A Website And Podcast You Can Trust
Looks like Apple is really serious about android and Apple music The Cupertino company updated the Apple music app for android today adding the ability to save downloaded songs to an SD card.
Continue reading → Apple Music App For Android Update. Offline Storage To SD Cards Feature.
Now there’s one problem with trackers and smart watches today it is that they leak your information like a syrup or they can according to a study from the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab at the Munk school of Global affairs.
Continue reading → Smart Watches And Fitness Trackers Leak Your Info. Apart from Apple Watch.
Here’s something funny Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster seems to have a real problem with Gurmans 4″ iPhone assertion. Baarons ran a piece Tuesday highlighting Munster’s argument against.
Continue reading → Gene Munster Has Problems With Mark Gurmans Predictions
Mark Gurman is back on the predictions trail this week. Gurman is well known for some great and not so great leaks and this time it’s in the form of an Apple event in March to launch three new devices.
Whilst Apple execs may not have liked the movie Steve Jobs they do like making money selling movies. The Danny Boyle biopic of Steve Jobs is now available to rent or buy on the iTunes store.
Continue reading → Steve Jobs BioPic now Available on iTunes
Since Microsoft launched the Band 2 back in October, there’s been numerous price drops, trade in deals and reasons to tempt you to get the new Fitness Gadget.
If you live in the UK you the Microsoft Band 2 with 15% off it’s usual price – that’s a £30 reduction, bringing it down to £169.99
Continue reading → Another Microsoft Price Drop. Microsoft Band 2 now £169.99
No two ways about it Rouge Amoeba make some really awesome apps. Audio Hijack is awesome, it’s a wonderful application that lets you record any audio and you can save audio from applications like iTunes.
You can play audio / video Safari and save that audio to a file or you can mix it with any kinds of hardware devices, with other microphones or mixers.
Pretty much anything that you ever could want to do recording apps, recording devices, have a sounboard play thought to skype when podcasting, you can really Audio Hijack to simplify everything.
You can have multiple people, you can merge them into one, you can use it for streaming, the list goes on
Rouge Amoeba have just come out with a new application and here’s how they describe it, called loopback they call it “cable free audio routing for Mac” and here’s their description
Suddenly it’s easy to pass audio between applications on your Mac, create virtual audio devices to take the sound for applications and audio input devices then send it to audio processing applications.
It’s like you have kind of like a mixing board but it’s software so you can do all manner of cool things.
Lets say you have a soundboard or you want to play an audio snippet or something like that and you want all of the guests to hear it. You can combine your microphone with an audio source like iTunes with QuickTime player or something else and you can send that as the output that goes through Skype to all the other people that you’re talking to
You can use the for screen casting. Open up screen recorder in QuickTime grab not only the microphone sound but the audio of the application that your recording.
For those Twitch.TV types out there, now there’s an easy way to route both game and microphone audio through to Open Source Broadcaster.
Garage band is only going to from a single audio device at one time. Logic Pro is limited that way too well now you can use loopback and combine multiple different devices into a virtual device.
It;s even got routing, signal chain capabilities, you can send things to NiceCast for streaming it’s really, really cool.
There’s a free download if you want to try it out. However it’s not cheap at $75it’s not cheap but this is the true sense of a power tool.
This is the kind of thing that regardless of what level broadcaster you really should take a look at Loop Back by Rouge Amoeba. There will be a full review soon, just when we stop figuring out all the cool things we can do with it.
iTunes radio has officially gone dark. Apple announced earlier this month and now the time has come. However you can still listen to internet radio stations within iTunes.
Continue reading → iTunes Radio Is No More BUT You Can Still Listen To Radio in iTunes
February is around the corner and that means more shows and movies to fall in love with. We’ve got stacks of unmissable movies coming your way: Fast & Furious 7, Pitch Perfect 2 and Mad Max: Fury Road, plus the Oscars® ceremony Live from LA, and must-see TV like The Walking Dead and Vinyl®. We’ve got plenty of top sporting treats too. Take a look below to see what’s coming up.
Continue reading → Sponsored Post: NOW TV What’s On February – New Walking Dead
Amazon have joined the ranks of streaming radio in their “stations” offering for those who have Amazon Prime. Its another compelling reason to purcahse prime even if the one off payment might put some off.
