The closed alpha development stage for the Dirty Bomb game currently under development by Splash Damage, has this week started. But don’t worry if you haven’t already applied for a place on the testing squad as places are still available if you are quick.
For an idead of what you can expect from the new Dirty Bombs game watch the gameplay video trailer after the jump.
We heard earlier today that Vodafone are offering RIM’s new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone on their network in the UK, and now the UK’s first 4G LTE network, EE has announced that the device is available on their network.
EE are offering the new BlackBerry Z10 for 49.99 when you sign up to a 24 month contract that will cost you 41 a month, they have also said that any devices ordered will be delivered in 10 days.
For those of you who have tried to start an internet based freelancing career, you probably know just how competitive offering services online can be. Due to the high level of desirability of working from home and having the most flexible time schedule imaginable, a large number of people all over the world wish to start an internet based freelancing career to earn money online. Unfortunately, few actually succeed in landing a single project, let alone making a career out of it.
Once you have registered on one of these marketplaces, you will soon start to realize that it is not easy winning a project. Understandably so, employers are reluctant to trust workers with no feedback or rating. This is why you might need to make your profile shine, by uploading samples, writing up a convincing description about yourself and your abilities, as well as writing intelligent proposals.
Winning your first project on an outsourcing marketplace is a challenge, but there are certain strategies you can adopt to increase your chance of getting a project. Once you have setup a complete profile, you need to focus on writing proposals for the right projects. The first step to this is to make sure you understand a project before you bid on it, and if you do not, ask questions. Employers love to see workers who seem to be interested in a particular project, and asking relevant, critical questions is a great way to display this interest.
You should also make sure you answer any questions the employer has asked in the job description. Writing generic bids about how you want to do the job are likely to get you no jobs, since they show your lack of interest to the extent that you cannot even take the time out to write a unique proposal. Once you have contacted the employer, you should work out a fair price to sell your service at. Since you do not have any on-site experience, you should bid on the lower side, but not low enough for the employer to doubt your ability to produce quality work.
Working on a popular outsourcing marketplace guarantees potential opportunities, but these sites charge a considerable amount of fees for the services they provide. Once you have become established as an online freelancer, you can create your own website and work from it, along with your existing client list from earlier projects.
Related posts:
www.Hotmail.com - Hotmail is one of the most popular and user-friendly email service providers and the best part is that, Hotmail is free. Hotmail allows you an easy access to your emails from your mobile devices, computers, and tablets. Hotmail Sign Up and Hotmail Login is an easy process, but sometimes, for a newbie, it may become a difficult task to sign up in Hotmail.com.
Hotmail Sign Up
1. Open http://www.hotmail.com in your web browser, like, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, etc.
2. Look for "Don’t have a Microsoft account? Sign up now" link, which is on the bottom right hand side of the screen.
3. Now fill the form which is displayed in the new screen.
4. Then follow up the process in the next page, and voila, you are done. You just signed up for a new free Hotmail Account.
1. Open http://www.hotmail.com” in your web browser.
2. Enter your "Username" and "Password" in the respective fields and click on "Sign in" button.
You have "signed in" to your Hotmail Account yet? It’s so simple to Hotmail Sign Up and Hotmail Login..
Related posts:
Camera Connection Kit Functions:
Two ways to import photos and videos from a digital camera
You can use A digital camera’s USB cable to import your photos and videos to iPad Mini and iPad 4.
You can use a card reader to import photos and videos directly from the camera’s memory card (SD, TF).
This camera connection kit includes two interfaces
USB interface to import pictures: The connector into the iPad interface using the USB data cable to connect the digital camera or iPhone (except iPhone 3G)
It’s far from their most successful piece of hardware, but there are plenty of reasons for Apple fans to love the Apple TV. Now it seems the set top boxes are right around the corner from an update, if the recently revealed FCC documents are any indicator, bringing with it a smaller chassis and more efficient hardware inside.
The Apple TV is a shiny little box that sits on your entertainment center until you want to push content to a television via AirPlay. There’s no one currently making a wireless playback and gaming service for TVs that comes close to matching the quality of AirPlay, though Intel and Google have certainly figured out that there’s a market for it. While Miracast and WiDi work on getting up to fighting strength, it seems Apple is working on refining the hardware in the Apple TV units.
The software update to iOS this week included a mostly featureless push to the current and previous generation Apple TV. After some digging around by Brin Klug at AnandTech, it seems that the purpose of the update was to prepare for the release of some new hardware.
In the FCC filing, it is made clear that the current design with separate Bluetooth and WiFi antennae is being replaced with a single chip that will handle both through a single antenna. Additionally, the revised Apple TV will feature the new 32nm A5X processor instead of the existing 45nm chip. With everything getting smaller on the inside, it is Apple’s fashion to make the outside slimmer as well, and that’s exactly what we can expect from the next generation device.
With these FCC documents in hand, it seems that Apple shouldn’t be too far away from officially releasing this piece of hardware, and possible announcing new features to compliment the adjusted build. There’s no expected timeframe for this announcement, though with Mobile World Congress right around the corner it wouldn’t be unheard of for Apple to steal the spotlight for themselves with a well-timed launch.
For today’s Daily Deal we’ve found 10 great apps to add to your iPad collection. We have 6 productivity / entertainment apps and 4 game apps in today’s bundle.
We used our PadGadget Apps Tracker to find these great deals and we’ll continue to look for the best app deals as they pop-up. Some of these apps are up to 67% off, several are even free, so be sure to check them out because they are on sale for a limited time.
Game Apps
Productivity and Entertainment Apps
Also be sure to check out yesterday’s Daily Deal to find more great savings.
= Indicates app is Universal and will run on an iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch.
We use our PadGadget Apps Tracker to constantly monitor the App Store to find the biggest price changes on iPad apps. Our editorial team goes through the data, picks the best deals on the most interesting apps and then brings them to you on a regular basis. All app prices are checked at the time of posting but prices are subject to change without notice. When developers put their apps on sale it’s usually for a very limited time, often 24 hours or less, so be sure to check pricing on iTunes before making a purchase.
