Category: News

Android’s Facebook app got an update yesterday, bringing it to Version 1.2 and bringing native inbox support along with it. In exchange, you lose the option to take and upload a picture from within the main page you see above, but that’s not really a big deal given how easy it is to do from the native Android or Sense (or Motoblur or whatever) camera apps, and you can do it from the news page. We’d still like to see Facebook chat, and maybe less reliance on the mobile site, but it’s still a welcome update.

If you haven’t updated yet, take a gander in the Android Market downloads section. Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Chauffeur Not Included
Alexandra Straub, Canadian Auto Press

Very rarely do I say I would rather be the passenger in a vehicle than the driver, after all, I like to be the one in control. It’s my job. But the 2010 Lexus LS 600h L is one of those vehicles that I would have no problem sitting in the back of, relaxing and enjoying the experience of this particularly unique luxury sedan.

2010 Lexus LS 600h L

Granted, this is one phenomenal vehicle to be behind the wheel of. It is luxury with a capital “L.” From the look of the polished wood trim juxtaposed with the leather covered upper instrument panel, to the feel of the premium leather seats against my derriere, to the touch of the suede-lined roof against my fingers, it’s just divine. Even the touch-screen and new-for-2010 HDD based Navigation System is incredibly easy to use and friendly to the eyes. Yes, it’s a luxury vehicle yet it’s also a driver-friendly vehicle.

Some luxury sedans require learning a secret code to understand what each button means. Not in this Lexus. The only drawback of this vehicle is the position of the 9” LCD monitor for the rear DVD player. It is mounted to the rear end of the centre console and does not fold down. Needless to say I hit my elbow a few times when entering the sedan and it made it very arduous to place my handbag in the back when someone was sitting shotgun. Then again, I wouldn’t have this problem if I was the passenger not the driver, would I?

Another characteristic this Lexus enjoys that is not only critical for a limousine but dumbfounding considering the car’s length is its turning circle. It might sound like an odd thing to mention, but even with its sizeable P245/45R19 all-season tires and 19” aluminum alloy wheels and long wheelbase, it can turn on a dime or more accurately 12 meters (39.4 ft). Everyday driving is a breeze. Upon first glance, or any glance for that matter, the LS 600h L is not a small vehicle. Its size might even be a little overwhelming to some, but from behind the wheel it doesn’t feel big or bulky, is extremely smooth on the pavement and very easy to park. After all, the LS has pretty much every corner covered when it comes to sensors thanks to its Advanced Parking Guidance System (APGS) and the rearview camera, which is as clear as my mom’s new HD television.

Where I had the most fun, though, was in the back seat. I’m not talking about ‘that’ kind of fun either! While I was parked outside waiting for my husband, I decided to hop in back where my sister-in-law was already sitting. There I had the Friday night of my life. Where else can I get to sit in the back of the most expensive hybrid Lexus makes and enjoy a vibrating shiatsu massage with my feet perched comfortably on a retractable ottoman? Massage and ottoman features are only available on the right side (passenger side) of the LS 600h L, the side I was seated on so I literally was in the lap of luxury. Too bad we forgot to bring a DVD because the Premium Executive Package that includes these items also adds a DVD entertainment system with satellite TV. And when we wanted some privacy to people watch, all it took was a push of a button for the power rear window sunshades to pop up. Gosh, I could live in the back of this vehicle. All it needs is a fridge and a shower. I think we sat there for over an hour and I’m pretty sure this is one of the few instances when I told David to take his time; I was in no rush. Astonished by this, he said to me, “This car must have magic woven into its fibers.” I concur and expand: the rear seat has magic fingers.

What happens under the hood is also pretty magical. Features aside, what makes this luxury sedan so amazing is the fact that it’s a hybrid. Lexus is no stranger to the ‘green’ world since its model lineup has four hybrid options. The LS 600h L gets the most powerful available, a 5.0-litre, 32-valve, V8 engine which works in conjunction with three electric drive motors and a dual mode, Electronically Controlled Continuously Variable Transmission (ECVT). The result is a net 438 horsepower and 385 lb-ft of torque, so there is no shortage of get up and go. Also, Lexus Hybrid Drive is a full hybrid system meaning it can use the gasoline-powered internal combustion engine (ICE) alone, the electric motors alone, or both together, meaning the ICE and electric motors are optimized to make fuel economy as good as it can be or power as instantaneous as possible, depending on the situation.

