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In the world of high-tech, gadgets getting tagged as “uncool” can be a death sentence for a product. That’s why Samsung’s win over Apple in a UK court on Monday is being viewed as a defeat by some people. Apple maintained in the case that Samsung’s Galaxy tablets infringed on the iPad design. Judge Colin Bliss ruled against Apple, but he handed Apple some fodder. He found that Samsung’s tablets “do not have the same understated and extreme simplicity which is possessed by the Apple design. They are not as cool.” Galaxy tablets uncool? No cut could be crueler. But it need not be. With the right spin, Samsung could turn Bliss’ slight into a positive marketing campaign. With some slick product shots that scream cool, Samsung could use tag lines like “It’s Cool to Be Uncool” or “Uncool Is the New Cool” or “How Cool Is Uncool?” or simply “Uncool” to sublimely reverse the judge’s verdict where it counts: in the minds of tablet shoppers. Samsung has used courtroom victories to highlight its tablets before. After defeating Apple in the Australian courts, it launched a campaign declaring that its Galaxy Tab was “The Tablet Apple Tried to Stop.”
It has also shown that it’s capable of spinning Apple’s cool image against the American company. In its “Next Big Thing” campaign launched at the end of last year, Samsung mocked Apple diehards who lineup outside Apple stores for hours to be among the first to get a new product from the company. So Bliss’ “uncool” opinion of Samsung’s tablets isn’t the death sentence some commentators make it out to be. In fact, it could be the kernel of a successful marketing campaign for the Korean company. All Samsung has to do is embrace the uncool.
Verizon Wireless announced the BlackBerry Curve 9310 smartphone will go on sale for $49.99 after rebate, with a two-year service plan, starting with online sales Thursday and in stores in the “coming weeks.” The BlackBerry Curve 9310 smartphone. The announcement came just minutes before BlackBerry maker Research in Motion was set to begin its annual shareholders meeting. About two weeks ago, the company reported $500 million in reduced first-quarter profits and a 40% decline in sales. RIM also announced then that it would ship BlackBerry 10 smartphones in early 2013, a further delay that helped send RIM’s stock price plunging 19% in one day. The Curve 9310 and runs the current BlackBerry 7.1 operating system and comes with a physical keyboard, the preference among some of RIM’s most solid customers. The 9310’s styling looks like many previous Curve models, with its smaller 2.44-in. screen, below which sits a central touch navigation keypad and physical keys in a Qwerty keyboard. Many analysts and even some at RIM have admitted the BlackBerry has not kept up with successful touchscreen smartphones with large screens like the 3.5-in. iPhone and Android phone models that range from 4-in. to 5.3-in. in screen size. The 9310’s display is 320 x 420 pixels, putting its resolution well below more expensive smartphones. Verizon and RIM noted in a statement that the 9310 is intended to “help customers make the move from a basic phone to a smartphone,” which is partly indicated by its low price. There is also a dedicated key for access to BlackBerry Messenger, RIM’s social network that is most popular outside of the U.S. Facebook and Twitter apps are easily accessible for real-time updates with RIM’s Social Feeds 2.0 app. A 3.2-megapixel camera is included, as well as a microSD card slot for up to 32GB of storage. It runs a 1,450 mAh battery and overall is 4.29 in x 2.36 in. x 0.5 in. in size and weighs 3.66 ounces. Verizon requires buyers to sign up for a Share Everything plan starting at $80 a month for unlimited text, talk and 300 MB of data service that can be shared with up to nine other devices. About The Author This article was originally published By Matt Hamblen, Computerworld Matt Hamblen covers mobile and wireless, smartphones and other handhelds, and wireless networking for Computerworld. Follow Matt on Twitter at @matthamblen or subscribe to Matt’s RSS feed. His email address is [email protected]. See more by Matt Hamblen on Computerworld.com.
Google to dismiss igoogle? Get a new homepage! For as long as I can remember, iGoogle has been my home page. I’ve used it for everything from monitoring my favorite blogs and news sites to tracking the number of days since I last added salt to my water softener. So it came as something of a shock to read that iGoogle is going away on November 1, 2013. That’s only 16 months from now, barely enough time to vet a replacement. I kid, I kid — that’s more than enough time. The question is, where should you hang your home-page hat? What should be the first thing that appears when you open your browser? I’ve got five suggestions: MSN or Yahoo Like to scan news headlines? Then you can’t go wrong with MSN or Yahoo, which bring you the latest stories followed by sections like sports, entertainment, local news, and money. You don’t need an account with either service to take advantage of their portals, though signing up for one nets you an extra email address and, in the case of Yahoo, some customization options for your home page (including what content appears and where).
Personally, I think Yahoo is the better of the two pages, but you’ll definitely want to browse both to see which one suits you best.
NetVibes This old-school Web portal has reinvented itself as a Web-analytics tool for businesses, but it still offers a consumer-friendly custom dashboard where you can monitor all the media that’s important to you: news, email, tweets, tasks, status updates, and so on. Where NetVibes excels is in letting you pick the “apps” (i.e. widgets) you want to include, then organizing them to your liking. For example, you can choose the number of columns you want for your dashboard and how you want them arranged. There’s also a Reader mode that’s great if you add a lot of RSS feeds. All told, NetVibes probably comes closest to replacing the look and feel of iGoogle.
If your browser favorites list hooked up with StumbleUpon, the result would look a lot like All My Faves. The site is essentially a massive collection of other sites, all represented by thumbnail icons of their logos. It’s a little overwhelming at first, but there’s an interesting portal beneath all the noise. Indeed, once you sign up for an account, you get to create your own batch of “faves” you can use to quickly jump to your favorite pages. You also get to choose up to seven areas of interest (cooking, movies, tech, etc.) that AMF will use to generate batches of sites you might like. After you finish the setup, you’ll see a much less intimidating tabbed display of your favorites and your areas of interest. And thanks to the AMF bookmarklet, it’s a simple matter to add sites to your start page. I’m not sure All My Faves is really my cup of tea, but if you want a favorites-oriented home page with lots of personalization options, this service is worth a look.
Protopage A little bit NetVibes, a little bit iGoogle, Protopage offers a simple, attractive, customizable home page you can stock with news, comics, Twitter feeds, email, podcasts, and more. The site starts you out with a wide assortment of popular widgets, everything from Dilbert to Engadget to PC World. You can drag and drop these to create just the layout you want, while clicking Add Widgets lets you choose from a huge selection of additional tools and content. Protopage really reminds me of the portals of old. If you’re already mourning iGoogle, this should help ease the pain. Nothing Nothing? If you’re not a news junkie and don’t tend to look at RSS feeds and the like, you might just prefer to leave your browser without a traditional home page. To that end, all the major browsers now have the option of starting you with a “blank” tab, one that doesn’t open a particular page but does show thumbnails of your most visited/most popular sites. You can also automatically open multiple sites in multiple tabs, which is helpful if you like to start each browsing session with, say, ELITES WORLD OF TECHNOLOGY, Facebook, and a favorite blog. Just open the tabs you want to reappear, then venture into the settings and choose “use current” for your home page. (The latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer all let you load multiple pages at startup.) Your Pick? Those are, of course, just five options out of many. If you’ve found another portal, home-page, or browser-startup option you like better, tell me about it in the comments.
Adsense is one of the most trusted way of making money online but after handing series of suspension to publishers it becomes potentially unreliable to use adsense.
Don’t get me wrong: Many people started blogging for the sole reason of earning money and after they put in so many hardwork to setup a decent blog they still found their adsense disapproved or suspended.
Now that doesn’t sound good at all, that was why I came up with this tutorial on how to make adsense your 12th choice for making money online.
Here Are The Lists Of The Top 11 Alternative to Adsense
Clicksor:Clicksor offers contextual ads based on your site content. You’re paid 60% of what advertisers. They provides in-text ads, text banners, image banners and even popup-unders.The payment process is via paypal, check or bank wire. The minimum payout is $50 if your payment process is via bank wire and paypal or $100 if your payment process is check.
Chitika: If you wish to run a different ad platform on your blog alongside Google Adsense, you should consider choosing Chitika. It complies with Adsense policies and they offer great contextual ads based on users’ search query and this gives you a high CPM. The minimum payout is $10 and it’s either by check or Paypal.
Luminate: This is very different from others and it’s ideal for you if you use lots of images on your blog. It notes the keywords that have been tagged with your image and displays relevant ads.The minimum payout is $10 which can either be through PayPal or Standard Cheque.
Bidvertiser:Bidvertiser works a bit differently from others. It allows publishers to sell ad space directly to advertisers and also delivers text and image add. They also offer a mouth-watering payout of $10 via paypal or check.
Adbrite: Adbrite is a trusted name in contextual advertising and it’s been said to be a major alternative to Google Adsense. The default payout is $100 but you can set it to any amount above $5. payment is by check and paypal
Addynamo:Ad Dynamo offers pay per click advertising worldwide for both web and mobile. Ad Dynamo was actually where I had my first experience on PPC and is very cool and you sometimes get $0.50 per click. The payout is only $20 and you can get your money through paypal or check. The one problem you may encounter withthem is the way they advertise their program on your blog when they’ve got no ads to serve and it takes a very long time before real ads start showing on your blog.
