So, you’ve built a Google Drive app with the latest HMTL5 technologies. Now you want to integrate Google+ sign-in into said app to provide a secure experience for your users. The Google Developer team has your back with a new tutorial:
I’m sure you heard about Google+ Sign-in. It’s simple, it’s secure, and it prohibits social spam, and it can be used in your Drive app! Join us today to learn how to integrate Google+ Sign-In with your Drive app and how you can use it to authorize your users.
Watch the West Wing Week here.
Call to Governors: On Monday, President Obama and Vice President Biden delivered remarks to the National Governor Association. The President drew attention to the importance of infrastructure and education, while praising the group for their great work and accomplishments across America. The President also urged the governors to push Congress to end the harmful and automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, set to take effect March 1.
“As governors, you’re the ones who are on the ground, seeing firsthand every single day what works, what doesn’t work, and that's what makes you so indispensable,” he said. “Whatever your party, you ran for office to do everything that you could to make our folks’ lives better.”
The First Lady and Dr. Biden also spoke and covered the importance of committing to our veterans in their transition to civilian life. Both highlighted states that have made progress in changing laws to make it easier for military spouses to attain new credentials when they move to a new state, and challenged all 50 states to follow through.
While most of the fighting game news for the past few weeks has involved epic battles between D.C. Comics superheroes in the Injustice: Gods Among Us tournament, Sony would like to remind gamers that their whimsical Smash Bros. clone is only a few months old.
Sony this week released new videos showcasing the new characters coming to PlayStation All-Stars BAttle Royale. Dead Space protagonist Isaac Clarke will be joining the brawler with his RIG suit and plasma cutter, while Zeus as depicted in the God of War series will be bringing the thunder of Olympus.
In addition to the new fighters, Sony will be adding a new MediEvil stage that also blends elements of The Unfinished Swan. In the middle of a fight the level background may be wiped and then slowly revealed with ink splotches. Both the fighters and the new stage will be available starting March 19.
Isaac’s video shows the engineer using his many tools, including the plasma cutter, ripper blades, and kinesis and stasis modules. His level 3 super blows other fighters out an airlock, where Isaac uses them for target practice.
Zeus will use hard punches, lightning strikes, and teleports while fighting. His level 3 super transports fighters to Mount Olympus, where he submits them to a God of War-style boss fight.
Time for another year of BlackBerry Live, the annual uber-networking event for everything BlackBerry in Orlando Florida. BlackBerry Live has grown year after year and this one will have no shortage of BlackBerry 10 excitement. Alongside the main event is BlackBerry Jam Americas which grants developers special access to lots of the BlackBerry Live events but at favourable pricing.
This year’s BlackBerry Live should have plenty to see and do with lots of developers and publishers showcasing their latest apps. The conference is built on a strong foundation of enterprise solutions and there should be plenty of demos that should peek the interest of CIOs and big business alike.
Everyone is going to be there for the main keynote packed with the leaders of mobility and you’ll be able to fill your schedule with highly specialized sessions, panels, awards, developer events or if networking is your game: the parties.
BlackBerry Jam Americas going on May 14th to 16th alongside the BlackBerry Live conference has begun registering attendees. BlackBerry 10 has launched and developers everywhere are in full swing publishing apps and getting sales on this budding new platform.
Google has a new mobile app download ad format aimed at making it easier for people to download advertisers’ apps. It works with iTunes or the Google Play Store.
The format is only available for those who have upgraded to enhanced campaign settings.
“With enhanced campaigns, click-to-download ads will no longer trigger the app icon, so once you upgrade to enhanced campaign settings we recommend also creating new app promotion ads to replace your click-to-download ads,” Google notes.
To create the ads, open the campaign in AdWords, select the Ads tab, click “new ad,” and pick “App / digital content ad” as your template. Then, select the “App promotion ad.”
From there, you can choose your platform (Android/iOS), and enter the app package name or app ID.
Google says that new apps might take up to 24 hours to appear in its search results, and that the app promotion ads will only show on the devices upon which the apps can be installed.
Larry Kim, CTO of Worstream, who was an early partner on Google’s Enhanced Capaigns, tells WebProNews of the new format, “It’s a huge improvement in terms of ease of use and ad intelligence over the previous way of doing this.”
