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How to Track your Windows 10 PC, Tablet or Phone Location

Ebenezer Obasi
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1
How to Track your Windows 10 PC, Tablet or Phone Location

Exactly this time last year, a Lagos based Nigerian Mr. Tunde Makhinde was able to track the location of arm robbers who invaded his property with his stolen iPad.  Still last year, an amazing iPhone app, Find my iphone, was used to track down a stolen iPad and the man who allegedly took it from underneath a family’s Christmas tree in the US. The victim on the ‘Find my iPhone’ app that sends out a signal to the device.Using his computer, the victim was then able to locate the iPad on a map, and alerted police to its whereabouts – just a few houses away.

This is something that is almost synonymous with Apple devices. However, this time, Microsoft is taking over the spotlight with their new ‘Find My Device’ feature introduced in November Windows 10 update. The new Microsoft invention is not just for tablets or phones. Any Windows 10 device can take advantage of the new feature, including desktops and laptops.

Although the current version of ‘find my device’ may not take your breath away or have your tablet make a sound, lock itself, erase data, or anything like that when stolen – it’s still a great feature to keep tabs of your device’s location and capture its thief – if needed.

Find My Device is buried under Settings > Update & Security.
Find My Device is buried under Settings > Update & Security.

To active this feature go to Start > Update & Security > Find My Device.

findmydevice2-100629921-large

On this screen you’ll see a big Change button under the heading “Find My Device is off.”

Turn this slider to On and you’re done.
Turn this slider to On and you’re done.

Once you click Change you’ll see a pop-up panel that says “Save my device’s location periodically.” Turn the slider to On and you’re done.

Find My Device is now on.
Find My Device is now on.

You should now see that the Find My Device screen has changed to “Find My Device is on” as seen above.

To make sure everything is working, login to account.microsoft.com/devices with your Microsoft account and you should see the name of your PC listed under “Your devices.”

If you don’t know the name of your device, right-click on the Start button and selectSystem. In the Control Panel window that opens you’ll see it under “Computer name.”

Microsoft’s Virtual Assistant, Cortana now Available for iOS

Ebenezer Obasi
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Microsoft’s Virtual Assistant, Cortana now Available for iOS

Looking back at my experience with Windows 10, the newly introduced Microsoft’s virtual assistant that goes by the name Cortana, was one thing I wished I had on my Macbook. Wishes are not horses, they said – but I have some good news – and some bad news too.

The good news is that Microsoft has just release a beta version of Cortana for IOS. The bad news is that only 2000 user can try it – for now.

According to tech blog Warenotice, Microsoft is currently distributing the Cortana for iOS beta to the first round of beta testers—presumably to those who applied for the beta program earlier this month. Warenotice received an invitation to test the app, and published a few screenshots of Cortana running on an iPhone.

The story behind the story: Microsoft has worked hard to bring many of its apps to other platforms like iOS and Android. It’s all part of the”cloud first, mobile first” ethos the company instituted under CEO Satya Nadella. However, as our Jared Newman pointed out, the iOS version won’t be as full-featured as the Windows and Android versions, largely because of the more closed nature of the iOS universe. The iOS version of Cortana won’t have a hands-free mode, for example, so it isn’t a true replacement for Siri.

Only 2000 testers allowed

Unfortunately, not everyone will be able to try the Cortana for iOS beta. Microsoft is using Apple’s TestFlight beta testing system—the one Apple-sanctioned method for distributing public betas on iOS—and it has some limitations. Most notably, TestFlight allows developers to distribute a beta app to only 2000 testers, and as Warenotice points out, app beta periods can run for up to 60 days. In addition, the beta program is only open to users in the US and China.

So if you aren’t one of the lucky few to get in the beta program, you’ll have to wait until the final release of Cortana for iOS to give it a try.

US spy court appoints lawyers to panel of advisers

Ebenezer Obasi
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US spy court appoints lawyers to panel of advisers

Under the USA Freedom Act, the panel is to advise the judge on privacy and technical matters

A secret U.S. spy court has appointed a five-member panel of advisers as part of the reform of the surveillance of the National Security Agency.

The presiding judges of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review have jointly designated five persons to be eligible to serve as an amicus curiae, or friend of the court, according to a notice on the FISC website.

The appointments have been made under the USA Freedom Act, the reform legislation that was signed into law on June 2 by President Barack Obama.

The panel consist of four lawyers and a professor of law, and does not include technology experts, although the USA Freedom Act provides for a panel of experts at the FISA court to provide guidance on matters of privacy and civil liberties, communications technology, and other technical or legal matters.

The persons appointed to the panel are Jonathan G. Cedarbaum, a partner in the law firm of WilmerHale, criminal defense lawyer John D. Cline, Laura Donohue, a professor of law at Georgetown Law, Amy Jeffress, a partner in the the law firm of Arnold & Porter, andMarc Zwillinger, a privacy and data security lawyer.

The reform of the NSA was taken up after revelations in 2013 by its former contractor, Edward Snowden, about widespread surveillance by the agency in the country and abroad, including its collection of bulk phone records of Americans.

Obama promised in January 2014 significant reform of NSA surveillance, and called on Congress to authorize the “establishment of  a panel of advocates from outside government to provide an independent voice in significant cases” before the FISA court, to ensure that the court hears a broader range of privacy perspectives.

