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So far, a number of Android internet browsers and file managers has been developed. While some of them are completely ads-free, easy-to-use and fast, quite a number of them contain detracting advertisement banners, data consuming and extremely slow when opening internet pages.
Recently, we listed five applications that will help you monitor your data usage on your Android smartphone. While monitoring your data usage it is also necessary you consider the speed of your internet browsers as this will affect your bandwidth usage. In this post we are listing 10 Android internet browsers and file managers that will sky rocket your surfing experience.
Base on popularity measure and our analyst experience; topping our list is, Dolphin Browser: It is the fastest Android browser out there which has had a total downloads of 1,090,050 so far.
Another very famous and popular browser which is suitable for the Android operating system is the Opera Mini Browser. It has been developed by Opera Software USA and has had a total of 938,098 downloads till date. The third fastest browser on this list of the fastest browsers for Android Smartphones is Astro file manager/browser which has been developed by Metago and has 358,155 downloads to its credit.
Chrome browser is yet another very fast browser for Android browser which is followed by Firefox browser developed by Mozilla. UC Browser for Android is also one of the fastest Android browsers out there and is developed by USWeb inc.
Maxthon Android web browser developed by Maxthon LTD is a very fast browser for Android and next in the line is Boat browser which is developed by Boat browser.
Ninesky browser is another browser for Android which is one of the fastest and this is followed by Baidu browser which has been developed by Baidu Inc
The saga of 2013 has long been kept in check. Earlier before now, we considered 20 PC games that rocked in 2013, various WordPress plugins and the themes we loved in 2013. Generally we, had an amazing year in 2013 and a good start to a new year but before the month finally round up, I’m going to take a final look at the constituent of the amazing year we had. 2013 saw the arrival of GTA V, the single most expensive video game in the history of gaming, competing neck to neck with only the highest budget film till date, the Pirates of the Caribbean 3.
The GTA franchisee has held records of being the highest budget games twice in the last 5 years holding the first and second positions with GTA V in 2013 and GTA IV in 2008 respectively.Yet, as the highest grossing game ever, GTA IV falls in the fourth position grossing in $1.35 billion with the scales being tipped over by World of Warcraft, grossing in a whopping $10 billion in sales
Below is a detailed infographics by Graphs.net that will show us which of this games made the list.
If your first reaction to Google Glass is, “That’s amazing and also horrifying!”, you’re not alone. Wearable Internet is certainly the future, and probably the nail in the coffin of social grace.
We’ve noticed that holding a conversation and even walking around in public can be tough while wearing Glass. That’s why we’re offering this warning about Glassholes: People whose DoucheFactor™ is off the charts thanks to the distracted, creepy behavior associated with wearing a voice-activated face camera.
Yesterday Paul Thurrottenumerated a number of tweaks that will appear in the upcoming Windows 8.1 update. Screenshots from WZor confirm a few of Paul’s earlier notes on upcoming changes to Windows 8.x that are worth discussing.
The gist is that Microsoft wants to unify the desktop and Metro environments, especially in the context of apps. The better the apps work between the two, the more people might use applications from the Windows Store. This is tacit admission that people love the desktop environment that they have used for decades, and have been slow to switch over to the Metro environment.
So, if people love the desktop and you want them to use more Metro apps, you bring the Metro apps to their desktops. Paul previously reported that you would be able to run Metro apps on the desktop, but WZor screenshots show it in action. Surprise? No.
There is more: “I can confirm one new feature: Metro apps will now include a close box, similar to that seen on desktop applications, which can be clicked with a mouse so that the app closes completely.” Thank god. Getting rid of Metro apps when you are done with them has been a constant Windows 8.x headache.
The divide between the “new” in Windows 8.x (the Metro side of the fence) and the “old” (the Windows 7 bits of Windows 8.x) is being blurred. That’s probably good, given that the old is popular and Microsoft wants the new to become more so.
We’ll see more before Build, given the current pace of leaks. It seems that Microsoft wants to patch the weaker parts of Windows 8.x while keeping its main thrust in place. You can’t have mobile Windows without the Metro interface, and you need an app store as well. But you can heal the cracks on traditional PCs, I suppose.
Google’s Knowledge graph is gradually developing into a very handy tool for Google search results. The company has announced that the tool, henceforth, will form an integral part of its search results. In a blog post on its official Search Blog, Google gave a brief explanation on how you’re now able to learn more about the topics you’re searching for by clicking names that appear next to a given link in your search results.
These additional, informational widgets are only appearing in desktop searches at present.
In the provided example, a search for “Civil War battles” may be tagged with another small link, which, when clicked reveals a drop-down box summarizing that page’s topic. In the picture shown (see above), an extra link titled “Civil War Trust” pops up a box that offers a one-sentence explanation about the nonprofit being referenced, including the date of its founding.