When it comes to fuel economy, I still marvel at how well the LS 600h L performs, especially since it’s an All Wheel Drive (AWD) vehicle. On average it uses and estimated 10.6L/100km in the city and 9.1L/100km on the highway. Considering all the horses under the hood, that’s amazing. Throughout my test period I drove close to 400kms, barely reached under half a tank and didn’t spend a small fortune filling it up. Buying the car itself is another story since its base MSRP is $119,950. With the Premium Executive Package ($24,050) the MSRP jumps to $144,000. I’ll be saving my pennies for quite some time.

Speaking of dreams, the 2010 Lexus LS 600h L is a dream to drive or be driven in. Its refined ride, to-die-for features and Hybrid Drive system makes this a truly exceptional vehicle, not only on the inside and out, but underneath the hood, too.

If there is one thing a rooted phone user does most, it’s flashing. What I found most annoying when I first rooted my phone was the lack of good backup software. I could flash three to four times a day trying the latest and greatest of what some new developer was able to port to the G1. The only problem was, when I found a good ROM that I liked, getting it back to the way I had it before was extremely time consuming. Things like changing the notifications and re-downloading all of my applications were taking forever. I had lost hope of finding a good solution until I found MyBackup Pro.

With the latest update, you now have the ability to back up everything to your SD Card or the Online Storage (50mb). This application can back up everything, including your SMS, MMS, Settings and Home Settings. To the stock user this may not even hit your radar, but to an everyday flasher, this is a lifesaver. With MyBackup Pro you can save hours of time and just restore all of your data to your new ROM.

Along with saving a lot of time for rooted users, this application is easy to use. There aren’t a whole lot of options for the user and the interface is pretty straight forward. Once you click on Backup, it’ll ask you exactly what you need, where you want to save it, and get the task done for you. The same speed is noticed in the restore as well. It’s a bulk one click install, which is nice because some of the free apps in the category require you to click “install” for each application you have.
NOTE: The more data/applications you have, the longer it’ll take.

The Good:

• One click install for applications
• Easy interface
• Does the job well
• Able to restore across software versions: meaning going from 1.6 to 2.1 is no sweat!

The Bad:

• If you back out of the application while it’s working, you’ll have to start over
• When restoring Android Home, it won’t restore your widgets.

Final Verdict:
Overall this app does so much for $4.99. It is a lifesaver.

Note: This review was submitted by Alan Reboli as part of our app review contest.

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Materials: EXPEDIT shelves + DRONA box

Description: This is just a small hack but was useful for our newly painted room – sage green.

In the room we have a single 4 box Expedit shelf in a very small space. I had bought Drona boxes to go with the shelves but they come in limited colours which looked awful with our green room so I just grabbed some fabric (happens to be Ikea fabric) and fixed my small but irksome problem.

Simply take fabric that works with your room/space/colours and measure a square just slightly bigger than the front of the Drona box. (1/2 inch should do)

Fold down the edges and iron a crisp fold (ensure you have made it narrow enough to tuck under the handle/flap of the Drona, but wide enough to cover the front of the box.

I used a glue gun and just glued all around the edges of the fabric and stuck it down.

I started on the top/flap end and put the glue on the box, under the flap and then slid the fabric under the flap (using a spatula or cake knife to get it under smoothly and press the fabric onto the glue.

It’s a small thing but the room looks so much better having something that looks coordinated with the room. Everyone surprised to learn its all Ikea.

~ Meredith, Luxembourg

Jennifer Carpenter says her husband, Dexter star Michael C. Hall, has “fully recovered” from cancer and has returned to work.

