Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts

9 Apps to Fast-Track Your New Years’ Resolutions






Whether your goal in 2013 is to lose five pounds, manage your finances, or spend more time with friends and family, there are a growing number of apps that fall into the self-help category and can assist you in accomplishing these resolutions.


At Mashable we’ve tested a lot of them out, but we’re still always hearing about new ones. There are a ton of fitness and health apps to chose from, but you might be pleasantly surprised to know they’re not all about weight loss. A device and app called Tinke monitors your stress levels and how deeply you’re breathing. An app called Fig will remind you to drink more water, skip fried foods and take breaks at work to keep you feeling good. Arianna Huffington also released an app called, “GPS for the Soul” that focuses on wellbeing.






[More from Mashable: Time Machine App Transports You Back to 2012]


Other apps can help you organize your social life, make new friends or save money for a vacation.


We’ve compiled a list of apps that can help you accomplish all sorts of goals this year. Check it out and let us know if we missed any that you plan on using in 2013.


[More from Mashable: It’s Easy to Save Videos From Facebook Poke Permanently]


OurGroceries


If you’re trying to eat out less and cook at home more often, make sure you always have a current grocery list at your fingertips. Mashable wrote about several grocery list apps this year. The standout seems to be OurGroceries for Android and iOS. If you have roommates or a significant other, everyone can download the app and sync lists. That way if you’re making a quick after-work trip to the grocery store you’ll not only be able to see the items you added, but also see what they’ve added, too.


Click here to view this gallery.


Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, hocus-focus


This story originally published on Mashable here.


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Ban on demanding Facebook passwords among new 2013 state laws






CHICAGO (Reuters) – Employers in California and Illinois will be prohibited from demanding access to workers’ password-protected social networking accounts and teachers in Oregon will be required to report suspected student bullies thanks to new laws taking effect in 2013.


In all, more than 400 measures were enacted at the state level during 2012 and will become law in the new year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).






Some of the statutes, which deal with everything from consumer protection to gun control and healthcare, take effect at the stroke of midnight. Others will not kick in until later in the year.


The raft of measures includes a new abortion restriction in New Hampshire, public-employee pension reform in California and Alabama, same-sex marriage in Maryland, and a requirement that private insurers in Alaska cover autism in kids and young adults, NCSL said.


In New Hampshire, a rarely used form of late-term abortion will become illegal except to save the life of the mother – and even then only if two doctors from separate hospitals certify the procedure is medically necessary.


John Lynch, the state’s outgoing Democratic governor, had vetoed the measure, saying it would threaten the lives of women in rural areas. But the state’s Republican-controlled legislature later overrode him.


In California and Illinois, laws that take effect at 12:01 a.m. local time will make it illegal for bosses to request social networking passwords or non-public online account information from their employees or job applicants.


Michigan’s Republican Governor Rick Snyder signed a similar measure into law earlier this month that took effect immediately. The Michigan law also penalizes educational institutions for dismissing or failing to admit a student who does not provide passwords and other account information used to access private internet and email accounts, including social networks like Facebook and Twitter.


But workers and job seekers in all three states will still need to be careful what they post online: Employers may continue to use publicly available social networking information. So inappropriate pictures, tweets and other social media indiscretions can still come back to haunt them.


Gun violence – in places where it’s all too common, such as Chicago, and in places where it’s unexpected, such as Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut – was big news in 2012. But only a handful of new state firearms laws are set to take effect in 2013.


In Michigan, the definition of a “pistol” under the law will now include any firearm less than 26 inches in length. The new definition encompasses some rifles with folding stocks and will make the weapons subject to the same restrictions as pistols.


In Illinois, certain guns currently regulated by state law, including paintball guns, will be excluded from the definition of a firearm and participants in military re-enactments will be exempt from some weapons laws.


Another big story in 2012 was the effort by lawmakers in a number of cash-strapped states to put their public employee pension funds on a sounder financial footing.


In California and Alabama, reforms designed to begin to address the unfunded liabilities of those retirement systems will take effect in 2013.


Among the other new laws on the books in 2013:


* In California, prison workers and peace officers will now be prohibited from having sex with inmates and prisoners in transport.


* In Illinois, sex offenders will be prohibited from distributing candy on Halloween, or playing Santa or the Easter Bunny.


* In Oregon, employers won’t be allowed to advertise a job vacancy if they won’t consider applicants who are currently out of work.


* In Kentucky, residents will be prohibited from releasing feral or wild hogs back into the wild and Illinois will ban the possession and sale of shark fins.


* And in Florida, the term “motor vehicle” will no longer apply to the specialized all-terrain vehicles with over-sized tires known as “swamp buggies” that are popular in some parts of the state.


(Reporting by James B. Kelleher; Editing by Greg McCune and Nick Zieminski)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Facebook Instagram use dived after photo fiasco: AppData






SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Facebook Inc’s Instagram lost almost a quarter of its daily users a week after it rolled out and then withdrew policy changes that incensed users who feared the photo-sharing service would use their pictures without compensation.


Instagram, which Facebook bought for $ 715 million this year, saw the number of daily active users who accessed the service via Facebook bottom out at 12.4 million as of Friday, versus a peak of 16.4 million last week, according to data compiled by online tracker AppData.






The popular app, which allows people to add filters and effects to photos and share them over the Internet or smartphones, experienced the drop over the brief, often-volatile holiday period.


Other popular apps also saw slippage in usage, and some were more pronounced. Yelp, for instance, saw daily active users — again via Facebook — slide to a weekly low of half a million on Thursday, from a high of 820,000 one week ago.


Instagram disputed the AppData survey, which was compiled from users that have linked the photo service to their own Facebook accounts, historically between 20 and 30 percent of Instagram members.


“This data is inaccurate. We continue to see strong and steady growth in both registered and active users of Instagram,” a spokeswoman said in an emailed statement on Friday.