“The app Market is huge,” he says. “A $30 billion market in 2012 that didn’t even exist 5 years ago.” He notes that there are over 700,000 apps in both iTunes/Google Play stores, 40 Billion app Downloads on iTunes, etc.
“This new ad format is smart,” says Kim. “It just works. If your app works only on iOS tablets, then it will only show up to users that are using iOS tablets. The advertiser doesn’t have to fiddle around with dumb settings or anything. As a result, the ROI is better. Driving downloads and reviews to your mobile app is the key to getting good rankings in the app marketplace, and this is a very easy/cost effective way to do that.”
Kim shares more of his thoughts about the offering in his own post.
Photos: James Duncan Davidson
Dan Pallotta created two huge charity initiatives – AIDS Rides bicycle journeys and Breast Cancer 3-Day events. These initiatives raised $108 million for HIV/AIDS and $194 million for breast cancer. Both had their best years in 2002 … and then Pallotta’s nonprofit went out of business.
In the final session of TED2013, Pallotta shares why that happened: Major sponsors pulled out following a slew of bad press over the idea that his organization was investing 40% of their gross into recruitment and customer service. The backlash came from our basic — and wrong — cultural understanding of charity.
“What we know about charity and the nonprofit sector is undermining the causes we believe in and our desire to change the world,” says Pallotta. We expect businesses and nonprofits to use “two separate rulebooks,” he suggests.
“Business will move the mass of humanity forward, but will always leave behind that 10% of the most disadvantaged and unlucky,” he says — which is why we need philanthropy and nonprofits. But couldn’t the nonprofit sector use the same strategies as the business world to grow their profits and give more money to the needy? After all, says Pallotta, “How do you monetize the prevention of violence against women?”
The nonprofit sector as we know it isn’t working. In the United States, poverty has been stuck at 12% for the last 40 years. Homelessness has not been solved in any major city, and we have no cure for cancer.
“Our social problems are gigantic in scale, our organizations are tiny up against them — and we have beliefs that keep them tiny,” says Pallotta, the president of Advertising for Humanity and author of Charity Case.
Pallotta outlines five ways in which nonprofits are handicapped in their mission to help people.
1. Compensation
“We have a visceral reaction to the idea of people making a lot of money helping others. Interestingly, we don’t have a visceral reaction to the idea that people should make a lot of money not helping other people,” says Pallotta. “It gives a stark, mutually exclusive choice between doing well for yourself and your family and doing well for world.”
For example, the average salary for a CEO of a hunger charity is $80K. Meanwhile the average salary for someone with an MBA, after ten years of school, is $400K.
“We send people marching from the nonprofit sector into the for-profit sector, because they’re not willing to make that kind of compromise,” says Pallotta. “Not a lot of people with $400K talent will make a $316K sacrifice every year.” And actually, it turns out it’s more financially advantageous for these talented business minds to take the big paycheck, give $100K to a hunger charity each year, reap the tax benefits and get the label of “philanthropist.”
2. Adveritsing and marketing
“We tell for-profits to spend, spend, spend on advertising,” says Pallotta, but nonprofits are expected not to advertise — unless the advertising space and airtime is donated. People want to see their money spent directly on the needy.
But Pallotta points out that money invested in advertising can be returned dramatically amplified. He uses his own initiatives as an example. Over nine years, more than 182,000 people participated in Pallotta’s AIDS Rides and Breast Cancer 3-Day events, raising a cummulative $581 million.
“We got that many people to participate because we bought full-page ads,” says Pallotta. “Do you know how many people we would have gotten if we advertised with fliers in the laundromat?”
Pallotta stresses that nonprofits need to be able to communicate with the public the incredible work that they are doing — and to ask for bold commitments in return. “People are yearning to be asked to use the full measure of their potential for somthing they care about,” he says.
3. Taking risks on new revenue ideas
Nonprofits are not allowed to try new things, says Pallotta, because public outcry sounds so quickly at a failure. As Pallotta found by using a different model of spending — experimentation is a big no-no for nonprofits.
“Nonprofits are reluctant to attempt any brave, daring new fundraising endeavors, because they’re because scared their reputations will be dragged through the mud,” he says.
