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As +Brian Gardner rightly said “the social media makes you look better, and that’s the problem”: We all like to appear slicker than we actually are, just to get a few likes and comments on Facebook.
Whether you are using Facebook as a business entity (page) or as an individual you can backdate your new status update, schedule an update (scheduling updates is only available to page admins) or even change the date of your already posted items.
Maybe you just remembered a photo you were suppose to post three years ago or something you were suppose to say yesterday, don’t worry, you can still go back to the past – at least on Facebook.
Scheduling Posts on Facebook Pages
If you need to make a statement at a time you won’t be available on your Facebook page, scheduling your status update may come handy. The system allows you to post a status update and schedule it to be publish at a given time.
You can prepare a post and schedule it to appear later by adding a date and time in the future before you post it. You can schedule a post up to 6 months in advance in 10-minute intervals.
From your Page’s sharing tool:
Choose the type of post you want to add to your Page
Clickin the lower left of the sharing tool
Choose the date and time you want the post to appear
Click Schedule
If you choose a date in the past, the post will appear immediately at the appropriate place on your Page’s Timeline. All times correspond to the current time zone you’re in.
Note: Scheduling post is currently available to only Facebook page admins.
Backdating Timeline Post
You can backdate your videos, photos, status and just about everything you own on Facebook. Simple goto to your Facebook sharing tool:
Choose the type of post you want to add to your Timeline
Clickin the lower left of the sharing tool
Choose the date and time you want the post to appear
Click Post
To backdate an existing photo:
Click on the photo you want to backdate.
From the right-hand panel, click Edit.
Choose the date and time you want the post to appear.
You may use your Mac for serious work, but sometimes it’s a good thing to add a touch of whimsy to it. Here are four quick tips for customizing OS X and making it a bit more fun to use.
Check them out below…
1. Try the iTunes Artwork screensaver
When you’re not working, by default your Mac’s screen turns black with a subtle, shifting white Apple icon and a bit of text, usually your username. But you need not settle for that. To pick something different, go to Apple menu > System Preferences, select Desktop & Screen Saver, and then click the Screen Saver tab. You’ll find a lot of fun options to explore here, such as “Word of the Day.” If you’re a music fan, though, try the iTunes Artwork screensaver, which displays a collage of random album covers from your iTunes library.
Scroll down the list of options in the left-hand column. When you see iTunes Artwork, click to select it, and then click Screen Saver Options. Here you’ll see the option to choose the number of album-cover rows as well as the “delay” in seconds. By default the delay is set to 2 seconds, meaning that every 2 seconds one of the album covers will flip to expose a new cover.
Click the Preview section of the preference pane to see the screensaver in action. You’ll notice that the different albums change at random, one at a time. As a bonus, if you spot an album you want to play, you can hover your cursor over its artwork and click to start the music.
The iTunes Artwork screensaver fills your Mac’s display with the covers of your albums. Even better, you can just click an album to get the music started.
2. Change your wallpaper…all day long
You probably know that you can change your Mac’s wallpaper—that is, the image or color on your Desktop. To do so, first open System Preferences (from the Apple menu or the Dock) and click Desktop & Screen Saver. Click the Desktop tab, and then you can choose an image from a number of folders, or from your iPhoto albums.
But there’s one setting that will make your Desktop a lot more interesting: At the bottom of the window, check Change Picture, and choose a frequency such as every 5 seconds, every day, or when waking from sleep. To make the image unpredictable, also select the Random Order option. Now you’ll never know which photo will come up, and your Desktop will be a source of surprise.
Bring unpredictability to your Mac by making the Desktop wallpaper change throughout the day.
3. Mix it up with emoji in file and folder names
Emoji are small graphics that work like fonts. You might see these little faces, animals, and other images pop up in text messages or tweets. But you may not realize that you can use them in your file and folder names too.
To change an item’s name and add an emoji character, select a file or folder in the Finder, and then press Return or Enter. This action will highlight the item’s name. Next, choose Edit > Special Characters, or press Command-Control-Space. You’ll see a pop-up palette; click any of the icons at the bottom. The clock icon shows characters you’ve recently used; the others sort special characters—including emoji—by category.
Make file and folder names more fun (and perhaps more memorable) by adding emoji. You can also use these small graphics in texts, email, and documents.
Browse through people (smiley faces and more), nature (including cute little animals and flowers), objects (such as food items and sports balls), places (buildings, vehicles, road signs), and symbols (for instance, from the zodiac), to find one you like. Click an emoji to add it to a file or folder name. You can type normal letters before or after the graphic. Emoji will make your file and folder names stand out, and they certainly won’t be drab.
4. Spice up folders with custom icons
Are you tired of all those boring blue folders in the Finder? Change them.
Want to have a folder with a picture of your pet, your child, or your favorite outdoor scene? Easy peasy.
Many sites offer free sets of icons that you can use to dress up your folders, like this one from IconArchive.
You can use almost any graphic—a photo of your child, a pet, album art from your favorite band—as a folder icon. If you want, you can even search Google for nice pictures to use, but keep in mind that they shouldn’t be too large, or they won’t be easily recognizable as icons. Better yet, download art specifically made to serve as folder icons, for instance from InterfaceLift or IconArchive.
Double-click a picture to open it in Preview, or open it in your favorite image editor. If you want to crop it, drag the crosshair cursor over the picture, and then choose Tools > Crop, or press Command-K. You might want to crop the picture to a square so that it will look more balanced as an icon. To do so, press the Shift key while dragging the crosshair cursor.