Adstract:Adstract is a global video-based advertising network that specializes in video ads, video distribution and monetization. Is particularly similar to adsense (But they don’t get your account suspended) But has a quicker payment system. They pay through check ($100 minimum payout), wire transfer ($300 minimum payout) and payoneer ($100 minimum payout).
Buysellads: Buysellads is an online advertising platform that brings publishers and advertisers together directly and this advertising platform allows advertisers to choose which website to display ads on based on the site content and advertisers budget. Lots of bloggers with good traffic are earning big with them but they charge 25% of your earning for the service they offer. You can withdraw through Paypal, cheque or bank wire transfer and the minimum payout is 50$.
Infolinks: Infolinks offers in-text ads and and it’s the best in this aspect. The in-text ad is unobtrusive and you can as well use it along with Google Adsense. Minimum payment is 50$ for Paypal and debit cards and 300$ for bank wire transfer.
Kontera: Just like Infolinks, Kontera offers in-text advertising and it won’t take up any space on your blog. It turns keywords to ads and you can use it along with any other contextual advertising platform you use. You get paid by Paypal or cheque and the minimum payout is 50$.
Yahoo! The Yahoo! Bing Network Contextual Ads program enables web publishers to easily and effectively earn advertising revenue. Publishers can now use the Media.net self-serve platform to create and customize ad units that display relevant text ads consisting of sponsored links and ad topics from the Yahoo! Bing Network. They only accept publishers per invitation and the payment method is paypal and check.
Google Adsense:Now adsense is what might have disapproved or suspended your account quite a number of times. Do you still want to continue it or try other alternatives? Share your views below.
Google AdSense & Blogger: An introduction
If you’ve been thinking about monetizing your blog and are unfamiliar with how Google AdSense works, here are the three things you need to know:
1. AdSense is built into Blogger: You can easily sign up and start showing ads on your blog, without having to leave Blogger, by clicking on the “Earnings” tab in your dashboard. After completing the AdSense application, the next step is to designate where you want the ads to appear on your blog. Once your application is approved, we’ll start serving ads and you’ll start making money. And unlike many other blogging platforms, Blogger doesn’t take a cut of your revenue.
2. AdSense serves relevant ads on your blogs: AdSense works by matching text and image ads to your blog based on your content and the types of users that visit your site. For example, if you write about running, your readers may see ads next to your post about running shoes and equipment. Ads are created and paid for by advertisers who want to promote their products.
3. Great content is key: Posting high quality content is the best way to maximize your returns with AdSense. It’s important to take a little extra time defining your topic, creating a post that is engaging and matters to your readers. The more interesting and appealing your content is, the more likely your readers will be to click on the ads on your blog. http://www.youtube.com/embed/32VknlEnYgc?feature=player_embedded This short video will also give you a quick overview of AdSense and how it works with Blogger:
Stay tuned to the Blogger Buzz blog for more tips and tricks about monetization in the coming weeks. If you are already a google adsense user I recommend you read How To Avoid Getting Your Adsense Account Terminated
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A High Court in the U.K. has ruled that HTC did not infringe on Apple’s photo management patent, while stating that three other patents Apple claimed in the lawsuit were invalid, according to HTC. The three patents declared invalid, include Apple’s “slide to unlock” feature, which Apple alleged HTC had infringed on in its smartphones and tablets. A multi-touch software that Apple had claimed certain HTC devices using Android 2.3 had infringed on was also found not to be patentable, with the Judge declaring it to be computer program. ” HTC is pleased with the ruling, which provides further confirmation that Apple’s claims against HTC are without merit,” the company said in a statement. “We remain disappointed that Apple continues to favor competition in the courtroom over competition in the marketplace.” Apple could not be immediately reached for comment. The ruling, which was issued on Wednesday, gives HTC a victory as the company faces ongoing patent battles with Apple across different countries. Both companies are fighting legal battles against each other in the U.S., and have sought for import bans on products allegedly infringing on their patents. Shipments of HTC smartphones to the U.S. were recently delayed, as a result of a ruling by the U.S. International Trade Commission that went in favor of Apple. Apple was denied an emergency ban on HTC phones earlier this week by the U.S. International Trade Commission. ITC said it found that Apple had not demonstrated the propriety of temporary emergency action.
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Building an amazing desktop computer is easy, but even after you stuff your new system with the latest hardware, hook up your cabling, and make room for your giant monitor, you’re not quite done. Make it easy on the eyes with this handy guide.
Building a desktop computer that’s amazing is easy, if a little time-consuming. But even after you’ve stuffed your new system with all the latest hardware, hooked up your cabling, and cleaned off your desk for a giant monitor, you’re not quite done. Your new desktop masterpiece is going to do you little good if you can use it for only a few hours each day. And you have the failure of your own biology to thank for that: Humans were made to be hunters, gatherers, and thinkers, not desk jockeys. Spend too much time in front of your screen, and you’re going to wreck your eyes—and no, we’re not just channeling our worried mothers. Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS) is a real condition with real symptoms that you’ve likely already noticed at some point in your tech-centric life: bloodshot peepers staring at you in the mirror after a long day of gaming; the tired, dry feelings that you attempt to relieve by rubbing your eyes; or perhaps a bit of burning, itching, or increased sensitivity to light. There are plenty of ways to keep your eyes from rioting every time you fire up your favorite Web browser. Most of them are super-easy to set up and require more time than money, although fancier (and pricier) solutions can give you a beautiful desktop setup and happier eyeballs all at once. In any case, your eyes will forever thank you for your investment.
Basic Lighting
While you might think that you’re looking at a crisper, more pleasing picture in a dim or otherwise darker environment, you’re just forcing your eyes to work that much harder to process extreme differences in contrast. And a similar situation happens when you set up your screen in a location that creates a ton of glare: not only does your picture look horrible, but all that light mucks up the quality of your picture and forces your eyes to do a lot more refocusing to achieve better clarity. So if you’re sitting at a computer under fluorescent lights and you aren’t at work, just stop: This kind of overhead lighting is one of the harshest environments for your eyes to deal with.
The best setup? Plain ol’ natural light, best deployed in the form of a window angled perpendicular to your computer screen. You might be tempted to slap your monitor or laptop in front of a huge window to enjoy some scenery while you work, but the brightness of your exterior view could stress your eyes out. You could always use blinds or curtains to limit the amount of light coming in when it’s especially bothersome, but that kind of defeats the point of the view, doesn’t it? When placing your screen perpendicular to your natural light source, you want to make sure that you’re balancing ambience with glare reduction: Angle your display so that extra light isn’t bouncing off your screen. And take some time to play around with your PC setup; a few minutes now will save you countless hours of agony later. Again, blinds or curtains can be an eye-saving device if the sun is really giving you trouble during certain hours of the day. You’ll want to supplement this natural light (or lack thereof, as the day turns to evening) with artificial lighting. And overhead lighting—even incandescent—still isn’t the best option due to its potential for glare. But you shouldn’t go to the other extreme, either. Resist the urge to purchase the classic “spotlight” desk lamp and slap its narrow cone of light somewhere on your desktop. Remember, you’re also trying to avoid sharp differences in contrast. You don’t need that much light around a monitor or laptop screen, and what you pick needs only to supply indirect light in a general area around your desk and display. A small lamp on a desk that creates a pleasant diffusion of light behind your display and prevents glare is great; a full-sized floor lamp can also work wonders, provided it physically fits into your particular desk setup. As for bulbs, consider those of the natural light (and low wattage) variety: If you need more brightness, switch to higher wattages or add another light source.
Advanced Lighting
If you’re looking for a setup that looks a little bit cooler than a tiny lamp on your desk—or if your particular desktop setup has no room for any bulkier lighting equipment—you might want to consider trying out some bias lighting. You’ve probably seen the concept before, likely on a Philips HDTV with ambient lighting (or as Philips brands it, “Ambilight”). The gist is simple: LED lights attached to the rear of your monitor blast the background with colored light (desktop systems only—unless you really want to silly up your laptop), helping to reduce glare in dimly lit environments, to make your picture appear sharper, and to transform your boring ol’ monitor into a glowing beacon of cool. As Sound and Vision’s Timothy Seppala describes the benefits of bias lighting, in an interview with Ars Technica, “It works because it provides enough ambient light in the viewing area that your pupils don’t have to dilate as far. This makes for less eyestrain when a flashbang gets thrown your way or a bolt of lightning streams across the screen.” Tim actually wrote a great guide to getting the most out of your HDTV for PCWorld that includes some tips on lighting your home theater for optimal movie watching, and you should definitely check it out if you’re a serious PC enthusiast seeking to optimize your display. When it comes to PC building, though, the problem with bias lighting is that few devices and software combinations exist that will allow you to achieve the perfect setup: ambient lighting that changes to match the colors appearing on your screen. We’ve had a lot of luck with Mad Catz’s Cyborg Gaming Lights. They’re a bit pricy at $100, but you get two little lighting modules that contain three LEDs (red, green, and blue) for creating any color you’re looking at. You just need to plug the lights into two of your system’s free USB ports (after plugging the lights’ power adapter into the wall), stash them behind your monitor, angle the lights up toward the wall, and fire up a software utility. You can then pick the color that you want to live behind your screen or set your lights to slowly rotate through a series of colors. You can also have the lights dynamically switch their appearance based on whatever happens to be on your screen—be it a game, a movie, or a picture. If you’re looking for a more inexpensive way to build bias lighting into your desktop monitor, you can always pick up Antec’s Halo 6 LED Bias Lighting Kit. For a mere $13, you can slap a strip of six white LEDs to the rear of your display. These lights—or a similar style that you can pick up at your local IKEA (Ledberg or Dioder)—aren’t going to modulate to fit whatever’s on your screen. But at least you’ll be able to reap the benefits of bias lighting without breaking your bank account. A bias lighting strip that you would attach to the rear of your display.