This fear kills innovation. And if nonprofits can’t try new things and grow — how can they possibly tackle problems of the size that our world has?
4. Time
On the same note, Pallotta points out that it took Amazon took four years to turn a profit. While businesses are given time to build the infrastructure they need, non-profits are not afforded this luxury.
“If a non-profit had a dream of building at a magnificent scale, but it would require six years for the money to go to the needy, we would expect a crucifixtion,” says Pallotta.
5. Profit to attract risk capital
This point is a simple one: nonprofits can’t go after capital, because they can’t be on stock market. And how do you build scale without capital?
Pallotta stresses that the nonprofit sector is at an extreme disadvantage when compared with the for-profit sector. The difference is dramatic. Since 1970, 144 nonprofits have crossed the $50 million annual revenue barrier. In the same amount of the time, an astounding 46,136 for-profit businesses have surpassed that mark.
So how did this happen? Pallotta looks to American history for the answer. He shares how the Puritanical spirit saw self-interest as a ticket to hell. But charity was seen as the antidote, a way to do penance. “Financial interest was exiled from the realm of charity,” he says.
Today, Pallotta is horrified that only one question is used to evaluate a charity: What percentage of my donation goes to the cause versus overhead?
“It makes us think that overhead is a negative, that it is somehow not a part of ‘the cause,’” he says. “This forces organizations to forego what they need for growth.”
Pallotta shares how his organization used a more-business like model — taking $50K in initial funding for AIDS Rides and multiplying it to $108 million, and taking an $350K initial investment in Breast Cancer 3-Day walks and multiplying it to $194 million. Pallotta says that his organization could have gone the route of just giving the initial funding to research, but by investing in growth, they were able to give so much more.
“[And yet] 350 employees lost their jobs because they were labeled overhead,” says Palotta. “This is what happens when we confuse morality with frugality.”
Pallotta notes that charitable giving in the United States has remained stuck at 2% of the gross domestic product for the past four decades. What if, instead of requiring charities to tighten their belts, we let them grow and try to increase their marketshare?
Pallotta shows an interesting pie graph. Two percent of the US GDP equals $300 billion, with about $60 billion going to health and human services charities. But what if charitable giving could be boosted just 1%? That would be an extra $150 billion a year — just for health and human services charities.
“Our generation does not want its epithet to read, ‘We kept charity overhead low,’” concludes Pallotta. “We want it to read that we changed the world.”
And so next time you’re investigating at charity, he pleads: “Don’t ask about the size of their overhead — ask about the size of their dreams.”
Acer is looking to create its very own phablet dubbed the Liquid S according to some clues left behind in an interview. Mobile World Congress (MWC) took place February 25th through 28th and the Taiwanese manufacturer had a small showing with devices such as the Liquid E1, a 4.5 inch Android smartphone running Jelly Bean.
In an interview for the official MWC paper, the President of Acer’s smartphone business hinted at an upcoming phablet:
“Unlimited exploration: the line between tablet and phone is blurring, a new breed of smartphone, the Phablet, is an irreversible trend to create new lifestyles. With above 4.7″ and quad-core+ processors, those giants offer extremely high resolution for multi-tasking, gaming, browsing and more. Acer will launch its Liquid S series as part of this growing segment.”
The company doesn’t currently have a phablet on the market and the Liquid S will be their first ever quad-core phone. Specs for such a device are non-existent at the moment and one has to take into question Acer’s definition of a phablet. There are more than a couple of Android phones currently available with screens larger than 4.7 inches. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S III has a 4.8 inch screen and the HTC DROID DNA has a 5-inch display. Depending on who’s holding it, they probably wouldn’t quality as a phablets.
Source: GSMArena
Come comment on this article: Acer Developing The Liquid S Quad-Core Powered Phablet
Whiskey flushed down the drain at a bottling plant could have an adverse effect on the treatment of waste water, officials say, after workers accidentally dumped over 6,000 gallons of Chivas from its container.
“We are currently investigating an accidental loss on the 26th of February at our Dumbarton site, where some spirit was released to the local water treatment plant,” the company said in a statement. “There has been no release of spirit to the River Leven or any other local water course. We have informed Scottish Water and all other relevant authorities.”