Next, press Command-A to select the picture, and then press Command-C to copy it. In the Finder, look for the folder that you want to sport the icon. Select it and press Command-I to display its Info window. Click the small blue folder icon at the Info window’s top-left corner. Press Command-V to paste your picture over the standard folder icon, and then close the Info window. The folder will now appear with its fancy new icon.
Microsoft has partnered with a domain name and hosting company GoDaddy to offer Office 365 as the exclusive business-class email and productivity tools service for GoDaddy’s small business customers.
GoDaddy is offering customers three different tiers of Office 365 service: Email Essentials, Business Essentials, and Productivity Plus. The Email Essentials plan is only $4 per month, and is tailored to very small business customers. It lets the business set up an email using the company’s own domain; comes with 5GB of email storage, plus 2GB of SkyDrive Pro cloud storage; and lets customers sync email, calendar, and contacts across devices and platforms. https://www.youtube.com/embed/xvK76H9olXM?feature=player_embeddedThe Business Essentials plan is closer to the standard Office 365 offerings. For $9 per month, it includes 50GB of email storage, and 25GB of SkyDrive Pro cloud storage. It also adds online HD video conferencing, file sharing and collaboration, and online access to the core Office Web Apps.
For $12.50 per month, Productivity Plus customers get to install the full Microsoft Office desktop suite on up to 5 PCs or Macs, and gain access to use Office Mobile Apps for Windows Phone, iPhone, and Android.
All of the tiers of service offered by GoDaddy also include the main benefits of Office 365 for small business customers. First, the infrastructure and applications are maintained by Microsoft, so it’s like getting a whole IT department thrown in for free. Second, the tools included in the Office 365 service will always be updated, and customers will have access to whatever is the most current version of the software available.
There are nearly 30 million small businesses in the United States, and an estimated 92 percent of them have fewer than four employees. Businesses that small face a challenge because they still need business-class tools and services, but lack the resources to implement and manage those tools on their own. A Boston Consulting Group study commissioned by Microsoft found that if more small and medium businesses had access to cutting edge IT tools, it could boost revenues by a combined $770 billion and create an estimated 6 million more jobs.
If your small business has a domain bought from or hosted by GoDaddy, you should take a look at the new Office 365 offerings and see if they make sense for you.
TechHive – Mobile developers hoping to cash in on a blockbuster app have bad news from researcher Gartner: More competition and higher demands from users will make it even more difficult for developers to make money from smartphone and tablet applications.
The Google Play app store and Apple’s iTunes store both have over one million apps. That adds up to too many choices for users, and makes it harder for developers to get noticed or make money from their applications.
Average apps stats
Today about 90 percent of paid applications are downloaded fewer than 500 times per day and make less than $1250 a day, according to Gartner. This is only going to get worse, thanks to greater competition. In addition, applications will have to become more sophisticated to keep up with user demands, so operations, development, testing, deployment and support will become more expensive, it said.
This means by 2018 only one in ten thousand consumer apps will be considered a financial success by their developers, according to the market research company.
Developers need to prepare for this scenario and should set realistic expectations. If the goal is to make money directly from the sale of the app, developers need to thoroughly assess the concept, the costs, and the opportunity, because the likelihood of success is minute, Gartner said.
The share of free apps is also predicted to rise from 91 percent last year to 94.5 percent in 2017. In the same period, the total number of downloads is expected to grow from 102.1 billion to 268.7 billion.
The growing number of available applications is also changing the way users find apps. Consumers can’t sort through these large numbers and instead depend on suggestions from recommendation engines, friends, social networking or advertising to discover mobile applications, according to Gartner.
Gartner does however believe that the number of paid downloads will continue to grow, even though they are a smaller percentage of the total, and will reach 14.8 billion by 2017, compared to 9.2 billion last year.
And there’s always the possibility of the exception: a student in a basement developing a one-of-a-kind application that becomes wildly successful, Gartner said.
PC World – BlackBerry will rededicate itself to physical keyboards as the company tries to regain its footing.
Speaking to Bloomberg , BlackBerry CEO John Chen said the company’s future phones will “predominantly” have physical keyboards, rather than full touchscreens. “I personally love the keyboards,” Chen said. Out of the four existing BlackBerry 10 smartphones, only the Q10 (shown above) and Q5 have physical keyboards, and only the former is available through U.S. carriers. The BlackBerry Z10 and Z30 use touchscreens, with the quality of the software keyboard being a major focus in BlackBerry 10.
BlackBerry’s recent emphasis on touchscreens over physical keyboards was reportedly a major source of friction within the company as it tried to bring BlackBerry 10 to market. In a story last September , The Globe and Mail recounted a 2012 board meeting, where co-founder and former CEO Mike Lazaridis expressed frustration over the touchscreen Z10. “I don’t get this,” Lazaridis said while pointing to the phone.
Lazaridis eventually left the board, and last November, BlackBerry ousted CEO Thorsten Heins, who oversaw the launch of BlackBerry 10. The company also abandoned plans to sell itself, as it focuses on enterprise services and BlackBerry Messaging (BBM) across multiple platforms.
Status of BlackBerry 10?
Since then, BlackBerry’s commitment to BlackBerry 10 has been murky. A partnership with manufacturer Foxconn will bring at least one BlackBerry 10 handset to emerging markets, but a recent open letter from Chen didn’t even mention BlackBerry 10 by name. The company’s enterprise business is still largely using the older BlackBerry 7 operating system, but companies are increasingly turning to iPhones and Android phones instead.