Beyond Lighting
Other tricks you can employ to reduce the harmful effects of extended computer use on your eyeballs include installing little apps to remind yourself to take a much-needed eye break. Chrome users can grab the extension Gimme a Break! and Firefox fans can hit up the simple Auto Timer extension to schedule some rest time for tired eyeballs. For every 20 minutes you spend staring at a screen, you need only to focus your eyes on something else for 20 seconds—that’s not so hard, is it? The software fun doesn’t end there. Odds are good that you’re running your display at fairly high brightness and contrast levels, as monitors are sometimes shipped with factory-default settings that use inordinate amounts of brightness to convince you that the picture is awesome. Not good. You’ll want to fire up the Lagom LCD monitor test pages and use their instructions to set your monitor’s settings to their correct levels. Why blast your eyes with excessively bright light if you don’t have to? Your monitor’s color temperature can also adversely affect your eyes after prolonged periods of staring. An app like F.Lux (click on the Download link at the top of the site) will automatically adjust your monitor’s temperature to match the time: Cooler lighting during the day, mimicking the temperature of common daylight, and warmer lighting in the evening, when “you probably shouldn’t be looking at the sun,” says F.Lux. Finally, you can also opt for a pair of geektastic computer glasses to help you handle your display temperature situation and reduce screen glare—we’re speaking specifically of Gunnar Optiks’ line of Advanced Computer Eyeware (the company’s term, not ours). Gunnar Optiks claims that its glasses also help increase the moisture within your eyes—a function commonly performed by blinking, which one tends to do much less when focusing on a computer screen. We can’t say whether Gunnar’s glasses turn eyeballs into swimming pools, but we did tend to notice less eye fatigue (and didn’t seem to have the same headaches as before) after a few marathon computing sessions when equipped with its glasses. Their yellow tint does take some getting used to, however!
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We sometimes like to shine a spotlight on deserving Kickstarter games but this week’s project is a little different. Instead of a game played on technology it’s a game played with technology, and it promises to make the online lives of tabletop gamers infinitely easier. Anyone that’s ever tried to run a game of Dungeons and Dragons or another tabletop roleplaying game online knows that trying to take your game to the Internet add an extra layer of complexity on top of an already complicated game. In addition to keeping track of all of the dice rolls, map positions and NPC information you normally need, you also have to figure out some way of selectively informing the other players of all the pertinent information without the convenience of them sitting right next to you to see it.
However, the team at Tabletop Forge thinks they’ve found a solution. By adding some robust tabletop gaming tools to the Google+ Hangouts feature, the team believes they’ve found an ideal way to help tabletop gamers play online. Tabletop Forge adds great RP specific features to the group videoconferencing features of hangouts that allow you to use virtual dice rolling, battle maps for laying out combat quickly and easily online, and even a macro system so you can edit any commands the team might not have thought of into Tabletop Forge. The core Tabletop Forge system is already in working order, but the team is running a Kickstarter to get some professional art assets into the Forge so that gamers can quickly and easily pick out maps and monsters that are right for their campaign and get started playing faster. The team has already easily surpassed their initial $5000 goal and are in the home stretch to meet a final $38,000 stretch goal that will add even more features and maps to the Tabletop Forge arsenal. If you’re interested, head on over to their Kickstarter Page and take a look at their donation options.
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Flaws in Apple’s App Store have made the updates to well over 100 apps completely unusable, creating headaches for both developers and users over the holiday. Apps affected become unusable and crash immediately upon setup, according to reports. Apple has not acknowledged the issue, but it is believed to have something to do with updates the company made to its app-updating mechanism. Some developers have reported that users are now able to successfully update apps, so it appears that the issue is being fixed. Here’s what you need to know about Apple’s App Store mess. Who’s affected? At least 100 apps updated between July 3rd and July 5th are believed to have been affected. Three major apps–Instapaper, Angry Birds Space HD, and Angry Birds Space Free–reported issues, along with a host of others. Apps downloaded between July 3rd and July 5th are not necessarily affected–apps are only affected if the developer submitted, and had approved, an app during that period. What happens? The issue affects both iOS and Mac apps. With iOS apps, the screen will fade to black and crash immediately upon startup, returning you to the homescreen. With Mac apps, an error message will appear, stating that “[App] is damaged and can’t be opened. Delete [App] and download it again from the app store.” If you are upgrading apps through iTunes, iTunes may pop up error 8324 or 8326 while attempting to update your device’s apps. What should you do? If you have a corrupted app on your device, you must delete it and reinstall it to fix the issue. If your app contains data that may be lost in the event of app deletion, you can follow these instructions from the developer of iPad app Goodreader to save your data. Fair warning: these instructions are a bit intensive and require backing up your device. The issue appears to be getting fixed, though Apple has yet to confirm this publicly. Therefore, it’s recommended that users with affected apps wait a couple of days before reinstalling said apps.
This is another fantastic blogger widgets I would like to share with you, it cost me a sleepless night to be able to set this up. With just a few steps we can setup this amazing widget on your blog.
Don’t save the template just yet, replace the following:
http://your-post-link1,2,3,4,5 with your links to your post. http://your-image-link1,2,3,4,5 with your post image link. Post content summary and post title with your post title and summary.
Now save your template and view your amazing blog!!
Having a high page rank is a good way of marketing your blog or website to advertisers.
Here I’m going to showcase to you some of the links that will help you increase your page rank.
But before I continue I would like to introduce you to a website you can check your website or blog page rank they also give suggestions on what you need to do to increase your website grade.
Websitegrader provides you with a complete website analysis, ranging from a full SEO analysis to the a complete details of your website social media activities. With Websitegrader, you can compare your website with another website or blog and also receive updates regarding your website via email. Features:
Computerworld – Sergey Brin, CEO and co-founder of Google, wears Google Glasses during a product demonstration at the Google I/O 2012 conference last month. (Image: Stephen Lam / Reuters)When one talks of computers today, he or she could be referring to a laptop, a desktop or maybe even a smartphone. However, if Google’s latest plan stays on track, the definition of a computer could broaden significantly. At its Google I/O developers conference in San Francisco, the company threw a lot of effort behind the unveiling of a prototype of its so-called Google Glass computerized eyeglasses. The Android-powered eyeglasses are equipped with a processor, memory, camera, GPS sensors and a display screen. Google co-founder and CEO Sergey Brin said the Google Glass development effort is all about “doing brand new risky technological things that are really about making science fiction real.” In that world of science fiction, he said, computers won’t always look like what we now expect from the term. The next generation of computers won’t necessarily sit on one’s desk or lap or in one’s hand. The devices may not have a have a monitor and/or keyboard. Someday – probably in the near future – computers will be worn, whether incorporated into glasses, or in a piece of jewelry such as a bracelet or something else, analysts say. “Google Glass changes the way we will look at computers,” said Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “It isn’t just research, it’s a workable prototype.” “Glass serves to stretch the technology ecosystem to even greater lengths, Moorhead said. “I believe that in five years we will see many different form factors and brands of wearable computers. We will have computers embedded in our glasses of course, but also in our jewelry and watches.” Moorhead noted that the U.S. military, especially the Special Forces units, already use wearable computers to for communications and GPS tasks. That technology hasn’t yet reached consumer or business users, he added. Google’s research efforts could hasten the mainstream use of the technologies. “As we see real devices in use that we previously saw only in movies and books, it will expand the possibilities even further,” said Moorhead. “We can go beyond the glasses and visualize computers in our jewelry, in our watches and even inside our bodies.” Charles King, an analyst at Pund-IT, said such new computing form factors are an extension of the current mobile trend, taking GPS-enabled smartphones, growing compute power and multiple new communications capabilities to the next level. “It’s the ever smaller and ever more powerful mobile technologies,” he added. “It’s about the things we used to see and think about in relation to sci-fi novels or Star Trek. The idea of highly mobile and highly powerful computers is extremely intriguing.” King said he expects there will be great demand for what he calls “mobile computing lifestyle choices” in a few years. “It would not surprise me if we see a lot of this in, say, five years,” he noted. “As the technology becomes more sophisticated and cheaper, it becomes something everybody can afford.” “Some years ago, a smartphone like the Blackberry was considered something that only business professionals needed. It doesn’t seem farfetched to think we could see Google Glass widely adopted in five years,” King added. Rob Enderle, an analyst with the Enderle Group, pointed out that Google Glass or other wearable computers could be very useful in many workplaces — not just the next big thing to help users look cool or geeky. “They could be used regularly for things like taking inventory in warehouses, and for tasks on factory floors and other places where folks need to use computers and their hands at the same time,” Enderle said. At the Google I/O conference, the company said it is offering prototype versions of Google Glass, dubbed the Google Glass Explorer Edition, to developers for $1,500. Brin said he expects the glasses to be generally available in 2014 — at a lower price. “If the developer community can come up with interesting solutions, the sky’s the limit,” said King. Enderle said that wearable computers could be a big step toward a new generation of compute form factors that can be embedded inside the human body. Putting aside visions of Star Trek’s Borg initiative, Moorhead and Enderle agreed that wearable computers are a bridge to the first such computer implants. “It’s an interim step toward imbedding computers into people and creating some kind of biomechanical interface that bypasses the eyes,” Enderle said, adding that he believes that computer generation is some 25 to 50 years away.
