Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]Meet the Priors!
We know all you Divergent fans have been waiting a damn long time to get a glimpse of the cast together, and now we have it for you.
We already knew WHO had been cast in the roles of the Prior family, but there's nothing like seeing them all together!
Ansel Elgort, who is playing Caleb, was oh-so generous enough to share this private, behind-the-scenes pic with us of his new onscreen family!
Pictured with him is Tony Goldwyn (Andrew), Ashley Judd (Natalie), and Shailene Woodley (Tris). And let us tell you, this group could not be a better looking family!
And sure, Ansel and Shailene might make a cute brother and sister combo here, but this pic is also proving they'll later make good-looking luvahs in The Fault In Our Stars.
All these wonderful teasers have us craving the first trailer! And don't even get us started on how pumped we are for the March 21, 2014 release date!
[Image via WhoSay.]
Tags: ansel elgort, ashley judd, cast, divergent, film flickers, photos, shailene woodley, tony goldwyn, whosay
Justin Bieber isn’t wasting his time.
Following his breakup from Selena Gomez, the singer has been delving into work, recording new music in the studio and announcing more and more tour dates. Yet, it seems “life is good” for the Biebs now that he’s figured out his M.O.: work hard and play harder.
The star tweeted the following this past Thursday. By the sound of things, he isn’t struggling too much with life minus Selena:
Read more »
[Image via Rayne/JFXimages/JP/WENN.]The letters state that law enforcement authorities are working with the government and "industry bodies" -- this would be Hollywood studios and the BPI, Britian's music industry group -- and go on to say that operators of copyright-happy sites are in breach of the Serious Crimes Act.
Distinguishing this letter from scare tactics past, it adds that operators could face up to 10 years in jail for their transgressions.
The website TorrentFreak has confirmed that at least two websites have received such letters. Interestingly, neither of those sites is located in the UK, but police reportedly believe that crimes are still being committed within British jurisdiction.
Such letters are not necessarily new. However, linking this sort of copyright infringement to the Serious Crimes Act -- and declaring that a decade-long jail sentence could be coming -- marks an escalation in the piracy war.
The UK has been particularly proactive in trying to weed out illegal file-sharing. Last year, authorities ordered British Internet service providers to block the notorious file-sharing site The Pirate Bay; they have since expanded the list of blocked sites, much to the chagrin of some UK advocacy groups.
[Source: TorrentFreak]
Following France's pledge to give nearly US$12 million to booksellers to stop the digital bleeding, British booksellers are imploring the British government to do the same.
The big threat to business is Amazon, according to Tim Godfray, the chief executive of the UK's Booksellers Association. Bookshops, publishers and agents will all be extinct if Amazon continues its expansion, Godfray said.
Amazon was also the impetus for the French book bailout. In fact, Amazon seeks to create a "virtual monopoly," said Aur?lie Filippetti, France's culture minister, adding that "everyone has had enough of Amazon."
That's everyone except people who like cheap books delivered to their door, perhaps.
Filippetti, a published novelist, is considering a ban on Amazon's free postage, she said, as well as the company's 5 percent discount on books.
In addition to the Amazon threats, France has discussed imposing a special tax on tablets, smartphones and laptops, all of which are undermining the arts, the logic goes.
Ergo, booksellers in the UK are hoping for similar measures. Indeed, there are now 1,028 bookshops in the UK, compared with 1,535 in 2005.
[Source: The Guardian]
Japan-based Sony and Danish Lego are teaming up to create a sort of hybrid between toys and video games.
Researchers at Sony labs in Tokyo are embedding motors, cameras and actuators into Legos. As shown in this demonstration, such "living" Legos can be operated with a wireless PlayStation controller.
Some Legos have also been equipped with the ability to "crumble" should a cannon blast, earthquake or other childhood fantasy strike just so.
There are no definitive plans for Sony/Lego consumer products -- they're just playing around at the moment. Hurdles to commercially viable products include battery life.
[Source: IDG News]
Amazon Marketplace has launched in India, making that nation the 10th in which Marketplace is available.
Currently, the site only has books and DVDs.
Amazon has faced hurdles in India, where it has been prevented from selling directly to consumers. However, Marketplace is set up so that third parties execute the sales, thereby allowing Amazon to skirt the problem.
[Source: The Next Web] 
Featuring a capacitive, multitouch 7-inch screen, the new tablet runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and slips into a cradle that adds digital and analog controls to make the Wikipad 7 a full-fledged game device.
It has a larger screen than one would normally see on a handheld gaming device. Further adding to its muscle is an Nvidia Tegra 3 mobile processor with a quad-core CPU and fifth battery-saver core.
The Wikipad also has a high-performance 12-core Nvidia GPU under the hood, along with 16 GB of memory and an additional microSD slot to support a further 32 GB of storage. The tablet offers dual-band WiFi (802.11 a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 4.0 support for connectivity.
Next week's release of the Wikipad will coincide with E3, the video game industry trade show that will take place in Los Angeles.
The Wikipad offers much more to gamers than the typical tablet. The game controller cradle gives the pad an analog stick as well as digital controls for games. This is in addition to the multitouch control that's in line with most tablets, which provides five-point multitouch functionality, meaning that several fingers can be put into use to control actions in a game.
"It's a portable gaming tablet," independent industry analyst Billy Pidgeon told the E-Commerce Times. "So, ostensibly it will appeal to hard-core gamers. Nobody's going to get this to play Candy Crush or Bejeweled."
Vying for the same niche is the Shield, another Android-based gaming tablet, which is expected from Nvidia later this month. The Shield is based on Nvidia's Tegra 4 chip.
The Wikipad also has to compete with console systems for hard-core gamers' dollars. Next week, both Sony and Microsoft are expected to release details on their competing consoles expected in time for the holidays.
Despite the competition, it is possible that a certain gaming demographic will line up to purchase the Wikipad.
"There are more and more hard-core gamers out there who happen to be adults with families and working professionals," Scott Steinberg, principal analyst for TechSavvy Global, told the E-Commerce Times. "Many are migrating to tablets. It makes perfect sense that as people gravitate to tablets, they allow more mature options."
Of course, when a new console or handheld system is released, manufacturers often work with developers to create games for the system. In the case of an Android-based tablet such as the Wikipad, however, the device's maker can lean on all the many existing game catalogs on Google Play to prop the system up.
Wikipad will be compatible with games and other apps on Google Play, PlayStation Mobile games from Sony Computer Entertainment, and games on TegraZone, Nvidia's free app built to support its Tegra processor.
"In terms of the traditional console game experience, smartphones and tablet games have existed for years, and their tastes have matured," said Steinberg. "More advanced controls should be well-received."
It's not yet clear how well games built for a multitouch screen will translate to digital and analog controls.
"Gamers are used to the controller input," said Pidgeon. "There are a couple of first-person games that are designed for tablets with multitouch, but still people are used to using controllers, and PC people are used to using a mouse and keyboard."