Under the USA Freedom Act, the amicus curiae is expected to provide to the court, as appropriate, legal arguments to promote the protection of individual privacy and civil liberties, information related to intelligence collection or communications technology, and legal arguments or information regarding any other area relevant to the issue presented to the court.

Another key part of the reform – the bulk collection by the NSA of phone metadata records of Americans- is set to end by the close of this month. The USA Freedom Act places curbs on the bulk collection program by leaving the phone records database in the hands of telecom operators, while allowing only a targeted search of the data by the NSA for investigations.

In September, the FISC court appointed a lawyer Preston Burton as amicus curiae in connection with a specific application by the government to retain already acquired  phone records beyond Nov. 28 for use for technical and litigation purposes.

Oxford’s word of the year for 2015: ?

Jake Bruton
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Oxford’s word of the year for 2015: ?

No joke. It was announced on the Oxford Dictionaries’ blog yesterday that 2015’s word of the year is officially a pictograph, or more commonly known as a emoticon. Which emoticon? ?. Yes, the emoticon dubbed “Face with tears of joy” has been announced as the word of the year. According to the official blog post, the emoji was chosen because it was “the ‘word’ that best reflected the ethos, mood, and preoccupations of 2015.”

Upon such news, one naturally asks “why would this be chosen?” Well, Oxford covered that question in the blog post as well!

This year Oxford University Press have partnered with leading mobile technology business SwiftKey to explore frequency and usage statistics for some of the most popular emoji across the world, and ? was chosen because it was the most used emoji globally in 2015. SwiftKey identified that ? made up 20% of all the emojis used in the UK in 2015, and 17% of those in the US: a sharp rise from 4% and 9% respectively in 2014. The word emoji has seen a similar surge: although it has been found in English since 1997, usage more than tripled in 2015 over the previous year according to data from the Oxford Dictionaries Corpus.

emoji-frequencySo, with that it is official. Looks like the use of emojis has developed into something greater than just icons to help add contextual message to our texts; seemingly, they’ve become words their self. For those wondering, there was a graphic created with the “runner-up” words that were looked into for the position that ‘Face with Tears of Joy’ took.

shortlist-WOTY-2015

What are your thoughts on Oxford’s choice for word of the year? Leave a comment below!

source: OxfordWords Blog

Steam Machines: slower at gaming than Windows PC

Jake Bruton
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Steam Machines: slower at gaming than Windows PC

Ars Technica ran benchmarks on November 13th of the Steam Machine, against Windows 10. The result was pretty much the fresh operating system processing gaming much faster than the machine meant for a couch-convenient PC gaming experience. The two systems are relatively close when it comes to the mechanics for gaming, but the Steam Machine was found to lag way behind the new Microsoft operating system when it came to real gameplay. You could end up losing frames and detail of graphics depending on which game you’re playing on the SteamOS versus Windows 10, according to the tests.

The tests were run with a playable, modest setup: a dual-core 3GHz Pentium with an old GeForce GTX 660; which could pose a problem when handling more major and demanding games.

The SteamOS’ foundation is based on Linux, which is an operating system not well fitted with custom video cards/specialized gaming cards unlike Windows and Mac Pro systems. The implementations of the software is simply keeping the hardware from excelling to its true potential, and that could change with a little bit of refinement and fine-tuning from Valve.

Until that time comes, we’ll stick with sitting at our computer desks for our PC experience.

My [condensed] experience with Windows 10 so far…

Jake Bruton
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1
My [condensed] experience with Windows 10 so far…

On November 11th, 2015, “TH 2” was released for Windows 10 users to download and install. Basically, TH 2 (using the abbreviation for the Windows 10 nickname ‘Threshold‘) is the first big update for the still in-development OS. The update came with an abundance of things, for both the personal user, and DEFINITELY for enterprise users. So, given this I figured it would be appropriate to share a condensed rambling of my experience with Windows 10 so far.

Using their Media Creation Tool, I downloaded and installed the first release version of Windows 10 onto my then Windows 8.1 HP laptop, excited to see all of the new features it boasted. I grabbed it sometime near the ending of July or beginning of August. After the semi-painful several hours it took to download and install, I was ready to become a user! Here I am now in November, and at the moment, I feel…slightly impressed.

Don’t let my words fool you to think I dislike the operating system – trust me when I say Windows 10 is definitely one of my favorites of the Windows Family! I was also very excited for its free download release and was super excited to setup my personalization, settings, and Start Menu. However, after having plenty of time to be more than acquaintances with the OS (and with the TH 2 update), I’ve began to realize that, at the moment, my personal experience with Windows 10 Home has fallen a bit short of my own expectations.

Since I like to discuss negatives (well, these or more less “personal opinions” rather than “cons”) and then the positives, I will do just that; and since I’ve had a good deal to experience with the system, I’ll try my best to condense the experience report.

1 – Start Menu & Taskbar

EWTWIN10_1The crux of Windows 10 was the return of our beloved Windows Start Menu. However, Microsoft was changing the game up by mixing in their Live Tiles for the Windows Store Apps to be placed in up to 3 columns on the right side of menu. It was all great, and worked quite well. Design options are well fitted, and since TH 2, the context menus for changing up your Live Tiles are grand. But on the technical side, I find myself feeling slightly encumbered by the Start Menu.  Simply put, it has its glitches and little bugs, but the one that caught me the most is that amount of time it takes for my machine to open this awesome and modern menu up. About 0.90 seconds approximately. As for the taskbar, it still has that pesky universal problem of sometimes keeping hovered icons focused on even without your mouse hovered over it.