“The change we are working toward … is one of the big changes we will see in computing this century. It will redefine personal computing by the time it has fully matured,” he added.
Sharon Gaudin
Author Biography:
Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, or subscribe to Sharon’s RSS feed . Her e-mail address is [email protected].
Mozilla’s new Firefox 13 browser may have just barely landed on users’ PCs, but already forward-looking fans can check out the beta version of Firefox 14–and the Aurora version of Firefox 15, too. Most notable in Firefox 14 are new security features that “make it easier for users to control their Web experience,” according to the official announcement late last week on the Mozilla blog. Several new features in the upcoming version of this popular free and open source browser are designed to make life better for users, in fact. The final version isn’t expected until July, but here’s a rundown of some key improvements you can expect.
1. HTTPS by Default
In the new Firefox 14 beta, HTTPS is enabled by default for Google searches to help protect users “from network infrastructure that may gather data, modify or censor search results,” Mozilla explained. This feature also stops third-party sites from gathering search data when you click on items on a search results page. “We look forward to supporting additional search engines as they enable SSL searches,” Mozilla wrote.
For sites with an EV certificate, Firefox 14 displays a green lock icon and the site owner’s name (Click image to enlarge.)2. A New ‘Red Flag’
Also included in the latest Firefox beta is a new way to display the verified identity of a website in the browser’s Awesome Bar, or URL field. Specifically, a globe icon positioned next to the domain indicates a site not using SSL encryption, while sites with SSL encryption include a lock icon and show “https.” Sites that have an Extended Validation (EV) certificate, meanwhile, are indicated by a green lock icon and include the name of the site owner. Sites with mixed http and https content show a gray triangle icon as a warning. Bottom line: a quick visual guide to the security level of the site you’re visiting, making “spoofing” of secure sites much more difficult.
3. More Control Over Plug-ins
The upcoming Firefox 14 lets users control how plug-ins like Flash and Quicktime play through a new feature that can add a “play” button to all plug-in content; users can then simply click “play” to begin viewing immediately. “Future releases will include more specific customizations and a robust interface; for now, you can experiment with the feature by selecting plugins.click_to_play to ‘true’ in about:config,” Mozilla explained.
4. Better Lion Support
For Mac users, Firefox 14 now offers native full-screen support of OS X Lion 10.7, providing “a richer and more immersive browsing experience,” as Mozilla puts it.
5. URL Auto-Complete
Last but not least, Firefox 14’s Awesome Bar now auto-completes URL domains as you type them, potentially making the process quicker than ever. There are also a few key new features for developers in the Firefox 14 beta, including a pointer lock API and pseudo class lock. And what of Firefox 15? The Aurora version of that software is now available as well. The most notable new addition there is native PDF support–a feature Google’s competing Chrome browser has had for some time. Neither of these new browser releases is designed for production purposes, of course, but if you’re interested in checking them out, they’re both available as free downloads for Windows, Linux, and Mac. Firefox 14 beta can be found in Mozilla’s beta channel; the early Firefox 15 is on the Aurora page.
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With interactive documents, you can choose from a range of predefined options for data, instead of typing the data from scratch each time. If you write lots of letters to the same few correspondents, generate electronic data-entry forms, produce documents with boilerplate language, or find yourself typing the same phrases over and over, wouldn’t it be convenient if your documents were already partially formatted and allowed you to make selections from drop-down menus instead of copying and pasting from documents you created earlier? I’ll show you how to use the Content Control tools within Microsoft Word to create templates that you can use every day.
How to Find Word’s Content Controls
Content Controls let you add interactive elements to your Word documents, but you might not even know they exist because they’re accessible only from the Developer tab in Word’s Ribbon, and that tab is disabled by default. To enable it in Word 2010, choose File > Options > Customize Ribbon. In the right-hand panel, locate and click the Developer checkbox and click OK. In Word 2007, choose File > Word Options and then click the Show Developer Tab in the Ribbon checkbox (from the Popular set of options) and click OK. Now select the Developer tab, locate the Controls group, and click Design Mode. You’re ready to set up your controls.
Select a Date Using the Date Picker Control
Hover your mouse over the icons in the Controls group, and a label will pop up identifying each control. The Date Picker Content Control creates a placeholder that you can use to choose a date from a calendar. The Date Picker Content Control will display a small calendar that allows the user to choose a date.Click the icon to add this element to your document. Turn off Design Mode, and you’ll see a box labeled ‘Click here to enter a date.’ The calendar will appear when you click the down arrow on the control. Pick a date, and that date will appear automatically in the document. The Date Picker has some handy settings you can configure. To see these, click Design Mode once again. Click the Date Picker control and then click the Properties button (it’s in the Controls segment of the Ribbon). Use the Properties dialog box to format the control (for instance, to have the month spelled out instead of being represented numerically). You can also use Properties to lock the content control so that it can’t be deleted, or you can add a title to the control telling the user about its purpose (“Select a date for a meeting,” for example). Finally, you can format the control with a Word style so that the date looks the way you want it to. If you use styles, and the style set changes, the date’s text formatting will automatically change to match the new style set.
Add a Content Control to Manage Text Entry
Use the Plain Text Content Control as a placeholder for a user to enter text into the document.The Plain Text Content Control creates a designated place for someone to enter text into a document. You can preformat the text in this control using a defined style, so that any text the user enters there will appear a certain way. You can also elect to permit or disallow carriage returns. On top of that, you can leave this control as is, lock it so that it cannot be deleted, or set it so that it automatically disappears once its contents have been edited. In the last mode, the content control will appear in the document until someone has typed text in it; as soon as they do, the content control will vanish, but the text typed into it will remain.
Select an Item From a List of Options
Populate the Drop-Down List Content Control with items for the user to choose from.With some documents, you’ll want to pick from a limited number of options presented in a list. In these cases, creating a template with the Drop-Down List Content Control or the Combo Box Content Control is the way to go. Click the Drop-Down List Content Control to add it to the document. For this control, you can not only type a title and use a style to format its contents, but also format it so that it cannot be deleted. To prepopulate the control with a set of choices, select the control and then click Properties. Now click Add in the Properties dialog box, and type an entry for the list (for this example, leave the display name and the value the same). Repeat this step with each entry for the list, and click OK when you’re finished. When you click Design Mode and return to the document, you’ll see the words ‘Choose an item’ in gray. Click that text, and a drop-down box will appear with the words in your list. Click one of these items, and the word will appear in the document.
Use the Check Box Control to Create Checklists
You can change the symbols used in the Check Box Content Control.The Check Box Content Control allows a user to place a checkmark to indicate their selection of an item. To add one to your document, click the Check Box Content Control and then click Properties. A Check Box can toggle between two states when clicked on: selected, represented by an X inside a box, and not selected, which shows a blank space inside the box. To change these symbols, open Properties, click the Change button, and choose a font from the dialog box (I suggest something from the Wingdings family.)
Add Quick Parts to a Document
The document properties on the Insert tab are another form of content control–these are populated from data stored in the document.Some document properties, such as the author’s name, are stored in every Word document, but usually they don’t display in the document. Here’s an easy way to add that information so that it does appear: While you’re in Design Mode, select the Insert tab on the Ribbon. Click Quick Parts and then Document Property. Finally, choose the property–Author, for example–to insert that information into the document automatically. Choose the Developer tab and click Properties while this control is selected, and you can set the text style or other properties for the control. To see where the Author data is sourced from, click File > Options. You’ll see User Name in the Popular group of settings; this is the value that populates the document’s Author property. If you change this information, you must restart Word for the change to take effect.
Put Controls to Work in a Document
You’ve probably already come up with a thousand ways to use Word’s Content Controls. If you haven’t, think of any documents you create on a regular basis that include repetitive data-entry tasks: memos, fax covers, shipping documents, and so on. Include a Date Picker control anywhere in the document template that calls for a date. Add a Drop-Down List control to pick an item from a predefined list. Use a Check Box control to select or deselect various options. Using Content Controls not only helps you complete documents quickly, but also allows you to preset a document’s layout so that you don’t need to align everything perfectly every time you create it. Once you’ve created your template, save it by choosing File > Save As > Save as Type, and choose Word Template (*.dotx). Be sure to click the Templates link in the top-left corner of the Save As dialog box to store the template in the Templates folder. Type a name for the template, click Save, and close it. In the future, you can create a new document based on this template by choosing File > New > My Templates and then clicking the desired template to open it.
Between its use of SPDY by default and speed gains through Mozilla’s “Project Snappy,” Firefox 13 has been generating excitement for some time already. Now, the final version of the software is here at last.