Carpenter said Friday that Hall was “incredibly brave” when he announced in January that he was undergoing treatment for Hodgkin’s lymphoma, cancer of the lymph nodes. Hall, 38, is currently in remission after undergoing treatment at a health facility near Los Angeles. In fact, he was snapped by paps filming scenes for the upcoming film East Fifth Bliss — alongside co-star Lucy Liu — in New York City this week.

Michael won a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe earlier this year for his portrayal of Dexter, a serial killer who targets other murderers. Jennifer stars on the gory Showtime hit series as Dexter’s sister.

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama and First Lady Michelle, according to the White House on Friday, “have a chance encounter with other hikers while walking along a trail off the Blue Ridge Parkway outside of Asheville, N.C.” Pete Souza, the White House chief photographer, only posted this photo at Whitehouse.gov and did not offer a wide shot that might have shown other people or security with the First Couple.

Football has arrived again!!!!  YES!

As the spring game gets ready to kick off, I’m perched in the press box at Ohio Stadium and I’m ready to discuss Ohio State football again with you….I’m hosting a live chat at Fox Sports Ohio today, and I’d love for you to come over and enjoy the conversation that we all are so used to online.

So please, be my guest at Fox, and GO BUCKEYES!!!!!

One of the larger issues surrounding applications and the Android Market (OK, one of a number of larger issues) is the current inability to update more than one application at a time. The above screen shot, purportedly from Android 2.2 (which might or might not actually be Froyo; or might be Froyo and not Android 2.2) shows a checkbox for allowing automatic updating. We’ll have to think about whether we’d rather see that or just the ability to update all our apps in one fell swoop. But either way, some sort of fix will be a welcome addition. [4chan via Android Community]

Running Flash on Mac OS is, in a word, miserable. It’s slow, resource-sucking and crashy, compared to Windows. Which is why Apple’s new video acceleration API—which Adobe plans to use in upcoming versions of Flash—is great news. More »

One of the bright sides of being stranded at Perth by a giant ash cloud was a visit to Perth Zoo and, particualrly, visiting their orangutan exhibit. I’ve been to quite a number of zoos in my time and that had to rank with the best enclosures I have ever seen. The zoo is part of an international conservation programme and its six or so orangutans have a sizeable area to roam around, complete with tall towers, ropes, ladders and more. The next couple of posts will showcase some of the photos I took of these animals, and will help to fill some bloggy time as I wind my weary way back to the UK.

We start with the baby, who was undoubtedly the highlight of the day. Just try and look at these photos without grinning.

After taking the shot below, I asked a keeper about whether the orangutans ever undid the fixtures in their enclosure. She grinned and told me about the story described in this news report. One of the females actually undid a rope and swung out into the visitors’ area, showing remarkable restraint in just ambling along the wall and in not making a Tarzan noise. Because, clearly, that’s what you or I would have done.

Remember when networking was cool? When I started my career in 1997 as a wet-behind-the-ears intern in Yankee Group’s data communications practice, networking was the coolest thing around. Billions of dollars were flowing into the market to drive the emerging Gigabit Ethernet wave, build out the Internet core and jump-start the carriers (CAPs/IXCs/ CLEC/BLECs) that had been spawned by telecom deregulation the year before. Some, such as Juniper, Foundry, Extreme and F5, became well-known players in the space, while others, like Qtera, Xros and Sirocco, were gobbled up in billion-dollar-plus acquisitions, never to be heard from again. Far more were crushed in the collapse of the Internet and telecom bubble, leaving behind little more than memories of over-the-top launch parties.

Source: Dow Jones VentureSource

And as the chart above makes clear, networking and communications have fallen out of favor, with VC investment in the segment decreasing faster than VC investment in technology overall. While this data is admittedly a little coarse, and mixes telecom and data networking together, it nonetheless makes clear the direction such investments are taking. Indeed, as anyone investing in networking and communications will tell you, there just aren’t that many new ideas walking in the door. Many investors who made their living at layers 1-4 have moved onto cleantech, digital media and the online advertising economy. So can networking be made cool again?