The incident occurred on Thursday at the Chivas Brothers bottling plant in Dumbarton, Scotland when workers accidentally threw the lever to drain the whiskey rather than the wastewater they were going for. Now, the company faces a huge monetary loss as well as issues with the sewer system.
“Discharging large volumes of alcohol into the sewer network can have an adverse impact on waste water treatment processes, particularly during dry, cold weather,” Scottish Water said in a statement. “We are continuing to closely monitor our Dumbarton wastewater treatment works to ensure treatment has not been compromised.”
It’s rumored that the employees responsible for the accident may lose their jobs, but nothing has been confirmed as yet. The water system in and around Dumbarton is being closely monitored.
Image: Chivas Brothers
Those who bought a Lumia 920 as their inaugural Windows Phone 8 may have done so for its reportedly fantastic camera. There’s now an app for the device that will make your photos even better.
Photosynth, Microsoft’s popular panorama photo app that took off on iOS, has made the jump to Windows Phone 8.
Photosynth can capture full 360 degree environments and it doesn’t even have to take separate pictures before filing it all in. Just move the phone around you and let it fill in all the details.
Those who have Photosynth on iOS, and have since moved to Windows Phone 8 will be pleased to see that the app features a few enhancements on Microsoft’s mobile platform:
Windows Phone 8 users can grab Photosynth here for free.
Lion Equity Partners has acquired International Mail Services, which was a U.S. division of Pitney Bowes. Financial terms were not announced. The business has been renamed IMEX Global Solutions and will be based in Newark, N.J.. IMEX is a provider of international mail logistics and distribution services.
PRESS RELEASE
Denver, CO and Newark, NJ (March 1, 2013) – Lion Equity Partners, through its affiliate Lion Equity Holdings, LLC (“Lion Equity”) announced that on February 28, 2013 it acquired the International Mail Services – U.S. Division from Pitney Bowes Inc. (NYSE: PBI). The business, which has been renamed IMEX Global Solutions (“IMEX”), is a leading provider of international mail logistics and distribution services to Fortune 1000 corporations and global e-commerce companies.
“This transaction paves the way for IMEX to offer the most comprehensive international mailing services in the industry,” said Jim Levitas, Partner of Lion Equity. “As a former division of Pitney Bowes, IMEX has benefitted greatly from substantial investments in human capital, infrastructure and technology and also inherits an unparalleled network of global carrier relationships.”
IMEX, headquartered in Newark, NJ with additional facilities in Itasca, IL, Elk Grove Village, IL and Corona, CA, consolidates and distributes over 40 million pounds of parcels, print media and critical communications to over 220 countries every year. This is accomplished through strategically located consolidation centers, state-of-the-art equipment, and long-term relationships with the world’s leading carriers, including the United States Postal Service, Canada Post and an exclusive alliance with the Royal Mail.
“We are very excited about our future,” IMEX Chief Executive Officer, Brian Fleisher said. “Our commitment to excellence and our reliable and accurate service to our clients have allowed IMEX to differentiate itself in the marketplace. The combination of IMEX’s deep industry expertise along with strategic direction and capital from Lion Equity, positions our company extremely well for success.”
Lion Equity expects to drive growth at IMEX both organically, as well as through prospective add-on acquisitions.
The terms of the deal were not disclosed.
About Lion Equity Partners:
Lion Equity Partners (www.lionequity.com) is a Denver, CO based private investment firm focused on acquiring controlling interests in middle-market businesses across multiple industries. Lion Equity specializes in acquiring divisions of larger corporations, and has significant experience in the divestiture process. Lion Equity’s investment strategy is centered on creating value in its portfolio companies through a combination of organic growth and add-on acquisitions. Lion Equity supports its portfolio companies with strategic and financial resources, operational guidance, and M&A expertise.
About IMEX Global Solutions:
IMEX Global Solutions, LLC (www.imexglobalsolutions.com), headquartered in Newark, NJ is a premier provider of international mail logistics and distribution services. Through its strategically located facilities in New Jersey, Illinois and California, IMEX consolidates and distributes billions of pieces of mail, publications and parcels to over 220 countries across the globe. With over 25 years of experience in international shipping, IMEX provides its customers with the highest levels of performance, accuracy and customer service.