Mozilla on Tuesday launched this latest version of its popular free and open source browser, which comes packed with numerous significant new features that promise to make life better for users in myriad ways. If you already use Firefox, this new update will likely be on its way to you automatically through Mozilla’s now nearly silent update process, which debuted in the Windows version of Firefox 12. If you’ve been using something else to browse the Web, though, this would be a great time to give Firefox a fresh look. The video below offers an overview of what’s new, but here are a few key reasons why Firefox 13 is well worth checking out. 1. Speed Though SPDY has been included in Mozilla’s browser since Firefox 11, Firefox 13 marks the first time it’s been enabled by default. Designed as a successor to HTTP, SPDY reduces the amount of time it takes for websites to load, so “you will notice faster page load times on sites that support SPDY networking, like Google and Twitter,” according to today’s official announcement on the Mozilla blog. 2. Security SPDY also delivers a boost in security to Firefox 13 thanks to the fact that it encrypts all communication with SSL so as to make browsing more secure. 3. A New Home Those of us who have been using Firefox for some time will notice a freshly redesigned home page in version 13. Now included, for example, are icons at the bottom of the page that provide easy access to bookmarks, history, settings, add-ons, downloads, and sync preferences via one-click shortcuts. http://www.youtube.com/embed/HRp4a_24cp8?feature=player_embedded 4. A New Tab Experience Firefox 13 also offers a better experience when you open a new tab, similar in many ways to how Google’s Chrome browser does it. Specifically, you’ll see thumbnails of your most recently and frequently visited sites. The software also lets you customize the New Tab page by adding or removing thumbnails based on the pages you visit most. 5. More Speed I wrote last month about Mozilla’s “Project Snappy,” and several key improvements from that effort combine to give Firefox 13 yet more speed. For example, when restoring a browsing session, Firefox first loads the tab you are currently viewing, then it loads background tabs on demand when you click them. “It’s an improvement that makes Firefox start faster and use less memory,” Mozilla explains. Also resulting from Project Snappy are an improved mechanism for reducing Firefox’s memory usage, a faster “first paint” when the browser is launched, and several other improvements. 6. It Speaks Your Language Last but not least, Firefox 13 adds support for the Khmer language, making the browser accessible to an additional 15 million users around the globe. Firefox is now available in more than 85 languages. Want to see the full release notes for Firefox 13? They’re available on the Mozilla site. Want to give the software a try? It’s a free download for Windows, Linux, or Mac.
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If the DNSChanger rootkit has infected your PC, you’ll lose access to the Internet when the FBI shuts down DNSChanger’s surrogate DNS servers. Here’s how to determine whether you’re infected, and what to do if you are.
In July the Internet Systems Consortium will permanently shut down DNS servers deployed to serve as temporary surrogates for rogue DNS servers shut down as part of Operation Ghost Click, an FBI operation that brought down an Estonian hacker ring last year. If your PC is one of the more than 1 million computers infected that carry DNSChanger you might unknowingly be relying on one of the FBI’s temporary servers to access the Internet, and if you don’t eliminate DNSChanger from your PC before the FBI pulls the plug on its servers, you’ll be left without Internet access. Read on to learn how to discover whether you’re infected with DNSChanger, and what you can do to eliminate it from your system.
How to Tell Whether DNSChanger Has Infected Your PC
The DNSChanger Check-Up websites will automatically check which DNS servers you’re using; it will let you know that your PC is clean by flashing a green background.To figure out whether you’ve been infected with DNSChanger, just point your Web browser to one of the (admittedly amateur-looking) DNSChanger Check-Up websites that Internet security organizations maintain across the globe. The link above will take you to a DNS Changer Check-Up page in the United States that the DNS Changer Working Group maintains; if you live outside the United States, you can consult the FBI’s list of DNSChanger Check-Up websites to find an appropriate service for your region. Unfortunately, if your router is infected, those websites will think that your PC is infected, even though it may be clean; worse, if your ISP redirects DNS traffic, your PC may appear to be clean even though your DNS settings may have been maliciously altered. If you want to be certain that your PC is free of DNSChanger malware, you need to manually look up the IP addresses of the DNS servers that your PC contacts to resolve domain names when browsing the Web. To look up which DNS servers your Windows 7 PC is using, open your Start menu and either run the Command Prompt application or type cmd in the Search field. Once you have a command prompt open, type ipconfig /allcompartments /all at the command line and press Enter. A big block of text should appear; scroll through it until you see a line that says ‘DNS Servers’, and copy down the string(s) of numbers that follow (there may be more than one string here, meaning that your PC accesses more than one DNS server). Use the /ipconfig command to look up the IP addresses of the DNS server(s) that your PC is using. It’s even easier for Mac OS X users to determine the IP addresses of the DNS servers that their PC uses. Open the Apple menu (usually located in the upper-left corner of the screen) and select System Preferences. Next, click the Network icon to open your Network Settings menu; navigate to Advanced Settings, and copy down the string(s) of numbers listed in the DNS Server box. Mac users can find their DNS server IP address(es) under the DNS tab of the Advanced Network Settings menu. Once you know the IP addresses of the DNS servers that your PC is using, head over to the FBI DNSChanger website and enter those addresses into the search box. Press the big blue Check Your DNS button, and the FBI’s software will tell you whether your PC is using rogue DNS servers to access the Internet.
What to Do If Your PC Is Infected by DNSChanger
If your PC is infected with DNSChanger, you’ll have to do some intensive work to get rid of it. DNSChanger is a powerful rootkit that does more than just alter DNS settings; if you’ve been infected with DNSChanger, your safest course is to back up your important data, reformat your hard drive(s), and reinstall your operating system. For more information, consult our guide to reinstalling Windows. If you’re leery of reformatting your entire PC, you can try rooting out the DNSChanger rootkit with a free rootkit removal utility such as Kaspersky Labs’ TDSSKiller. As the name implies, Kaspersky released the program to help PC owners seek and destroy the TDSS rootkit malware, but it also detects and attempts to eliminate DNSChanger and many other forms of rootkits. If the infected PC is on a network, you’ll have to check every other PC on the network for signs of infection, and then check your router’s settings to ensure that it isn’t affected (DNSChanger is programmed to change router DNS settings automatically, using the default usernames and passwords of most modern routers). To do this, copy down your router’s DNS server IP addresses (located in your router’s settings menu; read “How to Set Up a Wireless Router” for more information) and check them against the FBI’s IP address database mentioned above. If your router is infected, reset the router and confirm that all network settings are restored to the manufacturer’s defaults. When you’re done, repeat the steps outlined above to verify that your PC is no longer infected with DNSChanger. With all traces of this vicious malware eliminated, you should have nothing to fear when the FBI shuts down the ISC’s temporary DNS servers in July.
With just a bit of work you can set up Android 4.0 on your Kindle Fire, transforming the device into a powerful general-purpose tablet with an unbeatable price tag.
With a vibrant 7-inch IPS display and a 1GHz dual-core processor, the $199 Kindle Fire can make for one lovely tablet. With a bit of work–but no hardware modifications–you can set up Android 4.0 on your Kindle Fire and thenceforth use the device as a powerful general-purpose tablet despite its incredibly low price. Email, games, Web browsing (with Chrome for Android or any other browser)–the Kindle Fire can do it all. This guide is directly based on the excellent guide written by XDA Developers user Kinfauns. Kinfauns’s guide and his Kindle Fire for Beginners guide are highly recommended reading, but they’re fairly lengthy. We’ve simplified the process and then tested it ourselves, so we can walk you through all of steps; but please use caution when tinkering with your gear, and understand that PCWorld accepts no responsibility for the consequences. That said, read on for a quick step-by-step procedure that you can follow to transform your Kindle Fire into an Android 4.0 tablet!
Ingredients
You will need:
A Kindle Fire with a full battery (if it’s not full, take time to recharge it fully).
A USB cable for connecting the Kindle Fire to your computer.
A Windows computer that you have Administrator rights for.
The Kindle Fire Utility, a third-party toolkit that simplifies many tasks and includes vital drivers.
An ICS (Android 4.0) ROM for the Kindle Fire. You can pick one from this list of ROMs. For this wow-to, we’ll be using AOKP, a well-regarded third-party ROM. The latest AOKP version at the time of this writing is build 38, but it’s a good idea to check for the most recent version.
[Optional] The Google Apps bundle, including Gmail, Google Play, and other essential Android apps. This is packaged separately from the ROM for legal reasons. If you download AOKP, you can find Google Apps for AOKP release 38, under GApps (the last link on the page).
A willingness to void your warranty and to use the Windows command line. This how-to does not use graphical tools.
Install the Kindle Fire Drivers
For this procedure to work, your computer must correctly recognize the Kindle Fire as an Android device. Here’s how to make that happen: 1. If your Kindle Fire is connected to your computer, unplug it. 2. The KFU zip contains a folder called Kindle Fire Utility. Unzip the contents of this folder into a new folder, c:kfu. 3. Run the install_drivers.bat file that’s in the c:kfu folder. Windows will pop up a UAC prompt, and then start the Kindle Fire Driver Installer. 4. As you step through the installer, you’ll receive a Windows Security alert warning you that the drivers are not signed. Install the drivers anyway. 5. The installer should complete successfully and show a confirmation dialog with the driver name:Kindle Fire driver installation confirmation.
