Created by Scott Garner, a master's degree candidate in the interactive telecommunications department at NYU, Hell Is Other People relies on the same technology as Foursquare, an app that allows people to "check in" at various establishments to display their location to other users. Unlike Foursquare, which aims to maximize the possibility of face-to-face interaction, Hell Is Other People displays the locations of others, as well as the best routes you can take for how to avoid them.

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The Guardian reported:

 "A 'ban' is purely symbolic," commented Martin Macdonald, a marketing director for Expedia EAN who has tried Google Glass.

The developers behind Lambda Labs, which offers a paid-for facial recognition service, tweeted: "Don't worry, we think it's a core feature. Google will allow it or be replaced with something that does."

Being able to recognise faces has looked to a number of observers like an ideal application for Glass, because the device can "see" what the user is looking at, and display data such as a name in a small screen at the top right of the visual field which is invisible to outside observers. That, in turn, would drive demand for such apps.

Google though suggests that it stands as an intermediary between any online services and the display output on Glass, according to itsdeveloper overview, which says in part: "Google handles all of the necessary details of syncing between your Glassware and your users' Glass."

The result could be a cat-and-mouse game between Google and facial recognition providers.

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If you own an iPhone or have a friend who does, you’ve probably heard some version of this admission before. The grid is Dots, a super-addictive iOS game released by New York tech incubator Betaworks just over two weeks ago. Dots was downloaded one million times in the first few days after its release, becoming the top app in eight different countries; users completed 25 million rounds in the first week. After just two weeks, users had racked up more than 100 million rounds. That adds up to 190 years of gameplay.

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It had the dosages, the time of day each should be taken and a check mark when her folks, who live 10 miles away, assured her the pills had been swallowed.

"I work full time so it was very challenging," said D'Auria, 63, of West Nyack.

Now she has an app for that. With a tap or two on her iPhone, D'Auria can access a "pillbox" program that keeps it all organized for her and other relatives who share in the caregiving and subscribe to the app.

"I love the feature that others can see this," D'Auria said. "I'm usually the one who takes care of this, but if I get stuck, they're all up to date."

From GPS devices and computer programs that help relatives track a wandering Alzheimer's patient to iPad apps that help an autistic child communicate, a growing number of tools for the smartphone, the tablet and the laptop are catering to beleaguered caregivers. With the baby boom generation getting older, the market for such technology is expected to increase.

The pillbox program is just one feature of a $3.99 app called Balance that was launched last month by the National Alzheimer Center, a division of the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in the Bronx.

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In Iceland, a country with a population of 320,000 where most everyone is distantly related, inadvertently kissing cousins is a real risk.

A new smartphone app is on hand to help Icelanders avoid accidental incest. The app lets users "bump" phones, and emits a warning alarm if they are closely related. "Bump the app before you bump in bed," says the catchy slogan.

Some are hailing it as a welcome solution to a very Icelandic form of social embarrassment.

"Everyone has heard the story of going to a family event and running into a girl you hooked up with some time ago," said Einar Magnusson, a graphic designer in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik.

"It's not a good feeling when you realize that girl is a second cousin. People may think it's funny, but (the app) is a necessity."

The Islendiga-App — "App of Icelanders" — is an idea that may only be possible in Iceland, where most of the population shares descent from a group of 9th-century Viking settlers, and where an online database holds genealogical details of almost the entire population.

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Seventeen-year-old Nick d'Aloisio, who dreamed up the idea for the content-shortening program when he was studying for his exams, said he was surprised by the deal. As with its other recent acquisitions, Yahoo didn't disclose how much it is paying for Summly, although British newspapers suggested the deal's value at several million dollars.

"I would have never imagined being in this position so suddenly," he wrote on his website, before thanking his family, his school — and his venture capitalist backer Li Ka-Shing — for supporting him.

Summly works by condensing content so readers can scroll through more information more quickly — useful for the small screens of smartphones.

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Smartphones, like Swiss Army knives and SkyMall watches, have a few nifty features and plenty of useless ones. Who needs a checkbook when you’ve got Square, a toolkit when you’ve got iHandy Level, or a baby sitter when you’ve got Fruit Ninja? Encyclopedias, gazetteers, even boredom itself now seems obsolete.