These new links are small and gray, so as not to impact the search experience. They appear beneath the larger blue link, and next to the actual site URL (green link).
The extra information will only be provided for sites that are “widely recognized as notable online,” says Google, which means that it’s not likely that you’ll see some random person’s blog on page 10 of Google’s search results getting the same treatment.
The additional information is powered by Google’s Knowledge Graph, a semantic search effort the company first introduced back in 2012 as a way to make Google Search smarter by infusing it with an understanding of the people, places, and things in its search index.
Since that time, the Knowledge Graph has gone on to touch nearly every aspect of Google’s search, including Google Trends, its mobile card-style interface, searches involving statistics, and much more, in addition to also providing at-a-glance information to the right and sometimes top of Google’s Search results.
Like some of the Knowledge Graph enhancements that have come before it, the new informational pop-ups could impact click-throughs on the pages returned in the search results. For instance, if the searcher was only looking for a brief explanation or fact-check, the pop-up could suffice. But Google purports this extra info is instead designed as a way to help you choose the right result from its list of blue links, not avoid them.
Yesterday Paul Thurrottenumerated a number of tweaks that will appear in the upcoming Windows 8.1 update. Screenshots from WZor confirm a few of Paul’s earlier notes on upcoming changes to Windows 8.x that are worth discussing.
The gist is that Microsoft wants to unify the desktop and Metro environments, especially in the context of apps. The better the apps work between the two, the more people might use applications from the Windows Store. This is tacit admission that people love the desktop environment that they have used for decades, and have been slow to switch over to the Metro environment.
So, if people love the desktop and you want them to use more Metro apps, you bring the Metro apps to their desktops. Paul previously reported that you would be able to run Metro apps on the desktop, but WZor screenshots show it in action. Surprise? No.
There is more: “I can confirm one new feature: Metro apps will now include a close box, similar to that seen on desktop applications, which can be clicked with a mouse so that the app closes completely.” Thank god. Getting rid of Metro apps when you are done with them has been a constant Windows 8.x headache.
The divide between the “new” in Windows 8.x (the Metro side of the fence) and the “old” (the Windows 7 bits of Windows 8.x) is being blurred. That’s probably good, given that the old is popular and Microsoft wants the new to become more so.
We’ll see more before Build, given the current pace of leaks. It seems that Microsoft wants to patch the weaker parts of Windows 8.x while keeping its main thrust in place. You can’t have mobile Windows without the Metro interface, and you need an app store as well. But you can heal the cracks on traditional PCs, I suppose.
IDG NEWS SERVICE – Amazon has approached several major media conglomerates to discuss adding live cable TV channels to its Prime Instant Video service, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday.
The idea is still at a very early stage, and it might not go ahead, the newspaper said, without disclosing its source. Amazon is one of several companies that already offers on-demand movies and TV shows, but live TV would put it squarely in competition with existing cable and satellite TV providers.
Some of those providers already offer live TV over the Internet, but only as an extension of an existing pay TV subscription.
After news, music and video rentals, live TV is seen by many as the next big area that will be disrupted by the Internet. Amazon’s moves could be part of industrywide posturing in preparation for that.
The report came on the same day Verizon Communications, a major broadband Internet provider, said it is buying OnCue, a cloud TV service developed by Intel.
Sony recently said it would begin offering live television through a video service to be delivered through Sony PlayStation and connected TVs later this year, although offered no other details.
Over-the-air broadcasters are also moving toward the Internet. But in a twist on services offered in other countries, some local TV stations require a cable or satellite TV subscription in order to access live streaming programming over the Internet, despite it being broadcast free of charge over local airwaves.
One company that is attempting to break up this model, Aereo, has found itself targeted by lawsuits. Aereo receives and relays local TV broadcasts to subscribers over the Internet without the approval of the broadcasters. Aereo says it doesn’t need their approval, but TV stations disagree. That battle is heading to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Wall Street Journal report noted the difficulty Amazon might face in getting access to content, especially if media conglomerates want to avoid upsetting major cable and satellite providers.
For all of the different brands familiar to consumers, today’s pay TV market is dominated by a handful of large companies that own many of the channels.
General Electric, for example, owns the NBC and Telemundo over-the-air networks, cable channels including CNBC, NBC Sports Network, USA Network and SyFy, cable TV and Internet operator Comcast, and a third of online streaming service Hulu.
The recent versions of Google Chrome will let you synchronize your Google account with Chrome so that you don’t have to login again to each Google products (e.g. Google Drive, Gmail, Blogger, Google Play, etc) website you visit. This will also mean that anybody who has access to your Google Chrome browser can easily explore your email and other Google products without your consent.