Looking out over a broader timeframe, Instagram’s monthly active users edged up to 43.6 million as of Friday, an increase of 1.7 million over the past seven days, according to AppData.


“We’ll have to monitor the data over the coming weeks to gain perspective on trends in Instagram’s performance,” AppData marketing manager Ashley Taylor Anderson said in an email.


ATTENTION-SEEKING


The sharp slide in activity highlighted by AppData was bound to draw attention on the heels of the controversial revision to Instagram’s terms of service that, among other things, allowed an advertiser to pay Instagram “to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata)” without compensation.


The subsequent public outrage prompted an apology from Instagram founder Kevin Systrom. Last week, a California Instagram user sued the company for breach of contract and other claims, in what may have been the first civil lawsuit to stem from the controversial change.


Instagram subsequently reverted to some of its original language.


The move renewed debate about how much control over personal data users must give up to live and participate in a world steeped in social media.


Analysts say Facebook, the world’s largest social network, was laying the groundwork to begin generating advertising revenue, by giving marketers the right to display profile pictures and other personal information, such as who users follow in advertisements.


Its shares closed down 13 cents or 0.5 percent at $ 25.91 on the Nasdaq, in line with the broader market.


(Reporting By Edwin Chan; Editing by Leslie Adler and Andrew Hay)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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750,000 Android apps invade OS X thanks to BlueStacks App Player






Earlier this year, BlueStacks App Player made headlines by allowing Android apps run on Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows 8 platform. The company announced on Thursday its App Player is now available in beta form for free on Mac, giving OS X users access to 750,000 Android apps normally reserved for smartphones and tablets.


[More from BGR: Google names 12 best Android apps of 2012]






BlueStacks uses patent-pending virtualization software called “Layercake” to allow Android apps to run on other platforms. It works virtually the same as running Windows within OS X using software such as Parallels or VMWare. The Windows 8 version of BlueStacks has been out since March and has been installed on more than 5 million PCs, which is a good sign that people want to run mobile apps on their computers.


[More from BGR: Samsung looks to address its biggest weakness in 2013]


BGR tested BlueStacks on a mid-2011 MacBook Air running OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion and found performance to be hit or miss. Android apps can be searched and it will list which app stores to download them from, but sometimes apps won’t install properly because of missing code, especially from the Google Play store. Downloading apps from the Amazon (AMZN) Appstore seems to be a better bet, though. If it’s any consolation, Jetpack Joyride and Fruit Ninja are perfectly playable.


BlueStacks works as mostly advertised, but honestly, why bother running Android apps on your Mac? A mouse or trackpad isn’t a better substitute for a touchscreen. But if you must do so, it’s reassuring to know BlueStacks is available.


This article was originally published by BGR


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Find room for God in fast-paced world, pope says on Christmas eve






VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Roman Catholics into Christmas, on Monday urged people to find room for God in their fast-paced lives filled with the latest technological gadgets.


The 85-year-old pope, marking the eighth Christmas season of his pontificate, celebrated a solemn Christmas Eve mass in St Peter’s Basilica, during which he appealed for a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and an end to the civil war in Syria.






At the mass for some 10,000 people in the basilica and broadcast to millions of others on television, the pope wove his homily around the theme of God’s place in today’s modern world.


“Do we have time and space for him? Do we not actually turn away God himself? We begin to do so when we have no time for him,” said the pope, wearing gold and white vestments.


“The faster we can move, the more efficient our time-saving appliances become, the less time we have. And God? The question of God never seems urgent. Our time is already completely full,” he said.


The leader of the world’s some 1.2 billion Roman Catholics said societies had reached the point where many people’s thinking processes did not leave any room even for the existence of God.


“Even if he seems to knock at the door of our thinking, he has to be explained away. If thinking is to be taken seriously, it must be structured in such a way that the ‘God hypothesis’ becomes superfluous,” he said.


“There is no room for him. Not even in our feelings and desires is there any room for him. We want ourselves. We want what we can seize hold of, we want happiness that is within our reach, we want our plans and purposes to succeed. We are so ‘full’ of ourselves that there is no room left for God.”


PEACE CANDLE


Bells inside and outside the basilica chimed when the pope said “Glory to God in the Highest,” the words the gospels say the angels sang at the moment of Jesus’ birth.


Earlier on Monday the pope appeared at the window of his apartments in the apostolic palace and lit a peace candle, as a larger-than-life nativity scene was unveiled in St Peter’s Square below.


Reflecting on the gospel account of Jesus born in a stable because there was no room for Mary and Joseph in the inn, he said when people find no room for God in their lives, they will soon find no room for others.


“Let us ask the Lord that we may become vigilant for his presence, that we may hear how softly yet insistently he knocks at the door of our being and willing.


“Let us ask that we may make room for him within ourselves, that we may recognise him also in those through whom he speaks to us: children, the suffering, the abandoned, those who are excluded and the poor of this world,” he said.


He asked for prayers for the people who “live and suffer” in the Holy Land today.


The pope called for peace among Israelis and Palestinians and for the people of Syria, Lebanon and Iraq and prayed that “Christians in those lands where our faith was born may be able to continue living there, that Christians and Muslims may build up their countries side-by-side in God’s peace.”


The Vatican is concerned about the exodus from the Middle East of Christians, many of whom leave because they fear for their safety. Christians now comprise five percent of the population of the region, down from 20 percent a century ago.


According to some estimates, the current population of 12 million Christians in the Middle East could halve by 2020 if security and birth rates continue to decline.


At noon (1100 GMT/6 AM ET) the pope will deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing and message from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica.


(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Myra MacDonald)


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Facebook releases ‘Poke’ for the iPhone to compete with Snapchat









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TSX ends flat as RIM buckles, gold miners bounce






TORONTO (Reuters) – Canada‘s main stock index ended little changed on Friday as gold miners gained on safe-haven buying amid U.S. budget uncertainty, while BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd plunged more than 20 percent.