The post Lion Equity Buys International Mail from Pitney Bowes appeared first on peHUB.
Mophie caused a bit of a double-take by introducing not one but two rechargeable external battery cases for the iPhone 5 within a few days of each other. The Juice Pack Helium offers a sleeker body, but the Juice Pack Air, announced later, offers more stamina. I’ve been testing the latter for nearly a week now, and it lives up to Mophie’s good reputation, with a single trade-off that may or may not influence your buying decision.
The Juice Pack Air for iPhone 5 will look and feel familiar to owners of previous Mophie Juice Packs. It has a rubberized texture that makes the matte back extra grippy, a smooth black plastic band extending around the entire sides of the device, and a button on the back that lights up indicators showing how much battery is remaining. Some of the elements have shifted to make up for the new iPhone’s design: the battery indicator and activation switch are on the back, not the bottom, and the micro USB port is on the bottom surface where the Lightning port would be on an iPhone 5 without a case.
One of the few unfortunate changes caused by the iPhone 5′s redesign is the shift of the headphone port to the bottom, which is where the business end is on Mophie’s battery pack cases. That means that on this Juice Pack Air, there’s around a half-inch hole any headphones have to go through to get to the iPhone’s 3.5mm stereo port. Mophie includes an extension cable to make sure your headphones will work no matter their design, but it’s an extra bit to keep track of and potentially lose, and that’s never good.
Overall, the Juice Pack Air feels like a quality accessory, however, and all the pass-through switches and buttons work well. There’s even mesh on the front-facing speaker ports, which do enhance sound to my ear, and an appropriately wide opening on the back to accommodate the camera lens and flash without impeding mobile photography.
The Juice Pack Air claims to be able to provide around 8 more hours of 3G talk time and Internet use, 8 more hours of LTE browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi web, and up to 40 more hours of audio playback or 10 more hours of video. Mophie says that’s up to 100 percent the normal battery life of your iPhone 5. I happened to be able to test charging a dead iPhone 5 from a drained state with a fully-charged Juice Pack Air, however, and it only got the iPhone up to around 80 percent charge. Your mileage may vary, however, and 80 percent from a cold, dead battery that has lain empty for a while is still pretty impressive, and in everyday use I found it was as close to doubling my iPhone 5′s life as made no difference.
The Juice Pack Air gets warm while charging, but that’s nothing new and I mention it more to make new users aware than to cite it as an issue. New users should also note that the Air features pass-through charging via the supplied micro USB cable: You can plug it in overnight and the iPhone inside will charge first, with the case getting its fill afterwards. One thing missing in this version is pass-through syncing, however. That could be a problem for some, but I can’t remember the last time I’ve done a wired sync of an iOS device, so it doesn’t bother me.
The Juice Pack Air is a solid performer, which isn’t surprising, given its pedigree. It has the same general downsides as its predecessor (mostly that it adds bulk to the iPhone), and loses a few tricks. But most won’t miss the lack of pass-through syncing now that iPhones are much more autonomous devices than they were in the past. And the Air for iPhone 5 is slightly thinner than the version for iPhone 4/4S. If you need the extra power that a battery case provides, the Juice Pack Air remains the case to beat.
Photo: James Duncan Davidson
Orly Wahba is here to talk to us about the magic of kindness. As a middle-school teacher, she wanted to make a difference in the life of her students, so she designed “Act of Kindness” cards. These super-simple cards contained directions such as “open the door for someone” or “invite someone to have lunch with you,” along with an instruction to pass on the card once you were done. She wanted her kids to see the ripple effect of kindness.
One day, some construction workers were outside her house. It was hot out, so she brought them drinks — and kindness cards. One of them got a card with the instruction “call your mother and father and tell them how much you love them.” He hadn’t seen his parents in 10 years; he approached her, incredulous. He just needed the prompt.
Wahba shows us a film she put together to tell the story of the world we all live in. “Sometimes we just need to change our perspective.” And she tells us about Life Vest Inside, the organization she founded ”because kindness keeps the world afloat.”
Yeah, I know. I KNOW, OK? But it’s the Heat and it’s a pretty good one…
Ah hell, you can send me hate email. Fine.