I am ashamed to admit it, but I ate so much food over the holidays that I can no longer fit comfortably in my pants. I promised myself that I would start eating better and exercising to burn off some of the extra weight I'd gained. I have improved my eating habits, but the cold weather keeps me from wanting to do anything but snuggle under a blanket with my iPad and a cup of hot cocoa.
One way to get me off my duff is to stick an iPad in front of my face with a workout routine on it. Gorilla Workout offers an easy and instructive way to begin a fitness and strength training regimen without having to join a gym.
Users start by selecting their level of fitness ability. If you can perform 75 or more push-ups, you can start on level four. If, like me, you can't get past 10 push-ups, then you are a beginner and get to start off at level one.
Each day has a list of exercises to complete. For example, on day one of the first level fitness program, users must complete eight squats, four lunges and 10 "modified" push-ups. A modified push-up means you keep your knees on the ground while doing the exercise. When I was a kid, we called them "girl push-ups."
Each exercise includes a detailed description of how to do it, plus information on which part of the body is being worked. For example, The Quadriceps are being worked when you are performing Broad Jumps. The starting position for the exercise is to stand, shoulder width apart. The movement is "jumping with a strong forward motion propelling yourself as far as possible."
If the exercise's description is not enough for you to understand, you can also watch a short video demonstration.
This app is intended to increase your core strength by using your body's own weight. The exercises are all built around jumps, squats, sit-ups, push-ups, and other exercises that require you to work against your body. It is simple to use and the exercises, while difficult, are not complex or space consuming. Depending on what type of office you work in, you could literally complete these workout routines at your desk.
What I Liked: The first level exercises are hard, but not overwhelming. I didn't feel intimidated getting started. I also didn't have to suit up or go outside to complete them.
What I Didn’t Like: The video demonstrations are pretty grainy. I assume the developers chose to use low-resolution videos in order to keep the file size down, so it isn't a big deal.
To Buy or Not to Buy: You can turn your flabby winter mass into a fit temple for only $0.99. That is about a third of the cost of a cup of coffee from Starbucks. Which would you rather have – a hard body or a grande Caff Latte?
MuscleNerd, who is part of the new jailbreak team which goes under the title of Evad3rs confirmed via Twitter that iOS 6.1 final version is safe and can be jailbroken by the same means as the other beta releases of the firmware. The even better news is that in a further tweet, MuscleNerd teased that the jailbreak may even arrive on Super Bowl Sunday.
@MikeBeas @evad3rs yep 6.1 is safe
Hey, did everyone know the Super Bowl is this Sunday? What will you be doing? /cc @evad3rs /evad3rs.com
This untethered jailbreak has been a long time coming but those of you that like to jailbreak your device should not have too much longer to wait now. A point to note however is that the Evd3rs team are advising those who want to jailbreak to avoid the OTA update method and instead connect your device to iTunes and do a full backup and update this way. Apparently doing an over the air update is more time consuming for the team to fully test and also provides different SHSH blobs.
For me, Sunday can't come soon enough! The lines are blurring between a stock iPhone and a jailbroken one but the thought of getting back the extra functionality that BiteSMS and LockInfo provide is just too mouth-watering. Who else is looking forward to the iOS 6.1 jailbreak?
Source: Twitter 1,2, 3
Apple this morning announced new versions of the fourth-generation iPad, bringing the maximum storage level to 128 gigabytes. Same 9.7-inch retina display, same internals. Just more GBs. The upgraded storage applies to the Wi-Fi-only and Wi-Fi + Cellular versions of the iPad and doubles the previous max. Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing, Phil Schiller, had this to say:
"With more than 120 million iPads sold, it's clear that customers around the world love their iPads, and everyday they are finding more great reasons to work, learn and play on their iPads rather than their old PCs. With twice the storage capacity and an unparalleled selection of over 300,000 native iPad apps, enterprises, educators and artists have even more reasons to use iPad for all their business and personal needs."
9 to 5 Mac first reported the impending change earlier this week.
The beefier iPads will be available Feb. 5, in either black or white (or both if that's how you roll), for $799 for the Wifi model, and a whopping $929 for the cellular version.
Source: Apple PR
Here's one little cosmetic change in the latest iOS 6.1 update for the iPad. The media control bar on the iPad lock screen has been redesigned.
Just for reference, here's a Before shot:
I think it the new look is a bit sleeker and more elegant. I like it.
What do you all think? Maybe a first little peak at some of Johnny Ive's hand in the iOS interface?
Hat tip to reader SKR Imaging for pointing this new feature out.
It looks like the iOS 6.1 update has fixed the longstanding problem with the App Store Purchased section not loading. As I posted about recently this issue was affecting numerous users and was a known issue that Apple's engineering team has been working on.
After the iOS 6.1 update I can once again load the Purchased section in the App Store on my iPad 3 and iPad mini. I can get both tabs of the section to load too - the All tab and 'Not on This iPad'.
It still takes quite a while to load each page (a minute or more) and sometimes switching between tabs will make the App Store app crash back to the home screen - but most of the time it is working OK for me.
For those of you who were seeing this problem before, what are your results when trying this after the iOS 6.1 update?
Man behind fake girlfriend Lenna Kekua says confusion about his sexuality led to two-year 'relationship' with Notre Dame star
A man who pretended to be the online girlfriend of the US college footballer Manti Te'o for more than a year, is said to have fallen "deeply, romantically in love" with the star.
In an interview with the Dr Phil show, hoaxer Ronaiah Tuiasosopo said he was "confused" about his sexuality following the two-year relationship with Te'o. He had convinced the Notre Dame linebacker that he was Lennay Kekua, whom he characterised as a 20-something woman who narrowly survived a car crash only to later die of leukemia.
Te'o has denied knowing about the hoax, telling Katie Couric last week that he believed Kekua was real. Te'o never met his "girlfriend" during the course of their two-year courtship, even though he was told she had been "seriously injured" in the car crash. Neither did he attend her "funeral" after her apparent death, although he talked extensively about both events in media interviews.