One unknown is how well the games will adapt from multitouch control to buttons and joysticks.
"That remains to be seen," Pidgeon said. "It should be fairly straightforward to switch to a control interface, but that could be an issue."
Wikipad owners may find that they use the tablet more outside of its controller cradle unless games are made specifically for the system.
"It's not something that game developers are necessarily designing for, because it's such a rare instance," Pidgeon explained.
The Wikipad was originally slated for release last October, but a manufacturing difficulty sent the company back to the drawing board.
The Wikipad was then slimmed down from a 10-inch screen to a more usable 7-inch size.
While the tablet does have a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, another key change made during the redesign was to eliminate its rear-facing camera. Such a camera may have facilitated multiscreen applications -- like using the Wikipad as a controller for a console, or playing a game that reacts to activity on the television screen.
"That could be an issue with some of the multiscreens," said Pidgeon. "It may be OK. Multiscreen gaming is a bit down the road."
That's because people talk on the phone so regularly that they have developed learned habits that take over their awareness, according to Robert Rosenberger, an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology.
The phenomenon is known as "habituation," and it refers in essence to the fact that the more accustomed we become to something, the less we notice it.
"Using the phone, handheld or hands-free, involves a whole separate set of trained habits, some of which deeply interfere with the job of driving safely," Rosenberger told TechNewsWorld.
"We've trained ourselves to focus on the conversation when we use the phone in the same way we've trained ourselves to press the brake when we decide to stop," he explained. "When behind the wheel, it can be difficult to continuously resist the automatic habit to think more about that phone conversation."
Rosenberger's theories are outlined in the April issues of both Communications of the ACM and IEEE Technology & Society Magazine.
The act of driving a vehicle is complex.
"Many tasks require the driver's conscious and concerted attention, such as monitoring the roadway, following directions, looking for pedestrians" and so on, Rosenberger said.
Other tasks, such as gripping the steering wheel and pressing the pedals, must be learned by the body. That's why new drivers must practice behind the wheel -- just learning to drive from a book won't suffice.
"It's essential that the driver not only know which pedal is the brake, but that she or he also be able to press it almost automatically the moment they decide to slow or stop the car," Rosenberger explained.
People develop deeply habituated relationships with technologies they use daily, and phones are no exception, Rosenberger pointed out. Through normal phone usage, we learn to focus mainly on the conversation whenever we hold a phone to our heads.
"The danger is that when we are behind the wheel, the phone -- whether handheld or hands-free -- inclines us to focus more on the conversation than the road," he asserted. "Sure, we can actively resist this urge, but it remains and keeps tugging at us as the driving gets boring or as the phone conversation gets more interesting, and we don't even realize that we're being pulled away from our commitment to pay most attention to the road."
When people try to perform two different tasks to which they are habituated, the brain sends the body conflicting signals. We can manage those dual tasks if we are continuously paying conscious attention -- that's why drivers don't crash immediately every time they talk on the phone.
"The problems come when we get comfortable or overconfident, and we treat the situation with less care," Rosenberger said. "It's then that the phone-related habits creep in and pull our attention away from the road."
Although several states have passed hands-free cellphone laws, research indicates that conversing on hands-free phones "is just as distracting as handheld phoning, once the conversation begins," Russ Rader, a spokesperson for the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, told TechNewsWorld.
There are studies that bear out Rader's comments; several are cited on the IIHS website.
For example, there was a 37 percent reduction in brain activity associated with driving when research subjects using a driving simulator listened on a headset to spoken sentences they had to judge true or false, researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University found.
Drivers who talked on either hands-free or handheld cellphones were as impaired as drunk drivers in a University of Utah study conducted in 2006.
While conversations with passengers in a car can also be distracting, especially to teenage drivers, they can be less dangerous than talking on a cellphone -- at least in part because passengers may point out safety risks, help the driver navigate, or shut up when a situation becomes challenging.
In any case, as the modern car evolves into a mobile entertainment and communications center, there might be more trouble ahead, Rosenberger warned.
Building hands-free calling and texting systems into the dashboards of cars, for instance, "implies that all that drivers need to do is use a hands-free system and they will be safe," he said, "but this may not be true."
Without standard sizes, something as routine as buying clothes would be an exercise in frustration. Finding a replacement bulb or buying tires for your car would require unique parts made only by the manufacturer.
It is only through the establishment of standards, in other words, that protocols can be adopted for building products and services used in everyday life.
Standards pervade every part of our lives, and we benefit from them every day in lowered costs of production. Because of standards, competing manufacturers can offer comparable products at reasonable prices.
Standards have an equally important role to play in the world of technology, but conformance with them is far from universal -- to users' detriment. The Linux Standard Base is a perfect example.
"The LSB delivers interoperability between applications and the Linux operating system, allowing application developers to target multiple versions of Linux with just one software package," Jeff Liquia, senior engineer at The Linux Foundation, told LinuxInsider. "It also allows Linux vendors to demonstrate to customers that they meet a common set of industry standards and that they work together as an industry on advancing Linux."
The world of free and open source software has fostered a thriving Linux ecosystem in which the number of Linux distributions has steadily climbed to more than 500.
While it's encouraging to see such strong interest, the need to curb fragmentation is increasingly evident.
For an example of the problem, one need only visit the Linux download page for cloud storage service InSync and note how many package managers, GUIs and file managers the InSync developers need to consider in order to adequately support just one InSync software application.
It is also very confusing to the end user, who must navigate all these selections simply to get the right version of the software. There isn't a standard package management solution that works across the various Linux distributions, so users must be savvy enough to figure out what they need -- or suffer the consequences.
To solve problems like these, the Linux Foundation in 2001 established the Linux Standard Base version 1.0 as a way to standardize the file-system hierarchy and application and operating system software structures used by Linux.
Software development kit and test forms are available from the LSB to help vendors achieve compliance with the standard, which includes both mandatory and "trial" requirements in a tabular grid organized by CPU architecture and architecture-independent (generic) functional groups.
After going through the process of working toward those requirements, distros can go through a certification process to prove their compliance.
Now an official ISO standard, the current LSB specification was released in 2011.
Among the results of this standardization effort is that today, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Linux, SuSE Linux Enterprise and Mandriva Enterprise Server are all LSB-certified distributions and have in common the same LSB-compliant package manager: Red Hat's RPM. Thus, one package manager, RPM, will work across all the respective LSB-compliant distributions.
"Red Hat feels that the LSB is certainly valuable, and we aim for and support compliance so that barriers for application availability and skills can remain low," Lars Hermann, a senior director at Red Hat, told LinuxInsider. "At the same time, we feel that such interoperability standards are simply not sufficient."
Fragmentation is "bad for everyone, and LSB helps lower that risk," Hermann explained, but "we feel responsible, as leaders in open source software, to take this effort a significant step further through our own efforts."
