Bowers & Wilkins Wireless A7 speaker system is as good as it gets when you’re looking for big sound out of a compact design. Setup is incredibly easy thanks to Airplay, which lets you connect and control content wirelessly through your iOS devices. Yes, it’s relatively expensive, but it can essentially play the role of a complete music experience on it’s own. Plus, you can buy other Bowers & Wilkins pieces — perhaps another A7 or the smaller A5 — to enjoy room-by-room control throughout the house.
… an excellent all-in-one wireless Hifi speaker system.
The A7 can fit almost anywhere, and only needs to be near an outlet to function. It’s truly compact, and initially gives the impression of small sound, too. But that couldn’t be further from the truth.
The A7 delivers quality sound, with clear and powerful bass, and articulated highs and mids. I’ve even switched over my Apple TV audio with an optical audio cable adapter, and action movies just seem that much more real. Obviously, it’s not the same as having a full-fledged surround sound home theater system, but it’s a serious upgrade from a standard setup and/or other Airplay speakers I’ve used before, like the Sonos line.
Setup is incredibly simple — just plug in the A7 and download the Bowers & Wilkins setup app on an iOS device. It’ll ask you to connect to your Wifi, give the speaker a name (like Living Room, Bedroom, or whatever), and you’re good to go. Any one of your iOS devices (iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Apple TV) can then connect directly to the speaker, wire-free.
Buy the A7 for…
…the audiophile with limited space.
Truth is, the A7 is the perfect start to a room-by-room sound system. Owners can purchase the A5 or another A7 and expand the experience to various rooms in the house. That’s a great gift for a tech-enthusiast dad, father-in-law, or brother, but a complete system would end up being quite expensive.
What impresses me most about the A7 is that a college student in an apartment or dorm room can hook up one A7 and it will upgrade their entire audio lifestyle without taking up too much real estate. It’s expandable in the future, but for now it functions perfectly as a little all-in-one wireless system.
Because…
… the A7 actually makes a difference. It’s expensive, certainly, but once you have this thing up and running you really notice how powerful this little speaker is. It often feels with audio products, ranging all the way from earbuds to high-quality systems, the quality difference is negligible. But the A7 is an easy, compact system that can truly fill every audio need. It’s well worth the price for what it offers.
This morning saw a flurry of RIM news, including the debut of a beta program among enterprise and government clients, and a firm location for the January 30 launch event in NYC. In another curious development, major Canadian mobile network operator Rogers has opened reservations for BlackBerry 10 devices, according to BGR, letting customers reserve their spots in line for a device about which we know next to nothing.
Maybe “next to nothing” is a bit of an exaggeration. After all, we’ve had plenty of looks at and access to BB10 pre-release software running on Dev Alpha hardware, and lately there has been a sharp uptick in the amount of production shipping hardware leaks, some of which appear notably staged. But effectively launching pre-orders for a device — the confirmed details of which amount to “it will have a touchscreen and use LTE” — is still a move that seems a little unusual.
Rogers promises to ship the new BlackBerry 10 device to a store of your choosing as soon as the device becomes available, the exact date of which is yet another unknown. But if you’re the type who likes to be surprised, by all means reserve this mystery box. At the very least, you’ll be helping Rogers get a better idea of how much of an early commitment it should make to RIM’s big hardware and software overhaul.
HTC is said to be dropping a planned big-screen Windows Phone 8 smartphone, which was intended to go toe-to-toe with some of the latest Android devices with large displays, including HTC’s own Droid DNA. The reason HTC scrapped the plan is reportedly a lack of high-resolution screen support in Windows Phone 8, according to Bloomberg, since Microsoft’s mobile OS only offers up to 720p resolution, while big-screen devices are mostly now using 1080p or greater.
HTC figured that big-screen output on a Windows Phone 8 device that can’t compare to Android alternatives available with similar dimensions in terms of resolution was a losing proposition, according to Bloomberg’s source. That’s likely a wise assessment of the situation, and one made with the benefit of a few months’ worth of sales data on HTC’s existing Windows Phone 8 offerings, including the 8X and the more recently launched 8S.
The Windows Phone 8S, a budget-friendly offering the company showed off on stage with Microsoft at a special WP8 keynote launch event, was already scrapped by HTC for the U.S. in a move that was explained only by way of the manufacturing saying it wanted to focus on its flagship device in that market. But the two bits of news taken together could suggest a different story, one in which HTC isn’t seeing the upside of devoting too many resources to Microsoft’s mobile platform, despite a big push by Redmond to portray HTC as a flagship smartphone partner pretty much on par with Nokia, with whom MS has a very cosy relationship.
Fortune hasn’t been especially kind to HTC recently, with projections from the company putting quarterly revenue at its lowest point since 2010. Microsoft hasn’t yet put any solid numbers on Windows Phone handset sales, noting only that it is selling them at a much faster rate than it did with Windows Phone 7 devices a year ago. It’s unclear how many of those devices are made by HTC as opposed to Microsoft’s other OEM partners, but taken together, these recent reports of HTC backing away from WP8 as a platform suggest the numbers likely aren’t that high.
Microsoft needs some room to run to get Windows Phone 8 up to speed with the major players in the market, and to do that it likewise needs manufacturing partners who also have that luxury. HTC likely isn’t the best candidate, because despite the fact that they make excellent hardware, their financial picture hardly gives them a lot of wiggle room for investing heavily in a platform that will take time coming into its own.
The not-for-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched an app store for the $25 mini computer — called the Pi Store – to “make it easier for developers of all ages to share their games, applications, tools and tutorials with the rest of the community”. The Pi mini computer was designed with the mission to get more kids learning to code.
The move was announced on the Foundation’s blog today but has been something the organisation has been planning for a while. Back in July, Raspberry Pi founder Eben Upton told Young Web Builder that the Foundation planned to launch an app store. “We're hoping at some point to offer ‘App Store-like’ functionality to allow people to make money from selling software they write,” he said in an interview.
The Foundation says it wants the Pi Store to be a one-stop-shop for development needs plus entertainment apps like games — with other categories including apps, tutorials, dev tools and media. “We hope that the Pi Store will provide young people with a way to share their creations with a wider audience, and maybe to a make a little pocket money along the way; as well as offering commercial developers an easy way to get their software seen by the Raspberry Pi community,” it writes.
The Foundation has partnered with IndieCity and Velocix to build the Pi Store. The Store offers a mix of free downloads and paid content. There’s also a tip-jar system to enable free apps to make a little money after the fact if people like what they see.
There are 24 apps available at launch — with 23 free apps and one paid app (Storm in a Teacup) costing £1.99
For all her faults, Siri is a useful companion. Sometimes. But she defaults to Apple Maps. Thankfully it’s rather simple to trick Siri into giving you directions with Google Maps instead. No jailbreak required.
As shown in the video above, instead of saying, “Take me to the nearest Best Buy,” tell Siri “Take me to the nearest Best Buy via transit.” Those two little extra words prompts Siri to open a screen which displays transit apps. Simply click the button next to Google Maps to bypass Apple Maps altogether. It’s that easy.
The Google Maps app hit the Apple App Store last week and instantly shot to the top of the charts. But best of all, Google also released an SDK for its maps, allowing developers to jump back in bed with Google and kick Apple Maps to the curb. Apps that rely heavily on maps are no doubt toiling away to re-implement Google Maps. But for now, users are going to have to utilize workarounds to use Google Maps rather than Apple’s own.
Please note that this is a post about technology, not politics.
The tech industry cheerleads the displacement and reconfiguration of huge institutions like the music industry and telecoms. The arms industry shares many of the attributes of those industries, and is poised for fundamental change that is much like the changes they have experienced. If the product of the arms industry were not arms, the inevitable upheaval would be anticipated and prophesied with glee by the usual pundits (this website included).
It’s not, because the general availability of weapons is not something we as a community can agree on as an unmitigated good. For that matter, even free speech and assembly are by no means goals universally agreed upon. But advances in technology are providing all of these things, regardless of the preferences of any one group.
If we as a country, and indeed we as a global community, are going to seriously address the question of gun control, we need to address the issue of fabricated weapons and weapon plans, or else the discussion will be moot. This is because the proliferation of 3D printed weaponry changes both the definition of “gun” and of what it means to “control” it.
Gun
What is a gun? A barrel is not a gun, nor is a stock, or a sight, or a trigger. But at some point you put these and a few other objects together and you have a gun. As it turns out, strictly speaking, the receiver is how such things end up being defined in this country, at least as a rule of thumb. Buying, selling, and creating the receiver, into which a cartridge passes from the magazine and is prepared for discharge, is buying, selling, and creating a gun.
You may have read that there is already a 3D model of an AR receiver that can be printed, combined with other parts, and turned into a working firearm. The most recent news on that front was such a gun failing after firing just six rounds, leading to no small amount of derision online regarding the possibility of printed guns.
This allows people to ignore the issue, since if they aren’t making real guns, it’s not a real problem. In fact, some reading this probably consider the issue a little silly.
This skepticism is misplaced for two reasons.
First, the problem is strictly technical, and the team that made the gun was already analyzing and correcting for the problem by the end of the day. If they had a high-quality printer, they could have the improved part overnight, which is a capability that is changing other industries as well.
Second, the problem is not a problem. They created a working firearm. In World War II, the U.S. manufactured one million FP-45 Liberator handguns. These crude, single-shot pistols were designed to be dropped from the air by the thousand over occupied territory, to give the resistance there the advantage of a firearm, be it only for one shot. The fundamental difference was not between six shots and a hundred shots, but between zero shots and any shots at all.
A 3D-printed gun, were it only to fire one shot before melting or failing, is still a gun. After that, the difference is only in what kind of gun it is.
Of course printed guns don’t and won’t constitute the major part of the ideas in such a major and divisive debate as gun control. But that does not obviate the fact that we can print guns. We can do so today, and the ability to do so is only improving. It is very important to note that one need not take a side in the debate to acknowledge this. And it is very important that we acknowledge this now, so that we are not forced to acknowledge it later, when it will be too late to take either side.
Control
If you were to attempt to write a law governing media copyright in 1998, would you attempt to do so without acknowledging the existence of the Internet and compression methods like MPEG-3? Any law crafted under such restrictions would be laughably incomplete.
Likewise, if you were to discuss a law that allows or restricts the creation and distribution of firearms, would you attempt to do so without acknowledging the existence of 3D-printed weapons and the ability to transfer blueprints for them online?
Here’s the problem, though. Like the digitization of music, the digitization of objects, guns or otherwise, is a one-way street. Every step forward is ineffaceable. Once you can make an MP3 and share it online, that’s it, there’s no going back — the industry is changed, just like that. Why should it be different when you reduce a spoon, a replacement part, a patented tool, or a gun to a compact file that can be reproduced using widely-available hardware? There’s no going back. So what is “control” now?