It’s unclear whether BlackBerry’s physical keyboard push implies more new BlackBerry 7 handsets or more BlackBerry 10 devices without full touchscreens. Either way, BlackBerry is reaching for the past as it tries to stay alive.
CES may be finished for another year, but one of the biggest themes of the show — that anything (cars, watches, mirrors, tables, whatever) can be ‘hardware’ — is just taking off. And today’s news of Google buying Nest for $3.2 billion underscores how Google wants to be the player at the front and center of hardware.
Google’s Nest buy may not be giving the search giant access to all the data that zooms across Nest’s apps, thermostats and smoke detectors (for now at least), but it will give Google something else: top-shelf design expertise for that next frontier of hardware, by way of a team of people brought together by two senior hardware veterans from Apple, one of whom is known as the father of the iPod. This is a significant turn of events for Google.
Up to now, the search giant has cornered business — on desktop internet, mobile devices — through software, and then monetized those markets with data — specifically advertising data.
It’s been a fundamentally different approach from Apple, the quintessentially vertically integrated company that controls not just a platform and the services that run on it, but the devices they run on, too. (And with that, the lucrative margins that come from successful, premium hardware sales.)
Nest will give Google an opportunity to diversify its revenues by tackling a whole new market — connected home devices — with that vertical approach.
“This is the new hardware movement,” as one person described it. “Devices + services, product-market fit and research done through crowdfunding platforms, mix of retail partnerships and direct online sales.”
For Google, Nest is a particularly attractive example. Not only does it make an integrated piece of connected hardware for the home, but it’s designed with interoperability at its heart — in the initial case, by way of apps that you control on your iOS or Android smartphone, along with a well-developed, direct and online retail channel and loyal following.
It’s an area, in any case, that Google appears to have already been eyeing up for some time. In December, for example, The Information uncovered a test Google was running called EnergySense, which appeared to be a smart thermostat program that helped people lower energy consumption. This reportedly was being trialled on third party devices from Nest competitor Ecobee, but could now potentially find their way to Nest’s thermostats instead.
“Will Nest and Google products work with each other?” co-founder Matt Rogers asked in a hypothetical Q&A post earlier today. “Nest’s product line obviously caught the attention of Google and I’m betting that there’s a lot of cool stuff we could do together, but nothing to share today,” he answered.
Yet, to say that the acquisition is a boost for Google alone is not the whole story.
For months now, Nest has been facing a growing cacophony of criticism from customers that the software on its products was buggy. Leaning on Google’s software expertise could come in handy here (although the overlap between Google haters and Nest lovers could pose a problem in this regard).
And there is also the issue of Nest’s intellectual property and patent fights. Nest is facing patent infringement lawsuits from Honeywell and First Alert maker BRK. To help fight those and also to protect itself from copycats, it’s been aggressive on the patent front, with 100 patents granted, another 200 filed and a further 200 ready to file; and an ongoing licensing agreement with Intellectual Ventures. Bringing Google into the mix will be another major boost for safeguarding the company in these battles, too.
The Nest acquisition also raises questions of how Google’s other hardware interests may come into play going forward.
Motorola, which Google acquired for $12.5 billion in 2012, at one time looked like it could be a way for Google to take a new, vertical approach to smartphones and tablets. Ultimately, Motorola remained a partner among equals with other Android OEMs, and patents became one of the most crucial parts of the deal. Could the Nest acquisition, bringing a new focus on hardware creation, see Google bring in some of the IP and talent that Google picked up in that Motorola deal?
Google is acquiring connected device company Nest for $3.2 billion just after it has acquired Boston Dynamics, creator of Big Dog recently. Google sent out an email to employees noting the acquisition today and later issued a press release.
In the release, Google noted that Nest has been offering its best-selling thermostat since 2011 and recently began offering the Protect smoke alarm, which networks with its other devices. Nest Founders Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers will both join Google. Rogers was one of the first engineers on the iPhone team at Apple.
“They’re already delivering amazing products you can buy right now–thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe,” said Google CEO Larry Page in a statement. “We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams!”
Fadell, who is known as the ‘father of the iPod’, said that they’re ‘thrilled to join Google.’ “With their support, Nest will be even better placed to build simple, thoughtful devices that make life easier at home, and that have a positive impact on the world.”
Nest will continue on as its ‘own brand identity’ and continue to be led by Fadell. The deal hasn’t closed yet as it has to meet regulatory approval.
Nest founders Fadell and Rogers also sent an emailed statement to TechCrunch about why Nest chose to go ahead with the acquisition.
“Google will help us fully realize our vision of the conscious home and allow us to change the world faster than we ever could if we continued to go it alone. We’ve had great momentum, but this is a rocket ship,” Fadell says. “Google has the business resources, global scale and platform reach to accelerate Nest growth across hardware, software and services for the home globally. And our company visions are well aligned – we both believe in letting technology do the hard work behind the scenes so people can get on with the things that matter in life. Google is committed to helping Nest make a difference and together, we can help save more energy and keep people safe in their homes.”
Fadell says that this decision was not made hastily. He says that at the 2011 TED conference — even before Nest had launched — he and Nest VP of business Erik Charlton had ‘huddled’ together in a corner with Google’s Brin to show him a video and early model of the Nest thermostat.