The index’s materials sector, which includes miners, rose 0.4 percent. Even though the price of gold was near its lowest level in four months, the gold-mining sub-sector added 0.9 percent as investors fretted over stalled U.S. budget talks that could throw Canada’s largest trading partner back into recession.






“As our tiptoes are over the (U.S.) fiscal cliff and we’re looking over the abyss, the markets are upset obviously, and this is sort of putting a damper on the stocks,” said John Ing, president of Maison Placements Canada.


“But we’ve had a mixed reaction in Canada, mainly because the resources have been much better, like gold for example, which is hedging into the uncertainty (around the budget talks),” he said, noting gold miners had been under pressure for the last two weeks.


Miner Barrick Gold Corp edged up 0.2 percent to C$ 33.29. Centerra Gold Inc jumped more than 3 percent to C$ 9.10.


Gold miners are playing catch-up after underperforming throughout the year and could rise further in 2013, said Gavin Graham, president at Graham Investment Strategy.


Shares of RIM dropped 22.2 percent to C$ 10.86 on fears that a new fee structure for its high-margin services segment could put pressure on the business that has set the company apart from its competitors.


The Toronto Stock Exchange‘s S&P/TSX composite index <.gsptse> fell 3.01 points, or 0.02 percent, to end at 12,385.70. It gained 0.7 percent for the week.</.gsptse>


Efforts to avoid the looming U.S. “fiscal cliff” were thrown into disarray on Friday with finger-pointing lawmakers fleeing Washington for Christmas vacations even as the year-end deadline for action edged ever closer.


Graham said that until a deal is reached in the U.S. budget talks, investors will avoid economically sensitive Canadian stocks and those most closely tied to the U.S. economy: auto parts manufacturers, forestry companies and resource stocks generally.


“The resource sectors in Canada, which is half of the index, is going to be adversely affected, correctly or not,” he said.


“Chinese demand is likely to pick up somewhat now with the new leadership there but people will be focused on the U.S. given that it is still by far the most important export market for Canada.”


($ 1=$ 0.99 Canadian)


(Additional reporting by Claire Sibonney, Julie Gordon and Jeffrey Hodgson; Editing by Peter Galloway)


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Video game shares down in wake of shooting






LOS ANGELES (AP) — Shares of video game makers and sellers fell Thursday in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a Connecticut elementary school, which has renewed debate about violent games and their potential influence on crime.


Shares of GameStop Corp., whose stores sell video games as well as systems like the Xbox and Wii, fell 5 percent in afternoon trading.






Investors are seen as being increasingly concerned that the government may impose tougher rules on the sales of games rated for “mature” and older audiences.


Investors may be worried that parents will also avoid buying first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2″ after the tragedy Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary, in which 20 children and six adults were shot and killed by 20-year-old Adam Lanza.


“Maybe there will be more stringent efforts to make sure youth are not playing games that they’re not old enough to play,” said Mike Hickey, an analyst with National Alliance Securities. “Maybe there will be a greater effort by parents in managing the content their kids are playing.”


Shares of companies involved in the video game industry, many of which had been dropping since the shooting, declined further Thursday.


GameStop stock lost $ 1.37, or 5 percent, to $ 26.18. Shares have barely changed since last Thursday’s close, the day before the shooting, to Wednesday’s close.


— Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc., the publisher of “Call of Duty: Black Ops 2,” fell 9 cents to $ 10.70. The stock had already dropped 5.6 percent.


Electronic Arts Inc. shares fell 41 cents, or 2.9 percent, to $ 13.99. Shares had dropped 5.6 percent.


— Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. shares slipped 29 cents, or 2.5 percent, to $ 11.69. The stock had dropped 8 percent.


The declines came as broader markets rose. The Dow Jones industrial average was up 0.3 percent at 13,295.


Gaming News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Google Music adds free iTunes-like song-matching feature









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Charlie Brown’s Christmas Reunion Will Ruin Your Childhood






We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:


RELATED: A ‘Straight’ Protest Against Chick-Fil-A; Mark Hamill’s ‘Star Wars’ Audition






Sometimes we don’t get art. Sometimes we really, really, don’t get it: 


RELATED: Proof Ceiling Cat Exists; 295 Movies Bring You ‘Baby Got Back’


RELATED: When Hot Wheels Become a Reality and the Other Pitt


We love A Charlie Brown Christmas. We love Louie. We’re not quite if we love the two mixed together, but we’ll let you know right after we tell kids that Santa doesn’t exist: 


RELATED: The Only ‘Kiss From a Rose’ Cover You’ll Ever Need


RELATED: Let’s Get Honest with ‘The Avengers’


Meet Basse Andersen of Arendal, Norway. He’s the biggest chicken/scaredy cat in the entire world. And on the bright side, he probably never has any bouts with the hiccups. 


Shifting gears from scaredy cats to actual cats, here’s the latest chapter in the eternal battle between printers and cats:


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Be Careful When Downloading Your Twitter Archive






Twitter is rolling out the long-awaited feature of downloading your entire tweet history, it seems, but be careful. You might not like what you find in there. Sometimes we remember our tweets with rose-colored lenses.


RELATED: ‘Human Virus’ Snakes Through Twitter






The Next Web was the first to notice a few users posting about being able to download their tweet history this weekend. Not everyone can do it, though. Twitter is slow-rolling the new feature, so only a limited number of people have access to the option. To check if you’re one of the lucky few, go to your settings page. At the very bottom there should be a new section with a big button offering you the chance to download your archive. Twitter will send you an email with three different compression files of your tweet history after a few minutes. You’ll decompress a .html file and be able to sort through all the dumb stuff you’ve said on Twitter by month and by year. 