Will ISPs use deep packet inspection to watch for gun files being traded? Will torrent sites hosting firearm files be taken down, their server rooms raided? Will all the ineffectual tactics of digital suppression be tried again, and fail again?
Will 3D printers refuse to print parts, the way 2D ones are supposed to refuse to print bills? Will printers have to register their devices, even when those devices can print themselves? How is it proposed that control is to be established over something that can be transferred in an instant to another country, and made with devices that will soon be as common as microwaves?
Part of the discussion has to be that, government or otherwise, there can be no more control over printed guns than there can be over printed spoons. Regulation or banning of firearms, whether you think the idea is good or bad, will soon be impossible.
This isn’t “the singularity is near” wishful thinking. We can print working guns right now. They fire bullets. The guns themselves are being improved, and the tools to create them are multiplying. The scale is small, but every defining technology starts as a niche.
This also isn’t “the sky is falling” alarmism. We have had to come to grips with other transformative technologies, destructive and constructive. The telegraph, the atomic bomb, the computer. We can deal with this development, and that’s good because we are going to have to one way or the other.
Lastly, this isn’t about taking sides, politically or culturally. This is only about looking at all the facts, not just the convenient ones. And while with other industries it may be accepted, even justifiable, to simply let events play out and reap the benefits meanwhile (as with the implosion of the music publishing industry), the same cannot be said about an industry that concerns not our entertainment or our means of expression, but rather (regardless of what side you take) our safety and security.
When you fly nearly every week, you can get pretty bored on a plane. When I am sick of working, playing games, or watching movies, my latest distraction is checking out laptop screens. Sometimes I'm curious what movie you are watching but other times I am interested in what type of confidential company information you are displaying for the world to see. In the past few weeks I have seen the following types of information on my fellow flyer's screens:
End of year/end of quarter sales numbers
Disciplinary emails regarding employee peformance
Pre launch marketing information (which I presumed to be under embargo)
Competitive displacement information
Most of the time I suggest that my fellow traveler invest in a privacy screen, and most of the time they are receptive to the suggestion. It really is astounding how many people don't spend the approximate $30 on one. If your company doesn't issue them, I suggest you work to change that stance. World readable aren't the permissions you want on your laptop screen, time for chmod (UNIX joke).
Rowan Curran, Research Associate and TechnoPolitics producer, hosts this episode to ask me (your regular host) about The Pragmatic Definition Of Big Data. Listen to hear the genesis of this new definition of big data and why it is pragmatic and actionable for both business and IT professionals.
Podcast: The Pragmatic Definition Of Big Data Explained
I love the emails I get from readers of this blog. Yesterday morning, I got the following from Shane Schieffer of FitTrip and I just saw it as I was grinding through my morning backlog from the weekend.
“Hi Brad, Happy holidays. My friend and I were watching Polar Express with our kids last night, and he commented on the impossibility of skiing down the top of a train towards the engine, even on a crazy steep slope. I know you like to geek out on software and things such as figuring out the algorithms behind slip numbers, how about physics? The question was bothering me so I took a shot at it this morning. Thought I’d share the result. I bet users of your forum could top my work, or find errors, or extend it to further interesting observations. Kind of a fun holiday geeky thing to contemplate, so I thought I’d send it your way.”
This reminded me of a great story from Amy. On her very first trip to Dallas from Boston to meet my parents, she was sitting on a plane next to a guy who was doing a bunch of math sheet of paper. She asked him what he was doing. He said he was calculating how much fuel the airplane needed to get from Boston to Dallas. It turned out to be a guy named Christopher Couch, who was an undergrad at MIT that had crossed paths with me for some reason I can no longer remember. She and Chris had a great time on the plane together talking about all kinds of nerdy things. The entire memory made smile.
Oh – here’s the answer.
“Assuming just the train engine (not cars, and cargo) that the polar express was modeled after, which weighs 361,136kg and has an approximate cross sectional surface area of 10m^2, at freezing (0-deg Celsius) and 1atm of pressure (sea level) on a -128.5 gradient (what the sign said in the movie which equates to a -52 degree slope) assuming frictionless tracks, and a hill tall enough to induce free fall, where no braking nor engine acceleration is applied, and the coefficient of drag is based on a rectangular shape, the train would be traveling 1,434 mph. This is clearly much faster than the terminal velocity of a 6-foot tall man with a boy on his shoulders (say a combined 3m), standing up, weighing a combined 240lbs, with a cross sectional surface area of 2.25m^2, whose terminal velocity would only be 52.5 mph on that same slope. Of course the train itself would create a wind draft that would lessen the difference, but either way the man and boy are going off of the back end of that train. Unless the man is a spirit…”
The Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Set is a very nicely done part of the semi-new line of Moleskine Licensed products that they have been putting out lately. It is the first step beyond just a licensed journal, but instead it is a collection of journals, postcards, and stickers in a very nice box that resembles an actual Moleskine notebook. Normally I like to do reviews before I do giveaways, but I got things a little backwards this time because of the need to get things rolled out for giveaway week so we are doing the review today instead. Oh, and don’t worry, if you entered the giveaway, the winner gets a new version of this, not the one I am using for the review photographs here.
Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Set Everything
So inside of the hard cover box that looks like a typical Moleskine journal (with working elastic strap too) there are 6 ruled cashiers journals, 3 post cards, and 3 sheets of stickers. The post cards are a little smaller than your average post card and measure about 5.25″ x 3.5″ in size. As you can see in the photo above, there are three sheets of stickers, however 2 of the three are the same.
Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Set Stickers
If you click on this photo you can get a better look at the text captions in the Peanuts cartoon scenes on these stickers. The remaining stickers are composed of small Woodstocks, some dog houses, hearts, stars, and cartoon bubbles that can be written in to create your own scenes.
Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Set Stickers and Postcards
Inside the box the stickers and postcards come in a cardboard envelope that is labeled with a metallic black (makes it hard to photograph with my amateur photography skills) identification that says what else, but “Postcards and Stickers” so you know whats in there.
Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Set Stack
Under the cardboard envelope, there is a stack of 6 Moleskine cashiers journals. Three of the journals are the raw/tan color covers and black outlined versions of Peppermint Patty, Lynus, and Schroeder. The remaining 3 journals have black covers and white outlined renditions of Lucy, Charlie Brown, and of course, Snoopy. Each of the journals has a soft cardstock cover with ruled sheets. The black stripe that you see in the middle there is a pull-tab ribbon that helps to lift the contents of the package out of the box.
Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Set Back
Lastly, just a quick look at the back of the box. You cant see the elastic ribbon here because the paper label covers it up pretty nicely. Overall I think that the Moleskine Peanuts Boxed Setis a very nicely done and great looking item. Although I don’t usually recommend Moleskine products as my favorite for writing because of the paper quality, but from a design and cool factor perspective, you cant go wrong with this set.
Dont forget you still have time to sign up and win your own, along with all of the other items from Giveaway Week.
As the end of the year approaches, 2012 roundups, top 10 and top 12 lists abound and this morning Vimeo has jumped on the bandwagon, announcing their picks for the top 12 videos of 2012.
As one of the top online video communities for filmmakers, video artists, cinematographers and creatives, Vimeo's 2012 picks don't disappoint, filled with some of the most beautifully artistic videos of the year.
Official Vimeo mascot, Handstick, a stick with a plastic hand duct taped to the end, “writes” on the Vimeo blog, “We've got to hand it to these videos. Each singlehandedly captivated us with its cinematographic handiwork, candidly recorded offhand moments, and downright handsome filmmaking.”
Check out Vimeo's picks below and let us know what you think. And while you're at it, check out our post on 9 reasons why Vimeo is officially the coolest video site for creatives!
Which is your favorite video from Vimeo's top 12 of 2012?
The City of Samba
A beautiful tilt shift of the Carnaval party in Rio de Janeiro.
Moving Takahashi
Shot on 35mm, Moving Takahashi tells the story of a mover who “discovers that one of the pieces of furniture left behind for him is a suicidal daughter with 20 minutes left to live.”
Solipsist
This beautiful dance art piece is definitely one of my favorite's on Vimeo's list.
Breezeblocks
This thrilling music video takes place entirely in reverse.
Holi
Presented in slow motion, the filmmaker's intent with this video of the Hindu festival of colors was “to help viewers further appreciate and take notice in the beauty in life and culture that lies within our world.” It truly is beautiful.
The Eagleman Stag
Mikey Please created this short as his graduation piece at London's Royal College of Art. He's in the running for an Oscar.
Quik
Quik, shot on the streets of Los Angeles, gives viewers a look into the world of street skating.
Always A Fire
This short documentary tells the story of former New York Giant Chad Jones.
Everything is Incredible
Everything is Incredible tells the story of Agustin, a Honduran man severely disabled by polio, who has been building a homemade helicopter.
As I Am
As I Am documents the thoughts and observations of Chris Dean, a young man who received national attention after introducing President Barack Obama at his high school graduation.
Le Taxidermiste
This 3D animation tells the story of an old woman wanting to pay respects to her late husband in a house filled with taxidermied animals.
Tame Impala – Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
This music video for the band Tame Impala is created from over 1000 hand-made plasticine collages.
Megan O'Neill is the resident web video expert here at Social Times. Megan covers everything from the latest viral videos to online video news and tips, and has a passion for bizarre, original and revolutionary content and ideas.
Click here to receive the Morning Social Media Newsfeed via email.
Thousands Share Alleged Conn. School Shooter's Facebook Profile — but it May Not be Him (AllFacebook) Not long after the name of the shooter who killed nearly 30 people — including 20 children — was released following a tragedy Friday morning at a Connecticut elementary school, many people rushed to Facebook to find the social media profile of Ryan Lanza. The Facebook profile of a Ryan Lanza from Newtown, Conn., was posted all over the Internet, with roughly 9,000 people sharing his profile photo. However, reports have shown that it does not appear to be the same person. San Francisco Chronicle The killer, who committed suicide at the scene, was a 20-year-old named Adam Lanza. This was his brother – who had apparently been at work when the violence occurred. “F*** you CNN it wasn’t me,” he wrote on Facebook, later posting, “I’m on the bus home now it wasn’t me” and “IT WASN’T ME I WAS AT WORK IT WASN’T ME.” AllTwitter Some folks on Twitter targeted a person with the same name as the killer’s brother, Ryan Lanza. This individual's tweets give a depressed/loner vibe. But it isn't him, folks. NBC News He’s not the first to face this surreal experience unique to the Internet age. There’s very little that’s fresh about this cyber-flash mob against the wrongly accused, only of late we’ve mostly seen simpler cases of social-network mistaken identity. NPR Even as authorities struggle to gather real clues, they’re warning that those promoting misinformation about the case are subject to prosecution. “Misinformation is being posted on social media sites,” Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance said at a news conference Sunday. “These issues are crimes. They will be investigated, statewide and federally, and prosecution will take place when people perpetrating this information are identified.” CBS News In addition to people pretending to be the shooter or other principals in the investigation, Vance said other posters are putting up information purported to be from the Newtown city police or the Connecticut state police. Neither of those agencies are posting information via Twitter or other social media, he said. FishbowlLA An innumerable number of entertainment reporting routines seemed utterly pointless Friday in light of the devastating news, including the well-worn practice of compiling celebrity Twitter reactions. The first wave of such coverage relating to the mass shooting appeared on PMC website hollywoodlife.com and media watchdog gossipcop.com.