That, in turn, is "why we strive to continually create and maintain a vibrant, healthy ecosystem for both developers and our customers, the focal point of which is Red Hat Enterprise Linux," he said. "That solution, with its unique 10-year life cycle and API stability and ABI compatibility, as well as backwards compatibility across minor releases within a major release (e.g., Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6), drives the success of our entire ecosystem of certified open source solutions."
By discouraging unnecessary divergence, the LSB also significantly reduces the cost of software systems. After all, fragmentation produces added complexity, which in turn makes the work of creating software harder.
In many ways, the LSB is akin to the way both Microsoft's Windows and Apple's Mac OS X provide a single set of application programming interfaces to simplify software design and reduce cost.
"The LSB centers on a standard, consistent Linux operating system, despite the presence of many different Linux distributions, so that application support and certification can still be achieved across all or most Linux variations," Jay Lyman, senior analyst for enterprise software at 451 Research, told LinuxInsider.
That's a goal that was actually more important five to 10 years ago, Lyman added.
"Today, we do not hear the same complaints about Linux support on either side, with fewer application providers complaining that Linux is difficult to support and fewer Linux users complaining that applications are not supported," he noted.
Nevertheless, "there is still a need for a standard, consistent Linux code base to maintain application portability, support and certification," Lyman said.
The importance of the LSB is also greater on the business and enterprise side, "where there is a need for consistency and application support," he pointed out. "For hobbyist users of Linux, LSB certification may be less of an issue since application support and certification may simply be a matter of personal preference."
Nature is filled with randomness and chaos. Humans instinctively try to achieve order out of chaos by adopting methods for reducing complexity.
In the world of Linux, the Linux Standard Base has been chartered to provide a structure for achieving order out of chaos so that Linux distros can be more useful than ever.
When corporate system administrators can expect standard operating system and application behaviors, they can plan accordingly in anticipation of how best to efficiently deploy and maintain Linux distributions with the least amount of effort expended.
As uniformity is gained, inherent efficiencies will surely follow and can be exploited to lower cost of operation.
When consumers can rest assured that an application they download can be routinely installed on any Linux distribution, meanwhile, that breeds confidence. Linux becomes perceived as being more reliable, and users will likely rely on it more and more.
No wonder, then, that The Linux Foundation expects an ongoing future for the standard.
"The LSB is an important standards effort that will continue to support Linux distributions and users in the years to come," Liquia said.
Even now, work is well under way on the next version of the LSB, he noted, "which will broaden the standard's coverage of important Linux technologies as well as add flexibility with a more modular approach."
Despite the December stalemate, the UN's International Telecommunication Union hasn't given up. In mid-May, representatives from around the world met in Geneva to take another crack at finding common ground.
In this TechNewsWorld podcast, we chat with Eli Dourado, a research fellow with the Mercatus Center's Technology Policy Program at George Mason University and cofounder of the website WCITLeaks.org. Dourado, who has written for Foreign Policy, Wired and Ars Technica, among others, was in Geneva to keep tabs on the proceedings, formally dubbed the "World Telecommunications/ICT Policy Forum."
Dourado joined us to talk about what has changed since Dubai, why censorship-happy governments care about UN approval, and what role recent stories -- like, say, gratuitous cyberespionage conducted by China -- have on the debate.
Download the podcast (18:02) or use the player: TechNewsWorld: I actually recorded a podcast in the wake of the ITU conference that was held in Dubai last December, and it seemed like the takeaway from that was that while there was consensus among certain countries and certain blocs of countries -- and these were drawn up along rather predictable lines -- there wasn't a lot that could be called international consensus. I'm curious if the same sort of divisions played out in Geneva, and what your main takeaways were, especially considering past attempts to talk about this.
Eli Dourado: I was at that conference in Dubai as well ... that conference was called the "WCIT," the World Conference in International Telecommunications -- so some people have talked about the "post-WCIT era." The ITU has always been a place where they've really tried to have consensus, and of course at the WCIT there wasn't consensus; there was a forced vote.
So people wanted to see what the new environment looked like, what is the future of these conversations going to be like at the ITU, given what happened in Dubai: that there was a vote and some countries decided not to sign the treaty. So that was definitely something on our minds -- how is this going to proceed going forward?
TNW: Was the future that you were looking forward to any different than the past?
Dourado: I think what ended up happening was that the hard line that the liberal democracies took in Dubai kind of paid off -- that other countries were kind of like, "OK, just because we're more numerous doesn't mean that we can push them around and just force our agenda through. They just won't agree to it and then we're stuck." So I think there was a much stronger effort to get along.
And that's kind of what ended up happening in Geneva a couple weeks ago, is basically there was a lot of agreement on the opinions that emerged from the preparatory process, everyone sort of played nice and stuck to the existing pacts and didn't push too hard for big changes.
TNW: You talk about some countries perhaps relinquishing on pushing their agenda through. I'm curious if the countries that met resistance in Dubai -- such as Russia and China and some of the Arab states that were pushing for a lot of government autonomy -- do they need any sort of international consensus to impose the rules they want? It seems like it would be legitimizing for them if they were given UN approval to regulate the Internet in whatever way they wanted. But what's the motivation for them, what's the real necessity, to have a UN-sanctioned authority to do the things it seems like they're already doing now?
Dourado: That's a really insightful question, I think. Actually, the first line of the ITU constitution emphasizes that states are totally sovereign. So member states have complete sovereignty to do whatever they want to do in their own territory. Which means they can censor the Internet; there's nothing in the ITU that says you cannot do whatever you want on the Internet in your own country.
So what I think is, we're really operating at the level of international norms. We're trying to say, "Well, this is what well-behaved, good countries do." And we're trying to establish that and not give countries cover to push what they want to do on their own citizens by saying, "Well, this is what everybody does," or "This is how it's done." So if you think about Russia, for instance -- Russia is nominally a democracy, it has some sort of elections and so on. So it's responsible a little bit to what the public expects. And if you can get the public to think, "This is normal, this is how it's done in every country," then the government can sort of get away with more censorship and more monitoring.
TechNewsWorld: Since the Dubai conference there has been a lot of really interesting stuff that has transpired on the international Internet front, and especially when you talk about cybersecurity. There was, of course, the U.S. security firm Mandiant, [which] issued their report in February about Chinese military hacking. This spread like wildfire and it prompted an official denial from China, and they said that they, in fact, were the victims of U.S. hacking.
And then there was also what was reported to be the biggest-ever bank theft, a (US)$45 million heist that seemed to have been carried out 99 percent thanks to hacking and cyberbreaches. I'm curious if these current events seeped into the discussion and if there is enough flexibility and enough fluidity with the United Nations and ITU to take into account recent events and kind of what's on people's minds ...