The full interview with Tuiasosopo will air Thursday on the Dr Phil show. In released extracts, Tuiasosopo said he had wanted to end the relationship with Te'o earlier than he did. Tuiasosopo ultimately ended the hoax by killing off Kekua in early September.
"I wanted to end it because after everything I had gone through, I finally realized that I just had to move on with my life,'' Tuiasosopo told Dr Phil McGraw during their interview.
"I had to start just living and let this go. There were many times where Manti and Lennay had broken up, but something would bring them back together whether it was something going on in his life or in Lennay's life, or in this case, my life.''
Appearing on the Today show on Wednesday morning, McGraw said Tuiasosopo had fallen for Te'o.
"Here we have a young man that fell deeply, romantically in love,'' McGraw said. "I asked him straight up: 'Was this a romantic relationship with you?' And he says yes. I said: 'Are you then therefore gay?' And he said: 'When you put it that way, yes.' And then he caught himself and said: 'I am confused.'"
McGraw said Tuiasosopo had a "number of life experiences that damaged [him] in some very serious ways". He said he did not believe Te'o was involved in the hoax.
Te'o insists that he always thought Kekua was real, and he genuinely believed she had died in September. He said he received a phone call on 6 December from the voice he had come to know as Kekua, saying she was alive. In interviews after that date Te'o still maintained his story that his girlfriend had died.
A contender for the Heisman trophy in December, Te'o's stock has fallen since Deadspin broke the story of the hoax. NFL team scouts are reportedly preparing to ask hard questions of Te'o at the scouting combine in February, although the player is widely regarded as the best middle linebacker in the draft.
New data confirms Spanish economy shrank by 0.7% in the last three months of 2012 as its downturn picks up pace. In America, GDP fell slightly
Mouse FORTUNE a new concept. Fortune Mouse, original design and various concepts.
Here is a very unusual design of a computer mouse Fortune , created by industrial designer from Brazil Atila Rossito. This instance is in the form a paper clip, but it looks quite different. White frame blends in perfectly with the inner red illumination. It is a pity that this is only a draft .
Designer Brazil Atila Rossito
Finger mouse
Optical mouse concept
Space mouse
Mouse for innovators a highly original form
Touch Mouse M600
Concept mouse-clip
It is believed that the adaptive keyboard invented Artemy Lebedev, bringing out a keyboard "Optimus Maximus". But in reality, this device was somewhat impractical. In the first place, of course, because of the inadequate price. OLED-displays on the keys look a bit unnatural. An interesting alternative is the keyboard under the name E-inkey.
Concept E-inkey keyboard was designed by Maxim Mezentsev & Aleksander Suhih. The only difference works a device , that on a keys are placed not OLED-displays, and the small screen on electronic ink. Here, each key the conceptual wireless keyboard equipped with a display based on the technology of electronic paper. They look much more natural. This can significantly reduce the energy consumption , which means you can make a wireless keyboard E-inkey. For the "Optimus Maximus" it was not available. When working in different applications the user loads into the device profiles for key management, and all the functions are a little closer. This allows you to tailor the layout individually for each application. Do not we all remember keyboard shortcuts for even favorite programs.
Designers: Maxim Mezentsev & Aleksander Suhih
Concept keyboard puzzle
Wireless keyboard - Cleankeys
Virtual Keyboard
Concept Number keypad for Touchpad
Future computers concept
If Wall Street had a tech-stock popularity contest, Facebook would be closing in on Apple.
In a sign of the two companies’ changing reputations, Apple Inc. and Facebook Inc. are seeing the difference in the percentage of analysts recommending their stocks narrow, according to Thomson Reuters data. Just a month ago, the percentage of analysts rating each at “buy” differed by about 17 points: 84 percent of analysts recommended Apple and 67 percent recommended Facebook. Three months ago, that distance was 25 percentage points. Now, 71 percent of analysts recommend Facebook and 77 percent recommend Apple.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Out of the box, the 128GB version of Surface Pro offers only 83GB of available storage, and the 64GB model just 23GB. That’s a sizable disparity between advertised storage space and actual storage space, and something for those considering dropping upward of $899 on the device to keep in mind.
To be fair, a portion of the 41GB of the unavailable storage with which Surface Pro ships is dedicated to a recovery partition that users can easily free up, but still. The 64 GB iPad has about 57 GB of available storage. My understanding is that the 128 GB will have about 121 GB, though I’ve not confirmed that.
Microsoft, for its part, stresses that any storage woes Surface Pro owners might encounter are easily solved by external drives and the like.
“Surface Pro has a USB 3.0 port for connectivity with almost limitless storage options, including external hard drives and USB flash drives,” the company said in a statement. “Surface also comes pre-loaded with SkyDrive, allowing you to store up to 7 GB of content in the cloud for free. The device also includes a microSDXC card slot that lets you store up to 64 GB of additional content to your device. Customers can also free up additional storage space by creating a backup bootable USB and deleting the recovery partition.”
We first heard that the Kyocera Torque was headed to US mobile carrier Sprint earlier this month, the device is now official and it is headed to Sprint shortly, and it comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
The Kyocera Torque features a dual core 1.2GHz processor, 1GB of RAM and dual cameras, with a front facing 1.3 megapixel camera for video chat an a rear facing 5 megapixel camera.
It has been reported today by the Asahi Times, that the Japanese ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications in Japan has announced that they will start streaming 4K television pictures during the finals of the football World Cup in Brazil in July 2014.
Two years ahead of when the Japanese were first planning to launch their new ultra high definition 4K broadcasting, which was originally destined to be started in 2016.
Today, the US Patent and Trademark Office officially published a granted patent to Apple Inc. that “covers various concepts behind an advanced Smart Bicycle System,” Jack Purcher reports for Patently Apple.