Are dermatologists next? A slew of skin cancer-detection apps — with names like SkinVision, SpotCheck, and Mole Detective 2 — allow smartphone users to photograph and “analyze” their worrisome blemishes, offering diagnoses such as “problematic,” “high risk,” and “looks okay.” The free or low-cost apps base their findings on algorithms, rather than human expertise, and return results instantly. “Costs far less than an insurance copay, won’t leave a scar, and may save your life!” promises one advertisement. “The survival rate of melanoma is a dismal 15% at stage four,” warns another.

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A quick primer on Vine: It’s an extremely easy-to-use app that allows users to simultaneously shoot and edit very short videos. It’s owned by Twitter, and one way to think about it is as being to video what Twitter is to text: arbitrarily, but perhaps fruitfully, short. (Another way to think about Vine is that it's a program that basically lets you make GIFs of your YouTube videos and share them through your Instagram feed.) You point your iPhone at whatever you want to record and hold your finger down on the screen: The video pauses recording when you pick your finger up, and it starts recording again when you put it back down. You can start and stop as many times as you want within the six seconds, making it extremely easy to do edits and stop-motion tricks as you go. When you’re done, you upload the video, which loops continuously to your feed, where the people who follow you can see it, like it and comment on it.

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The blog Totem and Taboo aggregates photos taken at the Berlin memorial to the Holocaust, with its iconic, haunting gray slabs, and posted to Grindr -- a smartphone application used by gay men, that alerts users to the prowling presence of other men in their vicinity.  Totem and Taboo captures a peculiar trend of saucy men using the slabs as backdrops to lean against, climb upon and provide ironic context for their  come hither looks and shirtless poses.

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After shipping out several hundred units to early benefactors on Wednesday, Pebble has released the companion application for its e-paper smartwatch, a timepiece that allows you to customize its face -- or that of your iPhone -- according to your "mood, activity or outfit." The novelty of Pebble's watch extends beyond its swappable graphics. Vibrating notifications alert you to incoming calls, emails, SMS messages and even tweets, all of which are dismissible with a shake of the wrist. (Of course, if the prospect of having your hand tremble like a withdrawal victim sounds unappealing, you can easily disable these functions).

More compelling still is how the Pebble smartwatch came to be. After failing to attract traditional investors, the company (then called inPulse) took to crowd funding and managed to net a staggering $10,266,845. The second highest funded design project from Kickstarter, an elevation doc for the iPhone, raised just over $1.4 million.

According to the Pebble website, the smartwatch ($150) will be available to the general public in early 2013.

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Almost every app gathers some kind of information -- a unique identification number that belongs only to a specific mobile device, or location data revealing where exactly the app is being used. But connecting that data to the ostensible function of the app can be murky. The CMU researchers created an experiment in which they presented users of the most popular Android apps with the precise information those apps gathered, and then asked for reactions. Were they surprised? Bothered? Complacent?

The answers, says Jason Hong, an associate professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon, had a lot to do with our perception of the app's purpose. For example, participants in the experiment weren't alarmed in the least to learn that Google Maps is a heavy user of location data. Of course it is! The whole point of Google Maps is to help you get from where you are to someplace else. Location data is essential to the task.

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Talk about starting them young.

"NRA: Practice Range" advertises “one-touch access to the NRA network of news, laws, facts, knowledge, safety tips, educational materials and online resources,” but these features are not an integrated part of the app. Despite the app's claims of "striking the right balance of gaming and safety education, allowing you to enjoy the most authentic experience possible," users interested in gun safety are simply redirected to the NRA's website, making the app primarily a vehicle for the shooting game.

The app offers three gameplay modes: indoor range, outdoor range and skeet shoot. And while players start out with an M9 handgun, for $0.99 they can "unlock" an MK11 sniper rifle.

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He was playing Logos Quiz, a game that is based primarily on the ability to identify corporate logos.

I was appalled and amazed. We've all become quite used to product placement in our entertainment, to living in a world in which TV shows like, say, "Hawaii 5-0" don't even try to hide their primary function as vehicles for Victoria's Secret and Microsoft Surface marketing campaigns. But to make the ability to recognize a brand into the product itself -- that's pure genius. A 15-year-old's attention span in 2012 is perhaps the most fickle thing to ever exist on this planet -- to see my son trying to guess whether a certain squiggle signified BMW or Mercedes Benz was astonishing.

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