Photos: James Duncan Davidson
Moral philosopher Peter Singer starts the last session of TED2013, “A Ripple Effect?” with a shocking video of a 2-year-old girl in China who was hit by a van — and then a second van — and ignored by passers-by as she lay dying in an alley. He asks of the audience: Would you have stopped and helped this girl? Not surprisingly, the unanimous response was yes. Well, every day that we don’t help others, he says, it’s like leaving this girl crippled in the alley. In 2012, Singer says, UNICEF reported that 6.9 million children under 5 died from preventable poverty-relatable diseases like malaria. Does it really matter that we’re not walking past these children in the street, that they’re far away? According to Singer, there is no morally relevant difference.
There’s a new movement of people who are realizing how necessary it is to help others. It’s called effective altruism. Using empathy and intellect, it appeals to both heart and head. Because reason is not a neutral tool to help you get whatever you want, says Singer, but to get perspective on the situation. Effective altruism has been led by figures in philosophy, math, economics — which may be surprising because people think philosophy has nothing to do with the real world, economics is for the selfish, math is just for nerds. Indeed, the most effective altruists in history — Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett — are “nerds” who realize that it’s necessary to give to charity and to make sure that charity is effective.
Singer asks and answers questions about effective altruism:
1. How much of a difference can I make?
You don’t have to be a billionaire, says Singer. Meet Tony Ord, a philosophy researcher. He realized that with the money he was going to make over his lifetime, he could cure 80,000 people of blindness in developing countries and still have enough left to live a perfectly adequate life. He started Giving what we can, to ask people to give 10 percent of their income over their lifetime to fight against global poverty.
2. Am I expected to abandon my career?
Meet Will Crouch, a graduate student in philosophy who began 80,000 Hours (roughly the number of hours you spend in your career), which helps people find careers that make the biggest possible difference in the world. Surprisingly, one career he encourages people to go into is finance and banking, because the more you earn the more you can give. If you earn a big salary, rather than becoming an aid worker yourself, you could pay the salaries of five aid workers in developing countries.
Singer and one of his students started an organization called The life you can save, which aims to encourage people to see that charity is part of living a normal life.
3. Isn’t charity bureaucratic and ineffective anyway?
One of the most important aspects of effective altruism is measuring your impact quantitatively. You can pay to provide and train a guard dog for a blind American, which costs about $40,000. But with that money you could cure 400 to 2,000 people in developing countries of blindness from glaucoma, which costs about $20 per person. Resources like Givewell and Effective Animal Activism help find those organizations that are truly effective.
4. Isn’t it a burden to give up so much?
No, says Singer. Giving helps lift the immense weight of living a Sisyphean life. The consumer lifestyle is: Work hard, make money, spend money on goods, run out of money, start again to maintain happiness. It’s a hedonic treadmill you can never get off. Effective altruism allows you to demonstrably contribute to the lives of others while also adding meaning and fulfillment to your life.
NASA announced today that Mars rover Curiosity has switched onboard computers as a result of a “memory issue” experienced on its active computer. The issue has brought research by the rover to a halt.
The swap to the rover’s redundant computer took place yesterday and placed the rover into a “safe mode.” Over then next several days the rover team will be bringing the rover into operational status.
“We switched computers to get to a standard state from which to begin restoring routine operations,” said Richard Cook, project manager for the Mars Science Laboratory Project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
These computer issues are surfacing just as Curiosity is in the midst of a historical sample analysis. Earlier this week the rover had begun analyzing two small samples of rock powder taken from the inside of a Martian rock using the rover’s hammering drill.
The computer issue was revealed on Wednesday, February 27 when the rover failed to send recorded data back to Earth, instead sending only status information. It was found that Curiosity had not entered its latest planned “sleep mode.” The “memory issue” on Curiosity’s first computer is thought to be related to a corrupted flash memory.
The rover will now operate on its “B-side” computer, which was tested during its flight to Mars. The “A-side” computer was used from the rover’s landing on the red planet until this week.
“While we are resuming operations on the B-side, we are also working to determine the best way to restore the A-side as a viable backup,” said Magdy Bareh, leader of the mission’s anomaly resolution team at JPL.
(Image courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Google has started rolling out two new accessibility improvements in Google+ Hangouts: a sign language interpreter app, and more keyboard shortcuts.