Dourado: I think generally what happens at these events is the discussion is pretty high-level. Both in the strategy that countries are adopting and in what they can accomplish at the ITU -- it is pretty high-level. The ITU has zero day-to-day control over the Internet right now, and I think one reason that countries want the ITU to be involved is that they are comfortable working with the ITU, so they want to have the ITU be a place where they can go to raise their problems. But nobody is talking about anything specific, like hacking or specific hacking events. They'll talk about security in general terms, and that there should be an ITU treaty that says what the responsibilities are with respect to security, but it's all very high-level and not specific at all.
This is par for the course in China, where in 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009 -- basically every year social media has been huge -- the Net police have exerted extra authority to squelch conversation about the event.
This year's updated blacklist includes the Chinese words for "today," "tonight," "June 4" and "Big Yellow Duck," among others. The duck thing is an obvious outlier, but there is an explanation: A giant yellow duck floating near Hong Kong was photoshopped so as to irk Beijing.
When such dastardly phrases are punched into Sina Weibo, which boasts 500 million registered users and which people liken to Twitter, there is a message stating that the phrase cannot be shown due to "relevant laws, statutes and policies."
A ceremony is scheduled to take place in Hong Kong to remember the hundreds, or possibly thousands, of pro-democracy demonstrators killed in Beijing more than two decades ago.
One term slipped through authorities' grasp, however: "64," as in 6-4-1989. It reportedly rose to No. 14 on Sina Weibo's most-searched list, but at that point vanished.
[Source: The New York Times]
Canada's Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, which oversees the country's wireless regulations, has issued a new code of conduct that will limit extra data and roaming charges. Thanks to the changes, extra data charges will capped at CA$50 per month, and data roaming charges at CA$100 per month.
The new code of conduct, to take effect on Dec. 2, will also allow users to terminate contracts after two years without paying cancellation fees. Wireless carriers in Canada have in the past forced customers to stomach three-year deals.
The changes will foster "a more dynamic marketplace," according to CRTC, by forcing service providers to adapt to users' needs.
[Source: Bloomberg]
OrCam, a startup in Israel, has devised a camera-based system that it hopes can give the visually impaired the ability to read and be mobile.
Using a small camera that attaches to eyeglasses, the OrCam device is reminiscent of Google Glass. It is connected via a thin wire to a portable computer that fits into users' pockets and can recognize both objects and words -- and speak them aloud into an earpiece -- when the camera is pointed in their direction.
The device is currently available for US$2,500, which is akin to the cost of a midrange hearing device. It could signal a revolution in technology for the visually impaired, as it is equipped to decipher text "in the wild" -- everything from bus numbers to the faces of friends.
The OrCam system comes equipped with a pre-stored collection of recognized objects. Users can add to this library by waving their hand, or even an object itself, in the camera's field of view.
[Source: The New York Times]
A powerful transatlantic cable -- or at least more powerful -- has been switched on.
The link will be used to determine the operational requirements to run 100 Gbps wavelengths between Europe and North America.
Operating at 100 Gbps, the submarine cable is not as high-powered as some others, which can operate at around one terabit. That said, the new cable is the fastest of its kind: Intra-border cables regularly hit 100 Gbps, but previous transatlantic cables had been stuck at 10 Gbps.
The link was launched as part of the TERENA Networking Conference in Maastricht, the Netherlands.
[Sources: Energy Sciences Network; The Register]
On this week of Computex trade show in Taiwan, Microsoft has applied some Polish on his embattled Windows platform. The first public demonstration of its upcoming Windows 8.1 update included announcement that its widely used Outlook e-Mail software on Windows-RT finally arrive and make.
Windows RT, arrived last fall, has become far more a loss than may have been shown as a hit for the company, and Windows 8 revolutionary change to plenty of variety for some users.
"If you listen and read the negative comments about Windows 8, could be considered to address these issues," Craig Stice, senior said analyst for computing platforms at IHS TechNewsWorld, "but this is no desperate step." principal iSuppli
Of course, some new operating systems have arrived without the occasional bump in the road. Software developers have yet to recognize that computer users such as simplicity and not always want to learn to do something again, even if it is presented, as things do have an excellent opportunity.
"At the end of the day, it is a personal computer, and people become accustomed to their ways" charge explained. "If you are much on the computer, it is second nature to do things a certain way and manner; If that changes, there is a downside. In many ways, the learning curve was greater as people were willing to spend.
"It's almost like a new language learning, and it's boring," added loads. "The other half of it is that once you get past the learning curve users say, that Windows 8 is really quite large."
Rather than retreat, seems Microsoft in the trench and show that it can broken window panes Verlegenheit-- or at least what do not like, people. This new version of Windows 8-version 8.1, code name "Blue" - supposedly go in a preview build public later this month.
"Microsoft's actions at the Computex qualify collective"mea culpa"for the company misbegotten assumptions and practices relating to Windows 8, as a kind of" Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld. "Start desktop and was clearly a mistake such as shipping RT without a fully functional version of Outlook to replace the menu with the Metro interface."
The fact is that "Microsoft customers are investing both financially and emotionally in the Windows operating system, mission-critical applications such as Outlook and the larger ecosystem" declared King. "Faith that customers would simply follow where MMC felt like leading was offered Vista deeply insensitive and unnecessarily dumb, especially since many of the same painful lessons."
Given the fact that Windows 8 was one of the biggest changes to the operating system since the arrival of Windows 95, however, it is hardly surprising that a learning curve-has given not only for users, but also for the company.
At Microsoft has what people like and don't like, so it makes a lot of sense, learned that a ' point one ' upgrade should arrive so soon.
"When they first 8 October last Windows start year, there was a complete revision of the operating system,", IHS said iSuppli loads, "there were changes that were going to be taken."
"Unique Microsoft listens to feedback; Coming out with 8.1 is a good step, "he added.
The question is, of course, why such ease in retrospect must changes be made aligned. Are developers should not from previous OS versions know what works and not?
"Without a good sense of what works Microsoft often design flaws makes," said Roger Kay, principal analyst at endpoint of technologies Associates, TechNewsWorld. "Maybe change will make the change. Engineers, who gone wild. The desire to a billable moment things move."
Meanwhile, Microsoft has also pedal through the deployment of Outlook to Windows RT finally had to.
Is a problem to address, but cannot RT devices are still some running earlier versions of Windows compatible software. Whether the addition of Outlook alone are enough to users to influence, remains to be seen.
"The big problem with Windows-RT was that the email client, as compared to Outlook, sucked," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "It was in line with other email clients on other tablets, but it was not even on the same planet with Outlook and they drove it to those of us with RT-nuts.
"If it not had remained Windows RT for Outlook, my carry box as the battery life is dying," Enderle added. "This a movement could make this product."
Another issue is whether Microsoft app developer can convince Windows offer a second look at her. That may well be the biggest hurdle of all facing the company now: without apps, OS can not be put on - yet until there is wide acceptance, developers develop elsewhere.
"The app situation is something Kettle others of fish, because developers believe its in Windows 8 largely success", King said. "Microsoft can stroke a few ego and turn a few poor and the number of available apps bump.""But until Windows 8 win profitable platform carried out is, are likely to viele-- if not the meisten-- innovative developers way to stay."