How do you ensure that no intruder can have access to your Google account without you logging off? If you share a PC at home, other family members can start searching the web as you by simply opening Chrome.
Luckily, Chrome’s multiple profile support can help, providing an easy-peasy way for multiple people to use the same browser without worrying about intruders or having to constantly sign in and out of Google profiles.
How to Add a New User
First off, open Google Chrome’s menu—the icon with three horizontal lines in the upper right-hand corner—and open the Settings option. Towards the bottom you’ll see a “Users” section >> Simply click on Add new user.
A pop up window will appear with a bunch of user icons and new user account configuration. Choose an icon and name for your profile, you will have to decide whether you want to create a desktop shortcut icon for the profile, and then tap the “Create” button. Viz.. In a few seconds, a new window will open with the new user profile.
Notice that the first time you create a new user profile, Chrome will actually create two profiles: One called “Default Profile” for the person who is currently signed in to Chrome, and one for the new profile that you just created.
So the first time you add a new user, you are actually creating two profiles. To change the name of the default profile to something more user friendly, go back to the Chrome settings tab. Highlight the default profile in the “Users” section and the click the “Edit…” button to change the name.
That’s pretty much it. Just follow the same process as many times as you need to create a user profile for each member of your household.
Create User Profiles for Kids
If your kid is less than 16 years old. You need to be weary of what he/she does on the internet. The most reliable, easy and cheap way to achieve that is with Google Chrome. The browser allows you to supervise a particular profile. You can block the profile from visiting certain websites, view website histories by that user profile, delete and add bookmark.
To be able to monitor your kid internet activities, you will need to create a special kind of profile called a supervised user, a beta-grade profile type Google added to Chrome earlier in January.
To make a supervised user, simply click the checkbox next to “This is a supervised user managed by [email address].” Parents of supervised users can block specific websites, check out the websites they’ve visited, and lock kids into Google’s “Safe search.” If you block a website that your child thinks they should be allowed to view, they can even send you a request to unblock it, and you can manage settings for your supervised users via the dashboard at chrome.com/manage.
You need to be weary of the fact that user profiles are not password protected, however, so Chrome’s supervised users feature is far from fool proof. You will still have to keep an eye on your child’s surfing habits to make sure they are using their profile and not switching over to yours, or—if you’re really worried—create separate user accounts as the operating system level .
How to Switch between Profiles
To switch between users, just click the user icon that appears in the upper left corner of the browser window. The other created users will appear in a drop down menu. Select the one you want to switch to and a new window will open for that user profile. If that’s too much trouble, you can also use the customized desktop shortcuts Chrome offers to make when creating a profile to open the browser as a particular user.
How much do you know about IPTV Networking? Time to put your skills in use: Prodeco Limited Nigeria has declared an open door for qualified candidate to occupy the position of IPTV Solutions Specialist in their local firm.
The Job is only available for qualified candidates within Nigeria. Details of qualifications and requirement are stated below.
Job description
This is a hands-on position. The successful candidate will be responsible for our IPTV network operations. This network consists of Set Top Boxes (STBs) at the customer end, and streamers and servers (VPN, VOD, IPTV, EPG, Middle-ware, etc) at the head-end, distributed via a GPON network. This position will provide technical support to internal staff as well as limited customer technical support.
Duties include:
Operations and maintenance of the IPTV Head-end services to ensure quality of service delivery to customers
Planning to ensure that resources are available for capacity expansion, spares and new configurations.
Meeting and working with vendors to support our IPTV Head-end requirements
Testing and implementation of upgrades, channels or system requirements.
Support satellite downlinks, IP streams, and terrestrial incoming feeds for the IPTV services.
Manage the infrastructure and housekeeping of the IPTV Head-end System.
Planning of the recovery and continuity plan/procedure of the IPTV services.
Participating in meetings to improve on workflow and operation for the IPTV services.
Develop and maintain customer user guides/manuals for current and future IPTV features, such as website functions and account management, STB operation, STB Install, STB Reboot, etc.
Develop and maintain documentation on all IPTV equipment inventory, their connectivity to the network, VLAN information, and switch ports information, etc.
Develop and maintain up to date topology drawings of IPTV head-end connections, including content sources, Splitters, Streamers, Server, and Access Switches.
Develop and maintain daily, weekly, and monthly IPTV Operations reports
Communicate with vendors regarding updates/patches and deployment of updates/patches
Liaison with Information Systems, Network, and Support teams.