It can, and here’s why:

M&A Landscape — Cisco catalyzed a significant change in the M&A landscape with the introduction of its Unified Communications System. By declaring open war on HP, IBM, and Dell, Cisco has made networking relevant again for the major OEMs who need a networking story — and subsequently turned them into potential startup acquirers. The market capitalizations of Juniper, F5 and Riverbed mean they could pay a price that would make the VC math work, and virtualization’s impact on networking puts VMware and Citrix into the mix as well. Three years ago, it was more or less Cisco or bust. Today there’s a long list of companies that could be home for VC-backed networking startups.

One part data center + one part cloud + one part virtualization=hot startup — Yesterday’s networking gear isn’t well-suited to today’s application workloads, traffic patterns and multitenant business models. Legacy architectures evolved from the LAN and designed for email and enterprise client server applications won’t cut it when it comes to those based on Map Reduce, nor will they work for collaborative filtering, putting together a Facebook page or renting CPU cycles by the hour. The data center has/will emerge as a distinct category of networking products. Legacy constructs like VLANs and subnets are wrapping cloud providers up in webs of complexity and management headaches, causing them to leave money on the table as servers fail to be fully utilized. Customers want SLAs but deep visibility into network behavior and performance remains elusive. Solving these issues will require not just new routers, but new ways of thinking about building networks.

Commoditizing forwarding — Much has already been written by James Hamilton of Amazon and others about the commoditization of networking and the router vs. mainframe comparison. Imminently, dense, non-oversubscribed 10GE switches will be available from ODMs for any OEM that wants to put a badge on them. Silicon and reference designs from Broadcom/Dune and Fulcrum will take new levels of price performance into the heart of the Cisco chassis switching lines. While they won’t have the full Cisco feature set, they won’t have the outrageous gross margins either. As this ecosystem emerges and technologies like OpenFlow and other efforts to bring the routing out of routers take hold, these advanced features may be provided by a community of third-party applications, decoupled from propriety chassis and operating systems.

Capital efficiency –- Building a networking company no longer requires $50-$100 million of venture funding. The appliance model is well understood in networking. An Intel Nehalem server can forward a lot of packets (PDF)! Perhaps more interesting, the virtual appliance model has emerged, meaning firewalls, load balancers and WAN optimization products can now be downloaded and run on hosts.

It’s ironic that as Sun Microsystems gets absorbed by Oracle, its long-held mantra — “the network is the computer” — has never been more true. For proof, look no further than social networking, search, SAAS and the cloud. And with them comes a host of interesting networking problems to solve. In other words, there hasn’t been a better time to start a networking company in recent memory. So what are you waiting for? Find some buddies and a whiteboard, and dream up something new.

Alex Benik is a principal at Battery Ventures

For more on cloud computing, virtualization and other related topics, join The GigaOM Network at its annual Structure conference June 23-24 in San Francisco.

Hello, everyone! This is the editor of Mark’s Daily Apple, Aaron Fox, reporting from the field. Check back throughout the day for text, photo and (maybe, fingers crossed) video updates.

7:14 am: Recharging for the big day ahead of us

7:50 am: Energizing gentle movement session with Angelo

8:04 am: Group beach hike

Stay tuned for updates!

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Filed under: Motorsports, Mercedes-Benz, Racing

Critics have given Michael Schumacher a hard time all season so far over what can charitably be characterized as lackluster performance. Leading figures at the Mercedes-Benz GP team, however, have magnanimously attributed the problems to their car. But if his young teammate Nico Rosberg is currently second in the championship, having reached the podium twice so far this season (doubling his record from four seasons at Williams), then how can you blame the car?

The answer may be coming as soon as May 9, when the circus heads to Barcelona for the Spanish Grand Prix. According to reports, Mercedes will give Schumacher a new chassis design to try out at the Catalunya circuit. If the new car suits Schumi better than the current one, they’ll presumably have him run it for the remainder of the season. But given Rosberg’s performance in the current chassis, the smart money would be on Nico continuing with the existing machinery, meaning that the team could – in a Formula One rarity – wind up running two different cars in a bid to defend the championships it won last year under the Brawn GP banner.