Google Launches Bundle of Features for Google+ Mobile Apps (SocialTimes) Google has launched 24 new features for its Google+ mobile apps, focused on events, photos and Hangouts. The features include beefed up events-organizing tools, tweaks to the social network's popular Hangouts feature and a suite of changes aimed at improving photo quality. Wired All of these new additions are now available for iOS, Android and Web users. On top of that, Google has redesigned its social network's iPhone app, too. PC Magazine Additional features include: basic profile-editing, integration with Google Now to send birthday wishes to friends, support for animated GIFs, functionality to express your mood via animated images in posts. Looking to ditch Facebook, now may be a good time, especially if you’re a heavy mobile user.
Social Media Stock Tracker: Facebook, Google, Yelp on the Rebound (SocialTimes) The social media sector was up an average of 4 percent last week as it rebounded from the previous week's negative performance. There were no real fundamental drivers to value that stand out, but it is notable that continued downward pressure on AAPL shares (perhaps unfounded) did not drag the sector down.
Pinterest Accounts for 10 Percent of Social E-commerce Visits [Infographic] (SocialTimes) Holiday shopping traffic from Pinterest doubled this year and now accounts for nearly 10 percent of all traffic from social sources, according to an analysis by digital marketing firm RichRelevance. Facebook still dominates social e-commerce referrals, but its share dropped 5 percent to reach 90 percent.
The Social Profiles of Inc. 500 CEOs vs. Fortune 500 CEOs [Infographic] (SocialTimes) This infographic explores the social lives of nationally ranked businesses' chief executives — and by social, we mean how willing they are to participate on social media sites. It turns out that Inc. 500 leaders are the most social of the two groups: 79 percent of Inc. 500 CEOs have a social presence on at least one network, whereas only 30 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs have a social media presence at all.
Two Major Facebook Social Reader Apps Shutting Down (SocialTimes) The Washington Post and The Guardian, a reputable United Kingdom paper, have said they will pull their social reader apps from Facebook. The Post is in the process of replacing its reader in Facebook with an independent website that supports social sharing through a Facebook login. Beginning next week, links to Guardian articles shared on Facebook will begin directing directly to the Guardian's own website, the company said.
YouTube Tops Apple's 2012 Top Free iPhone Apps Chart (SocialTimes) As the end of the year approaches, Apple has released its AppStore Best of 2012, a list of the year's top sellers, notable trends and editors' picks. On the paid front, Angry Birds Space took the No. 1 spot for the best-selling iPhone and iPad app of 2012. Skype topped the charts on the free iPad apps chart, but on iPhone the most downloaded free app was Google's YouTube app.
Computing Legend Ray Kurzweil to Join Google (SocialTimes) Ray Kurzweil will join Google on Monday as director of engineering. While perhaps best known for his book “The Singularity Is Near,” he pioneered print-to-speech reading for the blind, the text-to-speech synthesizers and large-vocabulary speech recognition software.
NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel has gone missing in Syria, according to Turkish news reports. The reports also say that Aziz Akyavaş, a Turkish journalist working with Engel, is unaccounted for. NBC News has been successfully keeping Engel's status subject to a news blackout—one to which Gawker agreed until now—for at least the past 24 hours. More »
Twitter has started rolling out an archive function that lets you download all your old tweets in an easily searchable format. It looks like this, and should be available to everyone soon. Luckily, it appears this is not a publicly-accessible archive, only something for you to download in order to reminisce privately over the stupid shit you said three years ago, while weeping alone in your bedroom because you're sad that you have nothing better to do. More »
McDonald's, a machine for turning cow fat into money, is really into America, Christmas, Kwanzaa, holidays, whatever the fuck, assuming those holidays are celebrated at a McDonald's restaurant, or sitting in a parked car in a McDonald's parking lot, forcing down McDonald's food as tears stream down your face. All you have to do is to look at McDonald's advertisements to realize that McDonald's has the utmost respect for family, togetherness, happiness, America, freedom, blah blah buy some french fries. McDonald's would open a location at your mother's funeral if it thought it could sell one additional Filet-O-Fish. More »
A pastor who provided grief counseling to the mother of a Sandy Hook victim revealed yesterday how the woman's six-year-old daughter managed to survive the massacre that claimed the lives of her entire first grade class. More »
The White House didn't release any photos of President Obama meeting last night with some families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Shooting — but the families themselves did, and they're heartbreaking. On the left, the President with members of the family of Emilie Parker, who was six; on the right, Obama with the granddaughter of Sandy Hook principal (and hero) Dawn Hochsprung. More »
Active duty U.S. Marine Corps captain Matthew Phelps made history over the weekend by proposing to his partner Ben Schock inside the White House. More »
In the immediate aftermath of a horrific tragedy, it is inevitable that some number of politicians will expose themselves as fools. The Sandy Hook Elementary shooting is no exception. Here, we nominate Oregon State Rep. Dennis Richardson as a strong candidate for "Most Inappropriate Reaction." More »
After prominent Westboro Baptist Church member/professional troll/mother of illegitimate son Shirley Phelps-Roper announced her group's intention to picket Sandy Hook Elementary School "to sing praise to God for the glory of his work in executing his judgment," the wrath came quickly. More »
Wall Street Journal social media director Liz Heron notes that the life cycle of viral content is composed of two phases: "Uncritical mass sharing" followed by "semi-informed backlash." More »
Impossible as it might seem in the aftermath of Friday's horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary, the tragedy could've been worse. According to new reports, shooter Adam Lanza didn't shoot himself until after first responders arrived on the scene. Police found "hundreds of rounds" of ammo on Lanza's body, enough to have inflicted even more damage. More »
The Financial Timesreported this week that the world's richest artist is ending his partnership with one of the world's richest galleries. As with all Rich People Scandals, it's got everything your heart could desire: mass butterfly graves, lawsuits from British celebrities and Floridian nonagenarian, and snide NYT profiles about Hirst's diminishing value. Here's a look at the "divorce that has rocked the art world" by the numbers. More »
It is around this time of year that Victoria's Secret reveals its Christmas commercial, and while it cannot compare to the campy glory of other, vaguely incestuous holiday ads, it still merits careful analysis. More »
On Friday morning, while the horror at at Sandy Hook elementary was unfolding, Von I. Meyer, a 60-year-old man in Cedar Lake, Indiana, was arrested after he threatened to set his wife on fire and enter a nearby elementary school to "kill as many people as he could." After searching Meyer's home, police found 47 weapons and a stockpile of ammunition worth over $100,000. More »
The Times has sent critic Dwight Garner on a literary tour of New York in order to answer novelist Gary Shteyngart's immortal question, Can New Yorkers still throw a good party with only a bottle of shampoo? The answer appears to be "maybe," if you are in Brooklyn and allowed to smoke and are also in a coffee shop. More »
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Selling through distributors and resellers has a major issue as the interested parties will visit the website of the manufacturer while searching for information to solve their problem but then they will not or only briefly visit the website of their local reseller. Hence the potential customers are on the website of the manufacturer but the reseller don’t get any chance to contact these leads. Moreover only the really interested parties will contact the reseller or the manufacturer by email or web-form.
In order to increase the number of leads for the resellers the sole solution is to have the companies visiting the website of the manufacturer revealed and identified their interest in products with their level of interest. This will allow qualifying the visiting companies as leads which can be passed on to the appropriate reseller by geography or specialization. Hence your resellers will be able to contact these qualified leads in order to increase the funnel which eventually results in more sales deals closed. As during the purchase process the potential customers will revisit the manufacturers’ website the resellers can be kept up-to-date about these visits as an indication of interest level.
Todd Zywicki / Online Library of Law and Liberty: Regulatory Decadence and Dodd-Frank — Enacted swiftly in the wake of the financial crisis, the 2,319 pages of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform legislation contain a thicket of rules overhauling the entire American financial system, creating a bevy of new regulatory entities.
Politico: POLITICO ebook: Plenty of 2012 pitfalls for Obama and Romney — President Barack Obama's stunningly bad performance at the first debate was no surprise to his closest advisers — Obama had stormed out of a debate prep session just days before the disaster in Denver.
John Hinderaker / Power Line: Prosperity: US Drops Out of Top Ten — Via InstaPundit, we learn that for the first time, the United States does not rank as one of the world's ten most prosperous nations, as rated by London's Legatum Institute. The authors of the report found that the U.S.'s slippage is being driven by …
Kevin Robillard / Politico: Pro-gun Sen. Joe Manchin: Time to act — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — who has an “A” rating from the NRA and is a lifetime member of the pro-gun rights group — said Monday that it was time to “move beyond rhetoric” on gun control. — “I just came with my family from deer hunting,” Manchin said on MSNBC's “Morning Joe.”
Conor Friedersdorf / The Atlantic Online: The Conceit That America Hasn't Had a Conversation About Guns — Current policy isn't an N.R.A. conspiracy. Americans became increasingly pro-gun, even as debate on the subject raged. — Reuters — All words offered in the aftermath of the Newtown, Connecticut shooting are inadequate …
Paul Krugman / New York Times: That Terrible Trillion — As you might imagine, I find myself in a lot of discussions about U.S. fiscal policy, and the budget deficit in particular. And there's one thing I can count on in these discussions: At some point someone will announce, in dire tones, that we have a ONE TRILLION DOLLAR deficit.
David E. Sanger / New York Times: Obama Expected to Name Kerry as Secretary of State — WASHINGTON — President Obama is leaning strongly toward naming John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator and unsuccessful Democratic nominee for president eight years ago, to succeed Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state …
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Does professionalism stimulate or stifle creativity?
When research is essential for your creative work, how do you avoid it becoming an excuse for procrastination?
What does it mean to ‘turn pro’ as a creator, and what difference does it make?
How bad do things have to get before we finally turn pro?
These are some of the questions I put to Steven Pressfield in this wide-ranging interview about the relationship between creativity and professionalism.
As the author of many best-selling historical novels, Steve knows all about the benefits and pitfalls of research for a writer, and he explains how he resolves this dilemma in his own writing process.