Rather than rather than going down the route of saying radio stations they simply called their online streaming music offering, stations.
There is an absolute wealth of choices that will cater to even knows with the most eclectic type of music tastes.
Best of all of the stations are advert free.
Like other streaming music services you can teach Amazon your music tastes by simply rating up or down a particular track that’s been played. So far in my very limited testing after selecting down on any boy bands offering they have yet to be seen ever again
The alternatives
Deezer £9.99 / $ monthly. 30 Day free Trial
(requires flash on desktop)
Spotify £9.99 / $ monthly. 30 Day free Trial
Apple Radio £9.99 / $ monthly. 3 Month free Trial
As you might expect from the company that also provides Amazon Web services music loads instantaneously with no lag skipping either forward or backwards on tracks. There is no information with regards to the bit rate of the music stream but I could find at the time of writing.
Granted Amazon Prime Stations may not have the extensive back catalogue as its competitors and if you were a stand-alone offering a really wouldn’t be much in the way of temptation to jump ship if you already have a service from another streaming provider.
Although the user interface does feel a little rudimentary and certainly not as flashy as others it certainly gets the job done and of course you can listen via the Amazon music app, Amazon fire TV and pretty much any other device.
Amazon prime music is available for a 30 day free trial. Just remember to cancel before the end of the trial or you’re going to get bills the full amount for Amazon prime services.
Amazon Brings Movie x-ray to Songs.
One neat thing about movie and tv shows on prime is the nifty x-ray feature. Tapping on the screen on a movie brings up information about the actor and lets you link through to the IMDB page as well as a few other interesting facts.
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Now you can break out the app and enjoy a karaoke session and find out what that lyric you’ve been wondering about after all this time.
— Gallery
img-5752bd8074e8d647193e49b1
Bounts is the first app to offer you cash rewards for walking, cycling and training in general. Unlike Bitwalking which even after a year after it’s announcement is still invite only, Bounts is available to the public and for walking you earn money.
There is quite a lot to take in here so I’ve broken it down into distance needed, tracking and how much do you get paid
Uou don’t need to have a fancy fitness tracking device it can all be done from your iPhone. Bounts tracks you in a number of ways.
There are three types of activity that Bounts will reward you on – steps, tracked exercise, and checking in at the gym – and each of these can get you five points (known as bounts) per day limited to 15 in total for those using the free version.
7,000 Steps a day
or the equivalent of walking 5km or running 9km will get you 5 bounts points. According to the NHS, the average person takes between 3,000 and 4,000 steps in a day. A target for a healthy heart should be 10,000 a day.
Tracked exercise.
To get your next five points, you’ll need to do 20 minutes of continuous exercise in a day. This can include walking at a brisk pace (an average of 4km/h so don’t pause to take in the scenery too much), running, cycling or swimming, depending on which tracker you use. Of course, walking has the advantage that you’re also getting steps.
Attending gym/sports centre.
The final five points you can earn in a day come from using the app to check in at gyms and sports centres for at least 30 minutes – so no walking in and straight back out to the fast-food place next door – though we’ve heard some people report just walking past counts.
Let’s say you took 7,000 steps and did 20 minutes of exercise every day, and went to the gym three times a week, you’d earn 85 points a week. Note this isn’t a 5 days a week this is a full 7 days a week regime.
£1 = 769 bounts earned at 85 bounts per week it would take you 2 months 1 week.
£2 = 884 bounts
£3 = 1000 bounts
£4 = 1143 bounts
£5 = 1389 bounts earned at 85 bounts per week it would take you 4 months.
£10 = 2778 bounts
When the bounts have mounted up you’ll be able to spend them at major retailers who have varying rewards.
£5 voucher for Tesco, Argos, Halfords, Morrisons, New Look, Sports Direct, Tesco or WHSmith the equivilant of 1,389 points / 4 months excerise, 7 days a week on the free tier.
£10 voucher for Amazon, John Lewis, M&S, Boots, Costa Coffee, Curry’s PC World, Debenhams, Pizza Hut, Primark, River Island, Sainsbury’s or Toys R Us – 2,778 points. This would take less than six months, with the bonus points.