Google’s Anna Cavender announced the features in a Google+ post Thursday evening, saying that both are rolling out gradually.
“Using the Sign Language Interpreter app, deaf or hard of hearing users who prefer sign language can invite interpreters to speak and sign for them during a Hangout,” she says. “They’ll always see their interpreter at the top right of the window, and they’ll become the focus of the Hangout whenever their interpreter speaks for them.”
The app can be installed from here.
Keyboard shortcuts, she says, are great for those who can’t or don’t want to use a mouse during video chat. “For example: muting your microphone is now as simple as Ctrl+D (PC) or Command+D (Mac), and you can start chatting with Ctrl+B (PC) or Command+B (Mac),” she explains.
The full list of shortcuts can be found here.
Earlier this week, Google also announced some new keyboard navigation for Gmail.
3D printing has easily established itself as something amazing. Is it really the revolutionary technology that everybody makes it out to be though? That’s the question behind a new episode of PBS’ wonderful Off Book series.
This week, Off Book interviews numerous 3D printing insiders and experts to get their opinions on the future of the technology:
Much attention has been paid to 3D Printing lately, with new companies developing cheaper and more efficient consumer models that have wowed the tech community. They herald 3D Printing as a revolutionary and disruptive technology, but how will these printers truly affect our society? Beyond an initial novelty, 3D Printing could have a game-changing impact on consumer culture, copyright and patent law, and even the very concept of scarcity on which our economy is based. From at-home repairs to new businesses, from medical to ecological developments, 3D Printing has an undeniably wide range of possibilities which could profoundly change our world.
What’s sets 3D printing apart from other so called “revolutions” in tech or manufacturing is that 3D printing has over 20 years of innovation behind it. All that knowledge will soon be passed on to us as we move from a consumer culture to a creator culture. The Internet has already achieved a creator culture in digital goods, and 3D printing may very well be the thing to extend that into the physical realm.
DJ Ajax, a popular record-spinner from Australia, died early this morning after being hit by a truck. He was 41 years old.
Adrian Thomas had been celebrating his birthday and was reportedly the victim of an accident, although police are investigating. A spokesperson for police said in a statement, “It’s believed the man ran in front of the north bound truck on College Crescent shortly before 1am. He died at the scene.”
Thomas was a celebrated performer who was named “World DJ of the Year” by 3D Magazine three times. After making a name for himself with the group Bang Gang, he went on to found the label Sweat It Out. A rep for the label said today that Thomas was “instrumental in shaping the landscape of Australian dance music. He was a hugely talented individual and was highly respected by the local and international dance music community as a pioneer and innovator. Adrian touched so many people and it is impossible to sum up his legacy in words.”
Thomas is being fondly remembered across the web today as friends mourn the loss of a talented musician.
RIP Ajax, thanks for all the good time and great memories. ow.ly/i9shZ
— Ben Moroney (@benmoroney) February 28, 2013
Terrible to wake up to the news of DJ Ajax’s death. Such a talented, sweet guy..a huge part of @fbiradio‘s early days tinyurl.com/cprm8wt
— Alison Piotrowski (@apiotrowski9) February 28, 2013
RIP DJ Ajax – You are going to be greatly missed…we are thinking of all your friends & family..many thanks for all the great times!!
— 2manydjs (@2manydjsTour) March 1, 2013
If you’re a DJ and you ever toured Australia chances are you knew Ajax, he was like the ambassador. Much love to the Banggang homies.
— Krazee Eyez Killa (@atrak) February 28, 2013
Rest In Peace Ajax. we Lost One of The Best Dj On Earth. Thinking About His Family and His Friends. We Gonna Miss You Man <3
— Louis Brodinski (@Brodinski) February 28, 2013
Ajax; My favourite DJ in the country and a man that I’m honoured to have met. Rest in peace brother, you are my idol.
— Mike Metro (@Mike_Metro) February 28, 2013
Flagship phones will always be popular, but a recent trend of high quality mid-range phones started late last year. The DROID RAZR M is a perfect example because it gives you a lot for the money. Now HTC is attempting to get in on the bandwagon with the One VX. It’s priced at $49 on AT&T, and although the specs are not what you would find on a high-end phone, they are far from embarrassing. Is it just another cheap device or is it worthy of your money? Hit the break to read the rest and find out.