He also shares insights and stories from his latest book Turning Pro, about some of the biggest challenges we all face when we set out on a creative path. (And he keeps me on my toes as an interviewer by getting me to answer my own question at one point.)
You can listen to the interview via the audio player, or right-click on the link beneath to download the mp3. (If you’re reading via email you may need to click through to the original.)
And if you’re a creative entrepreneur of any description, you should check out the videos Steve recorded with his business partner Shawn Coyne, about Building a Long Tail Business to support your creative ambitions.
Based on their experience of launching Black Irish Books, the videos are full of useful lessons from two seasoned and successful creative pros.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
John McAfee's whereabouts are unknown and he's taken himself off of the media radar for now, citing the school shooting in Newton, Conn. After leaving Guatemala and landing in Miami last week, someone writing in the third person about the Silicon Valley software guru-turned-Belizean-fugitive posted on his blog that, "John is traveling without much internet access at the moment, and will be posting an update sometime tomorrow. More soon!" Then Monday morning, McAfee apologized for his uncharacteristic silence. "I apologies (sic) for my recent absence and lack of updates," he wrote on his blog, www.whoismcafee.com. "Due to the terrible events at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton Conn, I have decided to take a few days absence from public life. I will resume with my blog activities in a few days. Do your best to forget the name of the shooter, and remember the innocent victims of this terrible act." McAfee then listed the names of the victims.
Fast food delivery is not something new, and has been around for quite some time already, ensuring that gamers who are glued to the front of their TVs will be able to receive the right kind of sustenance, while they continue on their quest to complete whatever game that has gotten them engrossed until now. Well, most of the food that is delivered to the doorstep is done on a two wheeler simply because it is far easier to get around town on a motorbike compared to a car. Of course, if you were to fly, things would be far easier, wouldn't it? This is where the Burrito Bomber comes in, where a flying drone gets the job done instead.
The Burrito Bomber is made possible thanks to a team of designers over at Darwin Aerospace, where this particular UAV has been specially outfitted with a release mechanism and autopilot controls, allowing it to take food orders as well as air drop them at a person’s location in a matter of minutes. Needless to say, you will need to factor in the amount of time required to prepare the food that has been ordered as well.
The UAV of choice would be the Skywalker X-8 FPV/UAV Flying Wing (how apt for the name, does it require one to have a certain amount of midi-chlorians to work it?) for its frame, while the group built a delivery mechanism out of a Quantum RTR Bomb System that has a canister built from a 3-inch diameter mailing tube, in addition to some custom 3D printed parts. All navigation will be handled by an ArduPilot control system, where the developers had already pre-programmed waypoints for the drone to follow on autopilot, or for more fun (and perhaps an increase in the percentage of accidents), one can manually control the aircraft thanks to the video feed from a built-in camera. Definitely a big boy’s toy, this.
Back in the days when the SNES and Sega Genesis were duking it out on the home video game console front, there were some other side players that you might be able to recall if you think hard enough. How about Atari's Jaguar, Panasonic's 3DO and the Neogeo to boot? Well, you can more or less say that Atari has long since quit the hardware business and focused just on video games alone, but the same cannot be said of Neogeo. Well, this time round we have the Neogeo X Gold limited edition that is set to be delivered to the mass market later this week.
Tommo, Inc. has partnered with SNK PLAYMORE, and hence decided to announce the Neogeo X Gold Limited Edition entertainment system that will be made available via select online retailers across North America and Europe later this week. In order to help celebrate the release of the Neogeo X Gold limited edition as well as the 20th anniversary of the Neogeo console, Tommo has come up with an epic trailer in order to support the launch of the highly anticipated system while rousing up public interest.
The Neogeo X Gold limited edition is basically a two-in-one system which will not only function as a handheld game console, but it also works equally well as a home arcade entertainment system, where it will be accompanied by the Neogeo X Arcade Stick and the Neogeo X Station, where the latter is a replica of the Neogeo AES console which paved the way for memorable Neogeo titles to be enjoyed on a big screen format – never mind if it is over a monitor or via HDMI or composite cable.
The Neogeo X Gold Limited Edition will comprise of a 4.3″ LCD display, stereo speakers, 16:9 and 4:3 display options, and it comes pre-loaded with 20 classic Neogeo AES games. Any takers? [ Neogeo X Gold limited edition to roll out this week copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Do you love all things Star Wars? I think that it can be more or less agreed by the masses that having something that has been miniaturized or shrunken down from its original size will always look a whole lot cuter? I guess the same can be said for the $99.95 Mini Talking Chewie, where this diminutive sized Chewbacca will blurt out in an authentic Wookiee voice whenever you give him a nice, big hug. Of course, one ought to remember that the original Chewie in the movies stood at a rather massive 7 1/2' in height, but this plush doll will be able to remain close to you when you sleep at night, making him the perfect thing to cuddle up to during those cold and lonely nights.
Each time you squeeze Chewie’s tummy, he will be able to express his appreciation in his native Shyriiwook language, which will comprise of growls and roars. Unlike Yoda, we are unable to know what he is saying, but one thing's for sure – he sure as heck hates losing, whether over a game of chess or otherwise. Powered by one button battery, this is too cute to just buy without leaving it sitting at the corner of the bed.
There are times in life when you just need a calculator to help sort out the collection of figures that are sitting right in front of you, and those moments come when you realize that your mental faculties are not exactly in the pink of health. Well, forget about whipping out your smartphone every time, as you can never quite tell how sometimes when you are working on some numbers and figures, and you are carrying out a conversation, right? This ought to be where something that is highly affordable like the $5.99 Solar Cassette Wallet Calculator would come in handy.
This is definitely a blast from the past, considering how that was when the cassette tape was in vogue, and CDs were considered to be a luxury. The Solar Cassette Wallet Calculator will share a similar shape and dimensions as that of a credit card, meaning you can easily slip this into your wallet if you want to. Sporting an 8-digit display (meaning you can't figure out the billions of dollars that you have with this), the Solar Cassette Wallet Calculator is flat, extremely light, and ought to be able to work just about anywhere, unless there is a nuclear fallout and the sun is blocked due to all the ash in the sky.
Some of you may have heard of the WakaWaka Light, a Kickstarter success from 2011 made by Off-Grid Solutions. This solar powered, LED lamp gives a night of light after 8 hours of sun. The key is their power management which ensures it is more efficient than other products on the market. If you don't believe it read their reviews. In raising funds the makers also donated 800 units to school children in Kenya as a more logical and safe replacement for kerosene lamps.
Off-Grid is back with a next logical step – WakaWaka Power. In the first few days on Kickstarter they have almost doubled their target amount. I think they have a loyal following! WakaWaka Power will provide the same harnessing of the sun but also include a USB port. Charge your phone, tablet or other device. Monitor your charge level via LED indicators so you know if you need to get into the sun. A light will also be included for reading or whatever use you choose. Power units are available for as little as $69 by pledging to their campaign. The cool part is, continuing their socially conscious ways Off-Grid will donate a WakaWaka Light for every Power unit sold/committed to on their fundraising drive. Units will be sent to families in Haiti, still struggling after the 2010 earthquake. Not up for buying solar power? You can still donate to the WakaWaka Foundation and send a lamp to someone in a UNHCR refugee camp. And if you want to make a difference while also using the green power of the sun to charge and light your life check out WakaWaka Power.
Tis the season to take a ton of pictures. Whether a Christmas card photo, office party candid shots or memories of the kids opening gifts, odds are you are taking plenty pictures in the next weeks.
What on Earth works to get a small child's attention when trying to snap a photo? If there are two of you trying then perhaps one can offer the crazy hand motions and noises to grab their attention. But taking a picture while solo often sacrifices the quality of the image simply so you can throw your hand in the air to make the little one look. Try the Look Lock® System next time. This articulated arm easily attaches via cold shoe mount to any DSLR. The universal phone mount at the end grips your smart phone. Then just pull up content that will keep the child looking and you'll have your photo before you know it. Look Lock has other uses too. How about teleprompting during a video shoot? Or maybe you want a monitor to see photos as they are taken. Simply bend the unit in the direction you want to see your phone. Look Lock's come in 7" and 11" versions, at $45 and $50 respectively. Both are available at TetherTools website. Whether you are an amateur or a pro, a tool like the Look Lock provides one more way to perfect pics. [ Look Over Here Please copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Two years ago this week, I started working at 37signals. I couldn’t make a web app to find my way out of a paper bag.
When I started working here, my technical skills were in tools like Excel, R, and Matlab, and I could muddle my way through SQL queries. I had the basic technical skills that are needed to do analytics for a company like 37signals: just enough to acquire, clean, and analyze data from a variety of common sources. At the time I started here, I knew what Ruby and Rails were, but had absolutely no experience with them – I couldn’t tell Ruby from Python or Fortran. I’d never heard of git, Capistrano, Redis, or Chef, and even once I figured out what they were I didn’t think I’d ever use them – those were the tools of “makers”, and I wasn’t a maker, I was an analyst.
I was wrong.
Six or seven weeks after I started, I made my first git commit: “Add Clicky tracking to Basecamp marketing site”. All I’d done was figure out how to clone the marketing site repository, search for the existing Google Analytics snippet, and copy-paste the Clicky tracking snippet. In March or April of last year I built my first “web app” for 37signals. It was a single page dashboard on our support caseload, and since I didn’t know any Ruby or Rails, I did it with R. When one of our system administrators mentioned that he had some ideas for integrating various third party data sources into a single dashboard, we started working on a Rails dashboard that we use to this day. Twenty months and more than 3,000 commits later, more than half of the company accesses “dash” every day and it has its own iOS app. I’ve written client and server-side instrumentation frameworks, released an open source timeseries data storage system, and deployed a Hadoop cluster with Chef. By no means am I an especially good developer: my code isn’t always idiomatic, and I still get someone to review anything of substance in our customer facing applications. Still, I’m able to do things I never would have dreamed of when I left management consulting just over two years ago.
No romance here
I learned to work with these “maker” tools, but not because I had the intrinsic, almost romantic, desire to create things that drives many people. Rather, two more pedestrian concerns led me down this path:
It was faster. I work with some great developers, but they’re busy – we have millions of users to support and new products and features constantly under development. Rather than waiting for a developer to have time to help me, I could just do it myself. Business intelligence is about much more than statistics or machine learning – there’s a full “stack” involved from data acquisition to storage to reporting to testing. If I couldn’t do that, someone else would have to, and being part of a small company places a constraint on how much can be devoted to things that aren’t directly customer facing.
Creation is the language that’s spoken most at 37signals, and people here engage with something that you’ve made differently than something that you’ve written or presented. Before I could actually make things, I felt like an outsider – who was I to provide advice to these people who actually made things? I suspect every former consultant experiences this “outsider” feeling at some point; for me, learning to make things was the critical step to feeling like I was really a part of 37signals.