He instantly got what we were doing and so did the rest of the Google team when we showed them. In May 2011, Google Ventures led our Series B round of financing, and in 2012, Series C. Time and time again, Googlers have shown themselves to be incredibly like-minded, supportive and as big of dreamers as we are. I know that joining Google will be an easy transition because we’re partnering with a company that gets what we do and who we are at Nest – and wants us to stay that way.
We’ve been hearing rumors about Nest getting courted with large billion-dollar acquisition offers for months now, but a Google buy is a definite statement. The company has been fairly serious about its connected-device efforts for a while but hasn’t quite been able to get anything to gel. For instance, there have been some abortive attempts at connected devices like Android at Home in the past. But Nest already has a nice start in producing well-designed and connected home devices — something that Google should be able to build off of in the future.
Peter Nieh, a partner at Nest investor Lightspeed Venture Partners, has a post up about his early days working with Fadell at startup General Magic and what Nest has done since. He also shared a photo of the pair from 1992:
Nieh says that though he was excited to work with Fadell again when it came time to invest in Nest, “…our excitement went off the charts when we met Matt Rogers, Tony’s co-founder, who was responsible at Apple for iPod software development and one of the first engineers on the original iPhone team. We would have invested had they been looking to start a food truck.”
We reached out to Nieh for more thoughts, and he told TechCrunch that “Nest is a very special company — it’s a combination of an incredible team led by Tony and Matt, world-changing vision, and world-class execution.
“The acquisition by Google is just a milestone along the way as they continue their quest to change the world,” he added. “I can’t wait to see how they will continue to bring magic to all those unloved things in our homes.”
The acquisition could also provide a patent boost of some sort for Google. In December,Nest said that it had 100 patents granted, with 200 more on file with the U.S. Patent Office and another 200 ready to file. Nest has been the target of some fairly high-profile patent suits and threats from legacy manufacturers like Honeywell over its thermostat and BRK over its Protect smoke detector. Google will likely offer shelter from further suits with its wide range of patents across a variety of technology arenas.
As far as how much autonomy Fadell will have to execute on his vision of what Nest can be, it doesn’t make a lot of sense for Google to derail a business that — by most counts — was fairly successful already and had been garnering praise from consumers over design. It could help with infrastructure problems that have caused failed firmware upgrades, which recently prompted complaints.
There’s also bound to be an immediate and visceral reaction to the access that Google will now have to information about when you’re home, which rooms you’re in and more. Which is why Nest also issued a Q&A about what will happen to users now that Google owns their thermostats and smoke detectors:
Will Nest continue to support iOS so I can have the Nest app on my iPhone or iPad?
Yes, absolutely. We’ll continue supporting iOS, Android and modern web browsers so you can check in on your home and control the temperature from wherever you are.
Will Nest and Google products work with each other?
Nest’s product line obviously caught the attention of Google and I’m betting that there’s a lot of cool stuff we could do together, but nothing to share today.
What will happen to the Nest warranties on products?
No change there – we stand behind our products like we always have.
Will I still be able to find Nest products at my local retailer?
You bet. We intend to continue selling through the same partners in the US, Canada and the UK.
Will Nest customer data be shared with Google?
Our privacy policy clearly limits the use of customer information to providing and improving Nest’s products and services. We’ve always taken privacy seriously and this will not change.
That answer is a bit vague, but the concerns over the recent revelations of enormous datagathering efforts on the part of the NSA should definitely cause some to worry. Whether Google chooses to share information voluntarily, it’s still a big target for those looking to hoover up vast swaths of data about its users, and that will only be more likely as time goes on, not less.
The deal is also set to make the startup’s early investors — Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers and Shasta Ventures — a lot of money.
Scientists are one step closer to creating a real-life version of Dr. Seuss’ green eggs and ham, thanks to the birth of ten transgenic pigs in late December that glow green when placed under a black light.
Zhenfang Wu and Zicong Li of the South China Agricultural University used a technique developed by reproductive scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine to transfer plasmids (small DNA molecules, separate from the chromosomal DNA within a cell) carrying a fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA into the pig embryos.
Assisted by Dr. Johann Urschitz, an assistant research professor at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Biogenesis Research (IBR), the team of doctors were able to quadruple the success rate of the plasmid transfer — a feat that bodes well for the technique’s overall goal of introducing beneficial genes into larger animals to create more cost-efficient medicines.
This method of transferring DNA from another organism, known as transgenesis, relies on the embryo’s DNA repair machinery to integrate the transferred transgene DNA (in this case, the fluorescent protein from jellyfish) and transmit that property to its offspring.
Because all organisms share a similar genetic code, scientists can cut DNA sequences that code for a particular protein and insert it into other organisms to produce that specific protein. In transgenesis, the scientists insert the altered DNA into the host’s embryo and the desired DNA becomes incorporated, gaining the ability to produce the new protein (again, in this case, the jellyfish protein). This can be applicable in the production of cheaper medicine — pharming, as it is known, which uses the same process, but inserts genes that code for pharmaceuticals into host animals that don’t express those genes naturally (the anticoagulant ATryn, for example, is produced from the milk of genetically modified goats).
“We can make those enzymes a lot cheaper in animals rather than a factory that will cost millions of dollars to build,” said Dr. Stefan Moisyadi, a bioscientist at the IBR.
According to a statement released by the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the additional green glow does not harm the pigs; instead, it just indicates that the transfer succeeded.
“It’s just a marker to show that we can take a gene that was not originally present in the animal and now exists in it,” Moisyadi said.