2 – Windows Store Apps

EWTWIN10_2This is pretty much my other problem with my Windows 10 experience so far. The Windows Store offers a bunch of apps, no doubt; unfortunately only a good handful of them here and there and designed nicely and work with the system and its available APIs and standards. But the recurring problem I have here is one I’ve had since standard Windows 8. A lot of the time, apps from the app store like to either 1)close themselves immediately (and not just close, but end their own program and task(s)) and/or 2)be unresponsive (especially when communicating with servers).

3 – Windows Search

EWTWIN10_3The new search has Cortana so you can search (and now even Send Text Messages!) with your voice. It’s all great and good. However, Cortana still stands for some good improvements, and the actual search stands for some major improvements.

So, out of everything, those three points are the ones that have caused the most hindrance on my experience as a whole. There are other little things I come across sometimes that takes some small jabs to that ‘hype’ I had for Windows 10 as a whole, but they’re easy to look over.

On the flip side, I still love Windows 10 so far, and love the TH 2 update. It is my favorite Windows OS to date, and it DOES have so much goodies with it. The whole Start Menu and Live Tiles, despite their usual buginess, are great altogether! And while I don’t use the feature, Cortana and the voice commands are very convenient for quick search, note taking, emailing, events, and even calling/sending texts. Faster boot times are something that is great, along with improved programs performance, virtual desktops, an activity center, and tablet mode – Windows 10 is definitely a budding operating system.

The improved performance has helped me boost my productivity, though I will not lie when I say that the discovery of Flow Free and a third-party reddit app has held me accountable to some good procrastination. So, at the moment I recommend upgrading to Windows 10 if you have 8.1/8/7 if you want to try it out while the update is still free. If you end up disliking it, they give you a one-month use on their rollback tool to switch back onto your old OS.

 

Make sure to follow EWT Net for more news and blog posts related to Microsoft, and Windows 10!

Samsung unveils the Exynos 8 Octa CPU

Jake Bruton
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0
Samsung unveils the Exynos 8 Octa CPU

406238-samsung-exynos-8-octa-8890Today, Samsung announced the Exynos 8 Octa 8890 CPU processor.

This is the companies second “premium” chip built on 14nm FinFET process technology. It has a custom 64-bit CPU with four custom cores and four ARM Cortex A53 CPU cores. These specs improve the performance of the processor by 30% and cause it to use 10% less electricity.

Samsung said devices with its chips will allow users “to enjoy and share high-resolution video content on the go with ease.”

With our custom designed CPU cores and the industry’s most advanced LTE modem, consumers using mobile devices with the Exynos 8 Octa will experience a new level of mobile computing.” – Dr. Kyushik Hong, Vice President of System LSI marketing at Samsung Electronics.

The tech giant has also added that the new CPU can allow for highly immersive gaming and life-like virtual reality experiences thanks to Mali-T880; ARM’s latest GPU.

Sasmung had unveiled its first 14nm mobile application processor in February of this year. The company’s expected initiation for the Exynos 8 Octa mass production is set for later into this year.

You can no longer mention Tsu.co on Facebook

Jake Bruton
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0
You can no longer mention Tsu.co on Facebook

Tsu.co is a social media website that rewards its members for sharing posts, photos, videos and the like. Users who get others to join via referrals see cash benefits in the like. Naturally, when you have an opportunity to make free money doing what you do everyday, you do it right?

But, what would be the natural place to get referrals to sign up? Where could you access as many people – strangers and friends alike – to get them to see said link? You go to Facebook. This isn’t some imaginary scenario, as a matter of fact it is real. Tsu.co posts, mostly referral links, were becoming huge during 2014 and early 2015. I couldn’t check my Facebook without seeing a post with someones link in the newsfeed, or having a message from some friends of mine asking me to join with that link.

What was quite annoying to me, seemed to become quite the little bugger to Facebook Inc. As of September 25th, the Tsu.co address has been blocked by Facebook. In fact, it’s even been reported to have been blocked on Instagram, and other Facebook owned applications. Any mention of the address is blocked, and the company even insured the censoring of the site address by removing every single old post on their servers that mentioned the site/URL; effectively killing off millions of photos, videos, and posts in an instant.

You can still write ‘Tsu,’ but any mentions of Tsu.co will not be submitted and will be removed.

source: CNN money

Much like their other site-widely blocked sites, Facebook claims the link is spam and is annoying to the community. In return, Tsu thinks that Facebook is being a bully, who is killing off competition.

“We’re persona non grata,” said Sebastian Sobczak, who founded Tsu. “You can type in all sorts of seedy websites, and you can get to them. But not us. We don’t exist.”

Tsu had made an appeal to Facebook when their traffic source fail from an average 2,000 per day to a flat 0. However, their reasoning didn’t work. Facebook, however, says it will unblock Tsu if one thing changes: if Tsu users cannot post to Tsu.co and Facebook.com at the same time.