It all starts with a step
I didn’t learn to make things because someone told me to or it was a job requirement. I could have done a credible job of what I was hired to do without ever delving into reporting or instrumentation myself, but I decided that I could do a better job and help the company more by learning to do some new things that I’d never imagined doing. Learning to make things doesn’t have to be a big or intimidating undertaking – it all starts with a step. In my case that first step was adding something I copy and pasted from a vendor’s website. What will your first step be?
Benckiser agreed on Monday to buy the Caribou Coffee Company for about $340 million, only five months ago after announcing a nearly $1 billion deal for Peet's Coffee & Tea.
Instagram's founders had talks with top Twitter executives as late as March, verbally agreeing to a price for the photo-sharing service, according to a New York Times report. | The American International Group is preparing to end its longtime association with the Asian insurer AIA Group. | Argentina is still fighting over defaulted bonds, but it's at least getting a naval ship back. | Sidney Gilman, the Alzheimer's researcher at the center of an insider trading case, lived a double life.
Sun Life Financial, Canada's third-largest life insurance company, announced a deal to sell its annuity and some life insurance businesses in the United States to a company whose owners include Guggenheim Partners.
The American insurance giant said it has started a process to sell potentially all of its shares in the Hong Kong-listed A.I.A. Group -- a 13.7 percent stake worth $6.7 billion.
Federal regulators said that Aletheia Research and Management steered profits to some clients, and to the firm's co-founder, Peter J. Eichler Jr., at the expense of others.
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Let's hope so. The brand is positing that solution in the ad above in which the dessert serves as a sacrifice to please the gods.
The brand will bolster the campaign's short run (the end of the world is slated for Friday, Dec. 21) with a Twitter-based contest. The brand is asking fans to tweet about the one thing they'd do before the world ends with the hashtag #funpocalypse. Jell-O will award $100 a day to 12 people a day between now and Dec. 20 to the fans with the best tweets.
Meanwhile, Jell-O plans to introduce a sequel to the ad above on Dec. 22. The brand hasn't revealed the premise.
Has @Horse_ebooks become self-aware? And has it started self-promoting?
Some background: It is thought that @Horse_ebooks, the funny Twitter robot that chops and screws snippets of text from ebooks and marketing pitches, then regurgitates them into surreal found poetry on Twitter, is entirely automated, and that its aleatory tweets are the happy by-product of a misguided and nonsensical attempt to market ebooks.
Instagram has updated its privacy policy to reflect that the company was acquired by Facebook.
In the preface to the changes, Instagram is quick to point out two important details -- users still choose who can see their Instagram photos, and they still get to choose whether they post photos on Facebook.
That said, the new policy introduces the notion of "affiliates" (not present in the old privacy policy), which, we presume, primarily means "Facebook".
From the new policy:
"We may share User Content and your information (including but not limited to, information from cookies, log files, device identifiers, location data, and usage data) with businesses that are legally part of… Continue reading...
Beef up your Blu-ray collection, get that video game you've been putting off or go on an all-out electronics spree with free shipping mainstay Best Buy. Image courtesy of PCWorld
If you still haven't found that perfect gift, take note: The final shopping holiday of the season is upon us.
Now in its fifth year, Free Shipping Day gives you the chance to browse thousands of online retailers offering free shipping on unique deals, all guaranteed to arrive by Dec. 24.
"Back when [Free Shipping Day] started, we noticed that online shopping dropped off come Dec. 12 or 13," founder Luke Knowles tells Mashable. "We figured that people were just heading to the malls, and we thought, 'That's not good for online shopping.'"
Facebook is preparing to release its own version of Snapchat, the photo and messaging app whose contents expire within 10 seconds, according to a report.
The company plans to release the app "in the coming weeks," according to AllThingsD. Reps from Facebook could not be reached for comment.
Snapchat has been one of the runaway success stories of 2012. Launched in September 2011, the app has been used for more than a billion total "snaps," the company's founder, Evan Spiegel, told Mashable in October. Spiegel also said at the time that the app receive 20 million snaps a day.
The popularity makes Facebook's interest in creating a homegrown version plausible. Facebook, under pressure… Continue reading...
HTC has given up on producing a large-screen Windows Phone-based smartphone, Bloomberg reports citing a source familiar with the project.
The reasoning behind this decision lies in Windows Phone 8's maximum allowed screen resolution: 1280x720 pixels. HTC reportedly thinks that this is too low for a smartphone with a screen size larger than 5 inches, as competing Android models have a much larger resolution.
For comparison, HTC-made Verizon Droid DNA (also known as HTC J Butterfly) has a 5-inch screen with a 1920×1080 pixel resolution.
Another reason for the decision could be HTC's dwindling market share. According to comScore's latest report, the company's smartphone market shar… Continue reading...
Nokia has started rolling out its Windows Phone 7.8 software to some Nokia 800s, WP7.nl reports.
Microsoft's not-quite-WP8 update for devices which launched with Windows Phone 7 will also be coming to Nokia Lumia 510 and 900, but Lumia 800 seems to be first to take the plunge.
After the update, Lumia 800 owners can expect a number of upgrades, including resizable Live Tiles, more theme and accent colors, and a Bing-adorned lock screen.
It's been nearly two months since The Atlantic Media Company launched Quartz, a digital-only news publication for business readers, and traffic is growing at a steady clip. The news site pulled in 840,000 unique visitors in October and 860,000 visitors in November, per numbers provided by a Quartz spokesperson via Omniture.
Quartz, like The Economist and the Financial Times, covers global economic news through a macro lens. Its tone, however, is less formal and more conversational than your average business publication -- it's more "webby," you might say. With an editorial staff of 25, its coverage abilities are somewhat limited in scope, and so Quartz opts to go deep on a few key topics,… Continue reading...
Apple has sold more than 2 million units of the iPhone 5 in China, setting a new record for best first-weekend sales in the country.
The Cupertino, Calif. company made the announcement Monday, just three days after the iPhone's Chinese launch on Dec. 14.
"Customer response to iPhone 5 in China has been incredible," Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a statement. "China is a very important market for us and customers there cannot wait to get their hands on Apple products."
The news is a turnaround for Apple, which saw its stock drop 4% in early trading on Friday, falling to as low as $509 a share over concerns about low demand for the iPhone 5 in China. Locals responded to the smartphone wi… Continue reading...
This video is great for young children. Former elementary school teacher Cherie Donohue gives a quick lesson on making handprint reindeer Christmas cards and tissue paper wreaths.
It's December, which means colder weather. Plus, the holidays are just around the bend. If the kids are getting restless, cooped up inside all day, or if you're just looking for a fun family activity, a holiday-themed arts and crafts project is a great way to spend an afternoon or evening.
If crafting sounds up your alley, but you're lacking inspiration, you might find that these eight YouTube videos will spur your creativity.
Scroll through gallery above for fun lessons explaining how to create various crafts. The projects range in difficulty from cute handprint reindeer cards to beautiful luminaries for your front yard; there's so… Continue reading...
While many Americans gathered around their televisions to watch U.S. President Barack Obama pay tribute to the victims of the Newtown shooting, others complained on Twitter about missing Sunday Night Football.
Several users of the microblogging service published offensive tweets that condemned Obama's speech for interrupting a game between the San Francisco 49ers and the New England Patriots Sunday night. The president made remarks at a vigil for the victims of the Friday shooting at a Newtown, Conn. school.
The profanity-laced tweets included racial epithets directed against Obama, as well as demands for the return of the football game, which aired on NBC.
Today's PCs and smartphones can do a lot -- from telling you the weather in Zimbabwe in milliseconds, to buying your morning coffee. But ask them to show you what a piece of fabric feels like, or to detect the odor of a great-smelling soup, and they're lost.
That will change in the next five years, says IBM. Computers at that time will be much more aware of the world around them, and be able to understand it. The company's annual "5 in 5" list, in which IBM predicts the five trends in computing that will arrive in five years' time, reads exactly like a list of the five human senses -- predicting computers with sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch.
Apollo 11 left a lot of crap at Tranquility Base, both figurative and literal. Among the things untouched since 1969: a U.S. flag, a pair of tongs, two empty food bags, a gold olive branch, two defecation collectors and four urine collectors. In fact, there's concern among World Heritage advocates that these droppings may be disturbed when space is commercialized. So if you take a moon tour in 2050, try not to step in anything, mmk? Image via NASA.
U.S. President Barack Obama expressed his sadness in a speech at Sunday night's vigil for the victims of the tragic school shooting in Newtown, Conn.
During the nearly 20-minute long address, Obama commended the six adults who died in Friday's shooting for their heroism.
"Dawn Hochsprung, Mary Sherlach, Vicki Soto, Lauren Rousseau, Rachel Davino and Anne Marie Murphy. They responded as we all hope we might respond in such terrifying circumstances: with courage and with love, giving their lives to protect the children in their care."
The president also stated the names of the 20 young victims, aged 6 and 7.
Christmas trees are a huge temptation for cats. All those lights, twinkly decorations and dangly baubles can be too tantalizing for even the best behaved pusses.
We scoured YouTube for video footage of cats versus trees, and found 10 funny clips for your festive amusement.
Take a look through our cute collection of contrary kitties and Christmas trees in the video gallery, above. Let us know in the comments below if your cat has attacked your holiday decor.
There's some brouhaha brewing over whether or not actor Samuel L. Jackson said "Fuuuuuh" or actually uttered the f-bomb on Saturday Night Live's most recent episode.
SNL cast member Kenan Thompson looked shocked after Jackson said his line and joked on camera, "That costs money," referring to Federal Communications Commission fines for profanity. Some say they also heard Jackson say "bullshit" during that same sketch.
Since Jackson allegedly said the word at around 12:35 a.m. ET, it's possible the FCC fines won't be as high. The commission's website notes that profane speech is banned between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m.
Apple has announced its list of the best Mac apps of 2012.
Taking top honors is Day One, a $9.99 journaling app for iPad and iPhone that lets users write about their daily thoughts and memories. Entries into the journal are saved to iCloud or Dropbox, so they are synced across all devices.
CameraBag 2 was this year's runner up in the Mac App Store. The $14.99 photo editing app has 100 built-in styles and filters that can be used to edit photos, as well as more than 25 manual photographic tools to make any picture look its best.
Check out the gallery, above, for a look at the full list of Apple's favorite Mac apps this year.
Imagine Amazon is a brick and mortar store, with a sprawling parking lot and front doors that slide open as you approach. As you step inside, what do you see?
The number of products available on Amazon could fill 1,290 Wal-Mart Supercenters. If you've ever gotten lost in one of those shopping megaplexes, then this kind of scale should make your brain hurt.
