Category: News

  • Player Dies: Snake Bite Kills From Field Hockey Pitch

    An Australian field hockey player was bitten by a snake while attempting to get it off the pitch and died hours later, officials say.

    A series of unfortunate circumstances led to the death of 26-year old Karl Berry on Tuesday; thinking the snake was non-venomous, he picked it up without hesitation and threw it into the bushes, suffering a bite in the process. Deciding not to seek medical attention, Berry then went on a run for training. Tragically, running only caused the venom to circulate through his blood stream faster than usual, and he collapsed. When paramedics arrived, however, Berry didn’t mention the snake bite for several minutes. Those minutes could have been the thin line between life and death.

    “When the paramedics looked at his hand they saw the bite mark on his finger. The bite was more consistent with a bite from a poisonous species,” said St. John Ambulance Operations Manager Craig Garraway.

    In fact, it was a Western Brown, considered to be one of Australia’s most dangerous snakes.

    Berry reportedly picked up the snake because it was edging close to a group of children who were playing near the field.

  • Schneider Electric Opening New R&D Facility Near Boston

    Schneider Electric does plenty of research, and a new R&D facility is part of its commitment to advancing the energy efficiency and management market. The company announced today that it plans to build a new high-tech R&D Innovation Center in Andover, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston.

    The 235,000 square foot property will serve as the company’s North American R&D hub, accommodating more than 850 Schneider Electric employees. Out of the gate, the facility promises to be one of the most energy efficient buildings in the world, with LEED certification at the time of its opening. The Andover site is scheduled to be fully occupied by fall of 2013.

    “The vibrant ecosystem of innovation in the Greater Boston area is the ideal backdrop for Schneider Electric’s Global Innovation and Technology Center,” said Chris Curtis, president and CEO, North America, Schneider Electric. “The center will be a rich resource for customers, and it will bring together cutting edge innovators in the region with researchers from around the world, allowing for a cross-pollination of ideas essential for transformative and disruptive innovation.”

    The facility will combine all of Schneider Electric’s business segments, including Buildings, IT, Industry, Power and Corporate, under one roof. It will operate an R&D laboratory at the facility to develop and test new classes of technologies, ranging from data center management, to home and small business automation, to commercial business automation. It will also include a StruxureLab – a cross-discipline technology integration laboratory where Schneider Electric tests and validates its solutions, as well as a customer innovation center, a training facility, and a state-of-the-art conference facility.

    “We are bringing together top talent to collaborate across several disciplines, with the expectation that we will deliver breakthroughs in energy efficiency that will change the industry forever,” said Barry Coflan, senior vice president, Buildings Business, Schneider Electric, and member of Schneider Electric’s Global Innovation and Technology Council. “In addition, the new facility will be a fertile place for innovation, attracting new employees, students, researchers and customers to the Boston area, driving business and community development.”

    The facility will leverage the company’s portfolio of technologies, including StruxureWare energy management software applications and suites. It will leverage critical power and cooling, power distribution and control, and video surveillance and lighting, all from Schneider Electric. The facility will leverage the SmartStruxure Building Management solution and a highly efficient chilled beam HVAC system that will reduce costs, as well as operation and maintenance requirements.

    Schneider Electric is headquartered in Rueil-Malmaison (Paris), France, and the new Global Innovation and Technology Center in Andover joins four existing Schneider Electric Global R&D centers located in North America, Europe and Asia.

  • Intel confirms $200 Android notebooks are on the way

    Intel Android Notebooks

    Google hasn’t had much luck so far with selling many Chromebooks but the company is hoping to have better luck selling super-cheap notebooks based on its popular Android operating system. Intel chief product officer Dadi Perlmutter tells CNET that Intel is supplying Atom processors for a line of Android touchscreen notebooks that will be aggressively priced in the $200 range. Perlmutter said that we’re unlikely to see Windows-based notebooks priced in this range, however, since their retail cost “depends on how Microsoft prices Windows 8” while Android is free for OEMs to use. The Intel executive didn’t provide any release timeframe or specifications for the future Android notebooks.