“We do not allow developers to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it encourages spammy sharing,” said Melanie Ensign, a Facebook spokesperson.

Most of Tsu.co users spoken to (who haven’t made even a dime from the service), thought that this block was unfair to the service.

Top 10 messaging apps for your Android Wear watch

Ebenezer Obasi
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0
Top 10 messaging apps for your Android Wear watch

Google has certainly beefed up the feature set of Hangouts on Android Wear since launch, but just because Hangouts is the default messaging client on most Android phones doesn’t mean it’s your only option for messaging from your wrist.

There are plenty of great messaging apps with their own Android Wear modules. Let’s check out the best ones.

Coffee

Coffee is an interesting app because it’s an SMS client designed exclusively for Wear. The phone side is only used for configuring settings, adding quick responses, and organizing your contacts. Messages that come in on your phone are displayed on the watch with cool quick-reply features. The watch app includes dozens of pre-configured quick-reply snippets, but you don’t have to scroll through them all. They’re split up into categories, and similar statements are grouped together so you can build a reply in a few taps. There’s also voice input, of course. All the same messaging options are available if you want to send a new message from the watch—just open Coffee and select a contact.

Coffee (free)

Skype

You won’t (thankfully) be doing video calls on your watch any time soon, but the Skype app has support for messaging on Android Wear. You’ll need to be logged into the Skype app on your phone and have it running in the background, but you can reply to all your messages from the watch. Replies are handled by voice, canned responses, or by drawing an emoji.

Skype (free)

WhatsApp Messenger

WhatsApp is one of the most popular messaging services in the world, as evidenced by the more than 1 billion installs it has on the Play Store. WhatsApp was fast to add Wear support after Google’s wearable platform launched last year. Messages show up in full on the watch, and you can reply by voice. There’s no dedicated wearable app to select contacts or conversations, so all your messages have to be initiated by voice.

WhatsApp Messenger (free)

WearResponses

Unlike most other messaging apps for your wrist, WearResponses doesn’t try to take over for your main messaging app. Instead, it grafts new capabilities onto the existing SMS reply functionality. Android Wear still doesn’t have customized canned replies for SMS, and that’s what WearResponses provides. You simply add your desired text to the app, and when messages arrive on the watch via WearResponses, they’ll have your custom text as quick reply options. It’s best to turn off Wear notifications for your default SMS app so you don’t get duplicates. The free version limits you to three custom responses, but the $2.99 paid version is unlimited.

WearResponses (free / $2.99)

Wear Messenger

The tiny screen on your watch is not very conducive to typing, but Wear Messenger makes the experience not terrible, which is probably the best you can hope for. This app has a full wearable app that can be launched at any time to see all the active conversations and type out new replies with one of several keyboard options. You have to enable the keyboard in the phone settings app—the best one is FlickKey You tap or swipe each block of letters to get the ones you want. It’s not fast, but it’s feasible to shoot off short messages entirely from the watch. Wear Messenger also has full notification text and voice replies. It will cost you a little under $2.

Wear Messenger ($1.62)

Facebook Messenger

Despite the sorry state of the main Facebook app, the Messenger client is actually quite well-supported. Facebook Messenger notifications on your Android Wear watch have full text previews, as well as the ability to respond by voice or by drawing an emoji. Want something more immediate? Next to the reply button is one that just sends a thumbs up emoji.

Facebook Messenger (free)

Telegram

Telegram is a lot like WhatsApp in that it serves as a data-based replacement for SMS, but it’s free, open source, and end-to-end encrypted. It was also quick to add support for Android Wear, which entails expanded notification text and the option to reply via voice or by drawing an emoji. There’s no standalone Telegram app in the Wear launcher, though.

Telegram (free)

Messages for Android Wear

You want a full QWERTY keyboard on your watch? That’s what you get with Messages for Android Wear. It’s not as insane as it sounds, and this app has a ton of functionality for sending and reading your SMS. When messages arrive, you can view not only the current one, but the entire conversation via the wearable app. If you reply, there’s a voice option or a scrolling keyboard with text prediction. It’s possible to tap out a few words when speaking to the watch or using your phone isn’t an option. A $1.49 upgrade adds canned responses, a custom signature, and more.

Messages for Android Wear (free)

Evolve SMS

EvolveSMS is a full-featured SMS app for your phone, but it also has a great Android Wear client. It’s available in the app list and shows you all active conversations. Replies are handled only by voice—no fancy (or awkward) keyboards here. EvolveSMS also supports expanded message text on the watch when new messages arrive, and instant voice replies. The app is free, but if you want features like backup and themes, it’s $3 via in-app purchases.

Evolve SMS (free)

Google Messenger

Hangouts has SMS support, but Google also (for some reason) has a dedicated SMS app. I’m willing to forgive the overlap, though, because Google Messenger is fantastic. It doesn’t have a full Wear app in the launcher, but notifications on the watch have an expanded conversation view and the ability to reply by voice or with a quick response. It even has MMS image preview. Like all other Google apps, Messenger is free.

Google Messenger (free)

Google Invests In Mobvoi, Its Android Wear Partner In China

Ebenezer Obasi
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Google Invests In Mobvoi, Its Android Wear Partner In China
Google’s services are not available in China, but that isn’t stopping it from making a significant investment in a company based on Chinese soil. The U.S. search giant is backing Mobvoi, a three-year-old company specializing in mobile voice technology.