RELATED: Twitter Finally Grows Up


The Verge has the best screen shots of what the process looks like. One of their readers even posted a link to his history in the comments of their post. You can check it out here if you’re interested to see what the feature is like. Just don’t judge the poor guy too harshly. 


RELATED: Sexy Piggy Banks, Analogies and Haley Barbour


We don’t have the option to download our archive yet. We checked. And, in case you think you’re clever, we checked to see if you could game the url to get your history by subbing in your username into the Verge commenter’s URL. You can’t, unfortunately. 


RELATED: Arm Wrestling, Strangers and Pricey Prophylactics


Twitter CEO Dick Costello promised the feature would be here by the end of the year, so it seems like he’s just delivering what he promised. You should get it soon, too. 


Social Media News Headlines – Yahoo! News





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Huge Wave of Google App Updates Hits iOS, Android






Google just brought iPhone and Android phone users a holiday gift. Google Maps has returned to the iPhone, this time in the form of its own separate app, while Google Currents — the company’s Flipboard-style online magazine app for Android — received a substantial update as well.


Besides the two big updates, about a half-dozen other apps for Android and Google TV received bug fixes and new features, according to Android Police blogger Ryan Whitwam. Here’s a look at what to expect, and where the rough edges still lay.






Google Maps is back


It was technically never there to begin with; the iPhone simply had a “Maps” app included, which used Google Maps’ data. But a few months ago, Apple switched from using Google’s map data to its own, which caused no end of problems as Apple’s data was incorrect much more often. These problems were sometimes hilarious, but in at least one case they were dangerous, as several motorists had to be rescued after becoming stranded inside an Australian national park (where Apple’s maps said the town they were trying to get to was).


Google Maps has also received a thumbs-down from the Victoria police in Australia, but is regarded as more reliable overall. It’s a completely new app this time, and while it has at least one “Android-ism” according to tech expert John Gruber (an Ice Cream Sandwich-style menu button), it’s reported to work well and doesn’t show ads like the YouTube app does.


It does, however, keep asking you to log in to your Google account so that it can track your location data.


Google Currents has a new look and new features


The update to digital magazine app Google Currents brings its features more in line with Google Reader, the tech giant’s online newsreader app which can monitor almost any website for updates. Like Google Reader, Currents can now “star” stories to put them in a separate list, can show which stories you’ve already read, and has a widget to put on your Android home screen. Other added features include new ways to scan editions and stories, and filter out sections you aren’t interested in.


Bugfixes and updates for other Google apps


Google Earth and Google Drive received miscellaneous bugfixes “and other improvements,” while Google Offers (a Groupon competitor) now features a “Greatly improved purchase experience.”


The Google Search app received a slew of additions to its Siri-like Google Now feature, including new cards to help while you are out and about and new voice actions (like asking it to tell you what song is playing nearby). The Field Trip augmented reality app now uses less battery life, and lets you “save cards” and favorite places you visit, as well as report incorrect data to Google. Finally, Google TV Search and PrimeTime for Google TV both received performance and stability updates.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.


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iPhone 5 hits China as Apple market share slips






SHANGHAI (Reuters) – The China release of its iPhone 5 on Friday should win Apple Inc some respite from a recent slide in its share of what is likely already the world’s biggest smartphone market, but its longer-term hopes may depend on new technology being tested by China‘s top telecoms carrier.


Cupertino, California-based Apple has been in talks about a tie-up with China Mobile for four years. A deal with China’s biggest carrier is seen as crucial to improve Apple’s distribution in a market of 290 million users – which is forecast to double this year.






China is Apple’s second-largest and fastest-growing market – it brings in around 15 percent of total revenue – but the company’s failure to strike a deal with China Mobile means it is missing out on a large number of phone users. As the China pie grows, Apple’s sales increase, but without China Mobile, it’s losing ground at a faster rate compared to other brands.


“In absolute terms, this (iPhone 5) launch will certainly result in strong sales for Apple in China. However, in relative terms, I don’t believe it will move the needle enough in market share,” said Shiv Putcha, a Mumbai-based analyst at Ovum, a global technology consultant.


China Mobile and Apple initially said they were separated only by a technical issue – as the Chinese carrier runs a different 3G network from most of the world – but that has evolved into a broader and more complex issue of revenue-sharing.


“China Mobile and Apple still have to solve many issues, such as the business model, articles of cooperation and revenue division, but I believe we will reach an agreement eventually,” China Mobile CEO Li Yue was reported by Chinese media as saying in Guangzhou last week.


Apple China declined to comment. China Mobile said it had no update to the Apple discussions.


STRONG PRE-ORDERS


Apple’s ranking in China’s smartphone market slipped to sixth in July-September, according to research firm IDC, [ID:nL4N09G1QK] but investors, primed to look to China product launches for an uptick in Apple’s quarterly sales, have good headline numbers to digest – more than 300,000 iPhones pre-ordered on one carrier alone. But it’s the lack of a deal with the No.1 carrier that prevents those numbers being stronger.


The iPhone is currently sold through Apple’s seven stores, resellers and through China Unicom and China Telecom – which together have fewer than half the mobile subscribers of bigger rival China Mobile.


“Apple’s market share declined because of the transition between the iPhone 4S and 5. Their market share will recover (with the iPhone 5), but if you don’t have China Mobile, the significant market share gains will be very difficult,” said Huang Leping, an analyst at Nomura in Hong Kong.


TD-LTE: STILL DISTANT


Cutting a deal with a Chinese state-owned carrier may be less optimal than the deals Apple is used to in other markets, and analysts note that China Mobile wouldn’t necessarily open the flood gates for Apple.


Ovum’s Putcha believes Apple and China Mobile will eventually strike a deal – though this would be for an iPhone running on China Mobile’s next-generation network rather than its current 3G network.