“The premise of Apple’s invention is very much like Apple’s Nike + iPod system for runners except for cyclists,” Purcher reports. “While the system is for individuals, it’s also designed to work with teams of cyclists so that they could communicate with each other on-the-fly about course difficulty or perceived problems. The Bicycle system will be able to monitor speed, distance, time, altitude, elevation, incline, decline, heart rate, power, derailleur setting, cadence, wind speed, path completed, expected future path, heart rate, power, and pace. The system could utilize various sensors built-into the iPhone in addition to working with sensors already built-into the bike itself.”
Purcher reports, “Apple’s granted patent is extraordinarily detailed and packed with interesting twists that the sporting cyclist will really appreciate.”
Much more, including Apple’s patent application illustrations, in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers "Dan K." and "Arline M." for the heads up.]
“Can an app make your TV look better? According to THX, the answer to that question is yes. Today the company is releasing THX tune-up, a calibration app for iOS it claims can help you get the best performance from your home theater setup,” Chris Welch reports for The Verge. “THX tune-up arrives just in time for the rush of HDTVs being sold ahead of this weekend’s Super Bowl, and there’s good reason for new TV owners to give the app a look.”
“THX tune-up marks the first time we’ve seen a smartphone assist users with setting up their home theater centerpiece. Even so, the execution here is largely similar to optical media solutions. THX tune-up displays various visual patterns on your TV with step-by-step audio and text instructions guiding you through each test,” Welch reports. “They’re all extremely straightforward, and a photo sample paired with each test helps you better understand how each change impacts image quality. THX has also come up with a clever substitute for those plastic color filters; since the company can’t exactly include physical accessories with a digital app, it uses the iPhone’s camera to mirror their utility.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "TheMightyFinder" for the heads up.]
With the release of iOS 6.1, Apple has also announced a new Search API that will allow developers to query its Maps servers to get back point-of-interest and location data. This will allow them to integrate these kinds of local results into their apps when users search for things around them.
It’s not exactly an earth shattering development, as there are tons of ‘places’ API choices out there for developers including OpenStreetMaps, Foursquare and Google Places. But it does bring a significant point of parity back for Apple when it comes to its mapping offerings for third-party developers.
With iOS 5 and previous versions of iOS, developers could call Google Maps and use those in conjunction with any third-party places API. This included Google’s own Places API, which could only be used with Google Maps tiles, and not other services. So a developer could use Apple’s MapKit to call up mapping tiles and Google Places to fill out location data. This is fairly standard operating procedure for mapping services.
Unfortunately, with the release of iOS 6, developers no longer had the ability to use Google Places with Apple’s mapping tiles, and had to make the choice to use other services if they wanted to use the standard MapKit frameworks for their mapping apps. Now, with the addition of the new Search API, developers have a one-stop shop to get their mapping display tiles and their POI search data, all in one place.
Notably, Google’s Maps SDK for iOS does not have local search provisions, developers must continue to use the Places API to get local search results. While the effort involved in using an external API to call local search is fairly trivial, it is interesting to see Apple making an effort to make its mapping solutions more feature complete for developers.
Services like turn-by-turn and detailed traffic information were ones that Apple felt it had to make its own product to offer in the way that it wanted to (and without whatever concessions Google wanted). Unfortunately, launching when it felt it had to had serious consequences for the quality of mapping data backing the comparatively polished interface.
Adding local search to its API definitely doesn’t improve the quality of the results that will be returned, which is still very much a problem, but it does display a willingness to expand on the developer-facing features of Maps, as well as the consumer-facing ones.
Image Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Facebook is suffering from an extended outage that is causing downtime for users based in North America. The site has been offline for many in the US this evening — including Texas, New York and others — for around an hour and a half, although other in certain parts of the country are able to access the social network as normal. Overseas users appear to have remained unaffected.
Update: Facebook is back to normal working order. In a statement — below — the company says that a DNS issue was to blame.
We’re not one for unnecessarily highlighting downtime or service inaccessibility here at TNW but the outage — while not a full-scale, worldwide problem — has left Facebook inaccessible to many for a considerable amount of time and that will be of concern to the company. With one billion monthly active users to serve, keeping the site online and reliable is a top priority.
Website monitoring service downrightnow flags Facebook’s current status as ‘Likely Service Disruption’, and it suggests that the site has experienced intermittent access issues since 20:00 EST.
Facebook-owned Instagram has been operating as usual.
We reached out to Facebook for more details. Here’s the company’s response:
Earlier today we experienced a DNS issue that briefly prevented people who typed ‘facebook.com’ into their browsers from reaching the site. People who accessed the site using a mobile app, typed ‘www.facebook.com’ into their browsers, or used a bookmark or a search engine to navigate to the site were not affected. We resolved the issue quickly, and the fix should be fully propagated now. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Headline image via westm / Flickr
Gears of War: Judgment will be getting a demo day and date with its US release on March 19th. A new game mode called OverRun will also see release, which like the demo will be exclusive to Xbox Live Gold subscribers. The prequel launches in the UK three days later than the US, with the US also getting early access to the new game mode through an exclusive GameStop pre-order promotion.
What started as a joke and continued as a Kickstarter will now be ending up as a PS3, PC and Vita release. Divekick, a fighting game featuring just the titular maneuver, will be developed by Street Fighter: Third Strike studio Iron Galaxy. The game, created as an indie effort, was fully backed by fighting game fans on Kickstarter, who all subsequently had their money refunded when the game found a home.
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Apple has released iOS 6.1 to the public. The update brings a number of improvements, including increased LTE support and the ability for users in the US to purchase movie tickets with Siri.
This update contains improvements and bug fixes, including:
- LTE support for more carriers (complete list of supported carriers at www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/)
- Purchase movie tickets through Fandango with Siri (USA only)
- iTunes Match subscribers can now download individual songs from iCloud
- New button to reset the Advertising Identifier
For information on the security content of this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222
You can grab the update right now on your device by going to Settings, General, Software Update on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad, or connecting you device to iTunes and downloading the update there.
Once you've updated, let us know how it's working for you. Fix any annoying old bugs? Add any annoying new ones?