Any other duties as required
Desired Skills and Experience
A bachelor’s degree in Computer Science/Engineering, Electrical Engineering or equivalent, or a minimum of 10 years operational experience
Experience in operations and maintenance of IPTV Head-end systems, including both software and hardware
Experience in GPON networks preferred, especially with Huawei OLT and ONT.
Strong experience with service provider routing and switching protocols and technologies (BGP, OSPF, MPLS/VPLS, VRF/VPN, PIM, STP)
Experience with high-end Cisco IOS/IOS-XR routers and switches (6509, 7609, ASR, Nexus) desired
Strong experience designing and configuring QoS/CoS for multi-play service provider offerings
Ability to work in a 24 x 7 environment and have an operational readiness mindset.
Strong experience authoring network specifications and diagrams (MS Word/Visio or equivalent)
Experience working with multicast and next-generation Video delivery technologies (IPTV, ABR HLS, Smooth Streaming, etc.)
Experience with Web technologies and protocols (HTTP, SSL, HTML, etc.)
Experience with tools for stress testing of networks and related equipment
Experience with packet/protocol fault analysis for common IP and Ethernet protocols using network traces or sniffer captures
Experience configuring and maintaining content delivery systems such as caches, streamers, origin servers, request routing systems, load balancers, log aggregation systems, etc. desired
Familiarity with Windows and Linux system administration and related tools
Familiarity with programming and/or a working knowledge of scripting languages used in UNIX and Web systems
Familiarity with configuring common Internet services and applications (Web, DNS, SFTP, etc.)
Strong Microsoft Visio, Word, PowerPoint skills
Strong understanding of the Service Provider technical challenges including intimate knowledge of the end-user needs.
Strong ability to work in a complex environment, effectively building and sustaining relationships at multiple levels with the customer as well as internally.
Proactive, self-motivating with a good grasp of the key business drivers.
Fluent in English
Strong team and people skills, with both Nigerian and international exposure.
IBM is currently in need of a Client Technical Advisor within Nigeria. IBM is a global technology and innovation company headquartered in Armonk, NY. It is one of the largest technology and consulting employer in the world, with more than 400,000 employees serving clients in 170 countries. (Find out more about IBM).
The company announced recently that the position of a Client Technical Advisor has been thrown open to qualify candidates within Nigeria. Details are provided below.
Job description
Provide proactive technical counsel to CIO – Chief Information Officer and key IT executives on technical strategy, direction and projects Improve and broaden client access to IBM’s global technical and innovation expertise Increase the value that clients derive from application of new and existing technologies and accelerate innovation
Requirements
Bachelor’s Degree At least 5 years experience in Understanding Banking industry and business objectives At least 5 years experience in Understanding client’s IT strategy and architectural goals English: Fluent
Preference
At least 6 years experience in Understanding Banking industry and business objectives At least 6 years experience in Understanding client’s IT strategy and architectural goals IBM is committed to creating a diverse environment and is proud to be an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.Apply Now or Read More About IBM
The best way to start a new week is starting with fun. Not to worry, we do not intend to scare you with Android horror games—but it’s okay if horror is fun to you—what we are interested in are three most relaxing games you must rock this week on your Android or iOS devices.
If you happen to find your favourite game in this list, you are in luck. If not, it’s time to try other games and see what you have been missing. The games in our list here today is available for both iOS and Android devices and adaptable to any screen size.
IDG News Service – Some of the most futuristic features envisioned in networked cars will depend on 5G mobile technology that probably won’t be available in full until 2020, according to Ericsson’s chief technology officer.
There’s a bright future for cellular in cars, according to Ulf Ewaldsson, who is the mobile gear vendor’s senior vice president and chief technology officer and head of Group Function Technology. He spoke with IDG News Service following a big automotive push by Ericsson at International CES earlier this month. Among other things, the company showed off its CVC (Connected Vehicle Cloud), designed to deliver applications in a car for information, entertainment, making service appointments and other needs. Ericsson announced partnerships with both a carrier (AT&T) and a carmaker (Volvo).
But more advanced networked-car visions, up to and including self-driving cars, will rely on capabilities that Ericsson sees coming in the as-yet-undefined 5G technology that will augment today’s 4G networks, Ewaldsson said. Ericsson and others are already talking about what to include in 5G, but Ericsson has said it expects commercial deployments of the future specification starting in 2020.
Connected to a 5G network, cars could warn drivers of an impending collision or even be guided through traffic automatically with no driver behind the wheel, Ewaldsson said.Demonstrations at CES showed off both of those types of capabilities. But making those kinds of services work would require guaranteed performance all the way from the cloud that runs the service to the car, and back again.
”The networks that we have today have nowhere near that quality-of-service guarantee,” Ewaldsson said. Instead, 4G systems treat all data as “best-effort” traffic. Even though 4G radios, at their best, have a latency of just 20 milliseconds (a big improvement from 35 milliseconds on 3G), the critical thing is being able to predict and control those delays for each application, he said.