Of China Mobile’s 704 million subscribers, only 79 million are on its 3G network, and Apple has been reluctant to sign up to China Mobile’s under-utilized, homegrown TD-SCDMA technology. “Apple likely doesn’t see the return-on-investment in extending themselves for TD-SCDMA,” Putcha said.


China Mobile is currently trialling its next-generation network, TD-LTE, which could be of more interest to Apple, but full-scale commercial use – and an iPhone tie-up – could still be years away.


ANDROID THREAT


Meanwhile, rivals are circling, eating away at Apple’s smartphone market share. Samsung Electronics, Lenovo Group and little-known Chinese brand Coolpad held the top three slots in the third quarter, according to IDC.


All three have relationships with China Mobile and offer smartphone models at different price points. Apple competes exclusively at the high-end, and even there, rivals are rolling out models with China Mobile. Last week, Nokia said it planned to release its latest Lumia smartphone with China’s top carrier, which is also expected to launch Research in Motion’s new Blackberry 10, analysts predict.


“The threat will still come more from the Android camp where they have many vendors already working with China Mobile and offering high-end phones,” said TZ Wong, a Singapore-based IDC analyst.


While these smartphones don’t generate the buzz of a new iPhone, Chinese buyers are not known for their brand loyalty, and this could siphon away users considering an Apple upgrade.


“I’ve used a Blackberry, Android and iOS and, personally, I want to try the Windows 8,” said Andy Huang, a 37-year-old fund manager, who owns most iPad models, an iPhone 4 and a 4S. “I think the Windows 8 is very innovative.”


With a China Mobile deal looking some way off, Apple could always boost market share by offering cheaper models – the basic iPhone 5 will cost 5288 yuan ($ 850) without a contract – though this appears an unlikely route for a high-end brand.


“If they want to expand market share, probably the only way to do it here dramatically would be to put out a lower cost phone,” said Michael Clendenin, managing director at RedTech Advisors. “It’s really uncertain if they’d decide to go that route … Apple’s a mystery in that regard.”


($ 1 = 6.2518 Chinese yuan)


(Additional reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom and Jane Lee; Editing by Kazunori Takada and Ian Geoghegan)


Tech News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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‘The Hobbit’: Like One Bad Video Game






Perhaps the most exciting thing about Peter Jackson‘s landmark, blockbuster Lord of the Rings films was that they made fans, through a combination of stunning landscapes and intricate special effects and soaring music and dramatic spectacle, feel as though we were seeing an almost impossible elevation of the potential size and scope of movies. Here was a rich, dense, sprawling series of films that thundered like myths, that were breathtaking in their realization of some pretty huge ambitions. Sure, they were massive corporate projects that earned lots of people millions of dollars, but to the regular moviegoer they were feats that proved the majesty of the movies, the potential to tell enthralling stories that also played like art. And so it’s hugely disappointing, if not all that surprising, that Jackson’s first foray back into the land of Middle Earth, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is such a sullenly, basely commercial and junky affair, a movie that feels not crafted with Jackson’s seemingly divine inspiration but by the hands of studio executives. Perhaps the reason that Warner Bros. is forgoing the usual console video-game tie-ins for simple mobile games is because the damn movie already looks like a video game, and not a very fun one at that.


RELATED: ‘The Hobbit’ Trailer Needs to Get Out of the Shire






The Lord of the Rings series succeeded aesthetically because it was such an elegant, painting-like wonder to behold. The textures and palettes all had the look of a particularly vibrant illustrated story book, the kind of immersive vision that exists somewhere between imagination and the real world. For The Hobbit, though, Jackson chose to film at a high frame rate and with Real 3D technology in mind — because 3D movies are doing well these days and, hell, doesn’t hurt that the tickets cost more — but the results are frequently hideous. Those among us who have bought shiny new flatscreen TVs over the past few years are likely familiar with the dreaded “Soap Opera Effect,” which turns what should be stunning, glossy images into cheap-looking messes, all strange movement and lighting, like any network soap or cheap British show. (Think Children of Men looking like Torchwood.) It’s the problem of technology over-thinking or over-performing, and it is on startling, gruesome display in The Hobbit. When you’re wearing the 3D glasses (and admittedly sitting a little off to the side), this hugely expensive movie looks like it was shot on a nice handheld digital camera on the cheap. Actors stand in strange contrast to the digital backgrounds behind them, motion looks too slick or unnatural. Gone are the somber vistas and rugged terrain, replaced by eye-aching shine and plastic-y smoothness. The most special effects-heavy sequences look very much like the non-playable parts of modern video games — the exposition bits that can amp up the graphics a bit because they don’t have to worry about the randomness of play, the stuff you see in the commercials, right before the “rated T for teen” part. I don’t know if I just had a bad projector or what, but I spent the bulk of this long movie distracted by how dreadful everything looked. With a few small exceptions — The Shire glows with lovely green, a mountain cave fight/chase sequence is bracingly rich — this is a dismally unattractive movie, featuring too many shots that I’m sure were lovely at some point but are too often ruined and chintzified by the terrible technology monster.


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So on its aesthetic merits, The Hobbit comes up more than short. The trouble is, it’s not rescued by many narrative successes. Jackson has taken largely from the first third of J.R.R. Tolkien‘s novel — about an expedition to reclaim a lost dwarf kingdom from a dragon — but he’s also added in some elements found in appendices detailing an expanded universe that Tolkien included in an edition of The Lord of the Rings. This is partly to flesh out the story as Jackson believes Tolkien meant it to be, but it’s also meant to satisfy the needs of a supersize film trilogy based on one mere book. And so we get several pointless and uninteresting diversions, mostly about dwarves and their bitter enemies the orcs, that read exactly like the filler they are. Jackson is trying to flesh out dwarf mythology, because we spend so much of our time with these little guys, but it feels tediously synthetic, as if there are two movies competing for attention with neither one getting its due. We go to the goblin caves of The Hobbit and then, upon deliverance from that dark place, are thrust right into some kind of honor-and-revenge-based conflict with a snarling, giant, one-armed orc. It’s all very crowded and strangely hurried for a movie that, all told, takes its sweet time.