Update: Apple TV software has also been updated.
SuperBot, studio behind Super Smash Bothers-alike-with-Sony-IP PlayStation All-Stars will be cutting an unknown number of staff. Reductions in headcount after a large project is completed are everyday occurrences in the industry and a huge number of layoffs indicating real trouble at the studio would likely have made itself felt on Twitter if nothing else.
Samsung has taken the Samsung Galaxy S II, put in an updated build of Android, some new features from the Samsung Galaxy S III, and called the phone the Samsung Galaxy S II Plus. Speaking of which, this phone has just launched in Taiwan.
Organisers expecting thousands for march calling for ban on assault rifles and universal background checks for gun sales
Residents from Newtown, Connecticut, where 20 children and six teachers were killed in an elementary school shooting, are joining a march on Washington for gun control on Saturday with parents, pastors, and survivors of gun violence.
Organizers said they are expecting thousands of participants for the rally on the National Mall, including about 100 from Newtown, and buses from New Jersey, New York and Philadelphia. Others are flying in from Seattle, San Francisco and Alaska.
They will gather Saturday at the Capitol Reflecting Pool and will begin marching down Constitution Avenue toward the Washington monument shortly before midday. A rally is planned on the monument grounds at noon.
Molly Smith, the artistic director of Washington's arena stage, and her partner organized the march, inspired by the December massacre that killed 20 first graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, she said. The gunman also fatally shot his mother and killed himself.
"With the drum roll, the consistency of the mass murders and the shock of it, it is always something that is moving and devastating to me. And then, it's as if I move on," Smith said. "And In this moment, I can't move on. I can't move on.
"I think it's because it was children, babies," she said. "I was horrified by it."
While she's never organized a political march before, Smith said she was compelled to press for a change in the law. The march organizers support President Barack Obama's call for a ban on military-style assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines as well as for universal background checks for gun sales. They also want lawmakers to require gun safety training for all buyers of firearms.
After the Connecticut shootings, Smith posted something on Facebook and drew more support to do something. The group One Million Moms for Gun Control, the Washington National Cathedral and two other churches eventually signed on to co-sponsor the march. Organizers have raised more than $46,000 online to pay for equipment and fees to stage the rally.
Lawmakers from the District of Columbia and Maryland are scheduled to speak. Actress Kathleen Turner is expected to appear, along with Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund and Colin Goddard, a survivor from the Virginia Tech massacre.
Smith said she supports a comprehensive look at mental health and violence in video games and films. But she said the mass killings at Virginia Tech and Aurora, Colorado, and Newtown all start with guns.
"The issue is guns. The second amendment gives us the right to own guns, but it's not the right to own any gun," she said. "These are assault weapons, made for killing people."
President, in first official weekly address since inauguration, says job in second term is to broaden and strengthen middle class
President Barack Obama vowed Saturday to press on with his progressive second-term agenda in a speech that touched on the key issues he is expected to tackle in the coming year.
After winning re-election last year, Obama has struck a notably more activist tone, won several victories over Republicans and delighted liberal supporters, many of whom were disappointed after his first four years in office.
In the first official weekly address since he was inaugurated for this second term, Obama targeted immigration reform, gun control, taxes for the wealthy and cracking down on Wall Street abuses as areas of concern.
He said his job was to broaden and strengthen the American middle class. "It means reforming our immigration system, and keeping our children safe from the menace of gun violence. And it means bringing down our deficit in a balanced way by making necessary reforms and asking every American to pay their fair share," he said.
Obama is set to announce plans for immigration reforms this week and has already published a series of proposals on gun control, using public outrage in the wake of last year's elementary school shooting massacre in Newtown.
Meanwhile, the president has forced the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to vote for a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans to avert a so-called "fiscal cliff", and also got them to agree to a short-term raising of the debt ceiling.
In his weekly speech, Obama praised recent appointments to his White House team such as Mary Jo White, a former New York attorney who will head the Securities Exchange Commission, and Richard Cordray, who will remain as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. "We passed tough reforms to protect consumers and our financial system from the kind of abuse that nearly brought our economy to its knees," he said. "But it's not enough to change the law - we also need cops on the beat to enforce the law. "
Obama's more hardline stance comes as he is freed from the prospect of ever having to stand for election again. That could give the president a freer hand in pursuing a more liberal domestic agenda. But as mid-term elections start to loom in 2014, nervous Democrats in Congress may start to balk at supporting all his efforts, especially on hot button issues like gun control.
However, Obama has also been strengthened by clear splits in the Republican party, especially between some of its top political leaders, who want to moderate many of its stances, and an activist base still infused with Tea Party support. Last week Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who is seeking to emerge as a major modernising voice, warned party leaders that Republicans need "to stop being the stupid party."
Salesforce shares have been on a tear of late and touched a 52-week high of $175.74 today, closing at $173.86, up more than 47 percent from where they were trading a year ago. The proposal would boost the number of shares from 405 million now to 1.6 billion. It would also push the number of shares owned by CEO Marc Benioff, the company’s largest non-institutional shareholder, to north of 40 million shares from about 10.2 million shares now.
The thinking about the split, Salesforce says in the filing, is to keep the shares affordable for mainstream investors. At $43 and change, a share of Salesforce would be easier to justify buying than it is at $173 and change. It also makes stock options given to new hires a little more attractive, because there’s a perception that there’s a lot more room to grow. Salesforce puts it like so in the filing:
“The trading price of our common stock has risen significantly over the past several years. The Board regularly evaluates the effect of the trading price of our common stock on the liquidity and marketability of our common stock and believes the considerable price appreciation has made our common stock less affordable and, therefore, attractive to fewer investors. The Board believes that this considerable price appreciation, and the associated reduction in number of shares of stock covered by equity awards we issue to newly hired and existing employees, has reduced the perceived attractiveness of our employee equity awards.”