This isn’t the first instance of glowing green mammals. Last August, scientists from the University of Istanbul, assisted by Dr. Moisyadi, also used this technique to produce the world’s first green rabbits. The same scientists at the university are expected to make an announcement about their results involving sheep and the first transgenic lamb later this year.
This article and video was originally posted on Mashable
Some of us here have been enjoying the photo editing feature on Google+ since its introduction in November, 2013 but I believe a great number of you are yet to know about this feature and how to use it.
As one of it’s techniques to land you on Google+, Google has integrated an amazing photo editing tool into Google+. Though a number of you has sworn enmity with Google+ but in this case, hatred doesn’t matter: This tool will make you use Google+.
Google+ photo editing tool allows its users to crop, enhance or customize photos they have uploaded through their Google+ account, Blogger platform, Android OS or any of Google’s services that involves photos. Google+ creates an automatic album for all the photos you shared on various Google platforms. Any changes you apply on a photo will reflect on it regardless of where it’s being used or was uploaded.
To edit a photo
Login to your Google+ account.
Goto your photos page.
Click on the photo you want to edit
This will open a light-box, click on edit inside the light-box.
Clicking edit will bring photo editing tools to the right hand-side of the screen. For the first timers, I would advice you play around with the tool until you are able to master it’s functions.
When you are done editing, hit the finished editing link to apply your changes.
Earlier this week, Yahoo announced that it had acquired Aviate, a startup providing contextually relevant information on Android homescreens, but it didn’t say anything about the acquisition price. TechCruch has revealed that the deal cost Yahoo a whooping sum of $80 Million.
Below is the full extract from TechCrunch.
My source didn’t know any of the details beyond the amount — the mix of cash and stock or how much of the total is tied to an earn out, for example. Regardless, that’s an impressive price for a young startup that raised a $1.8 million Series A (from Highland Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others) less than a year ago. (It was also incubated at StartX.)
When I reached out for this story, spokespeople from both Yahoo and Aviate declined to comment on the terms of the deal.
Yahoo has on a pretty visible acquisition streak since Marissa Mayer took over as CEO. Last month, for example, it acquired content delivery network provider PeerCDN. During her keynote at the Consumer Electronics Show, Mayer said that Aviate’s technology will allow Yahoo to deliver content in “smarter and more personalized” ways on Android phones.
If you haven’t yet played around with Apple’s slo-mo feature on the iPhone 5s, now’s a perfect time to start. This week’s video tip has Macworld associate editor Serenity Caldwell demonstrating how to shoot slo-mo video, preview it on your own device, and share it with others.
Transcript: One of the great features of the iPhone 5s is its slow motion video mode. To use this mode, just swipe over while in the Camera app to the Slo-Mo setting.
To begin shooting a slow-motion video, make sure you’ve got your target focused, then press the record button. Your video will begin recording in what looks like real time, but don’t be fooled: there’s some slow-motion magic yet to come.
If you just want to view your masterpiece yourself, you can open up the Camera Roll. There, two new blue edit handles will drop down, allowing you to phase in and out of slow motion. But if you’d actually like to send those videos to anyone, you have to move over to iMovie, Apple’s free software for editing and sharing home movies.
iMovie automatically lists all the videos from your Camera Roll that you’ve taken. To create a project from one of them, just select the clip in question, then press the Share button, followed by Create Movie. From there, you’ll enter the Edit screen.
Unlike the Camera Roll, you can’t automatically phase in and phase out slow motion. We actually have to make some cuts first to do that. Scroll through your clip and decide where you’d like the slow motion to start.
Tap the clip, and then swipe down on it to create a cut. Once you’ve made your cut, double-tap on the clip to the right and select the Speed option. This allows you to slow down that new clip to 1/4 its original speed.
Now you’ve slowed down the middle of your future video, but you still need to create an end clip to take you out of the slow motion. When you’ve decided where your ending spot should be, select the clip and swipe downward to make a second cut. The clip to the right keeps the same speed as the clip it’s been separated from; as such, we still have a slowed clip where we’ve made our cut, and we need to speed it back up again before we can finish our movie. Once you’re happy with how your slow-motion video has come together, tap the arrow in the upper left corner of the screen. That brings you back to the Projects area, where you can tap the Share button and then tap Save Video to send your masterpiece back to the Camera Roll.
When your slow motion movie finishes exporting, you can send it to friends via Messages, email, Instagram, Facebook, and more.
This video and it’s description is the property of IDG Consumer & SMB and was originally published on TechHive.
Your iPhone is remarkable in many ways, but its camera will simply never capture photos with a deliciously shallow depth of field like your DSLR. And unless Apple finds a way to cram a much, much larger sensor into the phone, that will always be the case. You can simulate that luxuriant, shallow depth of field effect through software, though. Tadaa SLR does just that.
Actually, Tadaa doesn’t simply let you artificially tweak the depth of field; it lets you change the focus point of the photo. And it does that after you’ve taken the image, not unlike what you can do with the innovative Lytro camera.
You start Tadaa in camera mode; compose and take your shot. If you want to start with an existing photo, you can alternately choose one from your camera roll. There are a few widgets: Display a line of thirds grid, switch between a square or wide shot, and turn the flash on and off. Tadaa even gives you access to both the front and rear cameras.