Luckily, this infographic, courtesy of 500friends, can help put it all in perspective. Check it out and thank the Internet gods that you will never get lost in an Amazon Supercenter.
Cats, Felix Baumgartner, Psy and more cats -- this week's most popular and iconic videos feature everything from the inspiring to the adorable to the hilarious.
Google compiled a Year In Review video posted on December 12. The nearly three-minute clip starts with Baumgartner's jump from 24 miles above the earth and progresses into clips of other history-making moments this year: Oscar Pistorius' competing in the Olympics as the first athlete to have carbon-fiber artificial legs; clips from this year's presidential debates; images from the Arab Spring and the protests in Greece, plus some adorable animal videos that kept us entertained.
UPDATE: This article has been updated to reflect the different petitions that aim to classify the Westboro Baptist Church as a hate group.
Hacktivist group Anonymous published the personal information of members of the Westboro Baptist Church after the group announced on Saturday it would picket Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut where 26 children and adults were killed.
Anonymous published private email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses of various members, and teased the group about the hack on Twitter. Anonymous also posted a video condemning the group for "breeding hatred" and adding, "We will destroy you. We are coming."
Strum instantly turns your 15-second video clips into rock-and-roll masterpieces. The new video app comes with built-in filters, and when you add them to your video, they'll transform it into anything from a rap song to a love ballad.
Soundtracks are customized for your particular video, so even if you use the same filter on two different videos the results will likely be much different. The app has more than 20 different filters, including several themed filters for the holidays.
It can be tough to keep up with all the new apps released every week. But you're in luck -- we take care of that for you, creating a roundup each weekend of our favorite new and updated apps.
This week we found an app that lets you create a movie video on your phone or tablet in just a few seconds, and a popular service for watching videos made its way to even more devices.
An app that lets you hail a cab directly from your smartphone rebranded itself this week, adding some new features in the process; and a popular mapping app finally made its way back to the iPhone.
Check out the gallery above for a look at this week's app highlights.
A petition asking the White House to immediately press Congress for tighter restrictions on gun ownership became the most popular ever posted to the White House "We the People" website after less than 48 hours online Sunday.
The petition was filed in the hours following an elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., on Friday that left 27 people dead, including 20 children. More than 120,000 people had signed the petition as of 1 p.m. Sunday.
Petitions posted to We the People that receive more than 25,000 signatures are guaranteed a response from the Obama administration. President Obama has pledged to take some action to respond to the shooting but has not yet offered specifics.… Continue reading...
Ages 4-up Overall rating: 4.1 out of 5 stars Why we like it: PHLIP is a spatial relations puzzle where you "flip" or turn your screen left or right, like a steering wheel, to change the orientation of the set of tiles, in order to reassemble the picture. You can use photos you take, or choose one from your photo library. Need to know: The more tiles, the harder the puzzle. You can lock any tile by tapping on it. The physical rotation of the device develops motor and cognitive skills and hand-eye coordination. It can also cause your heavy iPad to slip out of your hands. This is a game that works much better on an iPad Mini. Ease of use: 8/10 Educational: 9/10 Entertaining: 7/10 $0.99
Chris Crowell is a veteran kindergarten teacher and contributing editor to Children's Technology Review, a web-based archive of articles and reviews on apps, technology toys and video games. Download a free issue of CTR here.
In this week's Top 5 Kids Apps, your kids can play with a spatial puzzle that lets them reassemble photographs they upload themselves. There's also a chance to learn and have fun with geography trivia and explore Australia with an illustrated story.
Vectorbeam displays--think Asteroids and Tempest--drew perfect lines from point to point. As a result, these games never looked right when emulated on low-res raster displays. With the latest high-DPI gadgets, however, the pixels are so small that the vectorbeam effect may be convincingly mimicked. Here's Kyle Orland on Vectrex Regeneration, a new app that goes to astonishing lengths to get the illusion just right:
Creating an authentic experience also means replicating some of the Vectrex's less desirable features. Because the Vectrex's oscillating electron beam can only be in one place at one time, there's a noticeable flicker as you watch the system actually draw each frame of the scene at a rate slightly slower than the human eye can process. This flickering is a key component of the authentic Vectrex experience for fans of the original system, but it might be frustrating (not to mention seizure-inducing) to a modern audience without the benefit of nostalgia.
A new rev of the Great Firewall of China seeks out VPN connections (including, I assume, connections over The Onion Router) and terminates them. Only companies who register official VPNs with the Chinese government will be able to run them without interference. Registration is only available to Chinese companies, and I'll bet it involves escrowing your keys with the Chinese net-cops so they can spy on it.
Users in China suspected in May 2011 that the government there was trying to disrupt VPN use, and now VPN providers have begun to notice the effects.
Astrill, a VPN provider for users inside and outside China, has emailed its users to warn them that the "Great Firewall" system is blocking at least four of the common protocols used by VPNs, which means that they don't function. "This GFW update makes a lot of harm to business in China," the email says. "We believe [the] China censorship minister is a smart man … and this blockage will be removed and things will go back to normal."
But the company added that trying to stay ahead of the censors is a "cat-and-mouse game" – although it is working on a new system that it hopes will let it stay ahead of the detection system.
Computer generated images have a certain aesthetics to them that make them immediately recognizable as such by the trained eye. Weird Faces Study is an attempt to combine my old interest in illustration with programing, to create something procedural that has a truly individual artistic touch to it and is not instantly recognizable as a generative art piece. Even though, the faces look hand-drawn, they are entirely expressed by algorithmic rules. Each face is random, each face is unique. Still, they look similar to my actual hand drawn faces.
Some people using the Anonymous banner have declared religious war on the Westboro Baptist Church, the real-life "God hates fags" trolls who have announced their intention to picket the funerals of the children shot in Sandy Hook. In addition to publishing a list of purported home addresses and phone numbers of alleged Westboro members, the Anons have released a videos that sets out chapter-and-verse citations of Biblical injunctions that Westboro is said to have violated, and promises to punish all of them.
In response to the WBC's plans early today, Anonymous tweeted, "It's so nice of #WBC to provide the internet with a list of their twitter handles..." Roughly one hour later, they revealed their plans for the WBC: "#WBC GodHatesFags Site Admin gets #DOX'd via: Anonymous." DOX, of course, refers to the work Anonymous did to find and publish a list of WBC members complete with e-mails, phone numbers, and even home addresses—all for the adoring public to access.
An op-ed by Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and John Perry Barlow, on the launch of The Freedom of the Press Foundation, an organization I'm proud to also serve as a board member.
We believe that not only does WikiLeaks need to survive, it must be joined by an array of others like it, edited transparency media that have so far failed to emerge, self-censoring victims of the chilling effects of the WikiLeaks blockade. Moreover, the watchdogs that do exist struggle for backers as brave as they are. The old media fear the fears of their advertisers. The new ones often depend on a few large foundations or donors, who, being from the elite themselves, may hesitate to part its curtains.
The answer, we believe, is to crowd-fund transparency, making it easy and relatively anonymous for the public to support the best watchdogs in one place, setting up a kind of United Way for the Truth.
NPR's Morning Edition reports that a federal court in Texas will today take up the case of a 15yo high-school student from an evangelical Christian family who refuses to wear her RFID-enabled, location-tracking school ID. Andrea Hernandez believes her ID is "the mark of the beast" from the Bible's Book of Revelation.
* Regulating using a gun * Regulating carrying a gun * Regulating owning a gun * Regulating parts of guns * Regulating tools that can be used to make guns * Regulating the information necessary to make guns * Regulating the information necessary to make tools that can be used to make guns
I'm proud to serve as a board member for the newly-launched Freedom of the Press Foundation, dedicated to helping promote and fund aggressive, public-interest journalism focused on exposing mismanagement, corruption, and law-breaking in government. The project accepts tax-deductible donations to an array of journalism organizations dedicated to government transparency and accountability. The board includes Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow, actor and activist John Cusack, and other journalists and activists with whom I'm honored to serve.
Or as I like to call it, Cape Fuckthiswearegoinghome.
Sadly, Antarctica's Cape Goodenough (pictured here on National Geographic's Political Map of the World) was not named by a less-then-intrepid band of explorers who decided that seeing the coastline of Antarctica was plenty of adventure for them, thankyouverymuch.
Instead, it's named for William Goodenough, admiral in the British Royal Navy. Yes. Admiral Goodenough. I'm sure the troops were enthused.
But wait, there's more. In the 1930s and 1940s, the admiral was apparently involved in the creation of comfortable, dormitory-style housing for international post-graduate students in London. Today, the buildings are known as ... Goodenough College.
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Gift wrapping is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. I love creating beautiful packages. Yes, they totally get torn apart, but it is so fun to receive a thoughtfully wrapped gift complete with a lovely bow and gift tag. It is so easy to make your own gift tags, and they are so much cuter than the sticky ones you can buy at the store.
Supplies Needed:
Old Christmas Cards
Brown Cardstock Rectangles {I found 25 for $2 at Hobby Lobby.}
Scissors
Hole Punch
Glue or Hot Glue Gun
Trim, Ribbon, Baker’s Twine
Directions:
Cut old Christmas cards in various shapes. Using the brown cardstock as a base, decorate each one with trim, ribbon and card pieces. I prefer using hot glue because it’s fast and easy, but if you prefer another glue, that works too.
Cut two angles on one end of each cardstock rectangle to give it a “tag-like” appearance.
Punch a hole through each tag. Thread baker’s twine or ribbon through the hole and attach to a pretty package.
Your friends and family are sure to be impressed with these adorable diy gift tags!
Related Projects:
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Join us as we celebrate 101 Days of Christmas with new DIY projects, gift ideas, traditions and more every day from now through Christmas!
Myra has a B.A. in Interior Design and is currently self-employed. When she’s not spending time with her little man, thrifting, creating, shopping or working on a project, Myra enjoys date nights with her husband and blogging at My Blessed Life.
Every Christmas Eve, my friend Chrissy lets her kids sleep by the Christmas tree. When I asked her how she does presents from Santa and stocking, she said she simply waits until they’re asleep and then hides the presents from Santa under the tree so the kids wake up to them in the morning, a tradition I love!
I love that idea in theory, but our main area is all hustle and bustle after the girls go to bed on Christmas Eve — assembling their “big” shared gift, preparing breakfast casseroles, laughing and chatting with my parents and my sister (and this year my grandmother too!). I can’t imagine trying to get them to sleep in the midst of that chaos.
Since Christmas Eve isn’t realistic for us, we decided to sleep by the tree as part of our 12 Days of Christmas. First, we stayed up late watching Polar Express, and then the girls all snuggled down in their beds, with Christmas music playing in the background, to go to sleep.
I think this will definitely be a new tradition for us!
Join us as we celebrate 101 Days of Christmas with new DIY projects, gift ideas, traditions and more every day from now through Christmas!