”A car is a good example of something that will have very different demands on different bitstreams,” Ewaldsson said. For example, a child watching a movie in the back seat may be getting that video stream over the same cellular network that’s responsible for real-time warnings and vehicle commands. Future networks will have to be able to tell the difference between them and prioritize one application over another, he said. “Maybe we don’t want to do this right now. Maybe we want to do this six microseconds later.”
In addition to prioritizing packets and using low-latency radios, 5G networks should be able to communicate the service levels for different traffic types to the clouds that will run the applications, Ewaldsson said. That calls for software-defined networking, an emerging set of technologies that shifts control away from traditional routers and switches and into software running on various platforms.
If all this work makes smarter cars sound like an impossible dream, Ewaldsson did say some elements of 5G would be implemented sooner than others. In addition, there is a parallel development track in the industry pursuing the same results without network assistance, he said, though he thinks everything disconnected eventually will hook up to the network.
Ewaldsson defended the lengthy process of completing global telecommunications standards.
”That model has been very successful. It has globalized technology faster than the super-competitive model, if you compare it to the IT industry,” he said. The alternative can create “redundant” innovation by competing companies that each try to make their approach dominant through their weight in the market, he said.
Following tests of Twitter-style Trending Topics on the web and mobile in August, Facebook today officially launches a redesigned “Trending” section on its web homepage’s sidebar in the US, UK, Canada, India and Australia. The richer design shows personalized lists of the most mentioned words and phrases of the moment with short explanations of why each is blowing up. A click-through leads to a Page of mentions by friends, Pages, and public posts by anyone who lets people “Follow” them.
If Facebook users find the Trending section atop the right sidebar of their homepage useful, it could encourage public sharing, drive return visits, and most importantly — make Facebook better known as a news source for current events. The social network has been in a heated battle with Twitter for that distinction over the past few years.
“Trending” will roll out to all users in the specified countries over the next few weeks, and Facebook continues to test a mobile version.
Comparing Facebook And Twitter’s Take On Trends
The explanations make Facebook’s “Trending” section a bit busier than Twitter’s simple list, but could also make it more immediately accessible. Sometimes it’s tough to tell what a Twitter Trending Topic means or why its popular, such as today’s “#SuperDraft”, which refers to the Major League Soccer player draft. That leads to clumsy digging through the hashtag’s tweets, or a web search for the term.
Facebook’s version of Trending doesn’t just list “24″, it explains that “Fox Sets May 5 Premiere for ’24: Live Another Day’”. While you might know Cristiano Ronaldo is a famous soccer player, if he trends on Facebook, it’ll tell you why, such as “Cristiano Ronaldo wins Fifa Ballon d’Or after stellar year at Real Madrid”.
Facebook Trending (Left) vs Twitter Trending Topics (Right)
Facebook tells me “The description next to the topic is actually a headline that provides context around the topic and what is causing it to trend. We have rules in place that work to select concise, accurate, informative headlines.”
Facebook is also taking advantage of its wealth of structured data about what people Like and who they’re close to so it can inform its Trends. Facebook tells me “Topics are personalized based on things you’re interested in and what is trending across Facebook overall.”
Once you click though, though, Facebook’s Trending pages (seen above) look a lot more basic than Twitter’s. Facebook shows a feed of links and posts by Pages, celebrities, and public updates from users who have turned on the “Follow” feature to let non-friends read their public posts. But they all look a bit the same. Twitter’s Trending pages have more style, intelligently highlighting compiled sets of photos and people you should follow as well as posts mentioning the topic.
And since Twitter has been long-known as a place for current, and since most content on Twitter is public and therefore eligible, Twitter’s Trending Topics pages may be deeper and move faster alongside breaking news.
The fact is that most people don’t post publicly on Facebook and don’t have “Follow” turned on, so what appears in Facebook’s Trends isn’t actually what’s popular with people.
Overall, Facebook’s Trends seem a bit more immediately helpful and personally relevant, but Twitter’s pages will likely feature much richer content that actually reflects the thoughts of the common man, not just celebrities and news outlets.
[Update: Hands-On With Facebook Trending]
I just got access to Trending and here are my initial thoughts. While the Trend descriptions are very useful, I sure didn’t see much personalization in the Trends I was shown. I’m not that into sports, Like/follow almost no teams or athletes, and never share sports links. Yet two of the three immediately visible Trends on my home page were athlete scandals.
After expanding the list to the full ten Trends, I got three more sports stories I wasn’t much interested in, though it did show a few about musicians which I found more interesting.