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I suspect that another of Jackson’s reasons for including all this extra dramatic battling is that, on its own, The Hobbit is something of a children’s book. We’ve got wacky, food-crazed dwarves, a mean old dragon, and a funny little guy to take us along on the journey. Jackson doesn’t deny his movie the kiddie flourishes — there’s snot humor and butt jokes and lots of other goofy stuff involving some trolls, plus two little musical numbers involving all the dwarves — but he then tries to complement them with the big, booming faith and honor stuff and it never properly congeals. One moment we’re on a sprightly children’s adventure, the next we’re talking in big fashion about all that warlike serious business. It’s a discordant mix, and I’d imagine it will leave both kids and adults out in the cold.


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The film is not without its bright spots, rare as they may be. Ian McKellen is a feisty, spirited, mysterious Gandalf as ever before, and Martin Freeman nicely and genially projects everyday hobbit-ness, even if he’s a tad underused in the film. (Yeah, in the movie called The Hobbit, there’s barely any time to focus on the darn Hobbit.) Cate Blanchett turns up once more as the ethereal elf Galadriel, lending the movie a cool classiness and a welcome dose of feminine energy. And, of course, we’re back, for one mesmerizing scene, with our beloved Gollum, so winningly and creepily played by Andy Serkis, and here yet another marvel of computer innovation. In some ways Gollum’s innate cartoonishness works better now than it did in the original trilogy, which is probably the only time that can be said of this movie. There are one or two moments in Gollum’s pivotal scene where he’s given a bit too much modern humor to play, but all told he’s the most welcome sight in the film. Maybe that’s just the newfound purist in me, yearning for the old days, but I suspect it has more to do with Gollum being the only genuinely realized character we’ve so far encountered in this new trio of films. Everyone else is a snoozy lesser version of someone else, especially the ridiculous bloodthirsty orc leader, who snarls and growls like something out of the Underworld movies. Sometimes, in the jumble of the The Hobbit‘s many cluttered and dull action scenes, the frantic blur looks like any sequence from one of those schlocky ’00s B-movies; all roughly hewn CGI clashing around nonsensically, with this orc fellow leading the charge.


RELATED: ‘The Hobbit’ Might Be Three Movies Now?


Despite all the technical advancements, if we can call them that, most moments in The Hobbit feel like Peter Jackson is sadly trying to make all those familiar LOTR elements work for him once more, without ever really being able to reignite the old flame. The supposedly awe-inducing visit to the elf city of Rivendell is a ho-hum experience in this new frame-rate-ruined world. A silly battle sequence involving a wizard, a silly Radagast the Brown, riding around pell-mell on a rabbit-drawn sled looks like an interstitial from late-era Super Mario. Even Elijah Wood, appearing briefly as Frodo, looks strange — a pale ghost of himself, as if stitched in from another movie by some forlorn and desperate hand. The film is inevitably resonant with memories of the original trilogy, and little about it can hold up to the comparison. There’s too much effort in the wrong places — action instead of story, technical tricks instead of actual design — and the constant rhythm of arbitrary event after arbitrary event becomes tiresome well before the film’s two hours and forty minutes have lurched to a halt. I’m sure there are kids who will like this wan, distracted effort — they might not yet have anything else to compare it to, depending on their age — but as a human who remembers what came before, I’m afraid The Hobbit left me nothing but frustrated, sad, and tired. Frustrated that these big-budget visionaries seem to consistently feel they have to taint their earlier masterpieces with techno-junk followups, sad that once magical lands now flicker cheap and garish in my head, and tired at the prospect of two more of these things. I exited the theater trying to remind myself that Attack of the Clones was way better than Phantom Menace and that Revenge of the Sith was better still. I then realized how depressing it was that I was making that comparison. Oh, Middle Earth. What has become of you?


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Behind the New Modern Seinfeld Twitter Account, Which Is Not About Nothing






Seinfeld has never left our pop culture lexicon. Just recently we’ve seen it referenced in the presidential race and in Game of Thrones parodies. But what would the seminal “show about nothing” be like if its characters could use cell phones or Facebook? The @SeinfeldToday Twitter account, which popped up Sunday evening, ventures to propose of-the-moment plots for a modern Seinfeld. For example:  



Kramer is under investigation for heavy torrenting. Jerry’s new girlfriend writes an extremely graphic blog. George discovers Banh Mi.






— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012


The man behind the account, BuzzFeed’s sports editor Jack Moore, started tweeting out scenarios with his friend, comedian Josh Gondelman, and then decided that the joke merited its own account. Moore is a Seinfeld fanatic himself: “I’m pretty much constantly watching episodes in the background while I’m doing anything,” he told us in an email. “I have a thumb drive with the whole series on it that I keep in my bag pretty much all the time.” 


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So far, the modern-day episode summaries ring true, despite warnings from Gawker last year that classic episodes wouldn’t have worked if the characters just had the use of newfangled technology. “It would be different but not as different as everyone acts like,” Moore wrote to us. “People always say that ‘if they had cell phones Seinfeld couldn’t exist,’ which is true for a certain type of Seinfeld episode, but not as a general rule (which I think the account shows).” 


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The account makes it obvious that Internet apps and 2012 trends would create the same awkward situations that Seinfeld thrived on. For example: 



Kramer uses grinder to meet new friends, doesn’t know it’s a gay hook-up app. Jerry refuses to admit he cried on @wtfpod.


— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012



Elaine has a bad waiter at a nice restaurant, her negative Yelp review goes viral, she gets banned. Kramer accidentally joins the Tea Party.


— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012



George thinks his GF is faking a gluten-intolerance, feeds her real cookies, sending her to the ER. Autocorrect ruins Jerry’s relationship.