[Source: Autocar]

Schumacher reportedly getting new chassis for Spanish GP originally appeared on Autoblog on Sat, 24 Apr 2010 10:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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[JURIST] Two Latino advocacy groups say they plan to challenge the constitutionality of Arizona’s new immigration law, alleging it permits racial profiling. SB 1070, signed into law Friday by Governor Jan Brewer, permits police to question the immigration status of suspected illegal immigrants. Officials from the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund (MALDEF) and the National Coalition of Latino Christian Clergy contend the law will let police single out minorities for immigration inspections. Under the law, it is designated a crime to be in the country illegally and immigrants unable to verify their legal status could be arrested and jailed for six months and fined $2,500. MALDEF said the law creates a separate state scheme to enforce immigration violations:One significant measure of SB 1070’s patent illegality is that it seeks to implement Arizona’s own scheme of immigration regulation – separate and in conflict with federal government policy – when our Constitution envisions a unified nation under one federal set of immigration regulations to be adopted by Congress and implemented by the President. By rejecting that constitutional plan, Arizona’s enactment of SB 1070 is tantamount to a declaration of secession. In response, the federal government must act to preserve our united nation by clearly stating that it will not cooperate in any way with the implementation of SB 1070 – that it will not adjust or alter its immigration enforcement priorities to the detriment of other states simply to accommodate Arizona’s most recent exercise in racial demagoguery.Brewer says she will instruct the state’s police departments to implement the law without violating civil rights.
The Arizona law is one of the strictest illegal immigration regimes in the nation. Proponents of the bill claim the new law will decrease illegal immigration from Mexico. After the Arizona House approved the bill, US senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) announced their support for the measure and outlined a proposal for additional federal controls on illegal immigration along the Arizona-Mexico border. In 2008, Arizona voters narrowly defeated a ballot measure that would have revoked the business licenses of employers who knowingly hire illegal immigrants.

The ex-wife of actor David Hasselhoff has been sentenced to three months in jail after pleading no contest to a drunk driving charge this week.

On Thursday, a Los Angeles judge sentenced former singer Pamela Bach to 90 days behind bars for violating her probation for a November arrest for DUI. Arresting officers found she had a blood alcohol level of 0.14, well above the legal limit of 0.08. Bach will begin serving the sentence in May.

Attorney Jon Artz says his attorney “wants to do the right thing” and move forward with her life.

Bach was married to Hasselhoff for 16 years until the actor filed for divorce in 2006. She appeared as a cafe owner in several episodes of The Hoff’s ’90s hit Baywatch. The former couple are the parents of two teen daughters.

Filezilla é um cliente FTP simplificado.  Além de estar disponível em português, o cliente é bem didático: possui alguns ícones que facilitam o manuseio e uma interface gráfica simples. Filezilla suporta os protocolos FTP, FTP sobre SSL/TLS (FTPS) e SSH (SFTP), roda em Windows, Mac e Linux, está disponível em 40 idiomas, incluindo o português do Brasil, suporta transferência e pausa para grandes transferências (acima de 4GB) e disponibiliza o sistema Drag-and-drop (arraste e solte). Clique na imagem ou aqui para baixar.

Amanda Seyfried clearly did not have a bonding experience with her Mean Girls co-star Lindsay Lohan, nonetheless the bubbly blonde — who’s gone on to star in features like Mamma Mia! and Chloe — is hopeful LiLo can sort out her personal problems and resurrect her fleeting career.

Seyfried made her movie debut when she starred as Lohan’s high school rival in the 2004 comedy and has since become a Hollywood leading lady with parts in the recent rom-com Dear John and HBO’s polygamy-themed drama Big Love. Lohan, on the other hand, who has endured a string of legal problems and stints in rehab, went on to appear in a string of critically-panned films, including 2007’s Georgia Rule and the chuckle-worthy thriller I Know Who Killed Me.

Nevertheless, Seyfried is confident her former co-star will one day make a career comeback.

“I think it’s just growth. People can fall out of line and fall back into it. I think it just takes some time. Clearly, people go through things and they deal with them differently. You’ve just got to be positive about it.”