Twitter now holds a $9 billion valuation after investment firm BlackRock made an $80 million offer to purchase stock from early Twitter employees, the Financial Times reported on Friday. The new $9 billion number is a 10 percent valuation increase since the company last raised money in 2011, yet lower than the $10 billion and $11 billion valuations made last year after two secondary stock transactions. Twitter declined to comment on the report.
Acer has announced the launch of a new Android smartphone, the Acer Liquid E1 which will come with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and features a 4.5 inch qHD display with a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels.
The Acer Liquid E1 is powered by a dual core 1GHz processor and features 1GB of RAM, there is also 4GB of built in storage and it has dual cameras with a front facing 0.3 megapixel camera for video chat.
Today Amazon has announced that its will be acquiring Ivona, the text-to-speech specialists that currently offers offers voice and language portfolios with 44 voices in 17 languages and more in development.
Ivona has already been helping Amazon develop speech features for its Kindle Fire, including Text-to-Speech, Voice Guide and Explore by Touch, and with Amazon acquiring Ivona you can only expect development to be ramped up for Amazon’s device.
Clash of Heroes has it all: epic storytelling, a wonderful blend of style and substance, and a spectacular battle system. This strategy-puzzler is genre-defining and an absolute must-play effort from the creators of Sword & Sworcery EP.The App of the Week, Gesundheit, which is currently offered for free in the iPhone App Store, features a similar description. Some other apps, such as those found in the "New and Noteworthy" and "What's Hot" sections of the App Store also have App Store Notes, though not all of the apps in those sections have the new notes.
RebelMouse, a content aggregation and curation site that lets users set up a profile and pull in content from their social networking accounts, as well as other sources, has hired some key former employees from CNNMoney and VaynerMedia.
Since launching to the public last June, RebelMouse has had 240K sites created and is hitting 1.5 million unique monthly visitors to its landing pages. The company tells us that it has seen a big demand from publishers, and has partnered with TIME magazine for its person-of-the year campaign. Additionally, it worked with C-Span for the presidential inauguration, will power an ESPN Magazine online experience for the Super Bowl and continues to bring in movie and television properties to create their own “portals.”
To help RebelMouse build out these partnerships and plans for the future, it has hired former CNNMoney social product lead Niketa Patel as Director of Content and Stephanie Bagley from VaynerMedia as Director of Partnerships. This is an interesting hire since Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of VaynerMedia, is an investor and advisor in RebelMouse. Both will report to Sam Epstein, RebelMouse’s VIP of Platform, who previously worked at Google and HuffingtonPost. Yes, this is the beginning of a power team in content curation and distribution.
In addition to these roles, the RebelMouse development team is now at 24, and has added both iOS and Android specialists to build out its mobile offerings. I spoke with RebelMouse CEO, Paul Berry, about where the company is now and what we can expect from it in the future.
TC: What direction do you see RebelMouse heading?
Berry: RebelMouse is solving a core problem with publishing on the realtime and social web. Everyone’s efforts are fragmented working on each network, and everyone needs to bring it all together to show who they are and highlight their efforts and the best of their community. We believe enterprise and individuals are increasingly using the same tools and this is a perfect example for that. Big publishers and brands will use RebelMouse to power more and more sections of their websites. RebelMouse will stick with a freemium model where rebelmouse.com/You is always going to be free, but you can pay as you use RebelMouse to power your domain and engage with more sophisticated features. RebelMouse should be the solution everyone uses, from companies with massive revenue or traffic to small companies. We believe we can apply a network effect to the open web. This year we are focusing deeply on building more and more network dynamics and engagement into the product while helping gain significant scale with partners and directly with consumers.
TC: What is it about content aggregation that makes the space so interesting to you?
Berry: I don’t see RebelMouse as a simple aggregator. Its the combination of curation plus content creation that is so interesting. Everyone’s struggling with their blogs because of what realtime and social have done to us. Five years ago if your last blog post was three weeks ago you were totally fine with that. Today it starts to get embarrassing. So when you can have your site constantly fresh with the work you’re doing on these vital social networks then you begin to also publish more original content.
TC: How do companies like Twitter and Facebook react to what you’re doing? Basically you’re stealing some eyeballs from their destination sites.
Berry: Our mission is to prove that a Twitter user who joins RebelMouse finds Twitter more vital and essential to them than ever before. Now instead of just reaching the people who are following them at the time they tweet, they know that these interactions are populating their website, not as a widget but as a core part of the content that shows who they are and who loves them and what articles support their thesis of the world. We work very very hard to make sure we are adding value to these networks. We push follows back to the networks they came from instead of asking them to follow only on RebelMouse. We believe that as astounding as the scale and growth of these networks has been, they are still nascent and we can be a strong partner to them, helping give more ROI on efforts to engage. We were one of the first companies to move onto the new Twitter API and to officially match new display requirements. We’ll always iterate and work quickly with them as they grow.
TC: How are you working with social networks right now and how will you work with them in the future to display things in a beautiful way for your users?
Berry: We are working with each to help users get into latest best practices on engagement and display. For example because Facebook is a mix of private and public, we look carefully at the permissions of each post and only publish what is marked clearly as public and send stuff that is just for your friends to draft so you can decide to make that public or not. One of the fundamental features of RebelMouse is the ability to freeze stories into a spot, so something that is particularly meaningful to you as an individual or as a company isn’t just lost in the stream.
TC: What’s next for the product?
Berry: We’re tremendously excited about the updates we have coming. We’ve reached a critical point where instead of having aspirational hopes about how what we were building could be used, it’s being used by some of the smartest people in the world and in high-traffic, high-impact situations. So we’re iterating with them, taking their feedback and looping it back to make RebelMouse sophisticated but simple.
In particular we’re really excited about adding contributions to Rebel Nav because essentially people are able to create topic-based front pages on the fly and invite guest editors and meet new people as they organize and create content. We’re working on sponsored content solutions, turning on revenue where it makes the product durable and focusing on creating network dynamics at every level of the software.