After taking the shot, you paint a mask over whatever object you want to be in sharp focus. Tadaa has pretty smart edge detection, so you can just dab with your finger and the app selects the whole subject for you. If that’s not working—and I did run into some subjects that Tadaa refused to select in their entirety—you can turn off edge detection and do the painting manually. In general, though, the trick is to slightly overpaint your subject so that Tadaa can find the edges.
Paint a mask over the parts of the image you want to be in focus.
After that, a slider lets you choose the aperture, which translates into the intensity of the depth of field effect. You can vary the effect from nothing, which gives you the deep depth of field the iPhone shoots automatically, to a very blurry background like you’d get from setting a DSLR to f/2.
And here’s where Tadaa distinguishes itself from other blur apps like AfterFocus, for example. You can tap anywhere in the image to adjust the focus. Tap the background, for example, and it snaps into focus, simultaneously blurring the foreground objects that you’ve previously masked. This is a fun feature that lets you explore what a photo would look like if you shot the scene several times, varying the focus in each. Unlike the Lytro, though, you eventually need to make a choice and save the image—you can’t continue to interactively change the focus after saving.
Tadaa even can give you a bokeh effect.
Another unique tool in Tadaa’s bag of tricks: You can add and tweak bokeh. Bokeh can be a difficult concept to wrap your head around; it’s the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photo, and it often manifests itself as glowing blurs around reflective elements in the background. Using a pair of sliders—highlights and gloss—you can dial in an excellent simulation of bokeh, and get just the amount that you want. If you have every looked longingly at examples of bokeh in DSLR photography, you’ll love fiddling with the bokeh in Tadaa; it delivers an effect that is essentially impossible to achieve with an iPhone in the usual way.
Completed photos are automatically saved to your camera roll, and you can optionally upload it to Twitter or Facebook from within the app. Tadaa SLR is one of several apps that let you simulate shallow depth of field in an iPhone photo, but it does so in an elegant and flexible way.
Google has deepened the integration between its Google+ social network and Gmail, adding a feature that auto-suggests Google+ contacts when Gmail users are typing in email recipients. In other words, you can email any of your Google+ contacts without knowing their email address, and they can email you as well.
The feature will be rolled out over the coming days to all Gmail users who also have Google+ profiles. Gmail will auto-suggest Google+ users that the email sender has added to his Circles on the social network. (Circles is the term Google uses for connections on Google+.) However, email senders will not see the email address of the Google+ contact being auto-suggested unless the contact responds to the message, and messages from Google+ users that aren’t also in your own Circles will appear in your Gmail account’s Social tab, rather than the Primary tab.
Google+ users are able to control who can contact them from Gmail in this way with four options. They can opt out entirely, so that they won’t appear in Gmail auto-suggest. They can limit the feature to include only people they have added to their own Circles. They can make the scope broader by extending it to people with a second degree of Circles separation, meaning people you’re not connected to but who are connected to someone in your Circles. The last option is to open up the feature to anyone on Google+.
The goal of this new feature is to make it easier for Google+ users to communicate via Gmail. Google says the feature will be rolling out over the next few days.
Google has said repeatedly that its intention is to integrate Google+ broadly and deeply with its other services, sites and web applications, so that it can act as a common, underlying social networking layer. Google has integrated Google+ with Gmail, Blogger, Apps, YouTube and other products to varying degrees already.Image and article credit goes to PC World
In an effort to prove that it hasn’t forgotten about Dre—er, about its loyal user base, Nokia announced that it’s officially rolling out the anticipated Lumia Black update for its line of Windows Phones. The update will begin with the Lumia 1020 and Lumia 925, and then roll out to other Lumia models later on.
Black comes chock full of features like app folders, compatibility for Bluetooth LE, and Nokia’s Glance screen 2.0, which constantly displays low-energy notifications on screen so you can check to see what’s happening without even having to unlock your phone.
Nokia has also bundled up its new suite of camera apps, including Nokia Refocus, Nokia Storyteller, and the revamped Nokia Camera that combines the Nokia Pro Camera and Smart Camera in one. Lumia 1020 users will also have raw DNG support, which should prove extremely helpful for serious camera phone photographers and Instagram fanatics (especially now that it exists!).
The software update will begin deployment in China first, with the US and all others soon to follow. You can check out the status of the roll out for your phone with this handy update page from Nokia.
Abuja – The fast growing computer technology company Lenovo is currently in need of a sales manager for it’s smartphone branch in Nigeria.
Though the China based company announced the vacant position eight days ago on LinkedIn, information reaching EWT has confirmed that no official appointment has been made, hence, the position is still up for grabs for people residing within Nigeria. See below for requirements and job responsibilities.
Key Objectives of Position:
Responsible for channel management and managing the distribution landscape across Nigeria
Manage key relationships in both direct and indirect Large Format Retail partners
Drive sell thru and sell out through the effective execution of various schemes and promotions and assessment of the ROI of these programs
Manage the field promoter program and Point Of Sale with retailers
Key Performance Indicators (Metrics)
Sales Targets
Increase in Retail Share of Wallet month on month
Successful Schemes and Retail Visibility in the region
Evaluate ROI for partners
Position Requirements
Success Factors
Channel Management
Retail Management
Problem Solving capabilities
Good Communications Skills
High Energy
Result Oriented
Team Work
Decision Making in Ambiguity
Influencing & Negotiation skills
Essential Experience & Key Skills
7-10 years of experience in direct sales roles out of which at least 3 years should be in the feature phone / smart phone category
LAS VEGAS—Forget search. The future of Yahoo is content. Yahoo’s loss to Google in the search engine wars was already quite evident before the 2014 International CES, but CEO Marissa Mayer revealed a new focus for the company during her Tuesday keynote at the tech trade show. “A comment theme is us simplifying our business,” Mayer said at the show. “Fundamentally when you look at Yahoo it’s about four core areas: search, communications, digital magazines, and video. These are four things people do as part of their daily habits.”