  • Save on Skins and Cases from CellPhoneShop

    phonecase

    Have you freed your phone? By free I don’t mean unlocked. I mean free as in free from the confines of a case. Yes, smartphones are quite expensive, so protecting them is pretty important. You might have insurance, but if you break your phone and have to file a claim you still have to pay, as one of my friends calls it, the dumbass tax (i.e., your deductible). By keeping a decent case on your phone you can save yourself the inconvenience and cost of an insurance replacement.

    At the same time, removing the case makes a phone seem so much freer. A few weekends ago I removed the case from my Galaxy S3, and it was like a whole new phone. Best of all, it didn’t even feel like a 4.8-inch behemoth. It felt just as small as my old iPhone 4. Why did I ever use a case in the first place?

    Alas, the reason became clear soon enough. All it took was a juggling act. After that near-miss, I slapped the case right back on the phone, resigned to keeping it there so I wouldn’t be out the $150 deductible. Much as I enjoy every aesthetic aspect of a case-less phone, I just can’t recommend it. There’s too much at stake.

    Need a case for your smartphone? CellPhoneShop is running quite a sale on customized skins and case: 40 percent off.

    So what are you waiting for? Get 40% off customized skins and cases. Use promo code CSKIN13 at checkout. Also check out the other deals they have running on the site, such as free shipping for orders over $20.

    The post Save on Skins and Cases from CellPhoneShop appeared first on MobileMoo.

  • Paltrow Humiliated By See-Through Dress

    Gwyneth Paltrow may have been voted the World’s Most Beautiful Woman by People Magazine recently, but she certainly felt less than perfect at a red-carpet event on Wednesday.

    The 40-year old actress appeared on Ellen today to talk about a wardrobe mishap at the premiere of “Iron Man 3″, when she was rushed to get dressed between events and didn’t realize she was rockin’ some extra hair…down there.

    “I don’t think I can tell this story on TV. Well, let’s just say everyone went scrambling for a razor and so I went from being the most beautiful to the most humiliated in one day,” she said.

    Apparently the dress left little to the imagination and required Paltrow to skip the undies; maybe next time she has a big premiere to attend, she’ll schedule a wax first?

    gwyneth paltrow

    Image: Us Magazine

  • Designer Builds 3D-Printed Headphones That Use No Manufactured Parts

    unboxed

    If the whole of human knowledge were to be wiped out tomorrow, how would you recreate the consumer electronics industry so you can jam out to some rockin’ tunes? Why you’d build these unique 3D-printed headphones. Except for some twists of wire, these cans consist of thin pieces of printed plastic and the speakers are actually plastic with a coil of copper wire embedded, by hand, into a set of tiny traces. Even the audio plug which consists of wire wrapped around a small plastic spindle.

    You can download the project here and print it yourself or marvel at how the creator, designer J.C. Karich was able to use wire and plastic to build a pair of cans that actually work. He obviously had to source the wire and magnets (although, arguably, he could have dug the ore himself, right?) but the rest of the project is completely hand-designed and printed on the fly, an increasingly common feat with today’s 3D printers.

    The audio quality looks surprisingly good, all things considered, and the design is ingeniously primitive. Writes Karich:

    Anyway, the sound quality is very nice against all expectations but will necessitate a power amplifier to be louder when using only portable sources like pods or phones.

    Sadly no one has reported actually being able to build these things yet on Thingiverse but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. Who knows? Maybe this is the future: artisanal headphones.

  • iTunes turns 10. What’s in store for the next decade?

    One of the first stories I wrote for my college journalism class involved me interviewing people on campus about whether they’d ever even possibly consider paying for music with this — at the time — brand new iTunes service. The story isn’t online, but I recall that most interview subjects laughed, curled up their noses in disgust or said something along the lines of, “Pay 99 cents for a song I can get from free from Napster? Uh, no.”

    Ten years later, paying for music — whether through downloads or subscription access — is by now a long-established practice. It’s sort of hard to believe it’s been a decade since iTunes launched, but it’s true: Sunday is the 10th birthday of Apple’s download service that seismically restructured the music industry and how we think of buying and owning music. iTunes’ effect on digital entertainment is a well-worn story, of course. But the occasion of iTunes’ 10-year anniversary is a good one to recall how far it’s come — and how the competition for digital music is fiercer than ever.