Mandi Ehman is the founder and publisher behind Life Your Way and the co-author of All in Good Time, as well as a wife and the homeschooling mom to four beautiful girls. She lives with her family on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia and loves coffee, chocolate, easy meals, beautiful things and minimalist spaces.
File hosting services like Dropbox and Google Drive have made it easy for anyone to distribute files through Shared Folders. You can upload a file to your shared folder and that file is instantly available to all other people with whom you have shared that folder. In the case of Google Drive, you can even create “public” shared folders where your files can be viewed by anyone on the web. →
The problem is how do you keep people in the loop when you add new files to a shared folders. Also, the less tech-savvy crowd may still prefer to receive these shared files as email attachments instead of using Dropbox or Google Drive.
iBeam.it, a new web service from Wappolf, is trying to solve this problem in an interesting way. Here you can put your files on Google Drive or Dropbox as before and the files are instantly “beamed” to other users who are watching your shared folder.
To get started, you just have to connect any of your Dropbox or Google Drive folder with iBeam.it (it uses OAuth). The folder get a unique URL that others can use to follow your folder (see this sample folder).
The “followers” are unaware of the service that you are using to host your files and they may choose to “receive” them inside Google Drive, Dropbox, Evernote, SkyDrive, Box and other popular services. Alternatively, they may choose to follow your Shared Folder through email and in that case, they will get your files as email attachments.
The service is free though you are only allowed to beam files up to 25 MB in size. Most email programs won’t handle attachments that large anyway. Also, sharing is one way – if you delete a file from the shared folder, it won’t be deleted from the folders of other users.
Similar things can possibly be done through IFTTT but iBeam.it is super-easy and doesn’t even require you to create an account.
Like many of you reading this, I am horrified by the events which unfolded at Sandy Hook and as a parent—especially affected by the thought of parents who will be grieving during a season when they should be celebrated. The tragedy is incomprehensible on so many levels and it makes my heart heavy. But I am also more than a parent and as a professional who spends so much of my time working with companies who are grappling with new dynamics in marketing, communications and doing business in a real time connected environment, I can't help but think about how much this creates the need for organizations (and people) to be sensitive (and responsible) especially during times like this. If we are really moving toward a "content economy" as I've recently outlined, and all brands and organizations can now directly manage their own media—then they are going to have to do it responsibly. Here are five suggestions for managing branded content during sensitive times.
1. Call a Meeting Between Staff & Partners
Most organizations now have staffers such as community/social media managers and agency partners who are running their social and owned properties (Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress etc.). When a sensitive story breaks which dominates the news cycle or at minimum their industry—they must themselves act like a news organization and huddle together the teams responsible for putting out content. Call an "all hands" meeting to discuss impact of story and devise a real time strategy for immediate steps moving forward.
2. Determine Appropriateness of a Response
Once a sensitive situation is in play, your organization is now faced with a question: do you stay silent or speak out? I recently advised an organization on this telling them that it's always best to "do the right thing" however, if they acknowledge what's going on (in this case with Sandy Hook) they had to be prepared to steward any conversation good or bad that came along with it. When determining if it makes sense to make a statement during a sensitive situation, it's best to do the right thing but be prepared for what may follow. If you're not prepared, then your organization has a bigger issue.
3. Temporarily Disable Automated Posts
Auto posts (scheduling content and posting later) are now a reality for how brands communicate at scale and the technique isn't going away any time soon. However during a sensitive situation there is no way to better damage your brand's equity and reputation than allowing auto posts to continue as if nothing is happening. There's a simple solution: direct your content team to temporarily disable them until further notice. It's ok to take a break and back to point no. 2, it's the right thing to do.
4. Review Content Calendar
Many brands and businesses now run content calendars to help them plan in advance for posts, marketing, communications etc. If your organization does this—check your content calendar to see if there are any scheduled communications that could come off as tone deaf or inappropriate due to the situation at hand. Reschedule evergreen content for another time and remove "at risk" content. In short, proactively manage your calendar or it will manage you.
4. Edit/Remove/Reschedule Sensitive Content
No matter how vigilant you try to be, there will always be situations where a communication is already out in public for whatever reason, maybe the publisher wasn't aware of the news. This is where the public can be your best ally, by alerting you to the issue and as long as you are listening, you'll have the opportunity to correct the mistake. Do it transparently and over-communicate over-communicate. If you end up deleting an offending piece of content which was not intended to offend—be sure to explain the steps you are taking.
One could question the timing of this post and my intentions. As I've stated, I'm both a parent and a professional, and while I have trouble wrapping my mind around recent events, I feel called to share whatever I can to get us all thinking about how we can manage direct communication channels responsibly. Brands are now built in real time and they can be unbuilt just as quickly.
MOBE stands for My Online Business Empire. It is the brainchild of my friend Matt Lloyd. Matt showed me MOBE during the ThinkTank 2012 mastermind in San Diego, and I was so impressed with Matt and his system, I became a MOBE Licensee. A MOBE license gives you the right to resell MOBE products and earn up to 90% commission on them. This is unheard of in the industry.
I made over $20,000 in my first month as a MOBE Licensee. One of the great things about the system is I don’t have to do any selling. I just drove the leads and the MOBE sales team followed up to closed the deal. Just for driving leads, I get up to 90% of the money!
I’m not the only one who’s raking in the money with MOBE. You can check out more case studies here. Many of the case studies are not super affiliates, but are just normal everyday people that you’ll be able to relate with.
For new or experienced Internet marketers looking for a turnkey solution to make money online, MOBE is a great system. With MOBE, you don’t have to worry about the product or sales funnel creation. It’s all done for you. And when you’re getting 90% commission, why would you want to spend the thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) it takes to create a new product? MOBE has over a dozen products, ranging in price from free to $15,000, that you can make money on. You don’t just get paid on the front end sales either. You get paid on all the backend sales as well. This is very important because the backend is where the big money is made.
To find out more about being a MOBE Licensee, scroll to the bottom of the case studies page and click the link. If you become a licensee, we can party it up at the upcoming MOBE mastermind retreat in Fiji. I’m really looking forward to that!
It’s the time of year when holiday music is playing in most places, and winter scenes are prominent in advertising and on the web. Some websites will even change or tweak their designs to have a winter or Christmas theme. Winter photographs can play a significant role in providing inspiration for your own winter designs, and with that in mind we decided to compile this collection of beautiful photos.
In this post you’ll find 25 outstanding examples of winter photography. The photos come from various photographers, and if you’re interested in seeing larger versions of the photos or more work from the photographers, click on the photos or the credit links and you will be led to the source. Hopefully these photos can provide some inspiration that can be used in your own work this winter.
Digital Marketing & Advertising Showcase 2013 will showcasing the digital marketing and advertising products, tools, and technologies. Exhibitors will be able to promote their products and technologies. It provides networking opportunities between the exhibitors and the visitors.
Ever since iOS 6 released, the biggest complaint is about the Maps app. Apple decided to dump Google Maps and replaced with its own app. The result? It’s so terrible that even Apple CEO, Tim Cook, apologized about it. Guess what, Google Maps is back now!
Google Maps for iPhone is now available on Apple Apps Store and 29 languages, including Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese and Spanish.
Screenshot: Google Maps for iPhone
Google Maps app now has a sharper looking, vector-based map and provides smooth tilting and rotating of 2D and 3D views. Depends on your the availability in your country, Google Maps for iPhone provides voiced-guided turn-by-turn navigation, public transit directions, live traffic information, Street View, and more.
It’s great, isn’t it? The bad news is.. Google Maps for iPhone only available in 30+ countries, excluding Malaysia (my country). You would need to create a US iTunes account in order to install Google Maps on your iPhone before it becomes officially available in your country.
Padfone 2 install super IPS + display 4.7-inch LCD that will be paired with a station being sailed a 10.1 inch tablet. The screen resolution is 720 X 1280 pixels using a scratch-resistant corning glass give details sharp images, accurate color, and ultra-wide viewing angle. Of the body, significantly reducing the thickness Padfone asus 2. Only about 649 grams, the combined weight of the Padfone 2 stations so it looks lighter in the appeal of most tablets on the market. Equipped quadcore processor 1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 with 2 GB of RAM ensures exceptional performance in smartphones and tablets.
In sector image, 13 MP camera capable of capturing highly detailed images without shuttler. Simultaneously record 1080p HD video at 30 fps, 720p HD video tau at 60 fps. Affairs of quality music, Padfone asus 2 in support SonicMaster technology and audio tunning with the waves. With capacities up to 64 GB and 50 GB ASUS WebStorage service is complimentary for two years, Padfone 2 offers limitless possibilities for storing data.
Along with support for mobile data speeds up to 42 Mbps DC-HSPA + and LTE deliver 100 Mbps of action browsing super fast download. Tablet became available for some areas at the end of December, including Japan, Singapore, Taiwan hongkong.
The next product was VivoTab Asus RT, one of the first devices running Windows RT, the tablet version of Windows 8. Previous blessing line transformer, asus quite successful at tablet android. Indeed vivoTab is the next generation of transformers. The tablet runs on the same hardware and a limited version of windows 8 windows called RT. Will be compared with the mechanical keyboard and additional features such as USB 2.0 ports and built-in battery.
Looks more like a laptop, Asus Vivo Tab T has aspects and features like a tablet. This device runs on ARM processors and adopts quad-core 1.3 GHz Nvidia Tegra 3 is supported by 2 GB RAM or memory or choice of 32 GB or 64 GB. 10.1-inch screen has a resolution of 1366 X 768 pixels looks pretty good.
With Super IPS + LCD screen for more captivating color combinations. The tablet has a camera with 8 MP main camera LED flash and 2 MP front camera for video calls and skype. As the windows 8 RT, some of which include mail applications, music, video, internet explorer 10, maps, store windows, and xbox live games.
Noticing vendor innovations to transform into a tablet-style laptop windows 8 is indeed quite interesting. Similarly, by Lenovo thinkpad ultra twist 5230u his book. You simply rotate the display through the hinge in the middle of this ultrabook. So this laptop pin turns into a tablet. Single hinge connecting the screen and the keyboard is quite interesting. Because though only a tiny player, but it turned out to be elastic hinge.
Making the rounds on the screen can be made up to 360 degrees. Intelcore i7 processor powered by the third generation, the thinkpad twist comes with 128 GB of SSD storage. This hybrid device also has 8GB of RAM provide the RAM. However, this specification may change, Lenovo provides several options for combinations of specifications, which would have implications on the price. This twist comes Thinkpad 12.5-inch screen IPS technology 1366 X 768 resolution. The device also comes with support for Intel HD 4000 graphics and dual USB 3.0 ports. Provided also Bluetooth 4.0 with front camera 720p. Windows version is windows 8pro planted, which would have a capacity of windows 8 full.