It is possible you’ll achieve the points necessary to get a £5 or £10 voucher quicker – Bounts gives extra points for joining monthly challenges, for promoting it on social media and when playing its ‘Rewards Wheel’ within the app.
You can take a chance on a lucky dip, like the chance to enter the London Marathon although not sure how they managed to secure an entry after the ballot had closed with terms and conditions stating that entries cannot be transferred under any circumstance . A prize draw entry into the Virgin London Marathon = 100 points.
Premium Offerings
This is where things get slightly more complicated. You can sign up to Bounts for a premium which will get you extra points but remember you need to earn even more points than before to recoup your investment.
Bounts has a £9.99 per year Premium account and a £14.99 per year Premium Plus account, which give up to six or 12 times more points than a free account. Below are the number of points you can accrue for completing each activity per day, with the different account levels:
A lot of people are going to be interested in purely the walking aspect of this app.
So if I just walk 7k steps a day how much do I get?
Free 7000 Steps = 5 pts per day * 7 days = 35 points in a week Max points per year = 420
Premium 7000 Steps = 10 pts per day * 7 days = 70 points in a week Steps needed to recoup cost 2778 = 39 weeks Max points per year = 3640
So cost of subscription less the max points you can earn a year JUST by walking leaves you with a profit of 640 Bounts points.
Premium+ 7000 Steps = 20 points * 7 days = 140 points in a week Steps needed to recoup cost: 4168 points = 29 weeks Max points per year = 7280
investment points minus max possible walking points per year leaves you with 3112 points.
overall if you are just going to be walking the bare minimum then it’s really not worth pushing for the subscription model. However if you are a do work out on a consistent basis then it might just be worth the return on investment.
Just for a test I’ve used a weeks worth of points to see what happens. After 39 spins the results are:
Rewards: 5 (35 bounts bonus points) Free Spins: 8 Unlucky: 22
There was a common(ish) pattern here looking at the spreadsheet I used for this. There was 6 unlucky spins on average before winning either another free spin or a reward. Of course like most apps you can allow for notifications. On the morning of the review I work up to a message to say 2016 Virgin London Marathon places up for grabs. Wow, that’s fantastic I can use my points to get a place for the VLM. Sadly it’s not quite that easy.
Granted this is all marketing talk yet the message could be a bit clearer to set expectations for something like this. I can’t say i’ll be using up those points for a shot to win this. Let’s hope that bounts can show some good PR photographs when the event happens this year. What about entry to some of the other great 10k events or the Great North Run as well? This could be potentially a very grey area as you are technically taking a gamble.
In the UK being tracked via mobile phone is not a new thing Car insurance providers will no let you download an app which tracks how you drive and gives you cheaper insurance. If you use Google, or many other services, you are providing information on yourself for the sake of a discount. Bounts is no exception so, as with any such service, it is worth reviewing the Privacy Statement carefully.
With regards to data, you have agreed for us to use your demographic information (not personal identification data), activity tracking data and shopping preferences from the bounts shop to provide insight into the activity of our members with our 3rd party partners. The data insight we provide allows our partners to design and provide better services. We charge our partners for this service which enables us to fund more rewards on the bounts website.
Laying within the privacy statement is also a worrying declaration about storing and keeping your credit and debit card information[1]. I’m guessing this happens when you purchase an account with them. I’ve reached out to them for clarification and will update the site accordingly.
Bounts is a free app available from the App store. If you keep things in synch, don’t mind the privacy and tracking aspect then it’s certainly worth a try. That is until Bitwalking comes along… if it ever does.
Updated 29th January. 12:20pm
We have heard back from the people at Bounts.it and we wish to make it clear that we have implied nor inferred that Bounts sells your credit card information. They have made it clear in their privacy statement they charge partners for information but do not sell information.
I can’t exactly explain what the difference is but I’ve highlighted the statement in question.
Will keep this story updated. Of course Bounts.IT have the right to reply.