The duo already have business ties. Mobvoi is the company that Google picked to bring Android Wear, its operating system for wearables, to China, so this deal takes things up to the next level.

The size of the investment, which is a Series C round for Mobvoi, has not been disclosed, but Mobvoi co-founder Yuanyuan Li confirmed that Google has become a minority shareholder. The deal, she said, takes the company to $75 million in investment to date. Since Mobvoi previously raised $10 million Series B and $1.6 million Series A rounds, Google’s investment is just shy of $65 million.


Update: Mobvoi has clarified to TechCrunch that it raised previously unannounced funding rounds so the amount invested by Google is lower than the $60-65 million that we originally reported. The company declined to disclose the value of those unannounced rounds or Google’s investment when we asked directly.

Beyond the Android Wear deal, the two companies have plenty in common. Beijing-based Mobvoi was started by ex-Googlers — CEO Zhifei Li and CTO Mike Lei are both former research scientists with Google U.S. — and Li said the company’s DNA is heavily influenced by the tech giant.

“We used the Google model from day one,” she told TechCrunch in an interview. “We wanted to have same culture and team values. The co-operation [on bringing Android Wear to China] went really well… and [Google] showed interest and decided to make an investment.”

On the business and product side, Mobvoi is very Googley, too.

The company is probably best known for Chumenwenwen, a mobile voice search service very much in the style of Siri or Google Now. The service is akin to a virtual butler, allowing users to perform a range of tasks — including search, checking weather, buying items, and more — just using their voice. Li said the company has struck deals with over 100 content partners to give users access to various services via Chumenwenwen.

Mobvoi used its natural language technology to build out its own smartwatch software, too. Ticwear is a ROM that pairs with Android Wear to make the Google-run operating system — which is kneecapped in China thanks to the government’s blockage of Google services — work in mainland China.

Beyond developing smartwatch software, which works on selected watches like the Moto 360, Mobvoi went a step further and developed its own hardware: the Ticwatch. Li said the company has sold 30,000 units of the smartwatch, which is priced between $160-$190 in China, but it remains focused on software development.

“Our goal isn’t to be a watch manufacturer, [but] we’re happy to see early adopters buying our product,” she said.

Mobvoi said it will use its new financing to hire talent from across the world and continue refine its software services — Ticwear is updated every two weeks, much like Xiaomi’s approach to its MIUI Android software — while it is plans to dip its toes into robotics and it is also working on its own in-car software. That latter product is, again, much like a Chinafied version of Apple’s CarPlay or Android Auto from Google.

Given the many business/tech similarities between both companies and reports that the U.S. firm is looking to open up its services in China — and in particular the Google Play Store — is today’s investment a sign that Google has found the company in China to rebuild its business there?

Perhaps there’s even the possibility of a full Google buyout in the future?

Not so, according to Li.

“We value this partnership a lot, and respect Google as an investor, [but it is] still a minority investor and we will focus on what we believe in and in our products,” she told TechCrunch. “We’re not changing what we’ve planned, but there are definitely more opportunities [that will open up].”

Google, for its part, said it has “nothing to announce at this time” when we asked about potential plans to expand the scope of its partnership with Mobvoi and reopen the Google Play Store in China.

The company may be coy on its China plans, but today’s news is undoubted evidence that those plans do exist in some form. Google Inc and its Google Capital VC arm have made investments in China in the past — including a $5 million stake in music and video site Xuneli way back in 2007 — but this deal with Mobvoi is certainly its most strategic to date, and it sets off thoughts about what the search giant has up its sleeve.

Note: This post has been updated to correct the name of the Mobvoi spokesperson. Apologies for any confusion.

New SAP Tool Aims To Fuse Content and Community With eCommerce

Ebenezer Obasi
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New SAP Tool Aims To Fuse Content and Community With eCommerce

It’s often said that content is king, but in a typical marketing department you have a hodgepodge of content. That could include carefully-crafted web copy, blog entries and FAQs along with user-generated ratings and reviews. For many companies, at least some of this content is spread out across the site without any real connection between the product pages and the content that supports it.

SAP has a theory that spreading all of this content asunder makes it rather difficult for consumers to make informed decisions about their purchases — and this goes for any type of sale, whether a consumer device like a camera or something more complex like an enterprise technology purchase.

That’s why the company came out with a new product today at the Hyybris customer conference, called SAP Jam Communities, Edition for SAP Hybris Commerce. The lack of poetry in the name notwithstanding, this product is designed to help companies create a more coherent link between all of the content related to the product and the product itself.


Just to parse that title for you for those who aren’t familiar with SAP, Jam is the company’s community product, created several years ago to facilitate employee communication. Hybris is an ecommerce product SAP bought in 2013. Bringing the two technologies together, SAP is hoping to create sites and apps that help consumers when they need it most with an appropriate level of content, whether from the company or community.

To achieve that, the company says the tool was built with what it called “an API-first” approach. In practice this means, that every component of the service is containerized, delivered as a micro-service and pluggable into any web page or app. This should allow customers to build a customized ecommerce experience that can adjust the appropriate amount of content, depending on the product’s complexity.