Lg optimus l9 whiz it big screen and a quick translation Continuing the family optimus L series, LG launched the LG Optimus L9 which is the highest series. Android phones are still relying on the wide screen as an attraction.
Some additional features are introduced to users LG, such Qtranslator, my style keypad function, and Qmemo, Qtranslator, point the camera at the word / phrase is still in the translated application. This application is not equipped with handwriting recognition. So, do not try to translate from handwriting. Typically, one of the things that interfere when using widescreen phones are difficult to type with one hand. To overcome this, LG offer my style keypad function.
This function will allow you to type a hand on the big screen LG L9. When the virtual keyboard appears, a broom or a keyboard to the left or to right to put it. Thus, you can easily typing with one hand. In landscape mode, you can do a sweep zoom out, to divide the keyboard into two parts.
Perhaps among you there are those who use mobile phones nokia symbian operating system. Although after his aging, according to independent research institute Gartner, Symbian toothed. Sales of mobile phones with the operating system made by Nokia turns Symbian third quarter of 2012 Gartner revealed that the operating system made by nokia symbian phone sales that went beyond armed Microsoft windows phone OS. Data third quarter of 2012 Gartner reveals that the mobile operating system world.
This figure is 0.2% higher than the mastery of windows phone. Meanwhile, the mobile operating system Symbian is old it was (still is) controlled 2.6% of the world mobile market. This figure is 0.2% higher than the mastery of windows phone. Meanwhile, the operating system released by Samsung controlled entities 3% market share, or sit in fourth position. These numbers indicate more sixth that carried by the Microsoft windows phone. According to Gartner nokia mobile operating system that is outdated it was nearing the end of the age cycle. Do not believe? Look at how third taken thrusting RIM blackberry.
Among all the mobile operating system available today, Android is the dominant. Seource open operating system sits firmly at the top of the stairs Gartner list with 72.4% holding the world mobile market. iOS from apple ranks next, with 13.9% market share. However, the acquisition will increase Gartner apple predicted the fourth quarter of 2012 with the launch of iPhone 5.
The most popular names in the field of smartphones is Samsung, the producer from south korea’s got a market share of 23%. The second position is occupied by Nokia which controls 19.2% market share. Apple sits at number three with 5.5% market pngsa. ZTE, Huawei LG nd respectively in third, fourth and fifth in the list of Gartner. Meanwhile, HTC is no position to -10, behind RIM and Motorola.
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Yesterday is a canceled check, tomorrow is a promissory note, and today is the only cash you have, so spend it wisely.
One of the secrets of getting to where you want to go in life is making a simple TO DO list every day, keeping it visible, and using it as a guide to action as you go through your day.
So here's one you can use today and every day going forward:
Give yourself some "me time." – Yes, you had battles to fight, insecurities to overcome, loved ones to contend with, and goals to achieve. But a break from it all is necessary. It's perfectly healthy to pause and let the world spin without you for awhile. It's good for you to spend time alone. It gives you an opportunity to discover who you really are, and to figure out why you truly are always alone. Read A New Earth.
Meditate on your own inner voice. – Some people will kill you over time if you let them; and how they'll kill you is with tiny, harmless phrases like, "be realistic." When this happens, close your ears and listen to your (more…)
Zoopoo, the bath animal that shits shampoo straight into your hand!
Don't you just get totally bored and almost fall asleep in the shower when you squirt out boring shampoo from a boring Pantene bottle? Don't risk almost sleep drowning to death in your shower. Make shower time fun and exciting by getting a stuffed animal that wet farts out a load of hair soap right into your hand. Who knew that you could get clean while getting into some scat shit with a stuffed animal? Zoopoo really does put the poo in shampoo.
But seriously, I'm not completely sold on this mess. I mean, it's hard to trust a dude who takes a bath with his work shirt on. A stuffed toy pooping shampoo into your hand = RIGHT. A grown man taking a bath with his work shirt on = NOT RIGHT.
Giovanni Ribisi (38) Jennifer Carpenter (33) Manny Pacquiao (34) Milla Jovovich (37) Sarah Paulson (37) Marissa Ribisi (38) Sean Patrick Thomas (42) Laurie Holden (43) Chuck Liddell (43) Sara Dallin of Bananarama (51) Gregg Araki (53) Peter Farrelly (56) Bill Pullman (59) Eugene Levy (66) Chris Matthews (67) Ernie Hudson (67) Armin Mueller-Stahl (82)
Kat Von D and Deadmau5 started rubbing their tattooed genitals together last September and they stopped for a minute in November after she subtly accused him of passing his mau5 dick to another whore, but true love always prevails! Mau5 just couldn't get enough of licking Jesse James' dried jizz off of Kat Von D's stomach, because they got back together and now they're engaged to be married. Like two 15-year-olds who met on MySpace and live thousands of miles apart, Deadmau5 asked Kat Von D to be his future ex-wife on Twitter and tweeted a picture of the ring he's going to get her:
After Kat Von D printed that picture out and wrapped it around her finger, she typed these words:
And then DeadMau5 kept this public display of pure class going....
I really can't wait for them to get married on Skype, spend their honeymoon by posting stock pictures of tropical places on Instagram and give birth to a Tumblr before getting divorced on Facebook. A true modern day romance. Yes, Kat Von D just got engaged (for like the ten millionth time) to a DJ who regularly wears a mouse head and proposed to her ass on Twitter, but he's still a major upgrade from Jesse James. So there's that.
Well, one way to pretty much get rid of those twat munching rumors is to get engaged to a man. Kelly Clarkson, star of the most important movie of 2003 From Justin to Kelly, is engaged to her boyfriend of a year Brandon Blackstock. Brandon, who's a talent manager and Reba McEntire's stepson, and Kelly announced yesterday afternoon that they're getting married. A few hours after they did that, Kelly showed off her totally demure and subtle engagement on WhoSay and explained it like this:
Everyone has been asking about my engagement ring, so here it is :) It's a yellow canary diamond with diamonds around it and Brandon designed it with Johnathon Arndt! They did an amazing job! I can't wait to make Brandon's ring with Johnathon as well!
THAT RING! It looks like a sucked-on Halls cough drop surrounded by diamonds. I'm patiently waiting for Claire's to file a lawsuit against Brandon Blackstock (Note: You don't know HOW bad my fingers want to type "Brandon BlackCock") for stealing one of their designs. It's nice that Kelly is getting married and everything, but does she really want to wear a ring that looks like diamond piss? That diamond is too yellow. It needs to drink more water.
During an interview with Mandy Patinkin on Fox5's Good Day New York, one of the co-anchors Dave Price had to quit that bitch early, because he got word that his wife was thisclose to popping out a baby. Yes, anything is more interesting than talking to Rosanna Scotto, but Mandy Patinkin's beard nearly blew off of his face from how excited he got over the arrival of Dave Price's new baby. Mandy didn't want to talk about his TV show or Facebook or anything else. Mandy just wanted to know everything about Dave Price's baby and even wanted them to call him after that baby breathed its first breath. I'm surprised Mandy didn't pull a bunch of blue and pink cigars out of his pocket and start handing them out. I bet Dave Price's wife wasn't as excited as Mandy was and the baby was coming out of her vagina.
If the whole "being on Homeland" thing doesn't work out for Mandy, he should become a professional labor cheerleader, because nobody's more excited about the birthing of babies than he is. If Mandy ever gets mad at you and starts cursing you out, stop him and say, "Mandy, somewhere a woman is giving birth to a baby." Then stand back and watch him go from MAD! to YAY! in five seconds flat.
For SNL's cold open last night, the New York City Chirrun's Chorus sang "Silent Night" in memory of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting. I know, isn't it weird how an invisible wind storm blew all up into our eyes at the same time last night? This was the best part of SNL last night and it was even better than Samuel L. Jackson dropping some kind of f bomb and blurting out "bullshit." And that's saying a lot.
For what felt like only a quick second in 2000, Heinz wanted to make the lives of children and acid heads more exciting by putting out a line of squirtable, colored ketchup. Heinz EZ Squirt came in purple, green, blue and a "mystery color." Heinz EZ Squirt was supposed to taste just like ketchup, but it's funny how when you put your tongue on green ketchup, it doesn't really taste like blended tomatoes. It tastes more like something that came out of Slimer's peen slit. Strangely enough, ketchup that was the same color as Smurf snot wasn't exactly a hit and Heinz stopped making it in 2006.
It's kind of sad that Heinz EZ Squirt is in the fucked up food cemetery, because if it was around today, it would make a wonderful diet tool. When you're stoned into the next dimension and halfway through devouring five orders of animal-style cheese fries from In-N-Out, the only way you'll be able to stop is if you taint those delicious fries with purple ketchup that looks like Barney's butt drool. Actually, that wouldn't stop me. It would probably make me eat more. It's like eating rainbow jizz!
Benny Andersson (66) Anna Popplewell (24) Michael Lohan Jr. (25) Candice Crawford (26) Amanda Setton (27) Danielle Lloyd (29) Krysten Ritter (31) Flo Rida (33) Sarah Kozer of Joe Millionaire (39) Scott Storch (39) Paul Van Dyk (41) Miranda Otto (45) Benjamin Bratt (49) LaChanze (51) Jon Tenney (51) Xander Berkeley (57) Billy Gibbons (63) Steven Bochco (69) Lesley Stahl (71) Liv Ullmann (74)
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As the end of the year approaches, 2012 roundups, top 10 and top 12 lists abound and this morning Vimeo has jumped on the bandwagon, announcing their picks for the top 12 videos of 2012.
Megan O'Neill
Does professionalism stimulate or stifle creativity?
What on Earth works to get a small child's attention when trying to snap a photo? If there are two of you trying then perhaps one can offer the crazy hand motions and noises to grab their attention. But taking a picture while solo often sacrifices the quality of the image simply so you can throw your hand in the air to make the little one look. Try the Look Lock® System next time. This articulated arm easily attaches via cold shoe mount to any DSLR. The universal phone mount at the end grips your smart phone. Then just pull up content that will keep the child looking and you'll have your photo before you know it. Look Lock has other uses too. How about teleprompting during a video shoot? Or maybe you want a monitor to see photos as they are taken. Simply bend the unit in the direction you want to see your phone. Look Lock's come in 7" and 11" versions, at $45 and $50 respectively. Both are available at 
We believe that not only does WikiLeaks need to survive, it must be joined by an array of others like it, edited transparency media that have so far failed to emerge, self-censoring victims of the chilling effects of the WikiLeaks blockade. Moreover, the watchdogs that do exist struggle for backers as brave as they are. The old media fear the fears of their advertisers. The new ones often depend on a few large foundations or donors, who, being from the elite themselves, may hesitate to part its curtains. 
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