In the face of this recent effort, is Microsoft back on track?
"she their valiant best does," said Kay.
Billy Lau, a research scientist at the institute, together with two Ph.D. students, will present a paper on this at Black Hat USA 2013, to be held in Las Vegas July 27 through Aug. 1.
It took only 1 minute for an iOS device to be compromised after being plugged into a malicious charger. All users potentially could be affected because the team's approach doesn't require jailbreaking the device and does not involve any user interaction.
"Many people with iOS devices don't put antivirus on their devices because they believe they're less likely to be infected," Julien Blin, a directing analyst at Infonetics, told MacNewsWorld. "That's a misconception in my opinion, and that's an opportunity for hackers."
Apple did not respond to our request to comment for this story.
The researchers built a proof-of-concept malicious charger they call "Mactans." For this, they used a Beagleboard, which is basically a Linux PC a tad larger than a credit card.
The researchers will describe how USB capabilities can be leveraged to bypass Apple's security mechanisms, and will show how attackers can hide their software in the same way Apple hides its own built-in applications to avoid detection.
Apple devs use Xcode to build OS X and iOS applications.
Mactans was built with constraints on time and budget, and the researchers will discuss briefly what hackers with better funding and more time might be able to do with the concept of poisoning chargers.
They will also recommend ways users might protect themselves, and suggest security features Apple could implement to help make such attacks more difficult.
The Georgia Institute of Technology's Billy Lau was not immediately available to provide further details.
A Beagleboard is a low-power, open source hardware single-board computer produced jointly by Texas Instruments and Digi-Key. It was designed as a way of demonstrating TI's OMAP3530 system on a chip.
OMAP, or Open Multimedia Applications Platform, is a family of SoCs that process images and video for portable and mobile multimedia applications. They include a general-purpose ARM architecture processor core and one or more specialized coprocessors.
The Beagleboard measures 75mm square. Its OMAP3530 SoC has an ARM Cortex-A8 CPU that can run Linux, FreeBSD, Risc OS or Symbian. Android is being ported to the CPU. The SoC also has a TMS320C64x+ digital signal processor for accelerated video and audio decoding, and an Imagination Technologies PowerVR SGX530 graphics processing unit for accelerated 2D and 3D rendering.
The GPU supports OpenGL ES 2.0.
The Beagleboard has separate S-Video and HDMI connections, a single SD/MMC card slot, a USB On-The-Go port, an RS-232 serial connection, a JTAG connection, and two stereo 3.5 mm audio jacks.
It has 256 MB of NAND flash memory and 256 MB of RAM through a package-on-package chip.
The Beagleboard uses up to 2 W of power and can be powered from the USB connector.
With the Bring Your Own Device trend on the rise among enterprises, and the U.S. Department of Defense recently approving the use of iOS 6 devices in the military, as well as speeding up its process for approving mobile devices, the potential threat posed by a malware-bearing charger is very real.
There are at least three different possible attack scenarios, Randy Abrams, a research director at NSS Labs, told MacNewsWorld. One is to get these poisoned chargers into the supply chain, "but that's likely to get discovered quickly."
Another is to have chargers built to resemble Apple's chargers and swap them for the real ones when users are not looking, though this is not a likely mode of attack except for very high-profile, high-value targets.
"If you've got a specific target that's worth a lot of money, spending US$50 on building a charger that looks like the real thing is chump change," Abrams remarked.
A third vector of attack could become available when a user borrows someone else's charger for a number of reasons.
"It's quite common for people to borrow someone else's charger because they didn't bring theirs," Abrams said. "I've loaned mine to people in the past."
It is no longer acceptable to use dates of birth, names of animals and so on for passwords. Easily guess these words were never secure, but it didn't matter much in the past-honestly, who cared when a black hat in your email account? So what?
However, things are much different today because our lives now digital are encased in. Everything from banking is now inexorably online relationships.
Here is how you protect your digital life with hardened passwords.
Determine which accounts to start hardening. Should you systematically re password of the online accounts related to money first.
This can be quite a project, so you start with banks and other valuable Web accounts; Progress, email and social networks. At the end-on a rainy day-tag passwords for smaller accounts as customer cards.
Vary passwords, and create different for each account. This is especially important for all sensitive accounts such as banking. Make passwords by hand using a combination of letters, numbers, and characters.
Introducing capital letters at random within words; If you to spell words she spell wrong and to use multiple independent words. Use numbers instead of letters from time to time, substitute such as a zero for an "o".
Alternative methods include a phrase think and take the first letter of each word- or variations on the theme.
Tip: Crackers can can use computer-controlled dictionaries, check and try word list substitutions, the millions of pattern of passwords per second.
Not directly do answer the security question. For example, security question requires name at birth or in the first school of the mother, they fabricate.
Tip: As in the previous step, use the same engineering-for example, or your response to beef things even more. Just don't forget, what is the answer.
Use two-factor authentication if it is offered. This method of protection used two factors, typically a password (something you know) and a phone or other device (something you owned have).
I've prescribed authentication via Google. Facebook also provides this method of authentication.
Tip: Maintain no password list on a device, you use two-factor authentication.
Pay attention to social engineering attempts. These are human interventions that are designed, a criminal to entice you to give out your password. To avoid this problem, never give out your password.
Tip: You reset a password, if you are in doubt that you cheated been can.
Last pass, iPassword KeePass and Clipperz are all password managers that are in price from free to $ 50. Features include DropBox integration, mobile integration, encryption, and password generation
Tip: Unfortunately is the nature of the animal, which the easier is that the easier to remember password is to crack the password.
Add password protection offered. Laptops and cell phones can endangered lost síé or casual thieves.
It is not just professional cracker, which you need to protect yourself from. Laptops are often fenced and resold.
Delete emails from senders account containing your password. Change always the initial setup password when you are prompted.
Set the parental purchases to in-app for your mobile device. This is an area where a password is useful in preventing any game upgrades that can occur quickly and inexplicably if you her iPad a child for games-give, what happened to me. I am about 40 dollars poorer than I was before I borrowed the Tablet because I restrictions left open.
Tip: Apple's device is "Restrictions" in the settings. In-app purchases in the store Google controls Android play. You can both passwords, you should not share with children.
Do it all again when you have finished. Password cracking goes time-how many attempts at a guess over a period of time can be made.
More often, the password is changed, the less likely ones who be cracked is.
There is you a piece of tech would know how to properly? There is a gadget that has confused? Please send your tech questions to me, and I will try as many as possible answer in this article.
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This week's All Things Appy takes a look at the must-have apps in this genre for the Android platform, including apps to buy the gear, track trends, social network with like-minded fashionistas, and put it all together with make-up tips.
About the Platform: Google's Android OS apps can be found in the Google Play Store. Browse to the Play Store -- it's in the smartphone's app drawer. Then search for the app.