For example, if the product involves a fairly easy buying decision like a $10 external battery for your cell phone, then simple ratings and reviews will probably suffice, but as the buying decision gets more complex, it requires a more detailed content from various sources to walk the buyer through the purchase process — like say a car or a wind turbine

The eventual goal of any ecommerce tool is to get the visitor to buy something without leaving, and to that end, each page includes whatever content the system designers might deem necessary for a particular product, and a Buy button. In the case of a more complex product, buyers might see a button for contacting a sales person, distributor or dealer, who can provide more information and begin to push the sale further along.

SAP is hoping that this approach has advantages over traditional content marketing and ecommerce strategies where it has been difficult to measure the ROI of the content part of the process. That’s because the content has sometimes lacked a coherent connection to the buying experience itself, often left on a disconnected landing page.

By including more of the content within the sales process instead of in a separate place, the company believes it should make it easier to measure the effectiveness of your content against actual sales, giving companies easier access to data that had previously been much more difficult to tease out.

SAP officials hinted that this could be the first of a series of enterprise-community products. eCommerce was a natural fit, especially since the company owns Hybris, but building the product using micro services was an intentional strategy to make the product transfer more easily to other scenarios in the future.

Why growing businesses MUST embrace SMS Text Marketing – Especially in 2015

Ebenezer Obasi
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Why growing businesses MUST embrace SMS Text Marketing – Especially in 2015
The shift from PC to Mobile is now in full swing. With “65% of all mobile phones sold being smartphones”, according to the June 2014 Ericsson Mobility Report, no longer is Mobile the future of communications, but rather the ‘present’, and the means by which information is consumed is now becoming more and more mobile.

This change in consumer behavior is attributed to smartphone penetration, which is around 30% now worldwide and continues to widen as mobile broadband connectivity continues to gain strength. In “Q1 of 2014 alone, there were 120 million subscriptions (mobile broadband) added and by 2019 we expect that 80% of the mobile subscriptions will actually be mobile broadband,” according to Rima Qureshi, Chief Strategy Officer of Ericsson.

This development results in an unprecedented use of mobile instant messaging (MIM), with actual number of messages expected this year to reach “50 billion messages per day on the MIM services and about 20 billion messages a day via text messaging (SMS)” according to Paul Lee, Deloitte TMT Head of Research. Tools like Webcilo Phone Number Generator are now flooding the internet, making it possible for SMS marketers to reach more mobile audience through text messaging.

However, despite the burgeoning volumes of messages carried over instant messaging on mobile phones (MIM) “we expect globally SMS to generate more than $100 billion in 2014, equivalent to approximately 50 times the total revenues from all MIM services, according to the 2014 Deloitte TMT Predictions.”

This disparity in revenue levels is largely due to the higher cost of sending SMS as opposed to the almost ‘free-to-use’ instant messaging apps that sprouted in the market in recent years. But, what does this information tell us?

The decline of SMS usage among consumers is attributed to the availability of instant messaging, which is relatively free to use. And it is replacing two-way conversations, i.e. email and voice calls, only because of this cost implication.

Despite this decline in number of outbound SMS text messages, people still continue to use it for more important, time-sensitive messaging because of its high open-rate. As the messaging platform, standard among all phones across the globe (whether basic or smartphone), SMS messaging gets through on any type of phone device, regardless of country, time zone, carrier connection, and does not require exclusive subscription as in the case of MIMs where one cannot send an instant message to another unless both of them use the same service, i.e. WeChat to WeChat, iMessage to iMessage, etc.

This makes the mobile phone a perfect spot for marketers to reach their existing and potential customers. As casual conversations take the MIM, people will have more room for consuming push notifications and promotional information on their SMS inbox. And with ethical implementation, the email’s loss could be SMS text marketing’s gain.

Use Nigerian Glo Recharge Card in Benin Republic, Ghana and Ivory Coast

Ebenezer Obasi
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Use Nigerian Glo Recharge Card in Benin Republic, Ghana and Ivory Coast

This service has been discontinued, you can see more details here.

If you are a Nigerian studying or residing in any west African country where Glo coverage is available, you can now recharge a Nigerian Glo card in your Glo sim in that country.

To recharge a Nigerian Glo card on your Ghana line simply dial: *123*234*Recharge Code#

Example: *123*234*152037711266634#

As seen on uniXclusive.

Why Smart Businesses should embrace uniXclusive Discount Card Partnership Program

Ebenezer Obasi
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0
Why Smart Businesses should embrace uniXclusive Discount Card Partnership Program
Let’s take your attention on the same-sex marriage legalized in the US away a little bit and bring it to a smarter move that can take your business to a new all-time high.

uniXclusive has introduced a student discount card that allows students to acquire goods and services at a cheaper rate (less than what normal people would pay) from top brands/companies enrolled into partnership with uniXclusive – which is where your business steps in.

Just in case you are wondering what uniXclusive is in the last 5 seconds? It is a social network tailored towards connecting students in higher institution across Africa and abroad. Students on uniXclusive can connect with other students, chat, share moments, etc., indeed, technology has no limit.

How does this affect your Business?

The student discount card is a must-have discount and lifestyle card for students across Africa. Thousands of African students will use the card daily for attractive and exclusive discounts with their favourite brands.