Verify That the Drivers Were Successfully Installed
Before doing anything risky with your Kindle Fire, make sure that your PC fully recognizes it as an Android device: 1. Connect the Kindle Fire to your computer and wait for a few moments while Windows recognizes it (even if you’ve plugged it in before). 2. Run Device Manager (Click Start, right-click My Computer, and then select Manage > Device Manager). 3. You should see the Kindle Fire registered as an Android Composite ADB Interface, under Android Phone in the Device Manager tree. If you see this listing, you’re good to go. If this isn’t exactly what you see, you’ll need to do some troubleshooting; for that, refer to the original guide which has an extended troubleshooting section under the heading “What can I do if the drivers won’t load?”
Switch to Fastboot Mode
It’s still not too late to turn back. Up until this point, you haven’t done anything to the Kindle itself. But now you’re about to take the first step that involves making changes to the tablet. So, without further ado: 1. Make sure that the Kindle Fire is still connected to your computer. 2. Create a new subfolder, c:kfusoftware. 3. Unzip fbmode.zip into c:kfusoftware. It contains a single file, called fbmode (with no suffix). 4. Open a command prompt window, and copy fbmode into a user-writable location on the Kindle Fire using ADB: adb push C:kfusoftwarefbmode /data/local/tmp/ 5. Edit fbmode’s permissions so that it can run: adb shell chmod 755 /data/local/tmp/fbmode 6. Run fbmode to switch to fastboot mode: adb shell /data/local/tmp/fbmode 7. Using ADB, reboot the Kindle Fire: adb reboot At the end of this process, your command prompt window should look like this: Command prompt window after switch to fastboot mode. Your Device Manager should look like this:
The meaning of this notation is that the name of the device changes from Android Composite ADB Interface to Android ADB Interface. Finally, the Kindle Fire itself should look like this:
Kindle Fire screen after switch to fastboot mode. The Fire will simply display a logo and stay put. It’s not “stuck”; rather, it’s in fastboot mode, awaiting further instructions.
Install a Recovery Image
Next, you’ll install a recovery image–a miniature operating system that you’ll use later to flash the complete ROM. The recovery image will also come in handy for creating full backups of the device, among other things. 1. Copy the TWRP .img file into c:kfusoftware. At this writing, the latest TWRP image is named openrecovery-twrp-blaze-2.1.1.img. 2. Open a command prompt window at c:kfutools and install the image: fastboot -i 0x1949 flash recovery C:kfusoftwareopenrecovery-twrp-blaze-2.1.1.img 3. Change the boot mode to Recovery: fastboot -i 0x1949 oem idme bootmode 5001 4. Reboot into TWRP: fastboot -i 0x1949 reboot At this point, your command prompt should look like this: Command prompt window after installation of recovery image. And your Kindle Fire should look like this: Kindle Fire screen after installation of recovery image
Install a Custom Bootloader
You are well into the process now. Next, install the FIREFIREFIRE custom bootloader: 1. Take the FIREFIREFIRE Zip file and place it (still zipped) into c:kfusoftware. At this writing, the latest filename is called fff-u-boot_v1.4a.zip. 2. Copy FIREFIREFIRE into the Kindle Fire’s /sdcard directory: adb push C:kfusoftwarefff-u-boot_v1.4a.zip /sdcard/ 3. On the Kindle Fire, press the Install button. Navigate to /sdcard if needed (you should already be there by default), and select fff-u-boot_v1.4a.zip. 4. Swipe to confirm. You should get a success message: Custom bootloader success message. 5. Back up the stock OS so you can roll back to it at any time. In the root TWRP menu, select Backup, modify the options if you like (the defaults are fine), and swipe to confirm. Backing up will take a while, which is one of the reasons why starting the process with a full battery is so important. Backing up the stock OS can take a while.
Flash the Ice Cream Sandwich ROM
You’re almost there! Now you just need to copy the ROM and flash it. As noted at the outset, we used AOKP in our test runs, but different ROMs may have different flashing procedures. Read the documentation for the ROM of your choice. 1. Place the .zip files containing the ROM image and Google Apps into c:kfusoftware. 2. Push the ROM and Google Apps onto the device: adb push C:kfusoftwareaokp_otter_build-38.zip /sdcard/ adb push C:kfusoftwaregapps-ics-20120429-signed.zip /sdcard/ 3. In TWRP, select Wipe > Factory Reset. This will remove all existing files from the data and cache partitions, but it won’t affect the /sdcard directory, which contains media files. 4. In TWRP, select Install. Navigate to the ROM .zip file that you placed on the device, tap it, and swipe to confirm. This will take a few moments: Installing the Ice Cream Sandwich ROM. 5. Once that is done, tap the Back button in the upper right corner, and repeat the process with the Google Apps .zip file. 6. Tap Reboot System in the lower right corner, and boot into your brand-new Android 4.0 experience! If you wish, you can now remove the ROM and Google Apps .zip files from your device.
This is an article by Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld and felt I should share it with you so we can all put our views together. A year after Google+ was launched, it seems Google is saying it’s not really a social network after all. Now this might be confusing to the 150 million people who actively use Google+ every month. They catch up with colleagues and friends on Google+ Circles. They chat with family members in Google+ Hangouts. They post photos. They watch videos. So aren’t those the things you do on a social network? Google has other thoughts on this. According to a report from Mashable, Vic Gundotra, Google’s senior vice president of social business, and Bradley Horowitz, Google+’s vice president of product, said Google+ may be social, but it’s more than that. Instead of a social network, Google+ is an upgrade to all Google products. “Google+ is just an upgrade to Google,” Gundotra told Mashable. “People have a hard time understanding that. I think they like to compare us with other social competitors, and they see us through that lens instead of really seeing what’s happening: Google is taking its amazing products, and by bringing them together, they just become more awesome.” Google declined to comment. The company has been saying since last fall that Google+ will be woven into all of its products. Speaking on an earnings call last October, Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page said he wants to “transform the overall Google experience” with Google+. “This means baking identity and sharing into all of our products so that we build a real relationship with our users,” Page added. “Sharing on the Web will be like sharing in real life across all your stuff.” And that’s what Google started to do. Soon after Page made that statement, Google began integrating Google+ with Google Apps, the company’s cloud-based office suite. While Google+ is expected to be used across Google’s product portfolio, does that mean it’s still not a social network? No, not at all, according to Dan Olds, an analyst at Gabriel Consulting Group. “This is a great example of moving the goal posts while the football is in the air,” Olds said. “Google didn’t do much to scotch these comparisons when Google+ was being rolled out, but now, a year later, Google+ suddenly isn’t like Facebook at all? It’s major-league and masterful spin, but I don’t think it holds water.” He added that just because Google+ is being integrated across product lines, that doesn’t change what it is at its core. “It’s still a social network at heart,” said Olds. “Google+ is still a service that gives users a chance to share and connect with others, and that’s what social networks do. If you take the social networking out of Google+, then it’s just a console, right?” However, Brian Blau, an analyst at Gartner, pointed out that Google has never come out and said that it’s focused on competing with Facebook. “I think the sentiment over the statement is correct,” he added. “They may not be competing over a social network as a pillar of a business, but certainly they are competing for consumer mindshare on technologies like search, location and mobile.” And Blau also noted that Google is smart to make all of its products more social because that will bring in more information and, in turn, more money for Google. “Maybe what you are seeing is a change in definition of what it means to be a social network,” said Blau. “The direction you are seeing with Google is the natural direction for how social will be integrated into consumer technology, and enterprise too. It will be a feature versus a stand-alone product.” However, Patrick Moorhead, an analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, said he’s not buying that Google doesn’t think Google+ is a social network. “This talk is nothing more than clever product repositioning,” he said. “Gundotra realizes now they cannot compete head-to-head with Facebook or Twitter, so he is attempting to change the playing field and lower expectations for everyone…. Google+ is a social network so long as it is a meeting place where users share their experiences, likes [and] dislikes, and others respond as if it’s a virtual conversation.” Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin and on Google+, or subscribe to Sharon’s RSS feed. Her email address is [email protected]. See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com. Read more about web 2.0 and web apps in Computerworld’s Web 2.0 and Web Apps Topic Center.
New GPS tech can track your every move. Should you fear it or embrace it?
Privacy fans, take note: A new technology, called Indoor Positioning System, could push your worry meter to the max. IPS allows pinpoint tracking of any Wi-Fi-enabled device, such as a smartphone or tablet, within a building. This means that an IPS service could easily track you–right down to, say, the table you’re occupying in a mall’s food court–as long as your mobile devices’ Wi-Fi is turned on. And, if you’re a typical device user, your Wi-Fi is always on, right? In short, we’ve moved far beyond using regular old GPS for location tracking. Indoor environments are challenging for low-cost location systems such as GPS, because the ways in which buildings are constructed–not to mention physical obstacles and even people’s bodies–interfere with GPS’s ability to pinpoint a location. Navizon ITS logoOne example of the new technology is the Navizon Indoor Triangulation Service, which MIT’s Technology Review blog discussed recently. Location services company Navizon says that ITS can provide accurate tracking of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops, anywhere inside a building or throughout a campus. (Triangulation by Wi-Fi hotspots helps to make location services more accurate.) As such services begin to grow, they might threaten your privacy. So, in many instances, if you don’t want an entity knowing the location of your mobile device, you should shut it off or ditch it completely. At the same time, however, device tracking could become hugely useful to you. Innovators have figured out how to take GPS-like navigation indoors so that people can not only quickly find the restroom in a department store or their departure gate at the airport, but also receive deals and discounts from retailers upon stepping over a shop’s threshold. Navizon wouldn’t comment for this article, but some of its competitors did. Let’s take a look at other companies working on IPS services.
