to Apple to be approved or confirmed before the products hit the market,” it said in a statement.
Apple may choose to appeal the Taiwanese government’s decision, however it may face a fine of 50 million New Taiwan dollars ($1,700,000) if it does not comply with the initial ruling. Furthermore, the ruling itself applies to iPhones only, with the government having no current plans to investigate Apple’s price interference with iPads in the region. Apple’s office in Taiwan has also not issued a statement on ruling.
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AIVAnet 