Mayer made a slew of announcements about new Yahoo products tied those core areas. In the process, she answered a few questions like: Why on earth did the company hire TV anchor Katie Couric and former New York Times technology columnist David Pogue?
Marissa Mayer, right, greets Katie Couric onstage at CES 2014.
Riding the content wave
Couric is anchoring interviews and original content for Yahoo’s mobile apps, while Pogue will lead the Yahoo Tech digital magazine, one of the first magazines Yahoo will launch this year. The company also trotted out Nick D’Aloisio, the teenage CEO that made headlines when Yahoo last year acquired Summly, his summarization technology. Summly is now baked into another new app that Mayer unveiled at CES, Yahoo News Digest.
Mayer presents to the audience at CES 2014.
News Digest delivers two daily news summaries of current events to users, one in the morning and another at night, and pulls content from all over the Web—tweets, photos, infographics, maps, and so on—to make the stories more visually appealing.
D’Aloisio said the app is the best of both the tech and journalism worlds, because “the stories are algorithmically produced but editorially curated.”
News Digest isn’t a unique concept. Apps like Circa have been trying in recent years to solve readers’ thirst for extremely short, but incredibly high-quality content. But Yahoo’s news efforts needed a shot in the arm: News Digest is its attempt to stay relevant in the world of bite-sized information.
Yahoo’s new digital magazines feature some heavy talent, like David Pogue, formerly of the New York Times and now editor of the new Yahoo Tech, which is shown above.
While 140-character news is on the rise, readers are also thirsting for visually rich long-form stories, which is where Yahoo’s new digital magazines aim to compete. Mayer hired big-name journalists like Pogue for Yahoo Tech, which launched Tuesday along with Yahoo Food. As with News Digest, the concept of a niche digital mag is nothing revolutionary, but it offers Yahoo a chance to ride the wave of popularity of apps like Flipboard.
Pogue posed Yahoo Tech as a tech site for “normal people” who don’t live in San Francisco or New York, hoping to garner mainstream users who don’t follow tech blogs (or Yahoo’s struggles to stay hip).
All about ads
Yahoo’s digital magazines, like the rest of its products, are free, but that’s OK: Yahoo has a whole new advertising plan. The magazines will incorporate native ads, the company has a new ad manager and ad exchange for businesses, and ads on Tumblr are about to get more sophisticated.
Tumblr CEO David Karp joined Mayer to talk about how Yahoo’s ad tech will power the micro-blogging site’s ads, and boasted about the reach of sponsored posts on Tumblr (which are re-blogged an average of 10,000 times). What does that mean for users? You guessed it: highly targeted ads, and a lot more of them.
News Yahoo apps like News Digest (left) and Aviate reflect a company in flux.
Yahoo says search is still a core part of its business, and Mayer kicked off her keynote announcing the acquisition of Aviate, which will use your phone’s location and your daily routine to surface the apps you use most.
“We believe home screens should be smarter and more personalized,” Mayer said. “Imagine that your phone could deliver the right experience to you at the right time instead of you having to search for it.” A good example would be a fitness app that pops up when you’re at the gym.
That’s not exactly active search. But let’s be honest: The company under Mayer is well on its way to becoming a content and advertising company. Ads have always key to Yahoo’s business, but if the company can marry advertising and original content in a way that doesn’t anger readers, it could become more than just the site you glance at for stocks and sports before making your way to other parts of the Internet.
LAS VEGAS—More PC makers are bringing Android to desktops as users increasingly turn to the Internet for apps, storage and entertainment.
Lenovo and Hewlett-Packard showed inexpensive all-in-one PCs running Android at the International CES event in Las Vegas this week. The $450 HP Slate 21 Pro has a 21-inch screen, and the $399 Lenovo N308 has a 19.5-inch screen.
Android is mostly used on tablets and smartphones, and PC makers are trying new desktop usage models with Android on large-screen PCs. The use of Internet-based applications, entertainment and storage services is growing, and Android is designed for that type of computing, said Nick Reynolds, Lenovo’s executive director of marketing. ”Everyone is finding they have an explosion of personal digital content and they need to store and manage it,” Reynolds said. “It changes the way people are working with their traditional desktop.”
Lenovo’s N308 all-in-one PC.
Android was also loaded on to high-definition professional monitors, seemingly as an afterthought. Lenovo’s ThinkVision 28-inch 4K monitor is primarily designed to be used as a professional display, but can also function as an Android all-in-one PC. Acer’s $1100 TA272 HUL is a 27-inch professional display that also doubles as an Android all-in-one when needed.
Windows is designed more for desktop computing, while Android all-in-ones would be a great hub for communications, home automation and online entertainment, analysts said. The PC makers view Android all-in-ones as hub computers in offices or homes that can sync easily with public or private cloud services.
”Most of the Android AIOs are essentially smart monitors, which I think makes them still a bit different—and certainly less powerful—than a true PC,” said Bob O’Donnell, principal analyst at Technalysis Research.
Once of Acer’s new all-in-ones.