    Here’s a look at iTunes through the years and how it stacks up today to its chief rivals in music: Google,, Amazon and Spotify.

    iTunes 10 years timeline v2

    iTunes is about much more than music today: It’s about mobile apps, movies, TV shows, ebooks, podcasts and even education. And over the years, Apple’s added more cloud services for customers to access their entertainment remotely. It’s not uncommon to hear people complain that the desktop version of the software is unwieldy (though I’ve found it to be fine for my needs).  iTunes is a huge download and has many moving parts because so many services are tacked onto it. The common refrain is for Apple to unbundle the desktop software, separating the App Store app from Music and Videos apps, like the way it’s handled within iOS. That, of course, would be a major philosophical change and one that Apple would not confront lightly.

    But more than the software itself, it’s music that likely is going to determine what happens to iTunes.

    While Apple still has the advantage in overall song titles, as the graph above shows, its competitors have been innovating on ways to offer their comparatively smaller catalog of songs. The pay-for-high-quality download service was innovative a decade ago, but now Apple is the one that will be forced to make some changes in order to keep its lead: subscription music services and web-based streaming are the future, and Apple knows it. And that’s why the company is looking to offer a streaming, web-based music service – dubbed by the press “iRadio.”

    As a recent NPD study showed, ownership of music is still important to people. But streaming music discovery services encourage people to find and buy more music, and Apple needs to be a part of that.

    iTunes is an important piece of tech history. But as attitudes about music ownership change, iTunes’ next 10 years will likely be more challenging than its last.

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  • Android outdated? Blame Google, not cellular carriers

    You can still buy phones running Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), even though Google released the last distribution, version 2.3.7, in September, 2011. In the meantime, numerous security flaws have been discovered in Gingerbread and users are vulnerable to them.

    For this, the ACLU blames AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. The logic in their plea to the FTC is so shoddy that I have to suspect an ulterior motive. In whose interests is the ACLU operating here?

    I got in an argument with a bunch of lawyers about this on a mailing list, and you can see how so many want to believe the worst about the carriers. It’s easy to bash the carriers and I don’t like them either, but that doesn’t make them at fault for this problem.

    Once they start releasing a new major version of Android, Google stops updating the old ones. Note that the release date of 2.3.7 is September 11, 2011 and the release date for 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) is October 19, 2011. Version 3.x (Honeycomb) was a dead-end of sorts that started as Google’s attempt to support tablets on Android, but was largely abandoned for 4.0. The next version for phones after 2.3.7 was 4.0.

    And yet the hardware requirements for 4.0 are substantially greater than those for Gingerbread. See chapter 7 in both the Android 2.3 Compatibility Definition and the Android 4.0 Compatibility Definition: Just one of the differences is that the minimum RAM requirement went from 128MB to 340MB.

    I’m sure Gingerbread devices typically have no more than 256MB, and no phones are upgradable for memory. The result is that it’s impossible for the carriers to update the phones.

    Who is to blame? If there’s any to asses, I’ll give it to Google for providing security patches only in a new major version of the operating system with elevated hardware requirements. Contrast this with, for example, Microsoft’s continuing provision of security updates for Windows XP, even for pirated copies, 12 years after initial release.

    Someone suggested to me that maybe this is true for Gingerbread, but what about Ice Cream Sandwich phones that aren’t upgraded to Jelly Bean (Android 4.1 and 4.2)? I think it’s worth pointing out that there are also hardware and software requirements changes in 4.1 that would take time for carriers to implement, and it’s possible that handset makers didn’t deem such task as possible or worth the trouble to provide the update.

    Notice I didn’t say “carrier” in that last paragraph, because it’s not their job to write updates. They provide updated software given to them by handset makers and Google. Many of the handset makers only do what the carriers tell them to do, but obviously they’re involved. The real blame, once again, is on Google for not providing patches for ICS after Jelly Bean became available.

    The carriers are old and easy villains for the ACLU. They’re bad big business. Google, Apple and the handset makers, on the other hand, are good big business. (Microsoft more resembles Google and Apple in this regard, but definitely bad big business. Why is left as an exercise to the reader in the comment section below.)