Design
HTC continues to amaze me with their quality of workmanship. The One VX looks like a baby One X, which is a good thing because it sports the same polycarbonate body. After using the DROID DNA for a while, the VX almost seems tiny, but it’s not. It packs a 4.5-inch display, which is just under what you will find in most flagships. The result is a really nice size (9.19mm thick and weighs 124.7g) for most people, and feels very comfortable in the hand. I generally don’t like white phones, but I fell in love with the color on the One X. With the One VX, the white back is very similar to the One X, but they added a nice touch of silver around the bezel, sides, and the top of the back. The other major change is that the back is removable, which gives you access to the microSD slot and microSIM slot. Unfortunately the battery is still non-removable, but that shouldn’t be a problem for the target user.
Hardware
The One VX comes with a 4.5-inch qHD (960 x 540) Super LCD display at 245ppi, a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Plus MSM8930 processor, 1GB of RAM, an Adreno 305 GPU, 8GB of internal storage, microSD slot for expansion, 5MP rear camera with ImageSense, VGA front camera, 1,800 mAh battery, 802.11a/b/g/n, WiFi Direct, Bluetooth 4.0, and NFC. As for mobile bands, it supports LTE (bands 4 and 17), tri-band HSPA+ / UMTS (850/1900/2100) and quad-band GSM / EDGE (850/900/1800/1900).
Performance
I remember when a $49 phone meant that it was slow and unresponsive. That’s not the case with the One VX. Is it the fastest phone in the world? Absolutely not, but I don’t see any casual user complaining about the speed. The best part is that it will only improve once the buttery smooth Jelly Bean update lands. For giggles, I ran the AnTuTu Benchmark and it came in at 10,384, which isn’t too shabby at all. In fact, it’s much higher than the One X, which came in at 6,772 and utilized the older S4 chip (sans Plus). To give you another perspective, the DROID DNA came in at 14,544, so the One VX sits right in the middle, which is very good for a sub $100 phone.
With the current crop of high end devices sporting 1080p, the qHD display on the One VX seems so 2011. However, HTC makes the best displays in the business. No, it’s not as nice as the DROID DNA, but I am going to repeat myself again in saying that the average user won’t find any complaints.
Beats Audio is onboard, and as we stated in the past, it might be more of a gimmick than anything else. With that said, I would still rather have it then not.
Battery
I ran my usual battery rundown test that yielded just about 6 hours on 4G LTE. This test is done by running continuous video and setting the display to 2/3′s brightness, while WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS are on. (WiFi and Bluetooth not connected). However, the real world is where it matters, and you should be able to go from morning until bedtime without a charge under moderate use.
Software
The one glaring negative for the One VX is that it comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich underneath Sense 4. HTC does promises the Jelly Bean update that will come with Sense 4+. If and when that does happen, I think it’s safe to say that it will be the only major update, so you will have to decide if you will be happy with that for the next two years. Other than some minor bug fix updates, don’t expect to see Sense 5 or Key Lime Pie, but most users looking for a sub $100 phone probably isn’t worried about what dessert their phone is running. To learn more about Sense 4 and Ice Cream Sandwich, see our One X and One S reviews from last year.
Camera
The One VX sports only a 5MP camera, but don’t let that detract you. It has ImageSense, an f/2.2 lens, and can record 1080p video. It also has the same settings and features that are found on the higher-end One X such as HDR, panorama, burst shooting, and a lot of effects. You can learn more about these features in our One X and One S reviews. Below are some example shots for you to judge for yourself (last one needing flash), but you won’t find a better camera in a sub $100 phone period.
Closing
If you’re looking for a sub $100 phone and on AT&T, it’s pretty clear to me that the One VX is a solid choice. It’s priced at $49 on contract, and you won’t find anything better at that price. It should also be noted that if you don’t mind your One VX in red, you can currently grab that one for 99-cents ( Web only). If you’re not tied to a carrier, you could look at the DROID RAZR M on Verizon Wireless, but to me the One VX is the better phone because it has a much better camera.
Come comment on this article: HTC One VX quick review: The best features from the One series at a bargain price