My fears that Trends would be dominated by news outlets and celebrity posts rather than true public opinion were confirmed. After scrolling through several reams of each other the 10 trends, I found most of the pages were overrun with news sites sharing the same links or copy-cat takes on current events. I only saw one post by a friend the whole time.
When there were public posts by normal users, they felt somewhat out-of-place or irrelevant. Facebook’s “Share” button for status updates is much less used than Twitter’s retweet button, so great content from people with small audiences doesn’t get bubbled up. Instead, the public user posts in Facebook Trends seem like scattershot.
Without a strict adherence to reverse-chronological order, Facebook Trends seem more like an overview of current events from 10,000ft, rather than up-to-the-minute commentary. That’s a dig at Facebook if you’re judging it by Twitter’s terms, but really the two takes on Trending may end up serving different purposes.
Facebook Trending aggregates the headlines of the day, while Twitter Trending Topics check the pulse of the moment. Both have their uses.
This is obviously a very early version, and Facebook has plenty to improve on. But no matter what it fixes in the product, Trends won’t be truly great unless it can get more users posting publicly.
Stoking The Public Conversation
…And that’s what Facebook is desperately trying to do. Mark Zuckerberg has been tearing pages straight out of Twitter’s playbook over the past year with the launch of hashtags, verified profiles, and embeddable posts. It’s also testing Twitter-style reverse chronological display of News Feed posts, and is giving marketers and partners more access to its firehose. Plus it recently acquired public sports data filter SportStream.
All these efforts are designed to make Facebook a place people come to discuss what’s happening in the world right now — not just share what they did yesterday with friends. Facebook has seen Twitter gobble up enormous amounts of engagement during TV premieres, award shows, sport matches, and world news events. It wants more of that discussion happening within it’s where it can analyze the data to improve its feed and show ads.
In an interview at Stanford on Tuesday, Zuckerberg said one of Facebook’s big goals after reaching one billion users is creating a unified model of understanding the world that’s powered by artificial intelligence. That effort can only reach its full potential if it knows what the world is thinking about the biggest events of the day. “Trending” is both one of the first by-products of this quest, and a way to lure the public discussion into its walled garden.
Recently, a friend tagged me in picture where he was brutally injured. “What happened?” was my first question as I wondered what might have inflicted such injury and bruises on him. The answer didn’t wait for too long: He honestly told me it was a costume he made with Face Changer on his Android device.
It doesn’t matter whether you forgot to apply the necessary make-ups before taking a photo, this app will help you apply make-ups or add items you never had to your photos.
Publisher Description
CNET: If you are searching for a great time killer and funny photo app, this one is for you. This app promises many laughs as you twist and edit your friends’ faces. Face changer lets you easily change faces in photos. Use it to change your face, friends or change face in any image you find on the internet. It’s easy to create funny pictures and caricatures, and easy to share them.
File Info
– Release Date: October 24, 2013 – Size: 6 MB – Version: 5.8 – App Requirement: Android 2.2 and up – Age Rating: 13+
For information on how to use Android Face Changer on PC or Mac click here, otherwise, click on the download button below to initiate your download.DOWNLOAD ANDROID FACE CHANGER
Techcrunch – Yesterday’s Nest acquisition was unique in the respect that out of its four board members, one of them, Bill Maris, was a partner at the corporate VC arm of the acquirer’s parent company, Google Ventures.
The other, Randy Komisar, was a partner at a Silicon Valley venture firm helmed by John Doerr, who was on the board of the acquirer, Google. The last two board spots were filled by the Nest co-founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. Holy conflict of interest Batman! What a completely awkward situation for both Maris and Doerr. As an investor you want to maximize returns, but as a part of Google, would you want to keep the price down for your parent company?
Google has been the acquirer of a Google Ventures funded company four times since the VC firm launched in 2009: Makani Power, Milk and Bufferbox. Nest will be the fourth if you count Bufferbox, which was so small that Google Ventures didn’t even know it was in M&A talks because it was grandfathered in as a personal Kevin Rose investment. Nest is one of its biggest, if not the biggest, Google Ventures Google exit to date. https://www.youtube.com/embed/gZYEjaJDpKM?feature=player_embeddedIn every case above, Google Ventures partners have recused themselves from M&A discussions, due to obvious conflicts of interest, and that was especially acute in the Nest because of the size of the deal (A whole Snapchat!). Maris took himself out of the game and left Kleiner Perkins’ Randy Komisar to negotiate for the investor’s side when talks got serious over a month ago. KPCB held the majority share in Nest, and saw an over 20x return in this deal. Back at Kleiner, head John Doerr also excused himself from talking to Komisar about the talks, because of his board conflict (note: Kleiner owns no Google shares). Komisar was a lonely puppy for a while.