No. 1: Zappos
Zappos claims 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 installs and has an average Google Play Store rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 from 10,334 reviewers.
Free returns is one of the killer features in Zappos' app, and the reason it's No. 1 on our list. We think that's the one apparel purchase must-have, along with fast checkout for garments, cosmetics and so on.
Other comprehensive features in Zappos include notifications for when gear comes back in stock, and one business day shipping if you order before 1:00 Pacific time.
No. 2: Trendstop Fashion TrendTracker
Trendstop claims 100,000 to 500,000 installs and has an average Google Play Store rating of 4.1 stars out of a possible 5 from 1,313 reviewers.
While much of the image content in this app is a come-on to try to get you to buy a US$2.00 a month app subscription, there's enough free style news and up-to-date fresh pictures to get an idea of what's supercool out on the streets -- retro safari, or fisherwoman street, perhaps?
Galleries and comprehensive videos from the latest fashion week collections, like New York, are included in the free package, which alone makes this a worthwhile app.
No. 3: Pose
Pose claims 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 installs and has an average Google Play Store rating of 4.4 stars out of a possible 5 from 18,184 reviewers.
This is a socially interactive app for getting inspired and checking out fashions. The app gets you to share your outfits and follow other trendy people who have also uploaded images. You then choose the looks you like, comment and trade ideas. Then browse and shop for the schmutter.
An Explore tab lets you see what celebrities, fashion bloggers and other voguish types are wearing -- like London posers, or brands and retailers. Follow a trendsetter -- or happening retailer -- and ideas appear in your stream, which then link to the store's site.
No. 4: Snapette
Snapette claims 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 installs and has an average Google Play Store rating of 4.2 stars out of a possible 5 from 4,054 reviewers.
Snapette lets you keep up with fashions and browse hundreds of boutiques and designer stores. A Discover tag lets you flip though countless photos of bags, dresses and other items -- all geosourced and locally provisioned.
It's a bit like going window shopping along a local chic street -- only the duds are displayed using images within the app. A requisite social element lets you follow modish boutiques and comment. You can then browse other like-minded commenters' posts.
No. 5: Beautylish Makeup Beauty Tips
Beautylish claims 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 installs and has an average Google Play Store rating of 4.5 stars out of a possible 5 from 5,326 reviewers.
Beautylish aims to inspire you to find new makeup looks and hairstyles. Browse makeup like you're in a spiffy department store. Set up a profile with your eye color, complexion, hair color and so on, and you can comment and discuss style options with an included au courant social network.
We place this app in a runner up position, because although it's a comprehensive browse, we'd like to see tighter integration with profile attributes -- like hair coloring products pitched based on complexion, for example.
Want to Suggest an Apps Collection?
Is there a batch of apps you'd like to suggest for review? Remember, they must all be for the same platform, and they must all be geared toward the same general purpose. Please send the names of five or more apps to me, and I'll consider them for a future All Things Appy column.
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Released about a year ago, Mozillux is now at version 13.5.1. It is primarily a portable Linux OS that boots from a DVD or USB drive, but you can also install it on a hard drive.
I am a big fan of two other well-tuned Linux-on-a-stick distros -- Puppy Linuxand Knoppix Linux -- but newcomer Mozillux can easily substitute for either of these distros for both its flexibility and its usability.
As its name suggests, Mozillux promotes Mozilla software and is designed as a complete software suite. Many computer users are familiar with various Mozilla cross-platform applications such as browsers and email clients -- Firefox and Thunderbird, in particular. In similar fashion, the Mozillux OS is an ideal Linux distro for both beginners and intermediate users.
I was pleasantly surprised at how comprehensive its installed software collection is. Adding applications is not dependent on distro-specific software repositories. Instead, Mozillux uses the Synaptic Package Manager.
This latest release of Mozillux runs on the Linux kernel version 3.2.0-38 and is built around Ubuntu 12.04 and Debian GNU/Linux. It is similar to Lubuntu, a lightweight version of Ubuntu that uses the LXDE desktop environment. But Mozillux does not duplicate all of Lubuntu's programs.
Its default Web browser is Mozilla Firefox 19.0. Also installed is the Mozilla build of the SeaMonkey Web browser and Mozilla's Thunderbird email client.
The LibreOffice suite is installed for office purposes, and other common applications such as Skype, Keepass, UNetbootin, Dia, Inkscape, Shotwell, FileZilla, Pidgin, Transmission, Audacity and VLC player are included as well.
This is a nice selection of computing tools. The installed software is important because as a portable OS, storage space for additional applications is either nonexistent or limited, depending on the boot method you selected to use Mozillux.
Mozillux goes beyond a varied mix of desktop applications found in most popular distros and includes what you rarely find elsewhere.
A submenu under the Internet drop-down menu includes almost three dozen links to Web applications. Clicking on any of these links opens a new private browsing session in Firefox, which then loads the URL. Similarly, the menu has a well-stocked game section, with some 30 resident game titles.
As an example of Mozillux pushing Mozilla software, the installed Firefox Web browser includes a tab row for each of the online content categories. The tab for games, for instance, provides access to dozens more game-playing locations. Some of them are affiliated with Mozilla.
I can be smug sometimes when it comes to following directions. Don't make that same mistake in installing Mozillux: You have to download it as a zipped file and uncompress it to access the ISO package and the text file of instructions.
The distro's developers specifically suggest burning the ISO files onto a DVD-R blank disk and, in particular, not using a rewritable disc. In fact, they stress avoiding a DVD+R blank disk. They claim that DVD+R disks are prone to errors.
I did not follow the developers' advice. I should have.
The DVD+R process failed to successfully burn the boot disk. The DVD-R worked flawlessly. And do burn at the lowest speed available, around 2x, with buffers enabled. Otherwise, you will have to repeat the process until you comply.
You can run Mozillux from the live session DVD if you do not mind waiting for the slower reads to complete from the optical drive. A better solution is to run Mozillux from the DVD and then use that to create a faster USB drive boot using the menu option. The USB boot is a good two minutes faster, depending on the computer, and much more responsive as you navigate the OS.
Mozillux gives you three types of portable boot options to create. The standard DVD boot is fine to check out Mozillux. But each time you boot into Mozillux from a DVD -- like any live-session Linux boot -- you cannot save any configuration settings or applications that you download.
The same limitations occur with burning the ISO files to make a bootable USB drive. In fact, both the standard DVD and USB boot methods will not let you save any personal files to the storage medium. So, you will need a separate USB device or cloud storage.
This is the one area that Mozillux falls short of the boot and data-save process in both Puppy Linux and Knoppix Linux. The only way around this limitation in Mozillux is to use the slightly more involved persistent disk methods.
If you want to save files and settings and such, you can use a second method. This involves formatting an 8GB or larger USB disk into two partitions. Format partition one, which holds the boot and OS files, as an FAT32 volume with the amorce flag set. Partition two, formatted as an ext4 volume, stores settings and personal files.