    Now I’d like to think I’m not stupid and I recognize that Google’s patching practices are arguably in the interests of the phone makers and carriers (who sell almost all the handsets) in that they increase the need to upgrade phones rapidly. Perhaps the whole system is wrong and everyone’s hands are dirty.

    Photo Credit: M. Dykstra/Shutterstock

  • Tesla to offer loaner cars to customers with cars in the shop

    A small bit of news out from electric car maker Tesla on Friday: the company will make 85 cars available as loaners to customers that need to have their cars serviced. Tesla says it will valet the loaner car to you free of charge, and you can also purchase or keep the loaner car if you like it better.

    Tesla Model S

    The announcement is another way that Tesla is trying to innovate around its business model, and also deliver more premium services to its customers. Tesla announced earlier this month that it will turn its first profit in the first quarter of 2013, for both non-GAAP and GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles), and will pay back its loan from the Department of Energy five years ahead of schedule. Tesla’s stock shot up this week and hit a high of $53.74 per share.

    Tesla’s news is contrasted with the ongoing problems with Fisker Automotive, which was the focus of a hearing on Capital Hill this week. Fisker seems to be close to bankruptcy and earlier this week the Department of Energy seized $21 million from a reserve account that Fisker was holding.

    “Our service is O.K., but it needs to be great,” said Tesla CEO Elon Musk on a call. “What is the best service and warranty that we can afford to do and this is it,” said Musk.

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  • Launching the White House Tumblr

    We see a lot of exciting things here at the White House every day, and sharing them with you is one of the best parts of our jobs. That's why we're so excited about launching a presence on Tumblr — a  microblogging platform designed especially for curating and sharing content.

    Here are some of the things you can expect to see on the White House Tumblr:

    • Behind-the-scenes photos of life at the White House
    • Quotes from President Obama
    • Infographics about important issues

    We're also looking forward to seeing what you have to share with us. President Obama is committed to making this the most open and accessible administration in history, and our Tumblr is no exception.

    You can follow us on whitehouse.tumblr.com.

    The White House Tumblr

    Not on Tumblr? Here are a few more ways you can engage with the White House online:

  • Study shows 45% of Bitcoin exchanges end up failing

    Bitcoin Exchange Failure

    Imagine a world where the Nasdaq, the Nikkei and the FTSE all failed within the span of a week and you have an idea how crazy the world of virtual currency trading has become. Wired reports that a new study from computer scientists Tyler Moore of the Southern Methodist University in Dallas and Nicolas Christin of Carnegie Mellon University has found that 45% of Bitcoin exchanges end up shutting their virtual doors while leaving their users’ money in limbo. However, this doesn’t mean that the Bitcoin exchanges that have survived so far are safe havens, since the study also shows that they’re under constant assault from cybercriminals who are working around the clock to hack users’ transactions.

    Continue reading…

  • Hellfire: Turbine-Powered Triumph

    Triumph Spitfire with turbine engine.

    The Triumph Spitfire is adorable. It’s perky. It’s sweet. And that’s exactly why it needs a screaming, searing, sky-splitting, pavement-melting turbine engine from a helicopter. The appropriately named StanceWorks forums member godzillus is installing a 320-horsepower Allison T63C18 turbine into a rusty Spitfire as you read this post. Oh, and it’s a senior design project for engineering school. Who said school isn’t any fun?

    Some perspective: The Spitfire was designed in 1957 by Giovanni Michelotti and was based on the sedate Triumph Herald saloon. It was a nimble, fun and very pretty little roadster produced from 1962 to 1980. Originally it was equipped with a torquey little 1.1 liter (1,147 cc) push-rod inline four. By 1974 the engine had grown to a respectable 1.5 liters (1493 cc). It never weighed more than 1750 pounds. Imagine then, a proper little British roadster with a 320-horsepower turbine engine that tops out at 53,000 rpm and generates 425 ft-lbs of torque at idle. Running stock suspension and brakes. Yep.

    testurbine2009_zps8d5ae7a3

    godzillus tells us, via the StanceWorks thread, that he and a team of students are building the beast as a senior design project for (the world’s most awesome) engineering school. They say they’re doing it to test a digital turbine controller, but come on. We all know they’re doing it in the name of hoons everywhere.