According to Fadell, Google had been interested in nabbing Nest as far back as Google Venture’s investment in 2011, but the discussions were never serious until this winter. We at TechCrunch had heard Apple was also trying to feather its nest with Nest around a month ago, whether “serious” or not.
For what it’s worth, Fadell told Fortune’s Dan Primack yesterday that he couldn’t discuss whether or not he had discussed an Apple buy, which likely means that he had, even if informally. I mean, he’s the father of the iPod. He’s not going to chat up his former colleagues?
But when it came time to sign away the company, Google was simply a better fit from a data standpoint. “Excitement from Sergey and Larry delivered a little extra confidence,” said one person familiar with the matter, citing that the deal was of the eBay “Buy It Now” sort instead of an all-out bidding war.
Google Ventures is now completing two to three new investments per week and will have a brand-spanking-new $300 million fund as of this month, so Google acquisitions of portfolio companies are just going to keep on happening. And the partners are trying their best to keep the mindset of a Sand Hill Road firm instead of one that resembles traditional corporate VCs like Intel Capital. “We get paid when we maximize returns,” one person said.
But there’s the question of how much revenue Google sees from a large Google Ventures return. Let’s say hypothetically that this deal returned a few hundred million for Google Ventures (if Google got 12.5% that would mean a ~$400M return minus carry). One could argue if Google as the parent company gets meaningful profit from Google Ventures, then Google bought Nest for less because it also sees returns on the deal, ~$3 billion instead of $3.2 billion, again hypothetically.
And unlike a Sand Hill VC, Google Ventures does advertise “Google access” as a portfolio company perk. According to a well-informed source, a Google Ventures investment will not make or break a potential acquisition, but yeah it might help – like making the original intro that eventually led to the Nest buy: “Google is a part of our DNA, I think that’s attractive.”
IDG News Service – One of the nicer features of Motorola’s Moto X (shown above) and recent Droid phones is the ability to have text messages read aloud while driving, but responding to those messages has been tricky until now.
A new update to Motorola’s Assist app makes those responses much easier. Users can now reply directly to incoming text messages by voice, instead of having to initiate a completely new voice command by saying “Okay Google Now.”
Assist is a major feature of Motorola’s newer phones that automatically does things based on your situation. For example, it switches to hands-free communications while driving, silences calls while you’re in meetings, and only allows important calls at night.
Motorola says it has improved driving detection over Bluetooth in the latest update, and also added a way to launch your favorite music app once you’re on the road. (The app could already start playing your most recent track when connected to car audio through the headphone jack or Bluetooth.)
Although the Moto X received critical acclaim for its clever software and customizable finish, Motorola has reportedly been disappointed by weak sales, and has slashed prices on both unlocked and carrier models. Starting next month, Motorola will start selling its flagship phone in Europe, but without the Moto Maker customizations available to U.S. customers.
Even if the Moto X remains a sales dud, it makes sense for Motorola to keep investing in the software. CEO Dennis Woodside has spoken of the “long-term mindset” at parent company Google, so Motorola will likely build upon Assist and other software features for future handsets.
WebOS made its second big debut at last week’s CES, but not on a smartphone like it was in 2009. This time around, WebOS has landed on televisions from LG, as we’ll explore in this video report.
WebOS will power 70 percent of LG’s Smart TV lineup.
The webOS interface on the TV makes sense of all the different types of content and inputs on your television. There’s no more wondering which input to use or which service has the best content.
IDG News Service – The way you identify yourself on Twitter can now be used by marketers in their decisions to place ads in your feed, under a new expansion of the site’s advertising program.
Twitter said Tuesday that it would add some new capabilities to its “tailored-audiences” program that will let marketers target their ads to specific users based on their email address or information in their Twitter bios. The program, if enough advertisers take advantage of it, could help the social network raise revenue at a time when the pressure is on for the now-public company to turn a profit. Part of the idea is to help advertisers better reach people on Twitter who are already loyal customers. If, say, you’re a membership cardholder for a fashion retailer, the new tools are designed to let that retailer better reach you on Twitter.
Under the new program, the retailer can share scrambled email addresses of its members with Twitter, and then Twitter would match that information to the accounts of those people, assuming they operate accounts on Twitter under those addresses.
A tweet from that advertiser might then appear in the person’s feed, Twitter said in its announcement.
Anonymizer scrambling
Scrambling is a process used by Twitter and its advertising partners to anonymize people’s account information so their identities are not revealed. Twitter uses a behind-the-scenes software program that automatically matches people’s email addresses and user IDs that are scrambled in this way. The process is meant to keep Twitter in the dark on whom exactly is being targeted this way.