———
We all share a lot of things, and it’s hard to put all of our favorite content into one place, displayed in a way that’s consumable by anyone who isn’t completely obsessed with the inner-workings of the Internet. At its very core, RebelMouse lets you curate your own magazine, full of photos, stories and videos that you choose to share, in the order that you’d like them shared. It’s a nice breakaway from the current model of reading a constant stream of information on Twitter or Facebook.
Think of RebelMouse as your Internet mixtape. While it’s not a completely new concept, it is very relevant in the age of people collecting items on Pinterest so it’s the right time for this product. Plus, it’s kind of fun to play with.
Research In Motion is once again the target of a rumored acquisition. Lenovo’s CFO Wang Wai Ming said in an interview with Bloomberg at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos that the Beijing company is eyeing the BlackBerry maker as a potential acquisition target or strategic alliance partner.
The news comes less than a week after RIM CEO Thorsten Heins told German newspaper Die Welt that RIM is still undergoing a strategic review, with the possibility of licensing BB 10 to other manufacturers and selling its hardware production unit. And last August, Bloomberg reported that IBM “made an informal approach” to acquire RIM’s enterprise-services unit–the heart of BlackBerry’s business–amid intensifying rumors of an acquisition.
“We are looking at all opportunities–RIM and many others,” Wong told Bloomberg. “We’ll have no hesitation if the right opportunity comes along that could benefit us and shareholders.” Wong added that Lenovo has already spoken to RIM and its bankers about various combinations and strategic ventures, though it is unclear when exactly Lenovo would put in a bid.
RIM has been looking at its options since last year, when its market share took a beating from the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy. On Lenovo’s side, a shrinking PC market has kept it from growing after it bought IBM’s PC unit in 2005.
RIM’s stock price fell to a low of $6.22 in September, but has since nearly tripled due to speculation over the results of a strategic review and buzz over RIM’s long-anticipated BB 10 phones, which will finally debut in less than a week. If the BB 10 takes off as RIM hopes, one option is to focus on licensing the OS to rivals like Samsung.
Other rumored suitors for RIM over the past two years have included Amazon back in 2011, and Samsung, which repeatedly denied rumors of a deal last year.
A takeover of RIM by a Chinese company would certainly raise security questions–especially for the company once described as a Canadian “crown jewel” by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. And back in July, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins said that the company has pulled back from expanding its China operations because of concerns over protecting its sensitive networks.
The deal could also face regulatory hurdles in the U.S., where government investigations into spyware have already created massive hurdles for two other Chinese telecommunications manufacturers, Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp. But a deal focused on just hardware instead of key IP and software might have an easier time making it past regulators.
Lenovo has been on an acquisitions kick lately as it seeks to pump new life into its business as PC sales wane. This month it completed a purchase of Brazilian computers, moible and tablets maker CCE. Its other five acquisitions in 2011 have included the purchases of Essen, Germany-based maker Medion, and the PC unit of Tokyo’s NEC Corp.
RIM has been emailed for comment.
Nokia announced their PureView 808 smartphone back in February of last year, the handset came with Symbian Belle, and it was thought to be the last Symbian smartphone from Nokia.
Nokia has now officially confirmed that the PureView 808 was indeed their last Symbian handset, you can see the statement from Nokia below.
We have been hearing a lot of information about the new Samsung Galaxy S4 over the last few days, earlier today we heard that the Galaxy S4 would feature new display technology and now we have some details on a couple of new features that may be headed to Samsung’s Galaxy S4.
Samsung has filed for two new trademarks in Europe, both trademarks are for application software for smartphones, tablets and computers, they are called Eye Scroll and Eye Pause.
“At first glance, Apple disappointed Wall Street with its fiscal first-quarter results published late Wednesday. This was the first full quarter in which the iPhone 5 was available. In particular, at 47.8 million, the number of iPhones the company sold came in at the low end of analysts’ expectations. iPad unit sales of 22.9 million were also short of some forecasts,” Rolfe Winkler reports for The Wall Street Journal. “As a result, Apple shares dived nearly 10% after the market closed, leaving the company with a market capitalization of about $437 billion. Backing out Apple’s cash pile of $137 billion, that implies a valuation of less than eight times 2013 expected earnings.”
Winkler reports, “But were the results really that bad? At 13 weeks, this year’s fiscal first quarter was a week shorter than last year’s, making comparisons difficult. IPhone unit sales were up 29% in the quarter versus the prior year’s 14-week quarter, while iPad sales were up 48%. Unit sales per day, however, showed bigger jumps: 39% for the iPhone and 60% for iPads. Overall, revenue was up 18%, but on a fairer per-day basis, it jumped 27%. Meanwhile, despite the shorter quarter, earnings per share of $13.81 were actually better than the consensus estimate of $13.48... Clearly, Apple didn’t provide the kind of blowout quarter many have grown accustomed to. But the results aren’t the total disaster implied by the market meltdown.”
Read more in the full article here.
“First, the bad news: Apple’s profits aren’t growing much. We pretty much know why. The iPad Mini accounts for about half of Apple’s iPad sales-and the Mini is a less profitable product than the Maxi,” Adam Lashinsky writes for Fortune. “The other strain on Apple’s profits is its capital expenditures, a forecasted $10 billion this year, up from $8 billion the year before.”
“[Plus], Apple’s quarter was a week shorter than in the year-earlier quarter,” Lashinsky writes. “Now for the good news: The iPad Mini’s success is a sign that no matter what CEO Tim Cook implies about not being concerned about market share-he answered a direct question on the subject by saying Apple is focused on building great products, not growing revenues-Apple is fighting to keep its share of the tablet market. He dismissed a question about Apple’s interest in producing multiple sizes of iPhones. All that means is that Apple hasn’t yet introduced multiple sizes of iPhones.”
Lashinsky writes, “If ever a company can afford to invest in its future by insuring that it brings in new customers it is Apple. It ended its quarter with $137 billion in cash. Another hopeful sign is that same capital-expenditure figure. Apple says it is spending about 10% of the $10 billion on new retail stores. The rest is for equipment. Those who question Apple’s ability to profit from its massive investments in new equipment to build category-defining products are betting against a juggernaut.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: All of that CAPEX. $9 billion for “equipment.” Is Apple’s Liquidmetal deal finally about to bear fruit?