The third USB boot method involves using the Linux tool UNetbootin. This program is included. You can create the USB boot disk from a computer running Linux, Windows or Mac OS. UNetbootin is available for all three platforms.
This third method allows you to build the Mozillux distro onto your USB drive and store your personal files and distro configuration settings all on the same partition. This approach is a bit more involved, but it is well worth the one-time bother in exchange for having a complete Linux OS and persistent storage all in one place -- your pocket -- for use on any computer.
This portable distro does not have a first-time setup where certain essential system hardware settings are created. Mozillux does not fully scan hardware upon initializing. So the screen resolution, date/time and keyboard input methods may not be accurate for your location.
The hardwired Internet connection on one test computer worked by default. But I had to manually configure the hardware and then the connection for another computer's wireless connection.
One of the first things to do is set the keyboard mapping to your country and language. Find the settings in Input Device Preferences. Otherwise, despite what keys you press, different letters will appear on the screen. In that panel, click on the LXKeymap button under the Keyboard layout section.
Then go back to the Preferences menu and select Monitor settings to establish the screen resolution. First try the Auto setting. If that fails to give you proper screen display, your only option is to try the present offerings in the drop-down list.
Do not forget to go back to the System Tools menu to select Time and Date settings. Otherwise, the default setting is Europe/Paris. Click the location button and then your geographic location on the world map. Then select the Configuration button to have the system synchronize the time with Internet servers or choose Manual to select the date and time yourself. If you choose the Internet synchronization method, it will take a few minutes for the date and time to correct in the display.
The Mozillux desktop looks a lot like the standard Lubuntu 12.04 release. The main difference is the panel down the left-hand side. This distro's default appearance is an eclectic mix of new and old designs.
For example, the left edge of the screen sports an Ubuntu-style vertical Favorites panel. But you can reposition it to the top or bottom of the screen as a horizontal panel by right-clicking on it and selecting Panel Settings. The right side of the screen displays usage and connectivity widgets. The traditional Linux panel sits at the top of the screen. But it, too, can be repositioned.
I was surprised to find several dozen background images accessible from the live session DVD and USB. Usually, live sessions have a single background available until you do a hard disk installation. Some portable distros such as Puppy Linux have a limited number of desktop images. Others like Knoppix Linux have only a default image regardless of the type of installation.
The main difference that distinguishes Mozillux from Lubuntu is the choice of applications. Mozillux has a unique set of software features targeting a wide range of user interests.
For example, FreetuxTV is a GTK+ WebTV and Web Radio player for Linux. It accesses a large list of channels for watching television online. But monitor this application's use if you have children using this distro. Some of the channels are quite eclectic and clearly not suitable for young viewers.
Other applications are "Drum Machine" and "Notessimo," which are small applications for composing music. Also included is Kazam Screencaster, which lets you record your desktop.
Mozillux is a very useful and interesting Linux portable distro. It is easy to use and has enough software to do meaningful work out-of-the-box without installing other programs.
You can use it on any computer regardless of existing operating systems. The portable boot disk eliminates the need to fully install it on the hard drive or create a dual-boot environment. If you like Mozillux, putting it there will make it even more useful.
Is there a Linux software application you'd like to suggest for review? Something you love or would like to get to know?
Please send your ideas to me, and I'll consider them for a future Linux Picks and Pans column.
And use the Talkback feature below to add your comments!
Glitchy iCloud can be, as it works for millions of people. In fact, it offers enterprise-class features and you will need to make, much less futz to configure it. ICloud remains frustratingly limited, but amazing. What happens if you want to share a document? Collaborate on a document? Save to let you download it to a video file for Grandma and Grandpa? It is not so easy.
If Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco will start from next week, it will be only application developers, the straight.While the company with business partners and professionals who every day using core-Apple-tools, the Apple fan world will pay attention. What will Apple show?
A new iWatch? The next iPhone?
No. and no.. Products, which can have their own startup is not displayed at the WWDC.
A new MacBook Air? A MacBook Pro?
Likely; new Intel HASWELL processors are slipping.
Is a fantasy but shallow iOS 7 in new splendour?
In any case.
iRadio?
I hope so.
Still, I'm not a developer, to make their lives easier, so many of the improvements and optimizations, the Apple with devs parts will be better and stronger Apple does not for me - at least until the developers start with the Apple goodness to deliver new apps.
What care I about? What think I every day Apple enthusiasts these days... really important is, that could come from WWDC?
Two things, actually, and they are connected to each other: iCloud and Apple TV.
Let's talk iCloud. As glitchy as it may be, it works for millions of people. More to the point, it offers enterprise-class features for consumer - and they have to worry about it, much less futz to configure it.
iCloud coordinates your music, movies and TV shows, synchronizing contents over her many Apple products-MacBook, iPad, iPhone - mainly behind the scenes. It would be even better it coordinates your calendar and email, contacts, and even some documents – as well as your Safari bookmarks and reading list, iBooks and apps.
Oh, and it can save consumers the iOS devices to the cloud! There are find my friends about Apple to run iCloud service, my iPhone and apps.
So it is a lot - a heckuva lot more going dropbox with iCloud as saying.
And yet, iCloud is amazing, frustratingly limited.
Simple things such as store important files in the cloud has to do, an Apple fan Icloud - to ignore, if you use only a special app to save a file in iCloud. The concept of a file system, a file that you sit as a thing in the mist cloud "see" is pretty much ignored by iCloud.
So you cannot really dump some files in iCloud secure it or access it from multiple devices, much less by a non-Apple device. Oh yes Sie-wait, Yes,-when she created documents of keynote, pages, or numbers are, and if you start with an Apple device and stop you then with an Apple device.
What happens if you want to share a document? Collaborate on a document? Save to let you download it to a video file for Grandma and Grandpa? It is not so easy.
If Apple iCloud would open up more flexible ways for developers, consumers would not separate dropbox of account or other services-are to be integrated with iOS apps. There are millions of dropbox customers directly, which seem quite happy. But Apple falls with iCloud-vision and services - both short and a few basic extensions could simplify the world of Apple users.
I do not know, what keeps Apple if there making a full Apple HDTV, but I'm sure it has to do with production costs, navigation and how to to combine the various types of content into something that makes sense actually. So a big mess.
The existing Apple TV still can one enters into the pants, and I hope Apple created an Apple TV app store and allow developers to create apps for Apple TV. Sure, right now we have a few cool apps like Netflix, Hulu plus, YouTube, and some sports channel now is far from the vision of apps, but the reality of what is Apple TV, as it could be in the near future.
Yes, you can display wirelessly AirPlay content from your iPad or iPhone on your HDTV screen, but that is not the same as a built-in app. I think that consumer for integrated apps available. I know that I am. We still enjoy a great fantasy Apple HDTV apps today have, so I hope, Apple isn't holding back, waiting to perfect a product that is never perfect.