    The team received the car as a gift from the local Triumph club and they’re borrowing the Allison turbine, which retails for more than $250,000. The students have scraped together $3,000 for the build, which is mostly going into fabricating parts for the engine swap, a roll cage and safety equipment. Thus there’s no extra cash for upgraded brakes and suspension. Sadly, the team ”will never get to drive this thing in anger,” says godzillus.

    As you can see from the pics below, the team has already made great progress. They’ve patched the rusty bits, sprayed the car with primer and have mocked up the engine in the car. They’ve also created some trick 3D CAD files to design the seven-inch exhaust that will no doubt leave burn marks on the asphalt. Heck, if we’re lucky, the exhaust may even light the asphalt on fire.

    Godzillus, on behalf of the entire Ridelust readership, I demand a video of this masterpiece ripping a hole in the space-time continuum!

    09

  • Carriots is building a PaaS for the internet of things

    For the last six years Miguel Castillo (pictured) and his team have built dozens of platforms for connected devices, from connecting garbage cans to adding informatics to solar panels. But in 2012 Castillo realized that he was sick of reinventing the wheel for each machine-to-machine project that Wairbut, his company, accepted.

    So he and his CTO, Alvaro Everlet, spun out a new company to build a platform of software and infrastructure so others could connect devices without having to reinvent the same wheel they had invented so many times before. They called the startup Carriots, and it’s now in the middle of raising a first round of funding.

    Like Electric Imp, Carriots, a Madrid-based company, wants to make it easy for people to build out services for connected devices. Electric Imp provides the cloud service as well as an SD card with built-in connectivity. Carriots provides the cloud service, essentially a platform as a service, or PaaS, for the internet of things.

    Castillo explained that developers can build the physical product and then link it to a software-based service on the Carriots platform using a few lines of Groovy, a Java-based language. Carriots charges companies for the number of devices they connect to the platform, with the first 10 devices being free.

    Carriots has 10 employees and plans to double in size this year, as well as open a U.S.-based office to support growing interest in connected devices and services here. As I see more and more startups eyeing the internet of things, providing some type of back-end platform helps open the field up to a variety of developers who might have an idea but less of a technical background. But I also wonder what devices will work with this type of model.

    For example, a consumer-facing device that sells millions might rack up some huge bills, so the team might be better off building out its own infrastructure, especially if it wants to provide access to data via an API. For companies selling to businesses, or with fewer devices, such as Pantry, the startup I wrote about recently that’s building a connected, refrigerated vending machine, it may make more sense.

    Of course, if Amazon Web Services has taught us anything, it’s that even large companies like Netflix can benefit from outsourcing their infrastructure if it’s not core to their value proposition. Perhaps the growth of platforms for the internet of things will produce similar examples even as it enables new businesses to come to the fore.

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  • Mid-range Samsung Galaxy Core for Asian, European markets leaks

    samsung_galaxy_core

    Although Samsung probably would like to see anyone buying a Samsung device run out and grab one of their top devices like a Samsung Galaxy S 4 or a Samsung Galaxy Note II, they know that realistically there will be many people looking for something a little less expensive even if it means giving up some ground on technical specs. In response to that market segment, information about a new mid- to lower-tier device dubbed the Samsung Galaxy Core has been uncovered. The GT-I8262 model which has not yet been officially announced is expected to hit the Russian and Chinese markets in mid-May and may eventually find its way into some other European and Asian markets.

    The Galaxy Core is certainly not going to overwhelm anyone with the hardware it makes available. Reports indicate it will have a 4.3-inch 480×800 display, 768MB of RAM, and will be powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. The device will have the benefit of accepting a microSD card to beef up the 8GB of onboard storage, handy if users decide to take advantage of the cameras, including a 5MP front-facing camera. While not the most powerful device by a long shot, it will come loaded with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean.