The technology fits in with an ad-analysis program Twitter unveiled last year, designed to look at how users’ activity on the site might affect in-store sales.
Twitter’s tailored audiences program was originally announced as a way to let marketers deliver ads to people based on their browsing activity outside of Twitter—a concept that is already rampant across the Internet. Google and Facebook have operated their own re-targeting programs for some time now.
Tuesday’s expansion shows Twitter is looking to give marketers even more ways to target individual people on its site.
The new advertising program also makes use of people’s Twitter usernames and basic bio information. The idea here is to help marketers promote themselves to people who aren’t yet loyal customers, but who might be receptive to their ads.
The retailer might be able to use public information on Twitter like a user’s bio, follower count, verified status, or past tweets, “to identify the specific accounts on Twitter which are the most appropriate potential customers,” wrote Kelton Lynn, product manager for revenue at Twitter, in a blog.
Twitter has partnered with a number of ad technology companies like Datalogix, Epsilon, and Liveramp to make all the targeting work.
If Twitter users do not want to be targeted by advertisers in this way, they can adjust their privacy settings to turn off the matching, the company said. In users’ privacy settings, there is an option to “Tailor ads based on information shared by ads partners.” If people uncheck that, Twitter will not match people’s accounts to information from ad partners, the company said.
IDG News Service – Few things are worse than when you’re trying to get some work done with your headphones on and all of a sudden, a loud, obnoxious advertisement yells at you to “come try this out!”
It’s terrible, but Google seems to empathize with this. Back in November, the search giant launched an update to its Chrome beta browser that included a helpful little feature that silences these noisy tabs. This helpful feature is now available in the latest stable release of Google Chrome.
Just look for the little sound icon in your tabs.
The feature allows you to track down noisy tabs with visuals: scan your tabs and look for the speaker icon to see which one is the disruptor. You’ll also be able to tell which tabs are using your webcam or are being cast to your TV via Chromecast.
The new Google Chrome update also comes with the stronger Safe Browsing feature that blocks malicious files from downloading, while Windows 8 users will appreciate the new “Metro” mode look.
Supervised users is a lot like multi-user accounts.
Lastly, if you’ve got a family computer, you can now try out a beta preview of supervised users, which helps out those family members who need some help getting around the Internet. Once you’ve set up the accounts, you can visit a specific page to review each member’s browsing activity and determine their restrictions. It’s like Android’s multi-user profiles, but for Chrome.
If you’d like to try out the new features, you can update the Chrome browser from the Help menu under the browser settings. To try out the beta features, you’ll have to download Chrome Beta.
WASHINGTON — New views from the Hubble Space Telescope are revealing the spooky-looking Tarantula Nebula in never-before-seen detail.
The Tarantula Nebula is located about 160,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud, one of the closest galaxies to the Milky Way. The prolific Hubble Space Telescope produced the image, which shows multicolored clouds of gas and dust glowing with stars sprinkled throughout the image. Hubble officials previously released images of the spidery nebula, however, this is the deepest view of the intriguing cosmic region full of star clusters yet. [See the amazing new Tarantula Nebula photos]
“The image is dominated by gas and dust, but I can assure you that there are more than 800,000 stars living in this region,” Elena Sabbi, of the Space Telescope Science Institute, said as she unveiled the new image here at the 223rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society. “To see them, you have to strip away the veil the dust is causing and then you can admire the stars in this region. This is a very efficient way to identify where stars are forming nowadays in the Tarantula Nebula.”
The impressive star cluster located on the left center portion of the image is actually a super star cluster called R136. The massive group of stars could eventually become a globular cluster — bunches of old stars orbit the centers of their galaxies.
Much of the Tarantula Nebula’s visibility is actually due to R136 thanks to the amount of energy produced by the super star cluster.
The image was created as part of the Hubble Tarantula Treasury Project, an initiative to map stars within the nebula in order to understand its structure more thoroughly. The Tarantula Nebula represents an environment that could be similar to the extreme conditions that existed during the early universe, Hubble officials said.
The new image is also used in an electronic book called Reach for the Stars: Touch, Look, Listen, Learn. While the new book is designed for children for visual impairments, anyone can use it to explore the complex nebula. The book will be available for free on iPad.
“We hope it will be an inspiration and attract people to science,” Sabbi said in a statement. “That’s the main goal. We want to convince children that science is cool, is fun, and that anybody could be a scientist, if they want to.”
The gist is that Microsoft wants to unify the desktop and Metro environments, especially in the context of apps. The better the apps work between the two, the more people might use applications from the Windows Store. This is tacit admission that people love the desktop environment that they have used for decades, and have been slow to switch over to the Metro environment.