— Modern Seinfeld (@SeinfeldToday) December 10, 2012


We kind of really want to see some of these made, actually. Reunion special? 


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Amazon’s Android Appstore explodes, downloads increase 500% over last year






Amazon’s (AMZN) Appstore is on fire. While the marketplace may not boost as many apps as Google’s (GOOG) Play Store, it has seen substantial growth in the past year. In fact, the company announced on Thursday that its Appstore has seen downloads increase more than 500% since last year. Amazon also revealed that the number of developers utilizing in-app purchasing doubled in the third quarter and that 23 of the top 25 grossing apps now incorporate the technology.


“Amazon offers the best end-to-end solution for app and game developers,” said Aaron Rubenson, Director of Amazon Appstore for Android. “Developers can use Amazon Web Services’ building blocks as the infrastructure for their games. To enhance customer engagement, they can add features like GameCircle’s Leaderboards, Achievements, Friends, and Whispersync. Amazon’s In-App Purchasing allows developers to generate additional income. Finally, since discovery can be a major challenge for app developers, we’re providing more and more ways to help developers reach customers on Amazon, Kindle Fire devices, and in our Appstore. We’re working hard to make lives easier for developers, and to give them more ways to grow their business.”






The success of Amazon’s Appstore is directly related to the success of its Kindle Fire line of tablets. Unlike most Android devices, the Kindle Fire does not include access to Google Play and instead must rely solely on Amazon’s offering for content and applications.


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James Cameron Relives Voyage to Ocean’s Deepest Spot












SAN FRANCISCO — The first thing James Cameron saw 7 miles below the sea was man-made: tracks from a remotely operated vehicle.


“When I got to the bottom, I saw skid marks from the ROV,” Cameron said yesterday (Dec. 4) here at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union, referring to a 2009 survey by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute. Scientific results of the film director’s expedition to the Mariana Trench were presented at the meeting this week, and Cameron and the researchers described the highlights to a packed crowd.












Cameron reported a new, corrected depth for his landing — 35,803 feet (10,912 meters) — which beats by five feet (1.5 m) the record set by U.S. Navy Lt. Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard in 1960 at the same spot. However, “because the error [calculating the depth] on Don’s dive is much greater, we’re just going to have to call it a tie,” Cameron said.


Deepsea Challenger


Cameron’s Deepsea Challenger expedition made dives to the New Britain Trench and the Mariana Trench in the southwestern Pacific Ocean between Jan. 31 and April 3, with one manned dive by Cameron to the Mariana’s Challenger Deep, the deepest spot in any ocean.


Unusual, never-before-seen species were snared and brought back to the surface. A bizarre microbial mat community was discovered living on altered rocks in the Sirena Deep, another deep pool 6.77 miles (10.9 kilometers) below the surface.


Changes in temperature and salinity starting at 26,200 feet (8 km) deep hint at an unknown current coming into the Challenger Deep, said Doug Bartlett, a microbiology professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego.


The filmmaker journeyed inside a high-tech lime-green machine — a steel sphere encased in foam — dubbed the Deepsea Challenger. The expedition traveled with two unmanned seafloor “landers” — large contraptions hoisted over the side of a ship and dropped to the seafloor. Once on the bottom, bait attached to the lander lured seafloor creatures to the craft, and a suite of instruments took samples, photographs and data. [Images: James Cameron's Historic Deep-Sea Dive]


The two contraptions working together proved to be a very good system, Cameron said. “We could rendezvous on the bottom and see the results of that bait running for six to eight hours, and that’s how Doug could find a new species of giant arthropod,” Cameron said.


Challenging journey


The March 26 dive proved to be a physical and mental challenge for Cameron. “I did yoga for six months so I could contort myself into the sphere,” he said.


As he sank through the water, Cameron said he “burned though my whole checklist,” designed to distract him during the long hours of the dive. “I still had 3,000 meters left to go with pretty much nothing left to do but sit quietly and think about the pressure building up around the hull,” he said.


The sub touched down gently, and Cameron immediately took a sample of the seafloor, as planned. This was a good contingency, because the sub’s hydraulic fluid line then burst, leaving him unable to collect more samples.


To his surprise, the sub’s voice communications worked perfectly. “We actually expected they wouldn’t, and I would have to default to texting,” he said. “Texting while driving is not a good thing, especially if you’re using two hands to operate seven joysticks and you’re 7 miles down.”


Cameron first drove the sub about 200 meters, finding the seafloor elevation stayed the same. In fact, Challenger Deep turned out to be remarkably flat, and the sub was easy to drive. “The vehicle was quite nimble, the sub’s yaw rate was very good,” he said. (Yaw describes the left-to-right rotation of a craft.)


A quick return


After about three hours, some of the submersible’s batteries had low charge readings, the steering was problematic, and it was time to return to the surface. The mission should have lasted five to six hours. “I hate this. I hated having to go back,” Cameron recalled thinking.


The trip to the top was mercifully short at 73 minutes. The submersible covered nearly 7 miles in a little over an hour — slow in a car, but like riding a missile for a human in a metal ball. Cameron said the surface trip is when he noticed the aches and pains from the cramped sub. “That’s when your butt is really sore, and when you notice how much it hurts.” [Infographic: James Cameron's Mariana Trench Dive]


The sub now sits in a barn in Santa Barbara, waiting for Cameron or another group with enough money to send it back to the deep ocean. He declined to say how much it cost to build and mount the expedition.


“I would love for the sub to dive again,” he said. “I personally feel that we just barely got started before we had to turn back and there’s just so much out there.”


“And if not, at the very least, the technical innovations can be incorporated into other vehicle platforms,” Cameron added. “As far as I’m concerned, it’s an open source situation.”


Reach Becky Oskin at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @beckyoskin. Follow OurAmazingPlanet on Twitter @OAPlanet. We’re also on Facebook and Google+.