Google announced that it has revamped its image search to be faster and more effective. The changes, which will be rolled out over the next few days, include image results displayed in an inline panel, allowing users to flip through a set of images by using their keyboard and view metadata without being redirected to a separate landing page.
Here is more information from Google’s announcement on what the upgraded image search means for webmasters:
We now display detailed information about the image (the metadata) right underneath the image in the search results, instead of redirecting users to a separate landing page.
We're featuring some key information much more prominently next to the image: the title of the page hosting the image, the domain name it comes from, and the image size.
The domain name is now clickable, and we also added a new button to visit the page the image is hosted on. This means that there are now four clickable targets to the source page instead of just two. In our tests, we've seen a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting website.
The source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view. This speeds up the experience for users, reduces the load on the source website's servers, and improves the accuracy of webmaster metrics such as pageviews. As usual, image search query data is available in Top Search Queries in Webmaster Tools.
During Apple’s Q1 2013 earnings call, CEO Tim Cook took a moment to address the rumors of iPhone component cuts which caused some consternation recently. Though he said he didn’t want to address specific rumors, he did say that basing judgements on a single data point of cut component orders would be impossible to interpret correctly anyway.
Cook said that he would ‘recommend questioning the accuracy’ of those rumors, especially given that there were so many possible interpretations.
“I'd also stress that, even if a particular data point were to be factual, it would be impossible to interpret what that data point menas to our business”, said Cook. “Our supply chain is very complex and we have multiple sources for our components. Yields can vary…supplier performance can vary. There's an inordinate list of things that would make any single data point not a great proxy for what's going on."
Reports that Apple had cut orders from one supplier for screens caused many to interpret that as a significant reduction in iPhone orders for Q2 of 2013.
Image credit: Kimihiro Hoshino / AFP / Getty Images
Polish developers Teyon Games have this week announced that their new game Heavy Fire: Shattered Spear will be launching on January 29th for Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.
The new Heavy Fire: Shattered Spear provides an on-rails shooting experience, catapulting players straight into rapid-fire action, and has been updated with a new graphics engine. Watch the trailer after the jump to see it in action.
If you are looking for the 30 pin iOS compatible microphone for use with the older generation of Apple devices, the new Rode Ixy 24-bit Stereo Microphone might be worth more investigation.
The Rode Ixy has been specifically designed for use with Apple devices with up to 24-bit/96k recording and on-board high-fidelity A/D conversion, using the Rode Rec or Rode Rec LE applications, available from the iTunes app store.
“The options market is bracing for a big move in Apple shares after it posts earnings on Wednesday amid what has been a dramatic plunge for the world’s most valuable publicly traded company,” Angela Moon and Doris Frankel report for Reuters.
“Based on options activity just hours before the announcement, due after the market close, traders were estimating about a 7 percent one-day move after the earnings, which would be a much more volatile outcome than normal for Apple,” Moon and Frankel report. “Such a move could push the shares as low as $465 or as high as $535, depending on how earnings come out.”
Moon and Frankel report, “‘Three ingredients make this earnings for Apple especially appetizing for options traders: (CEO) Tim Cook has missed earnings estimates 60 percent of the time over the past five quarters, the stock has crashed almost 30 percent since September, and no stock has as many hedge funds owning it,’ said Gareth Feighery, a founder of options education firm Markettamer.com in Philadelphia. ‘Combine those three factors together and Apple is a fireworks display ready to ignite, which makes it no surprise to see its options building in a move of close to 7 percent post-earnings.’”
Read more in the full article here.
“People who worked with Steve Jobs (I’ll call him Steve) usually don’t talk about it,” Glenn Reid writes for Inventor Labs Blog. “It’s kind of an unwritten rule, partly because he was obsessive about his privacy.”
“I think that has all changed now, but I’m not exactly sure. I am at least sure that my phone won’t ring if I say something about the experience,” Reid writes. “And I feel compelled to do just that, because there is so much written about Steve, and so few who have actually seen him work. I was one of those people.”
Reid writes, “I actually worked with the guy, and I’m realizing that perhaps I worked with him more closely than almost anyone (save Avie and the many who were in his inner circle for the whole duration of course) - because I worked on products that he cared deeply about.”
Read more in the full article here.
RIM is all set to unveil its new BlackBerry 10 devices at the end of January, hopeful that they will make a splash among consumers. Despite that focus, the company hasn’t forgotten its core enterprise roots, and it launched its new BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 (BES 10) today.
The company first released details of the new system for businesses at the end of August, promising that it will launch in the first quarter of 2013, and it has delivered on its word. RIM is coming under increasing pressure for corporate customers from Apple and Samsung — which invested in enterprise-focused Fixmo this week — and its new enterprise service consolidates all of its services for business into one place, while also allowing easier management of non-BlackBerry devices.
RIM was the main target of a Samsung ad which aired this week and poked fun at the fact that many companies are limited to using BlackBerry devices for ‘work phones’. It has set out to address that and, while it has long had technologies allowing other devices to use BES, it has made management of multi-platform devices a central part of BES 10.
With BES 10, everything from the company's mobile device management (MDM) to its security, infrastructure, and app management products come together into a "single unified web-based console."
Other key features that the company is stressing include application management for apps — both internal and public — via BlackBerry World for Work, improvements to over-the-air activation for devices and ‘enhanced’ IT policies.
BES is available on a 60-day trial without cost, while existing customer can upgrade their software through a range of packages.
RIM’s focus on content for BlackBerry 10 appears to be going well and its final Port-A-Thon to encourage developers to port iOS and Android apps to the platform saw more than 19,000 submissions last weekend. That volume has forced the Canadian firm to push back the deadlines for its developer incentive programs.
This walk-through shows the BES 10 product working, and includes it being set up with a BlackBerry 10 alpha device.
Headline image via Honou
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