News

The the laser tag craze of the late 80s may have been brief, but it burned so very very brightly. Hasbro is on track to launch a whole new generation of Lazer Tag branded blasters featuring iPhone and iPod touch compatibility. They will work without the Apple add-on however the real fun begins after your favorite iOS device is docked.

Hasbro will release a free Lazer Tag app that uses augmented reality to provide a heads-up-display that delivers information during battle. Players can challenge their friends or compete against virtual opponents in single-player mode. Much like other solo games, levels can be mastered and difficulty increases as the player collects points and rewards.

Before the iPhone and before electrical recording there was the gramophone. Although the sound quality of these wind up machines may lack something to the modern ear, the retro look of a Victrola still has its appeal. Now you can enhance the sound from your iPhone 4 or 4S without electricity while adding century-old flair.

Other audio docks such as Koostic work in the same way, essentially using the shape of the dock to amplify sound from the iPhone speaker. The iVictrola does this with ultimate simplicity while harking back to the era before radio.

iPhone users seem to fall into two camps, those who use Newsstand and others who can't stand it and want to delete or hide the Newsstand icon in a folder. The jailbreak tweak known as Booksstand may help those in the first group, however iPhone owners with no use for Newsstand won't be converted.

What Booksstand does is consolidate your iBooks and Newsstand content into one place, putting shortcuts to your iBooks content in the Newsstand. When you select a book from the Newsstand, this triggers iBooks to open and the content to be displayed.

WeeTrackData may have a scary sounding name, but it's the perfect app for people with limited data volumes. The jailbreak app allows you to set up a monthly data limit and keep track of your usage in the Notification Center. The data is broken down by monthly usage, weekly usage and daily usage. You can view the different stats by simply swiping left to right.

Once setup in the Notifications panel via the Settings app, the widget will keep track of your usage in realtime. You can then enter your billing cycle and monthly data threshold using the widget's settings. After everything is complete your Notification Center will display your download and upload stats, signal strength and percentage.

There is a new Cydia tweak that teaches Siri to display the last five tweets from your Twitter timeline. I haven't quite figured out why it's needed, but a few improvements may make it a more useful tool in the future.

The tweak is called TweetLine, and it can be located in the ModMyi repo under "Sources" in the Cydia Store. Once installed just say the word "Timeline" to prompt Siri to access your Twitter account. She will then show you the last five tweets from your timeline. You will also need the free Twitter app from the iTunes App Store for it to work.