Android all-in-one adoption could grow as more apps migrate to the cloud and hybrid computing models, said Jim McGregor, principal analyst at Tirias Research.
”Throughout this year, you will see more and more productivity apps go that route using Android and iOS, which really weakens the argument for traditional PCs,” he said.
The Android PCs are based on ARM processors and cheaper to build than Windows PCs, McGregor said. ARM processors are less expensive than Intel chips used in Windows PCs, and Android is virtually free.
”You eliminate the Windows license fee and you can use a mobile processor that is a fraction of the cost of an x86 processor. That simplifies your system design because it is easier to [build] and the overall design can be much simpler,” McGregor said.
HP’s Slate 21 Pro.
Beyond the cost, HP also liked Android for its Slate 21 as the OS could be heavily customized. The company has modified Android with specific software and fine-grained management and security features designed so that a fleet of Slate 21 PCs could be easily managed in corporate environments.
But there are challenges for Android all-in-ones. They are not designed to run high-end applications, and like mobile devices, are most effective when connected.
Also, most Android apps are written for mobile devices, and questions remain on how effective those apps will be on all-in-ones, where touch input is secondary, O’Donnell said.
”My guess is we’ll see some application compatibility problems and other issues that could be a problem for market success,” he said.This was originally posted on PC World
Dreaming of working in the Nigeria oil and gas sector? Orion Group is currently recruiting qualified applicants into the Nigerian oil and gas sector. Details and requirements are stated below this section.
Read the details below to see if you are a qualified applicant.
Job Responsibilities
Verify and validate Contractor ICAPS commissioning preparation activities to ensure conformity with company OPERCOM specifications and project planning.
Manage and follow up execution of (pre)commissioning and punch list clearance activities performed by contractor.
Responsible for issuance of (pre)commissioning handover dossiers (RFC & RFSU) to achieve a smooth handover process.
Produce company progress reports, close out and various commissioning document deliverables.
Company(pre)commissioning ICAPS focal point.
Verify and validate contractor technical preparation of ICAPS (pre)commissioning activities, relevant project documents and dossiers compilation.
Verify proper punch list management set up and ensure timely ICAPS database back up practices by Contractor.
Company focal point for ICAPS punch list report activities.
Work closely with Company and Contractor CSL & Discipline Leaders, participate actively in overall commissioning schedule, planning and optimization activities.
Verify consistency of (pre)commissioning ICAPS database versus Ccontractor actual (pre)commissioning progress.
Ensure proper overall contractor tracking management for punch list clearance activities (priority based, follow up delivery date for spares/equipment).
Report comprehensively ICAPS status, including performed man hours, and punch list management progress.
Attend project.
Skills and Experience
Minimum High School Certificate (technical discipline) qualification or equivalent combination of relevant experience and training.
Moderate experience in Oil & Gas Plant construction, upgrade, commissioning, start up or maintenance activities.
Experience with ICAPS implementation and execution on projects.
Extensive knowledge of OPERCOM/ICAPS methodology.
Hands on and computer literate.
Able to communicate and work efficiently with company, contractor and vendor personnel.
Spoken and written command of English language is a requirement.
This is a contract position.
The rate for this position is negotiable.
If you feel that you are well suited to the above opportunity and would like to find out more then please contact Orion Group for more information or apply by forwarding your current CV quoting reference 893801.
Orion Group currently supplies over 3,500 personnel in roles including Oil & Gas, Renewables, Power & Utilities, Construction, Mining, Rail, Aerospace, IT & Telecoms, Office and Commercial. With 29 offices worldwide, Orion Group operate in the UK and internationally and in January 2009, were named the UK’s number one for engineering recruitment.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer just made her first announcement onstage during her Consumer Electronics Show keynote — that the company has acquired Aviate, a startup that taps the apps on your smartphone to bring up information at the moment that it’s relevant.
Mayer suggested that Yahoo could use Aviate’s technology to deliver its content in ways that are “smarter and more personalized.” For example, she said that your homescreen could automatically show you stock quotes at the beginning of the day, instead of forcing you to open a finance app.
We envision homescreens becoming smarter, more personalized, aware of your context. Aviate helps us bring this vision to life. Aviate auto-categorizes apps on your Android phone and intelligently gathers them into “spaces.” By using signals to understand your context – WIFI, GPS, Accelerometer, Time, etc – Aviate automatically surfaces information at the moment it’s useful. So whether you’re just waking up, driving, at work, or maybe out for the night, Aviate learns your habits and helps anticipate the information and apps you need – making your phone smarter.
Note that Aviate is an Android product, and the blog post says Yahoo plans to make it “a central part of our Android-based experiences in 2014 (and beyond)” — not, it seems, on iOS. When it was independent, Aviate told techcrunch that it had iOS plans, but I’m guessing its capabilities would be significantly limited. It’s also interesting to see Yahoo making an Android-focused acquisition, especially since we’ve written about the company’s challenges in launching a big, sustainable hit on Apple’s platform.
The Yahoo post doesn’t offer any details about the financials of the deal, but it does suggest, unsurprisingly, that the Aviate team is joining the company. The startup raised a $1.8 million round of funding last year from Highland Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, and others.News Source: TechCrunch
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Zhenfang Wu and Zicong Li of the South China Agricultural University used a technique developed by reproductive scientists from the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s John A. Burns School of Medicine to transfer plasmids (small DNA molecules, separate from the chromosomal DNA within a cell) carrying a fluorescent protein from jellyfish DNA into the pig embryos.