    The Galaxy Core does appear to be dual-SIM capable, so that will be a nice bonus for buyers. Estimates are that it will be available for 12,990 rubles ($417 USD).

    source: phoneArena

    Come comment on this article: Mid-range Samsung Galaxy Core for Asian, European markets leaks

  • HTC exec says mixed Galaxy S4 reviews cap off ‘a great week for us’

    HTC Executive Interview
    While BGR found Samsung’s Galaxy S4 to be a top-notch smartphone, other publications have given the device decidedly mixed reviews, typified by Walt Mossberg’s criticism of Samsung for producing software that is “often gimmicky, duplicative of standard Android apps, or, in some cases, only intermittently functional.” There’s likely no company that is more relieved to see the Galaxy S4 getting so-so reviews than HTC, whose HTC One flagship phone has received across-the-board acclaim but is also in danger of being outgunned by Samsung’s all-powerful hype machine.

    Continue reading…

  • Turning New York City INSIDE OUT: Volunteering at JR’s photo truck

    New-Yorker-2

    JR, the man behind the participatory global art project INSIDE OUT, has parked a photobooth truck in Times Square, from now until May 10. Photo: Instagram/newyorkermag

    On an unseasonably chilly Monday evening in Manhattan, hundreds stood in line in Times Square for up to two hours. As a city-dweller for seven years, I’ve seen queues this long for big Broadway openings or on New Year’s Eve. But this line was formed for a very different purpose — for people to have their faces and stories featured in what JR describes as “the biggest art gallery in the world.”

    JR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside outJR's TED Prize wish: Use art to turn the world inside outIt’s been three years since TED Prize winner JR made the wish to turn the world INSIDE OUT with a global collaborative art project. As a documentary about the project premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last weekend, JR decided to use his time in New York productively. He hatched the plan to park a truck with a photobooth on-board in the middle of Times Square, as he’s done in other cities before. As soon as I heard about this project, I knew that I wanted to be one of the volunteers for the truck’s inaugural night in my hometown.

    When I arrived in Duffy Square (the northern triangle of Times Square), stunning rows of freshly pasted black and white portraits covered the ground. Smiling, smirking and winking visages of passersbys — with homes as diverse as the Bronx and Tokyo — replaced the usual bareness of the concrete. Throughout my shift, elders, painters, skateboarders, toddlers and even NYC’s infamous Naked Cowboy posed for INSIDE OUT’s camera, adding their photos to the street-side quilt of images that breathed life and humanity into the street.

    As an INSIDE OUT volunteer, I learned how to capture and distribute large-scale portraits and make and apply wheat-paste. Over and over again, commuters interrupted their busy and purposeful strides and stopped to behold “the people’s art project.” Since I was adorned in INSIDE OUT’s trademark black and white spotted t-shirt, I was repeatedly asked about the origins of the project, how people could get involved, and how much it would cost to buy the portraits. Almost everyone eagerly jumped in line after learning that they could participate by giving their time, image and elbow-grease to help paste pictures.

    Placing the faces of strangers side-by-side in a collective masterpiece created a powerful sense of community. People marveled at the process of taking their pictures in the speckled black and white photobooth and watched in awe as their likeness printed from the side of the truck. I spoke to one man who was so addicted to the practice of snapping and pasting his photo, that he has followed JR’s installation to three cities around the world, including Tokyo and New York.

    As I walked away from Times Square, I thought of the thousands of people who have contributed 120,000 portraits to city walls, streets and countless other surfaces from Tunisia to South Dakota. I wondered if volunteers in the each of the 110 countries INSIDE OUT has touched experienced what I did. Did they see giggling children who were shorter than the portraits of their likeness dance blissfully with images of themselves? Did they witness a bride and groom take photos in their wedding finery and paste their pictures next to each other to symbolize their bond? Or, did they see what I repeatedly witnessed, a sense of recognition, pride and purpose in the eyes of folks who were given a moment to be truly seen – with big, bold, authentic, and honest emotion.

    “The people’s art project” gave New Yorkers a chance to choose to remain anonymous while also being visible. By providing us with an opportunity to pause and be present together, INSIDE OUT created a humbling a sense of intimacy in the most populous city in the United States.

    Help INSIDE OUT transform the city! If you live in New York City or will be visiting between now and May 10, email [email protected] to volunteer by yourself or with a group.

