This week: Apple raises prices, a new way to wake in the morning, upgrading your Wi-fi, and listening to the life of trees.

Your apps are going to cost more

The minimum price of software in Apple’s App Store has been raised twenty cents, from $.99 to $1.19. The company says the change was made “to account for adjustments in value-added tax (VAT) rates and foreign exchange rates.”

So you can blame falling oil prices for the fact that Desert Golfing is going to cost you more to purchase.

Prices also went up in the European Union and Norway. They went down in Iceland.

Ever wanted to wake a stranger?

Wakie is an app, for Android, iOS, and Windows Phone, that lets you replace your alarm with a personal phone call from a stranger. The company’s CEO says that their research indicates that, unlike hitting the “snooze” button on an alarm clock, people can’t go back to sleep after they have a one-minute conversation with a person.

Members of the community volunteer to wake up others, who can be anywhere in the world. Calls are anonymous and are automatically cut off after 60 seconds. It’s all free, too.

And it all sounds very proper. But when I read that a “premium” version of the app was in development, which would extend the call time up to five minutes and would permit the viewing of profiles, the concept suddenly became a bit sketchy. Just what we need, another worldwide pickup joint.

When was the last time you upgraded your home Wi-fi?

Many of you got a new smartphone or tablet during the holiday. And many households have multiple smartphones and tablets all connecting to Wi-Fi. But when was the last time you upgraded how you get a wireless signal when you’re at home?

On the phone from Toronto, Mathieu Whelan said that most modern devices are designed to take advantage of upgraded Wi-Fi technology. Adoption of the 802.11ac specification is “very high and growing”, said the regional product manager for Linksys/Belkin. Despite that, he added, few consumers have thought about getting a new router that can deliver faster wireless, or can accommodate multiple devices that are drawing on the router’s bandwidth. Unless you get a new router, as you have more smartphones and tablets connecting to your Wi-Fi, the download speed to each of them decreases.

The next generation of AC technology is referred to as “MU-MIMO”, which stands for multiple user, multiple input, multiple output. Asus and Netgear have MU-MIMO routers in the market, and in 2015 Belkin will be issuing a range of new Linksys routers that adopt the standard. The EA 8500 AC 2600 Dual Band 4×4 router, for example, can serve up to four wireless devices at a time, and can deliver the maximum bandwidth possible to each of those devices before there is any decrease.

Whelan said that iteration on the 802.11ac spec is still happening, and that it is technically possible for MU-MIMO to support more than just four devices simultaneously.

Cross-posted at the Georgia Straight

The life of a tree becomes piano music

Bartholomäus Traubeck developed a special turntable player that plays slices of wood. The Years installation was part of the Schmiede Hallein media and art festival in Vienna in 2012.

The turntable “reads” the rings of trees – which provide information about the tree’s life, including age and the environmental conditions during it’s growth – and generates corresponding piano notes.

Each tree “plays” a different song, and the album, Years, includes tracks from seven Austrian trees: spruce, ash, oak, maple, alder, walnut, and beech. It’s available digitally or on, of course, vinyl.