Top brands/companies partnered with uniXclusive discount card program receive unrivalled brand exposure and access to the student market via various channels, both on and off- line, allowing them to grow their customer base within the 7 million strong students demographic.

Brand/Companies enrolled into the discount card partnership program stands to gain:

  • Access and exposure to thousands of uniXclusive cardholders.
  • Association with uniXclusive so students know you have their best interests at heart.
  • Exposure to student unions throughout the country.
  • Opportunities to feature in e-correspondence.
  • Opportunities to run flash-sales or competitions to the student market.
  • Data capture opportunities.
  • Exposure across social channels reaching in excess of 15K students.
  • Exposure on uniXclusive.com with a link to your website.

uniXclusive welcomes partner applications from any national or international brand looking to target the student market through their dynamic and powerful web portal.

Getting Started

If you interested in partnering with uniXclusive, you can download the form here. After filling the form, scan and submit it to admin[at]uniXclusive.com

Tim Cook, Facebook, Google and Tech Giants throw their Support for Same-Sex Marriage

Ebenezer Obasi
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0
Tim Cook, Facebook, Google and Tech Giants throw their Support for Same-Sex Marriage
When the Supreme Court issued its historic ruling on Friday legalizing same-sex marriage across the U.S., many of the biggest technology companies embraced the decision with characteristic flair through social media, on their sites, and with tools that others could use to show their support as well.

Companies like Google, Microsoft, Motorola Mobility, Uber and Airbnb, their chief executives, and their venture capitalist funders all took to Twitter to post celebratory tweets about the ruling, often accompanied by the hashtags #LoveWins or #Pride, plus GIFs. Companies also changed the colors of their profile pictures on Twitter to those of a rainbow, conjuring the symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender pride.


Twitter, which called Friday “a monumental day for equal rights,” released two new rainbow emojis, of a flag and a heart, that users could post by tweeting the aforementioned hashtags.

Google, in a tweet, said it was proud to celebrate marriage equality. The company included a GIF of a green Android robot waving a rainbow flag.

Given the likely impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling, and rising support among the public, same-sex marriage has become a safer issue for technology companies to support. Liberal social values in the parts of California where many tech companies are based made their reactions not much of a surprise.

And yet the ruling comes at a time of heightened sensitivity around issues of diversity in the tech industry. Whether it’s leveraged this way or not, the Supreme Court ruling offers a convenient opportunity for companies to cast their brands in the light of openness and acceptance.

Some executives expressed wholehearted support for the ruling. Tim Cook, the openly gay CEO of Apple, said the day marked “a victory for equality, perseverance and love.”

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO at Facebook, said the ruling represented another step toward achieving the founding promise of the U.S. that all people are created equal.

Josh Elman, a venture capitalist at Greylock Partners in Silicon Valley, offered this observation: “Rainbow flags going up. Confederate flags coming down. Feeling the arc of progress and humanity in how we respect each other,” referring to growing opposition to the flag associated with racism in the South.

Meanwhile, some technology companies offered tools or features meant to celebrate marriage equality. Facebook released a filter that people could use to overlay a rainbow on their profile picture. The tool appears to have been developed for Pride events around the country this weekend; the Supreme Court ruling hastened its arrival. It can be accessed at www.facebook.com/celebratepride.

Google, for its part, added a banner to the top of its search results page showing people holding hands and a rainbow heart. The banner only appeared for certain searches like “marriage equality” or “gay marriage.” The banner did not appear for a search for just “marriage.”

Snapchat got in on the action, too. The photo-sharing app created a themed Live Story around the ruling, called “Marriage Equality,” which let users post photos and videos to a feed that everyone else could see. Part of the feed contained a video showing people celebrating outside the Supreme Court.

Interest in the ruling, at least initially, appeared to be higher in the U.S. than in other countries. Google searches around gay marriage were concentrated primarily in the U.S. and Canada, according to a Google Trends report.

But the Snapchat feed was made available to users globally, as was the Facebook rainbow filter.

Android Secret Codes – Tricks you don’t Know about your Android Phone

David Nwonye
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0
Android Secret Codes – Tricks you don’t Know about your Android Phone

The domination of the global smartphone market by Android devices is no secret but only few can brag about knowing their in and out about their Android devices. Here, we have exactly what you need to explore and make maximum use of your Android mobile device.

Below is an image that illustrate the secret codes you can play with on your smart device!

Have fun!

Android Pay Will Get You Back To Your Position As A Developer

David Nwonye
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0
Android Pay Will Get You Back To Your Position As A Developer

Google’s Sundar Pichai essentially used today’s Mobile World Congress keynote to let the cat out of the bag for a whole host of interesting Google projects, including Android Pay, a new mobile payments framework that will look to succeed where Google Wallet failed. This time, they’ll be mostly leaving the apps themselves to developers, and Android Pay is intended primarily as a developer tool made available via API, rather than a centralized app like Apple Pay, for instance.

Android Pay sounds like it’ll offer one half of what Apple Pay is on the iPhone, providing users with a way to store their payment information locally, and make it available securely to third-party developer apps via API. Those apps will then determine when and where you can use the payment cards, via store (and perhaps payment provider) specific apps that can be branded however third parties like.