    The artist himself examines portraits pasted in Times Square. Photo: Anna Verghese

    The artist himself examines the portraits tiled in Times Square. Photo: Anna Verghese

    Pasting in action. Photo: Instagram/JR

    Pasting in progress. Photo: Instagram/JR

    A bride and groom make their portraits kiss at the INSIDE OUT photo truck. Image: Instagram/JR

    A bride and groom make their portraits kiss at the INSIDE OUT photo truck. Image: Instagram/JR

    The bride snaps her portrait. Photo: Instagram/NewYorkerMag

    The bride snaps her portrait. Photo: Instagram/NewYorkerMag

    A closer look at a section of portraits. Image: Anna Verghese

    A closer look at a section of portraits. Image: Anna Verghese

    New-Yorker-3

    A view of the truck itself. Photo: Instagram/NewYorkerMag

    Pharrell Williams takes a moment to add his image to the mosaic. Photo: Instagram/JR

    Musician Pharrell Williams takes a moment to add his image to the mosaic. Photo: Instagram/JR

  • NY Times rolls out app for Google Glass users

    nytimes_google_glass_app

    For most people, the opportunity to get a Google Glass device is still about a year away. There is a relatively small set of early adopters, mainly people who have agreed to be beta testers and developers, who are already getting their devices or will be soon. For those individuals, the NY Times is rolling out an app that will make their news available via Google Glass. In the case of the NY Times, there is not really a specific app to install. Instead, users have to connect their Google Glass device to their Google account using a special web site. The process is similar to sites that let you sign in using a Facebook or Google+ account. Once connected, the NY Times will deliver breaking news alerts and top news on an hourly basis to your Glass device. Users will have the option of having article summaries read aloud.

    If you are one of the lucky ones with a Google Glass device already, hit the source link to get connected with the NY Times. If you don’t have Google Glass, you can go through the motions of linking to your Google account and you’ll be ready a year from now when you can finally buy your own pair.

    source: NY Times

    Come comment on this article: NY Times rolls out app for Google Glass users

  • Samsung Galaxy S 4 Duos launches in China with dual-SIM support, Exynos 5 Octa cpu

    Samsung_Galaxy_S_4_Front_Top_Samsung_Logo_TA

    As the Samsung Galaxy S 4 is launched around the world, one market getting a couple unique versions is the Asian market. Samsung has launched a Samsung Galaxy S 4 Duos model (I9502) that includes a couple notable differences from the standard version many people may be getting. First, the Galaxy S 4 Duos has two SIM card slots available. Second, the Duos version of Samsung’s flagship will be equipped with the Exynos 5 Octa chip with each of the cores running at 1.6GHz. All of the other specs for the device are the same as other Galaxy S 4 models.

    Another model intended for the Chinese market, the I9506, will be running a Snapdragon 600 processor and is limited to TD-SCDMA 3G connectivity.

    source: Samsung China

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  • Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 Review [GIVEAWAY]

    Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 comes with a slightly changed interface that increases ease of use by better highlighting the functions for each module available and the utility currently accessed.

    The newly released Ashampoo Photo Commander 11 went through improvements that touch on both functionality and usability.

    New technology allows… (read more)

  • Chrome Beta For Desktop Adds Support For Microsoft Office Documents

    Despite Google’s best attempts at getting people to switch to Google Docs, much of the world still works in Microsoft Office. It may be a while before Google can win the format wars; but in the meantime, it will make sure Chrome users stay in Chrome when opening Microsoft documents.

    Google announced that Chrome Beta for desktop can now open Microsoft Office documents directly in the browser. In other words, all of your Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint files can be accessed in the browser without having to open Microsoft Office.

    You could interpret this as Google firing a warning shot across Microsoft’s bow, but Google says it’s only watching out for its users:

    In addition to saving you time, the Chrome Office Viewer also protects you from malware delivered via Office files. Just like with web pages and PDFs, we’ve added a specialized sandbox to impede attackers who use compromised Office files to try to steal private information or monitor your activities.

    If you want to start viewing Microsoft Office files in Chrome, you’re going to first need the Chrome Beta. You can grab that here. Next up, you’re gonna need the Chrome Office Viewer which is also in beta. Google reminds users to help them squash any remaining bugs in the Office Viewer by submitting bug reports whenever things go wrong.