Skyhook
Skyhook developed the first hybrid location system to use Wi-Fi positioning, GPS, and cell-tower triangulation to determine the coordinates of a device, even indoors. Since then, Apple (Skyhook’s biggest customer) and Google (Skyhook’s biggest competitor) have emulated the hybrid approach for their respective mapping apps. All sorts of mobile devices on the market–phones, laptops, ebook readers, digital cameras, and gaming devices–are location aware. In many cases, that’s because Skyhook software is baked into them. For instance, Apple, Dell, and HP laptops use the Skyhook system to change their clocks automatically when users take them across time zones. The laptops also let users pull up real-time information about what’s happening in a neighborhood that they happen to be in, and they can broadcast their location so that users can find them in case of theft. Skyhook’s SpotRank data-intelligence service predicts the density of people in predefined urban square-block areas worldwide at any hour, any day of the week. Image: Courtesy of SkyhookBut what’s really interesting about Skyhook is its ability to profile individual devices–not identifiable people, as CEO Ted Morgan is quick to point out–and know which ones are associated with certain kinds of people. For instance, if Skyhook sees that a device shows up at Wrigley Field four times in a season, it assumes that the person using the laptop is a sports fan. Or if a laptop or smartphone is detected in an airport several times a month, Skyhook guesses that the user is most likely a business traveler. “Because we’ve been running the location on about 100 million devices for the last four or five years, we have a tremendous amount of knowledge into overall human behavior–about where people are throughout the day, where they go, which street corners are busy, which ones are not at different times of the day,” Morgan says. Over time, Skyhook also figures out where all these devices live. Then, by mixing into device profiles publicly available data from the U.S. Census, for example, it adds demographic data such as age and ethnicity. This is a veritable gold mine of data that Skyhook can then package and offer to marketers who want to reach only select segments of consumers, or to developers and device makers who can use the software to deliver highly relevant real-time content to users. “We’re able to see at an aggregate level what 100,000,000 people are doing, so we can predict what areas of a city are getting busy or less busy, what types of people are in different areas of the city,” Morgan says. “So, if you want to know where to go out in Seattle tonight, I can tell you what the most active street corner is going to be, and I can tell you the high-level breakout of the type of people who will be there, because they’ve done that every Friday night for the last three years.” So just how does Skyhook do all this profiling of individual devices while maintaining the anonymity of the people using them? Morgan says that the company does not use device MAC addresses or phone numbers. “Every time a new phone registers on our system, we give it an ID like a license plate. There’s no way for you to know what it is. There’s no way for anyone to see it. If you were able to look into our system and see what my phone’s ID was, the only thing you’d ever find out about me is that I’m a middle-aged white guy who makes over $100,000,” Morgan says. “It would never say my name. It would never say where I’m from. There’s nothing that could ever figure out the user, and that’s the bar we have for privacy. Nobody could get into our system, even ourselves, to figure out the name of a user.”
Skyhook and Google
The main thing you need to know here is that Skyhook is suing Google currently. “Google recognized [the value of mapping the country’s Wi-Fi] and decided it wanted to have a similar system, so it copied the model,” says Morgan. “And because Google brings so much else to the table, where it’s giving away things for free [such as] maps and search and email, they became a competitor to us.” The problem, Morgan says, came about after Skyhook won deals with Motorola and Samsung, and Google forced those companies to back out of their contracts. Google did not respond to a request for comment. Even so, maps are undeniably a brilliant gem in Google’s crown–its turn-by-turn navigation is something that Android users universally adore. It only makes sense that the company would get involved in IPS services. In November, Google announced that it was taking Google Maps indoors. Now, if you go to select U.S. shopping malls, airports, and retail locations, or certain Japanese transit stations, you can use your Android mobile device to see where you are. The idea is similar to the physical kiosk maps you see in malls, except this one is on your phone and adds Google’s famous little blue pin so that you can quickly figure out how to get from the shoe department in Macy’s, for example, over to the men’s department.
Google Maps 6.0 for Android updates your indoor location as you move, and will even refresh the map when you move to a different floor. Image: Courtesy of Google Google Maps 6.0 for Android updates your location as you move, and it will even refresh the map when you move to a different floor. It also labels all sorts of helpful information, such as bathroom locations, ATMs, and airport gates. At launch, the application included floor plans for Tokyo’s Narita and 17 U.S. airports; stores of the retail chains Bloomingdales, Home Depot, Ikea, and Macy’s; and malls such as the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota, Times Square Mall in Mt. Vernon, Illinois, and Liberty Fair Mall in Martinsville, Virginia. To enable indoor mapping, Google created a desktop tool that lets venue owners and business owners upload the floor plans of their locations. After doing so, they download an app from Google Play that lets them share publicly broadcast GPS, cell-tower, and Wi-Fi information with Google. With that radio-signal information in hand, Google can allow Android users to track their indoor locations on its maps. Currently Google isn’t pushing ads, discounts, or offers to consumers who use its IPS service. Since Google makes gobs of money on advertising, however, one can only imagine that we may very well see something like that at some point in the future. As for whether the service profiles devices the way Skyhook does, Google’s new privacy policy doesn’t exactly say. It does state that the company keeps a consolidated record of how you use its services so that it can improve them as well as serve you more-relevant search results and ads. Regarding location information specifically, Google’s privacy policy states: “When you use a location-enabled Google service, we may collect and process information about your actual location, like GPS signals sent by a mobile device. We may also use various technologies to determine location, such as sensor data from your device that may, for example, provide information on nearby Wi-Fi access points and cell towers.”
Wifarer
Wifarer is another company using IPS. Unlike Google, which so far provides only indoor maps and location awareness to users, Wifarer wants to give its users heaps of content, discounts, and deals related to where they are located. The company says that its service is essentially a private, customized version of Google’s IPS offering that lets venues control the content, the branding, and various ways to make money from their digital space. The Wifarer app for Android gives users heaps of content, discounts, and deals related to where they are located. Image: Courtesy of WifarerThe Wifarer software works with Wi-Fi systems that exist in public places such as malls, museums, and airports–that is, any location where it might help you to know your whereabouts so as to better find your way and receive relevant information or offers. If you have the Wifarer app installed on your Android phone (Apple has yet to allow the app into its ecosystem), the fingerprint radio frequency-based system determines your phone’s position within a few feet of where you’re using it. Currently beta testing in 25 venues, Wifarer expects to be up and running in 400 additional places by the end of this year. “One of the things about indoor positioning systems is that they open up a new vein of [intellectual property],” says Wifarer CEO Philip Stanger. That means IPS is seeing a tremendous amount of development; Stanger says that some exciting things will be coming down the pipeline in the next several months to a year. He won’t divulge what those developments might be, although they could include inventions such as displays that employ augmented reality and are triggered by users’ locations. Stanger, like many other people in the business of phone-finding technology, maintains that his product keeps user privacy intact. “Without giving away core IP and proprietary processes, I can say that the app calculates and displays its own positioning and location information entirely from within the app. This occurs when the app is turned on, and only when the app is turned on,” Stanger says. “Upon first download, a new user is given an anonymous user ID, and neither their MAC ID nor their IMEI number is ever recorded, monitored, or tracked. From then on, all transactions with and downloads from our system are identified by this UI (user ID) alone. Occasionally, and only when the app is on, location information of the UI is reported back to the system, mainly to verify positioning accuracy.” The fact that Wifarer works at all is pretty impressive, considering the technical hurdles involved. “The challenges are many, but most revolve around the variability of Wi-Fi due to environmental considerations,” Stanger says. “For instance, most Wi-Fi broadcasts at around 2.4GHz. Unfortunately the resonating frequency of water is also 2.4GHz, and people are comprised of mostly water. So, the more that people congregate, the more the Wi-Fi radio patterns vary. So the question becomes, how can we normalize patterns when the very usage we envisage generates disruptions to those patterns?” Stanger isn’t saying how his company has done it, only that it involves proprietary coding.
Nokia
Phone maker Nokia is also working on an interesting way to determine location in an indoor environment. As part of a consortium of 17 technology and media companies, Nokia recently participated in a demo showing how unused portions of the TV spectrum can deliver information to people according to their location. At the Imperial War Museum hangar in Duxford, UK, Scott Probasco, a Nokia senior manager, shows how a Nokia smartphone can connect to the Internet via TV white spaces and use an app to grab information about the planes on display. Image: Courtesy of NokiaAt the Imperial War Museum hangar in Duxford, UK, Nokia recently showed how a radio system box operating in UHF TV bands can connect to a TV white-space database to pinpoint which TV channels are available. From there, a Nokia smartphone can connect to the Internet via the TV white space and use an app to grab content. In the case of the museum demo, the content was information about the planes on display. This type of arrangement would allow museum visitors, for example, to gain access to a vast amount of information about exhibits depending on where they are standing–far more than the museum could ever include on physical signage. A similar system could be built out to push content to people in other places, such as retail locations; in this case, shoppers could receive offers and coupons, and participate in loyalty programs, just by walking around with an app on their phones. That isn’t going to happen overnight, however. Before services can use TV white spaces for location finding and content distribution, the necessary technology–including mass-produced chips inside phones and special wireless access points–must be standardized, which likely won’t occur for at least a few years. In addition, the system isn’t terribly precise, as the accuracy is good only at 25 feet to 50 feet. “We can use several well-known methods to refine this coarse location, for example taking signal-strength measurements from several access points and then mathematically combining these signals to estimate the location of the phone a bit more accurately,” says Scott Probasco, a senior manager at Nokia.