Google’s system will tokenize card numbers, in the same way that Apple Pay and Samsung Pay do, meaning it generates a one-time payment token for transmission to the receiving terminal for each transaction, rather than just offering the user’s static credit card information. This decreases the risk if the transmission is intercepted, since a one-time token with finite expiry is of no use once it’s already been consumed.

Like Apple Pay, Google’s Android Pay will use NFC for transmission, and will also support biometric authentication via hardware like the Samsung Galaxy S6’s fingerprint scanner. And while Samsung is clearly hoping to offer its own hardware-specific solution Bimini hfjd, Google’s offering is looking to convince businesses to adopt it by giving them a lot of freedom in how it’s presented and integrated into their brand. Pichai told the MWC crowd today that it’s not meant to compete with Samsung’s offering, however, and is intended primarily to offer up more consumer choice.

There’s no timeline on a release as of yet, but expect to hear more about the particulars of Android Pay when Google hosts its annual I/O developer conference in May.

Discovered: Monster Black Hole Marking The Brightest And The Largest.

David Nwonye
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0
Discovered: Monster Black Hole Marking The Brightest And The Largest.

The largest black holes found so far in the nearby universe have masses more than 10 billion times that of the sun.


Astronomers have discovered the largest and most luminous black hole ever seen — an ancient monster with a mass about 12 billion times that of the sun — that dates back to when the universe was less than 1 billion years old.

largest black holes found so far in the nearby universe have masses more than 10 billion times that of the sun. In comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is thought to have a mass only 4 million to 5 million times that of the sun.
Although not even light can escape the powerful gravitational pulls of black holes — hence, their name — black holes are often bright. That’s because they’re surrounded by features known as accretion disks, which are made up of gas and dust that heat up and give off light as it swirl into the black holes. Astronomers suspect that quasars, the brightest objects in the universe, contain super massive black holes that release extraordinarily large amounts of light as they rip apart stars.
So far, astronomers have discovered 40 quasars — each with a black hole about 1 billion times the mass of the sun — dating back to when the universe was less than 1 billion years old. Now, scientists report the discovery of a super massive black hole 12 billion times the mass of the sun about 12.8 billion light-years from Earth that dates back to when the universe was only about 875 million years old.
This black hole — technically known as SDSS J010013.02+280225.8, or J0100+2802 for short — is not only the most massive quasar ever seen in the early universe but also the most luminous. It is about 429 trillion times brighter than the sun and seven times brighter than the most distant quasar known.
The light from very distant quasars can take billions of years to reach Earth. As such, astronomers can see quasars as they were when the universe was young.
This black hole dates back to a little more than 6% of the universe’s current age of 13.8 billion years.
“This is quite surprising because it presents serious challenges to theories of black hole growth in the early universe,” said lead study author Xue-Bing Wu, an astrophysicist at Peking University in Beijing.
Accretion discs limit the speed of modern black holes’ growth. First, as gas and dust in the disks get close to black holes, traffic jams slow down any other material that’s falling into them. Second, as matter collides in these traffic jams, it heats up, emitting radiation that drives gas and dust away from the black holes.

Elon Musk’s Hyperloop To be Put To A Working Project In California 2016

David Nwonye
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0
Elon Musk’s Hyperloop To be Put To A Working Project In California 2016

If you were worried that Hyperloop was nothing more than a fantasy, you might be happy to learn that some companies are taking the idea very seriously. Hyperloop Transportation Technologies, one of the companies inspired by Elon Musk’s idea of making people travel in tubes, has signed a deal to build a five mile test facility in California. The facility will be built by a local developer along Interstate 5, and is expected to begin construction next year. According to CNBC, the scheme will cost an eye-watering $100 million to build and should be up and running by 2019.

Although Elon Musk himself is credited with the Hyperloop idea, he had originally stated that he was too busy with SpaceX and Tesla to develop the project. Since then, however, the entrepreneur has changed his tune, pledging to build a test facility of his very owndown in Texas. Unlike HTT’s, the Musk loop will be used by companies and students to test pod designs, and could even host a student race competition in the vein of Formula SAE. All we can say is that we hope it won’t be long after that before we start seeing Hyperloop tunnels popping up across the country.

Human Head Transplant Possible In 2017

David Nwonye
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0
Human Head Transplant Possible In 2017

Sergio Canavero, of the Turin Advanced Neuromodulation Group in Italy, first proposed the idea of transplanting a head onto someone else’s body in 2013, but he’s moving things forward by announcing the project at the American Academy of Neurological and Orthopaedic Surgeons in Maryland in June where he’ll seek support and sponsors for it.

Canavero’s idea is based on a controversial operation where the whole head of a monkey was transplanted onto a different body.

In 1970, Dr. Robert White, a neurosurgeon, completed a procedure between two rhesus monkeys, but the monkey that received the transplant died after nine days. White’s animal head transplant experiments were called grotesque and barbaric.

In an article published this month in Surgical Neurology International, Canavero writes that the process hinges on the reconnection of the severed stumps of the two spinal cords involved.

In a procedure he calls “GEMINI spinal cord fusion” he writes that the “key” to it is the “sharp severance of the cords themselves” with minimal damage.However, other surgeons have expressed doubt about the procedure ever happening.

“This is such an overwhelming project, the possibility of it happening is very unlikely,” Harry Goldsmith, a clinical professor of neurological surgery at the University of California, Davis, toldNew Scientist.

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