The sad thing is, we need no huge app store with half a billion apps, to transform our living experience. Heck, I'd like a nice slideshow-based app only, weather information and music-something dirt simple, but better usable as Apple's own built-in slideshow app contains.
Something that you want to use your HDTV as a giant picture frame but also basic information and music simultaneously - allow to be your TV part of your life, if you don't want TV shows to see.
Developers using this type of law come-not always Apple-so if we want conditions on the better preserved? Foreseeable?
WWDC will tell us, and this is why I'll be attention to.
MacNewsWorld columnist Chris Maxcer writes about the tech industry since the birth of the e-mail newsletter, and he is still the clatter of keyboards on Macs high school-Apple seed plant strategy at work reminds. While he enjoys elegant speed and sublime tech, there is something to say for all off - or -most - outside go. To catch him, take a guess "FirstNameLastName" at WickedCoolBite.com.
There's some talk that the 8-inch tablet might cannibalize Samsung's previously announced 7-inch device.
However, Samsung's strategy is hypersegmentation -- that is, identifying and exploiting a need not addressed by existing devices, and that "has worked well for Samsung and has let it leave no stone unturned in ... the tablet market," Jeff Orr, a senior practice director at ABI Research, told TechNewsWorld.
The tablet market is in the differentiation phase, noted Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research. Vendors are coming out with different-sized models trying to figure out what niches they fit.
"Everyone's still trying to develop the market, feel out the market, and figure out the appetite for their devices," he told TechNewsWorld.
What's in Samsung's New Devices
The Galaxy Tab 3 8-inch tablet uses a 1.5 GHz dual-core Samsung processor. It's presented as an e-reader, an entertainment device and a travel assistant. It is designed to be held in one hand and has physical keys at the base of the bezel for what Samsung describes as a "smartphone-like experience in navigating."
It features S Translator, which provides instant translation through voice recognition and through text in applications such as email and text messages for both speech-to-text and text-to-speech. The preloaded S Travel Smart Travel Companion provides real-time local information and lets users make reservations at hotels and restaurants, as well as reserve tickets.
Other preloaded features on the 8-inch tablet include Story Album and Group Play. It also has Samsung's "reading mode" technology, which optimizes the display for reading in various lighting conditions.
The 10.1-inch device is the first Android tablet to use an Intel CPU -- the 1.6 GHz dual-core Intel Atom Z2560 processor, aka the Clover Trail+. It can double as a home media control device.
"That's a pretty big message to the market if Samsung's using Intel processors on a 10.1-inch tablet when its 8-inch version is using a Samsung processor," Orr said.
Both tablets have a WXGA TFT screen with 1280 x 800 PPI resolution. Both have the obligatory front and rear cameras, although the smaller device's cameras have a higher MP rating. The two have sensors common to all tablets. Both support WiFi and 3G as well as LTE; both offer audio and HD video support.
Samsung Hub; Samsung Kies, which is similar to Apple's iTunes software; and Samsung's ChatON global mobile communications service all come preloaded on both devices.
Both tablets also come preloaded with various Google services including Search, Gmail, Google Talk, YouTube, Google Now and Google Maps.
The main differentiation factor in this coming generation of products will be screen size, said Tirias Research's McGregor.
"If they find different niches such as in gaming or other areas, you may see different solutions such as controllers -- but for now, there are going to be very similar products offering different screen sizes with different apps," he added.
Samsung is not the first tablet maker to offer an 8-inch device; Acer has just announced an 8-inch Windows tablet, while Archos introduced an 8-inch device earlier this month. Vizio also offers an 8-inch tablet with WiFi.
It could be that Samsung's launched a pre-emptive strike to steal the thunder from Apple, which is widely expected to announce a new iPad at its Worldwide Developers Conference, to be held later this month in San Francisco.
"I think the timing's interesting," Orr said. "Samsung's getting its tablets out early, and I think they understand how to play the game."
The company also demoed several smartphones running the Firefox OS and announced that it would make devices running the open software in eight categories, ranging from smartphones and tablets to laptops, TVs and outdoor signage.
"Currently, Foxconn is executing on a vision of 'eight screens, one network and one cloud' with all our strength," said Young Liu, the general manager of Foxconn innovation Digital System Business Group.
"Besides the native advantages of hardware manufacturing, Foxconn is also developing a brand new integrated approach to providing hardware, software, content and services," he added.
Foxconn is apparently working on five devices with Mozilla.
Firefox OS is based on HTML5 and other Web technologies -- JavaScript and new application programming interfaces built to emerging standards for devices, Web apps and systems.
Based on Linux and the Gecko layout engine, the software's roots lie in the Boot to Gecko project set up two years by a group of programmers at the Mozilla Foundation to create a standalone mobile operating system for the open Web. B2G used the Android kernel, drivers, the GNU C library and other technologies.
Developers built prototype APIs for exposing device and OS capabilities to content such as telephony, SMS, cameras, USB, Bluetooth and near field communication -- the technology used in mobile wallets -- among other things.
Any modifications made to the user interface and any applications created to run on Firefox OS are Web pages that have enhanced access to a mobile device's hardware and services.
Firefox OS can be ported to most recent ARM-based mobile devices.
Mozilla claims the Firefox OS is getting support from numerous manufacturers and telecom service providers worldwide. The first Firefox OS devices will be released this summer, Mozilla said.
"This is interesting, but there are still more questions than answers at this point," Jeff Orr, a senior practice director at ABI Research, told TechNewsWorld.
The Firefox OS and browser are creating "an ecosystem where you truly can have anybody and everybody chip in," Orr said.
The value of HTML5 devices brought out by organizations such as the Mozilla Foundation and the Linux Foundation is "not to overthrow Apple or Google; it's in promoting interface standards that the larger companies may be holding back," he explained.
The larger question, however, is "the rate of innovation and the ability of the Mozilla and Linux Foundations to be the shepherds of innovation going forward which, in turn, forces mainstream providers to adopt it."
Indeed, "the carriers are always complaining that they want another source and how it's difficult to go up against iOS and Android," Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research, told TechNewsWorld.
Foxconn is going to offer devices running Firefox OS together with services, software and content, and that means it's "basically setting up a new carrier in the market, similar to what Amazon's doing for the Internet today," McGregor pointed out. "I can see a bank offering Foxconn-branded phones or servers."
However, devices running the Firefox OS will have to go up against the massive number of apps available on the iOS and Android platforms because "what's important to consumers is the applications they can use on the phone," McGregor said.
That means the devices "will be limited to people willing to take a chance, and typically they'll be people on the lower end of the market spectrum who don't expect too much, or are in lower-cost markets," he added.
Asia and Africa are likely candidates, Orr speculated.
In any case, noted McGregor, there's also the possibility that the move "is going to raise some concerns among Foxconn customers that it may be utilizing some of the technology it's making for them and may be competing with them."