[1] Bounts.it have replied to this point on Twitter. For clarity sake here’s the point in their very own privacy statement I was referring to on twitter.
bountsit
@oceanspeed It’s true but in limited context. Upgrade on the Bounts website needs a card payment. We don’t retain card details. Single use
Updated 29th January. 12:46pm Bounts.it are now threatening legal action unless this article is removed or updated. Not the best marketing and PR move for a new company. If they had reached out to use nicely with some manners then we would of gladly worked through the issues one by one.
The term lying is in the sense of “contained” so allegations of calling anyone product person or service a liar is misplaced or deliberate misunderstanding
When this app first became mainstream it was unusable for many hours due to popular demand.
This is something omitted from the review. also omitted from the review:
Bounts charges partners for the data it collects and pass your along, such as geolocation data. As they say they DON’T SELL information, they simply CHARGE companies for information. The difference I will leave up to your interpretation.
Bounts is the first app to offer you cash rewards for walking, cycling and training in general. Unlike Bitwalking which even after a year after it’s announcement is still invite only, Bounts is available to the public and for walking you earn money.
There is quite a lot to take in here so I’ve broken it down into distance needed, tracking and how much do you get paid
Uou don’t need to have a fancy fitness tracking device it can all be done from your iPhone. Bounts tracks you in a number of ways.
There are three types of activity that Bounts will reward you on – steps, tracked exercise, and checking in at the gym – and each of these can get you five points (known as bounts) per day limited to 15 in total for those using the free version.
7,000 Steps a day
or the equivalent of walking 5km or running 9km will get you 5 bounts points. According to the NHS, the average person takes between 3,000 and 4,000 steps in a day. A target for a healthy heart should be 10,000 a day.
Tracked exercise.
To get your next five points, you’ll need to do 20 minutes of continuous exercise in a day. This can include walking at a brisk pace (an average of 4km/h so don’t pause to take in the scenery too much), running, cycling or swimming, depending on which tracker you use. Of course, walking has the advantage that you’re also getting steps.
Attending gym/sports centre.
The final five points you can earn in a day come from using the app to check in at gyms and sports centres for at least 30 minutes – so no walking in and straight back out to the fast-food place next door – though we’ve heard some people report just walking past counts.
Let’s say you took 7,000 steps and did 20 minutes of exercise every day, and went to the gym three times a week, you’d earn 85 points a week. Note this isn’t a 5 days a week this is a full 7 days a week regime.
£1 = 769 bounts earned at 85 bounts per week it would take you 2 months 1 week.
£2 = 884 bounts
£3 = 1000 bounts
£4 = 1143 bounts
£5 = 1389 bounts earned at 85 bounts per week it would take you 4 months.
£10 = 2778 bounts
When the bounts have mounted up you’ll be able to spend them at major retailers who have varying rewards.
£5 voucher for Tesco, Argos, Halfords, Morrisons, New Look, Sports Direct, Tesco or WHSmith the equivilant of 1,389 points / 4 months excerise, 7 days a week on the free tier.
£10 voucher for Amazon, John Lewis, M&S, Boots, Costa Coffee, Curry’s PC World, Debenhams, Pizza Hut, Primark, River Island, Sainsbury’s or Toys R Us – 2,778 points. This would take less than six months, with the bonus points.
It is possible you’ll achieve the points necessary to get a £5 or £10 voucher quicker – Bounts gives extra points for joining monthly challenges, for promoting it on social media and when playing its ‘Rewards Wheel’ within the app.
You can take a chance on a lucky dip, like the chance to enter the London Marathon although not sure how they managed to secure an entry after the ballot had closed with terms and conditions stating that entries cannot be transferred under any circumstance . A prize draw entry into the Virgin London Marathon = 100 points.
Premium Offerings
This is where things get slightly more complicated. You can sign up to Bounts for a premium which will get you extra points but remember you need to earn even more points than before to recoup your investment.
Bounts has a £9.99 per year Premium account and a £14.99 per year Premium Plus account, which give up to six or 12 times more points than a free account. Below are the number of points you can accrue for completing each activity per day, with the different account levels:
A lot of people are going to be interested in purely the walking aspect of this app.
So if I just walk 7k steps a day how much do I get?
Free 7000 Steps = 5 pts per day * 7 days = 35 points in a week Max points per year = 420
Premium 7000 Steps = 10 pts per day * 7 days = 70 points in a week Steps needed to recoup cost 2778 = 39 weeks Max points per year = 3640
So cost of subscription less the max points you can earn a year JUST by walking leaves you with a profit of 640 Bounts points.