Copyright 2012 OurAmazingPlanet, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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Microsoft #DroidRage Tweet Shows How Malware Has Moved Past Windows












“Do you have an Android malware horror story?” Microsoft asks through its @windowsphone Twitter account, in what may be one of the most ironic tweets of the year.


After all, it wasn’t that long ago that “virus” and “worm” stories made headlines on a regular basis, all of them about “computer viruses” which were really Windows viruses. Just a few years ago, Apple advertised the fact that a Mac “Doesn’t get PC viruses” as a reason to buy one.












But this year, 600,000 Macs were infected by the Flashback trojan, an epidemic which exceeded the scale of history’s single largest Windows infection. And now ​Microsoft​ is implying that its phones don’t get malware, as a way to advertise them. How did things get to be this way, and what will malware and virus authors do next?


​When virii attack


For years, Microsoft’s DOS and Windows operating systems were the biggest targets for virus and malware authors simply because they were the least secure. Today’s PC security best practices had yet to be built into them, and trying to bolt features on to ancient programming code was a half-baked solution at best. HugeWindows malware epidemics spread as the malware programs were able to install themselves without explicit permission and operate without user intervention.


​Network effects


One reason Microsoft Windows dominated the computing world for years and years was simply because it was dominant. More people using Windows meant more profits for Windows app developers, which meant more games and apps for Windows, which meant more people buying Windows PCs so they could use Windows games and apps.


Like with apps, malware is a business that makes money for the people who write it. And while it was theoretically possible to infect a computer running a more secure operating system, like OS X (used on Macs) or Ubuntu (powered by Linux), it was considered impossible to get it to spread far enough to be profitable. Whereas on Windows it was (and still is) possible to infect vast numbers of PCs, even chaining them into zombified “botnets” which act as supercomputers-for-hire.


​How the mighty have fallen?


OS X’s more secure design makes it extremely hard to infect with malware — normally. The Flashback trojan sneaked in this year using the Java web browser plugin, which is bundled with the Mac’s Safari web browser and was poorly maintained.


Plugins like Java and Flash open up new ways to infect a computer, which was one reason why Apple stopped including the Flash plugin (already absent on its iPhone and iPad) by default. Apple created a fix for the problem, but not before over half a million Macs were infected.


​What about on smartphones?


Unlike Apple and Microsoft’s app stores, the Google Play store allows anyone to submit anything with no review. It’s up to Android smartphone and tablet users to look at the “permissions” each game or app requests, as well as the reputation of their developers, and decide whether or not to install them.


While some consider this approach more “trustworthy” and respectful of users, it’s also helped lead to a comparatively enormous number of malware infections on Android, including “The Mother of All Android Malware,” which completely took over tens of thousands of phones last year.


​Are you #DroidRage-ing yet?


Microsoft’s tweet says “we may have a get-well present” for people who send it their best or worst stories of Android malware. Even if all the apps in the Windows Store are virus-free, however, there are still far fewer of them than there are for Android.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.
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32% of Young People Use Social Media in the Bathroom












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Four Things Google’s Nexus 4 Has in Common with the iPhone 4












Besides being each company’s flagship smartphone (and having the number 4 in their names), Google‘s new Nexus 4 and the 2010 iPhone 4 have a fair bit in common with each other.


This could be a good thing, if you remember just how popular the iPhone 4 was. Unfortunately, in this case it’s more of a bad thing, and hearkens back to “Antennagate” and the iPhone 4′s other problems. Do any of these features remind you of anything?












​A glass back


With the iPhone 5, Apple finally moved from a crack- and scratch-prone glass backplate to a solid, aluminum unibody construction. Google doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo that the former may have been a bad idea, however, and the Nexus 4 has a sparkly glass back surface.


While sparkly things obviously have their fans, the Nexus 4′s chassis also seems to lean towards the brittle side. Joshua Topolsky, who reviewed the Nexus 4 for The Verge, managed to crack the glass when he accidentally knocked his phone off the table. Meanwhile, Droid-Life’s Kellex found that setting the phone on a stone countertop caused its glass back to fracture in two.


​No 4G


Even Topolsky’s glowing review of the Nexus 4 said “It feels slow,” and “There’s simply no way to ignore this deficit.” That’s because, like the iPhone 4, the Nexus 4 lacks a 4G radio (even though it has the chip to support one if it had it).


The iPhone 4, however, was released in 2010, when 4G was still a new thing and the Android “superphones” which supported it had enormous screens and horrible battery life. Today, even the iPhone has 4G. Possibly because of bad blood between Google and the wireless carriers, which appear to resent Google’s selling phones unsubsidized and sans “customizations,” the Nexus 4 does not.


​Selling out fast


Every one of Apple’s iPhone models has sold out faster, and more dramatically, than the one before. Google’s Android devices, in contrast, haven’t tended to do so … although the new Nexus smartphones and tablets are starting to have this problem.


How bad is it? After Google finally got a new wave of Nexus 4s up for sale, they sold out in about a half-hour. Google claims that it hasn’t actually sold out, but even if you spotted the Nexus 4 on Google Play, chances are you ran into technical glitches which kept it out of your shopping cart. Tipster “Syko Pompos” told the Android Police blog how to get around this and place your order, but expect to wait months to receive it.


​Public relations nightmares


It hasn’t quite reached Antennagate levels yet, perhaps partly because the Nexus brand isn’t as well-known as the iPhone (the iPhone 4′s antenna problems were actually shared by many smartphones). But most of the press coverage of the Nexus 4 lately has been about how you can’t get one. Or else, how if you want one you’ll have to either buy it on contract or pay a lot more to get it unsubsidized from T-Mobile.


On the plus side (for the Nexus), this problem is only partly caused by the Google Play store’s technical errors. The biggest reason it’s taking so long to get out to people is, like with the iPhone 4, simply how popular it is.


Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.


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