Review disclosure: note that the product reviewed on this page may have been provided to us by the developer for the purposes of this review. Note that if the developer provides the product or not, this does not impact the review or score.

Tags: .99 | apple | d&d | flip | mob | over | physics | price drop | steel-media | youtube

The Pebble smartwatch is getting a little smarter with its latest update, v1.14, which brings us a couple of useful new additions to the popular wearable. Anyone already familiar with Do Not Disturb on the iPhone or Mac will be pleased to know that you’re now able to apply similar features to your Pebble.

Right from the watch, decide when you don’t want to be notified of anything and it’ll take care of it for you. Likewise you can decide which type of notifications you want, be that all of them, just calls, or nothing at all.

Talking alarms, you can now set multiple alarms, customize the snooze functions for each of them, and toggle each of them on and off without removing them completely. Oh, and bug fixes, there’s a ton of bug fixes as well.

You should receive an update notification by way of the Pebble app on your iPhone, where you’ll be prompted to install it. If you’ve already done so, be sure to drop us a line in the comments or the iMore Pebble forums and let us know what you think of it.

Source: Pebble

Tags: appe | book | children | d&d | inc | nes | rig | sites | smart | twitter

Apple on Thursday released an updated version of Remote, the app that turns your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad into a remote control for the iTunes library on your Mac or PC.

You can also use Remote to control your Apple TV. The app lets you search your library, view album, movie and TV show artwork, control which AirPlay speakers you want to use, and more.

The new 4.1 release adds the ability to control iTunes Radio on the Mac or PC.

Tags: art | children | creative | data | inc | iphone | math | mmo | radio

Twitter has changed the way its “block” feature worked. Previously, user accounts you blocked could no longer follow the account you blocked them with, wouldn’t appear in your timeline, and couldn’t see your posts. They could still be retweeted by accounts you didn’t block, and the people behind the accounts could still log out or view your account’s profile page on the web. For all intents and purposes, however, “block” worked pretty much the way any reasonable person would expect it to – it made things more difficult. With the change, however, blocked accounts can now still follow the account you blocked them from, retweet and favorite your posts, and otherwise interact with you – you just won’t see them (again, unless an account you do follow re-broadcasts it). In other words, the new Twitter “block” is now more of a “mute”. The only way to protect your account and content now is to make it private.

This change might more accurately convey the dangers inherent in public internet activity, but it also leaves a huge gap between the new, muting “block” and the “private” account. There’s little place left to go if you want to engage a wider audience, but don’t want to be harassed, stalked, or abused online.

If Twitter wants to change the “block” behavior, they should offer something that still fills the needs of the people who depended on the past behavior: “mute” to stop seeing those you don’t want to see, “block” to stop them seeing what you don’t want them to see, and “private” to have absolute control over who sees what.

Right now it strikes me as a situation similar to Google’s password protection policy for Chrome. Eliminating casual protection just because full protection is impossible is a technical abstract, not a human reality. It’s logic, not emotion, and people need and deserve a better balance of both, especially from a social network.

Update 1: Twitter explained their rationale to Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch:

The company said that they had seen situations where users, once they discovered that they had been blocked — because they could no longer view tweets or interact with tweets — would find other ways to attack or harass the blocker or even be spurred to greater abuse. Twitter says that another reason for the change is to better communicate to users that ‘blocked’ does not mean ‘invisible’ and that your information is still public.

Which, again, is technical but not human. Twitter is public by default. Pop up a dialog reminding people that block doesn’t prevent public content from being seen in public, but allow them the tools to make their content even slightly less accessible to those who have abused their access to it.

Update 2: Twitter has decided to reverse the changes and revert “block” to its previous behavior. From the Twitter blog:

Earlier today, we made a change to the way the “block” function of Twitter works. We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users – we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe. Any blocks you had previously instituted are still in effect.

If nothing else, it shows that feature changes need deep ramification modeling before being implemented, especially on social networks.

If you’ve got any thoughts about the new “block”, let me know.

Twitter has changed the way its “block” feature worked. Previously, user accounts you blocked could no longer follow the account you blocked them with, wouldn”t appear in your timeline, and couldn”t see your posts. They could still be retweeted by accounts you didn”t block, and the people behind the accounts could still log out or view your account’s profile page on the web. For all intents and purposes, however, “block” worked pretty much the way any reasonable person would expect it to – it made things more difficult. With the change, however, blocked accounts can now still follow the account you blocked them from, retweet and favorite your posts, and otherwise interact with you – you just won’t see them (again, unless an account you do follow re-broadcasts it). In other words, the new Twitter “block” is now more of a “mute”. The only way to protect your account and content now is to make it private.

This change might more accurately convey the dangers inherent in public internet activity, but it also leaves a huge gap between the new, muting “block” and the “private” account. There’s little place left to go if you want to engage a wider audience, but don”t want to be harassed, stalked, or abused online.

If Twitter wants to change the “block” behavior, they should offer something that still fills the needs of the people who depended on the past behavior: “mute” to stop seeing those you don”t want to see, “block” to stop them seeing what you don”t want them to see, and “private” to have absolute control over who sees what.

Right now it strikes me as a situation similar to Google’s password protection policy for Chrome. Eliminating casual protection just because full protection is impossible is a technical abstract, not a human reality. It’s logic, not emotion, and people need and deserve a better balance of both, especially from a social network.

Update 1: Twitter explained their rationale to Matthew Panzarino of TechCrunch:

The company said that they had seen situations where users, once they discovered that they had been blocked — because they could no longer view tweets or interact with tweets — would find other ways to attack or harass the blocker or even be spurred to greater abuse. Twitter says that another reason for the change is to better communicate to users that ‘blocked’ does not mean ‘invisible’ and that your information is still public.

Which, again, is technical but not human. Twitter is public by default. Pop up a dialog reminding people that block doesn’t prevent public content from being seen in public, but allow them the tools to make their content even slightly less accessible to those who have abused their access to it.

Update 2: Twitter has decided to reverse the changes and revert “block” to its previous behavior. From the Twitter blog:

Earlier today, we made a change to the way the “block” function of Twitter works. We have decided to revert the change after receiving feedback from many users – we never want to introduce features at the cost of users feeling less safe. Any blocks you had previously instituted are still in effect.

If nothing else, it shows that feature changes need deep ramification modeling before being implemented, especially on social networks.

If you”ve got any thoughts about the new “block”, let me know.

Tags: cat | chrome | creative | language | publisher | resource | run | server | thor

Some people may not want Safari to track their online activity and hey, we aren’t here to judge. Some of us also just value our privacy and want to keep as much information as possible out of the hands of large companies. Regardless of the reason, iOS 7 makes it easy to block cookies and stop Safari from tracking your online activity. Here’s how:

How to block cookies in iOS 7 Safari

1. Launch the Settings app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad running iOS 7.
2. Scroll down and tap on Safari.
3. Under Privacy & Security, tap on Block Cookies.
4. Here you can choose between three different options including Always, From Third parties and advertisers, Never. Make your selection.

How to stop iOS 7 Safari from tracking your activity

1. Launch the Settings app from the Home screen of your iPhone or iPad running iOS 7.
2. Scroll down and tap on Safari.
3. Under Privacy & Security, turn On the option for Do Not Track.

That’s all there is to it. iOS 7 Safari will now obey the settings you’ve selected regarding your privacy for each time you browse going forward. Do you take advantage of the privacy settings in Safari? What options do you choose and why?

Tags: app | block | ebook | elements | exp | find | hey | language | mmo