Premium+ 7000 Steps = 20 points * 7 days = 140 points in a week Steps needed to recoup cost: 4168 points = 29 weeks Max points per year = 7280
investment points minus max possible walking points per year leaves you with 3112 points.
overall if you are just going to be walking the bare minimum then it’s really not worth pushing for the subscription model. However if you are a do work out on a consistent basis then it might just be worth the return on investment.
Just for a test I’ve used a weeks worth of points to see what happens. After 39 spins the results are:
Rewards: 5 (35 bounts bonus points) Free Spins: 8 Unlucky: 22
There was a common(ish) pattern here looking at the spreadsheet I used for this. There was 6 unlucky spins on average before winning either another free spin or a reward. Of course like most apps you can allow for notifications. On the morning of the review I work up to a message to say 2016 Virgin London Marathon places up for grabs. Wow, that’s fantastic I can use my points to get a place for the VLM. Sadly it’s not quite that easy.
Granted this is all marketing talk yet the message could be a bit clearer to set expectations for something like this. I can’t say i’ll be using up those points for a shot to win this. Let’s hope that bounts can show some good PR photographs when the event happens this year. What about entry to some of the other great 10k events or the Great North Run as well? This could be potentially a very grey area as you are technically taking a gamble.
In the UK being tracked via mobile phone is not a new thing Car insurance providers will no let you download an app which tracks how you drive and gives you cheaper insurance. If you use Google, or many other services, you are providing information on yourself for the sake of a discount. Bounts is no exception so, as with any such service, it is worth reviewing the Privacy Statement carefully.
With regards to data, you have agreed for us to use your demographic information (not personal identification data), activity tracking data and shopping preferences from the bounts shop to provide insight into the activity of our members with our 3rd party partners. The data insight we provide allows our partners to design and provide better services. We charge our partners for this service which enables us to fund more rewards on the bounts website.
Laying within the privacy statement is also a worrying declaration about storing and keeping your credit and debit card information[1]. I’m guessing this happens when you purchase an account with them. I’ve reached out to them for clarification and will update the site accordingly.
Bounts is a free app available from the App store. If you keep things in synch, don’t mind the privacy and tracking aspect then it’s certainly worth a try. That is until Bitwalking comes along… if it ever does.
Updated 29th January. 12:20pm
We have heard back from the people at Bounts.it and we wish to make it clear that we have implied nor inferred that Bounts sells your credit card information. They have made it clear in their privacy statement they charge partners for information but do not sell information.
I can’t exactly explain what the difference is but I’ve highlighted the statement in question.
Will keep this story updated. Of course Bounts.IT have the right to reply.
[1] Bounts.it have replied to this point on Twitter. For clarity sake here’s the point in their very own privacy statement I was referring to on twitter.
bountsit
@oceanspeed It’s true but in limited context. Upgrade on the Bounts website needs a card payment. We don’t retain card details. Single use
Updated 29th January. 12:46pm Bounts.it are now threatening legal action unless this article is removed or updated. Not the best marketing and PR move for a new company. If they had reached out to use nicely with some manners then we would of gladly worked through the issues one by one.
The term lying is in the sense of “contained” so allegations of calling anyone product person or service a liar is misplaced or deliberate misunderstanding
When this app first became mainstream it was unusable for many hours due to popular demand.
This is something omitted from the review. also omitted from the review:
Bounts charges partners for the data it collects and pass your along, such as geolocation data. As they say they DON’T SELL information, they simply CHARGE companies for information. The difference I will leave up to your interpretation.
Bounts is the first app to offer you cash rewards for walking, cycling and training in general. Unlike Bitwalking, Bounts is available to the public and for walking you earn money.
Discussing with me this week alternatives to Netflix in light of the Geo Blocking stories going around the net is Karl Madden from the Mac and Forth show. BBC iPlayer, Amazon “not quite prime” Video, Now Tv and TV Player all come in for scrutiny and review. Grab the show on iTunes
Continue reading → Rampant Mumblings 52 : Netflix isn’t the only fruit