Broadcom
Before the end of the year, a new chip made by Broadcom, called the BCM4752, will be integrated in certain mobile devices coming to market. Although the company won’t identify the devices, the technology looks to be pretty mind-blowing.
Broadcom’s BCM4752 chipDesigned for smartphones, tablets, portable media players, and portable navigation devices, the BCM4752 chip is a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) product that communicates with the U.S.-based GPS as well as with three of that system’s counterparts–the Russian GLONASS, the in-progress Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) in Japan, and SBAS constellations of satellites. Access to more satellites means better location awareness, but what’s really fascinating about the Broadcom location platform is that, in addition to supporting IPS through Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and NFC, it integrates measurements from device sensors–the accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, and altimeter–into its positioning engine. Essentially, that means Broadcom’s technology can find your location without being connected to any kind of network. For example, after recording your GNSS coordinates as you enter a building, the technology could continue to track your device’s location simply based on these sensor outputs–how many steps you’ve taken, in what direction you took them, and at what altitude. According to Scott Pomerantz, GM and VP of Broadcom’s GPS line of business, the technology makes use of intelligent location software known as the Hybrid User Location Application to integrate measurements from GNSS, inertial sensors, its Wi-Fi products, its cellular modem, and many other RF components found in smartphones today. “We want to be able to do all of the position location locally, not necessarily depending on outside databases or other information; but, just with the device in your hand, we can recognize [the data that is] available and how to render [its] position,” Pomerantz says. While it’s one thing to have a phone capable of doing incredible things and quite another to build out infrastructure and applications that actually use it, Pomerantz says many location-aware apps will be able to make great use of the BCM4752 chip. The companies I spoke with represent just a sampling of those carrying out the location tracking of mobile devices. If this topic interests you, check out Polaris Wireless as another example: It provides high-accuracy, software-based systems for finding the location of mobile phones, and it can serve not only for activities like push advertising and social networking but also for asset tracking and fleet tracking, plus lawful interception by government agencies.
How Much Should You Worry About Privacy Issues?
Should it bother you that so many entities can see where you’re using your mobile device, or do features such as vastly improved navigation trump any such privacy concerns? I posed the question to a couple of experts well versed in the implications of this advanced technology. Rob Enderle, principal analyst for Enderle Group, sees the tracking of individuals as particularly useful for companies that have high security requirements or have issues with employee theft or time-card cheating. And, he says, when physical danger is an issue, knowing a person’s exact location can mean that help comes faster. “In those instances, when implemented properly, the reward clearly exceeds the risk,” Enderle says. “The utility and convenience for commercially available location-based services and wireless tracking usage outweigh, at this moment in time, individualistic notions of privacy,” says T. Jeff Vining, VP of government research and geospatial surveillance operational technology for Gartner, a technology research firm. “But when data is aggregated, then it will become a concern for privacy advocates and governments.” In short, this is a subject you’re going to want to track
I got this information from one of our contributor’s site this morning and felt i should share this with you, my readers. A few days back google announced a short online certificate course ‘Power Searching With Google’ this program is aimed at helping all Google users learn about the powerful advanced tools which Google provides to help the world find just the right information when the stakes are high.
The certificate, according to Google will be emailed upon successful passing of the online course by participants. Mobile phones according to Google will not be used for the classes.
Course Details
Power Searching with Google is a free online, community-based course showcasing search techniques and how to use them to solve real, everyday problems. It features:
Six 50-minute classes.
Interactive activities to practice new skills.
Opportunities to connect with others using Google Groups, Google+, and Hangouts on Air.
Upon passing the post-course assessment, a printable Certificate of Completion will be emailed to you.
Ready to get started?
Registration is open from June 26, 2012 to July 16, 2012. We recommend that you register before the first class is released on July 10, 2012!
New classes will become available Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday starting on July 10, 2012 and ending on July 19, 2012.
Course-related activities will end on July 23, 2012.
To register now for “Power Searching with Google Free Online Certificate Course” follow this link Power Searching with Google Free Online Certificate Course After registration, remember to sign into your email to confirm that Google has sent you a confirmation of your registration and course dates with activities.
The GreatCall Jitterbug Plus ($119, no contract required; price as of July 2, 2012), designed for seniors and anyone else who needs access to health or safety services, looks and functions like a simple, no-frills feature phone, but it has lifesaving technology behind it. The Jitterbug Plus improves on the previous Jitterbug model with photo-sharing capabilities, preloaded text messages, and a more sleek design. It also supports GreatCall’s 5Star Urgent Response personal emergency-response service. GreatCall CEO David Inns says that the company obtained feedback from customers on ways to improve the previous Jitterbug. One feature request that kept coming up was picture sharing. Jitterbug Plus owners can now share photos on Facebook, Picasa, and Shutterfly. It is easy to set up, too: You simply go to your Jitterbug.com account and fill out your profile credentials. Afterward, you can share photos with your social networks directly from the camera gallery. The 2-megapixel camera isn’t the highest quality; in my tests, photos looked a bit hazy and washed out. For social networking purposes, however, the Jitterbug Plus’s camera works just fine. The camera has no flash, so taking photos in dark environments might not turn out so well. The Jitterbug’s design is a bit of a throwback to older phones, with its clamshell shape and internal and external displays. The Samsung-built phone is smaller and lighter than previous iterations, though, and comes in an attractive red or silver color. On the Jitterbug Plus, you’ll find a few preinstalled text messages, such as “How are you?” and “On my way.” The alphanumeric keyboard offers large, easy-to-press keys with a clear font to make texting painless. Large ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ keys help you navigate the simple menu; for example, if you want to read a text message, you press ‘Yes’ to open it. As somebody who is constantly using advanced smartphones, I found that this extremely basic navigation system took some getting used to–I kept looking for ‘Back’ and ‘Home’ keys instead. But when I showed the Jitterbug Plus to a person who has never even attempted to use a smartphone, he loved the design, and said that it was much easier to use than the feature phone he already owned. He did not like how long it took to browse through the main menu, however. I also noticed that the navigation was a bit slow in that regard. The Jitterbug Plus has insanely long battery life, which is an important feature for its demographic. GreatCall claims that the phone has 25 days of standby time. Although I haven’t had the phone for 25 days, I haven’t needed to charge it since I received it about a week ago. One drawback is that the display has no battery-life indicator; you have to go to ‘Phone Info’ from the main menu, which is a bit unintuitive. For customers who are hard of hearing, the Jitterbug Plus has a very loud ringtone and audio speaker. Call quality overall was quite clean on my test calls. My friends on the other end of the line were similarly pleased with how clear I sounded.
Pricing and Additional Services
GreatCall offers a pay-as-you-go plan that starts at $15 per month for 50 minutes, and runs up to $80 per month for unlimited minutes and text messages. If you choose to go à la carte, text messages cost 10 cents each. Voicemail costs an extra $3 per month. Jitterbug Plus owners can add a number of wellness services to their plans, including 5Star Urgent Response ($15 per month), which gives you direct contact with a certified emergency-response agent, performs GPS tracking, and provides free 24-hour access to unlimited health advice from registered nurses. You can tack on other helpful services, too, such as automated check-in calls ($5 per month) and medication reminders ($10 per month). These services add up, but are invaluable to anyone who needs them. The Jitterbug Plus is meant for a very specific audience–one that I’m not yet a member of–so reviewing a product like this can be difficult. But I’ve seen other products that try to make an interface too simple, and end up leaving out some important features. GreatCall has done an excellent job of creating a phone that is both easy to use and full-featured, packed into a modern design.
Adsense is one of the most trusted way of making money online but after handing series of suspension to publishers it becomes potentially unreliable to use adsense. 
What should you do?
Kindle Fire driver installation confirmation.
Command prompt window after switch to fastboot mode.
Command prompt window after installation of recovery image.
Kindle Fire screen after installation of recovery image
Custom bootloader success message.
Backing up the stock OS can take a while.
Installing the Ice Cream Sandwich ROM.
Navizon ITS logoOne example of the new technology is the Navizon Indoor Triangulation Service, which MIT’s Technology Review blog discussed recently. Location services company Navizon says that ITS can provide accurate tracking of Wi-Fi-enabled devices, including smartphones, tablets, and laptops, anywhere inside a building or throughout a campus. (Triangulation by Wi-Fi hotspots helps to make location services more accurate.)
Skyhook developed the first hybrid location system to use Wi-Fi positioning, GPS, and cell-tower triangulation to determine the coordinates of a device, even indoors. Since then, Apple (Skyhook’s biggest customer) and Google (Skyhook’s biggest competitor) have emulated the hybrid approach for their respective mapping apps.
The main thing you need to know here is that Skyhook is suing Google currently.
Wifarer is another company using IPS. Unlike Google, which so far provides only indoor maps and location awareness to users, Wifarer wants to give its users heaps of content, discounts, and deals related to where they are located.
Phone maker Nokia is also working on an interesting way to determine location in an indoor environment.
Before the end of the year, a new chip made by Broadcom, called the 
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