Monday, April 20, 2015
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
The new Galaxy S6 has the strongest processor in the world
The move by Samsung to use its own processor in the new Galaxy S6, proved correct. The first benchmark, flagship of the Korean manufacturer literally zgromi main competitors, HTC One M9, Nexus 6 and Apple iPhone 6 Plus.Exynos 7420 chip, definitely proved stronger than the latest Qualcomm, Snapdragon 810, although both have similar architecture with eight physical cores. Due to the number of cores, the chip of Samsung achieved an incredible result of 4547 points GeekBench, before HTC One M9, who finished with 3959 points. Nexus 6, which has 805 Snapdragon processor, complete with 3307 points, while most iPhone with 2911 points.
The benchmark intended for single core, though, Nexus 9 with Tegra K1 is the best CPU with 1976 points before the iPhone 6 Plus with 1626. For these tests, Galaxy S6 finished third, with great achievement for processor cores with more than 1443 points, that is dramatically better result than 810 Snapdragon processor in HTC One M9, which ended with 1186 points.
Looking at the results of these benchmarks, it is clear that the Galaxy S6 boasts that it is the fastest Android smartphone now, certainly not if we consider Nexus 9, which is a tablet. The difference relative to its competitors is generally small and sopred previous experiences, could be felt in some 3D games that require more and more performance.
And though the new Exynos CPU Galaxy S6 not make a big difference in everyday use in terms of Snapdragon 810, Samsung will have the right to boast that it has the fastest smartphone on the market right now, which may in great increase sales . Along with the new, luxurious design of the phone model and Edge, who after a long time brings innovation in display in this class, Samsung seems to have again hit the world, which will sell millions of copies.
A Chat With Project Mosul About Rebuilding A Ruined History
Matthew Vincent is one of the members of Project Mosul, an effort to recreate the lost artifacts at the Mosul Museum that were recently destroyed by ISIS fighters. By taking pictures and images of the broken artifacts, the group hopes to recreate them with 3D printers, storing at least the shape and quality of the originals to keep them safe, at least in a digital form. He spoke with me about the project and what it feels like, as an archeologist, to see history destroyed.
TC: Tell me about yourself and your team.Matthew Vincent: Project Mosul is a volunteer effort that has grown out of the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage, a Marie Curie Actions programme funded by the European Commission. We are around 17 fellows who are working on this, although the instigators of Project Mosul are myself, Chance Coughenour (another fellow), and the project coordinator Marinos Ioannides.
TC: What does your group do?
MV: We work on digital cultural heritage. The ITN-DCH is all about dealing with cultural heritage as a single, cohesive unit. The digital part is the application of new technologies to traditional heritage, such as the digitisation and preservation of heritage through these new mediums.
TC: Why are you taking up this project?
MV: I am an archaeologist, I’ve been working in Jordan for 11 years now and seeing the destruction in Mosul is just too close to home. In a conversation following the video released the ISIS a couple weeks ago, one fellow suggested that we crowdsource the reconstruction of the Mosul Museum. that was when the project began. There was no reason not to do it, and so Project Mosul was launched.
TC: What do you hope to achieve?
MV: We hope to see a virtual museum come out of this, where as many of the artefacts as possible can be located within a virtual environment and visualised through the web or other environments. The limitations of photogrammetry mean we cannot guarantee the fidelity of the models to the originals, but the visual representations should be enough to give the public access to lost heritage. Furthermore, the 3D models could potentially help to restore any of the originals, even lacking the geometric fidelity.
TC: Has this been done before?
MV: We are not the first to do something like this. One of the more famous examples is the reconstruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan which were originally destroyed by the Taliban. Crowd-sourcing photos for reconstructions dates back even further, with IBM being one of the first to work on a reconstruction, specifically the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, which is the earliest photogrammetric reconstruction of a monument, to my knowledge.
TC: Have you spoken to anyone in Mosul?
MV: We are trying to reach out to those in Mosul, but communication isn’t easy and we want to respect the safety of the individuals in the area.
TC: What do you think of this sort of destruction?
MV: As an archaeologist, I am sickened by what I see. My first love was Mesopotamia and the ancient Akkadian and Sumerian languages. To see world heritage sites destroyed is a senseless act of violence. Their actions are those of extremists and do not represent Islam. What they destroy is all pre-Islamic, and represents a shared heritage that much of the world holds, and I would love to see actions taken to protect this heritage. That said, ISIS has done far worse in terms of human lives lost, and the heritage is just one more casualty in a long list of those destroyed by the extremists.
TC: What can museums do to make your job easier?
MV: Museums and public alike. Museums around the world should see this as a wake up call. No museum is safe from these sort of destructive acts, whether they are acts of man or natural disasters, heritage is a treasure to be preserved for generations to come. Museums can take preventative measures and digitise and publish their collections in open formats. One challenge we face with the Mosul Museum is that they’ve effectively been closed for over 10 years (since the 2003 invasion of Iraq). That means there aren’t a lot of pictures of the museum and its artefacts. Museums that do not allow photography could jeopardise the opportunities for future digital reconstructions by not allow the public to capture what they see in those institutions. Better yet, museums should open source 3D digitisations of the artefacts, giving the public direct access to the collections and democratising the data for all. However, this is something that must come from the museums, and it is not something we can simply usurp.
On the same lines, we need the public to support our museums, and make it clear that they will be maintained no matter what. Project Mosul is about showing the world that we don’t want to see a single museum lost in times of crisis, and that we are willing to be our time and energy into the preservation of these memory institutions, even with limited information and resources available. But, much of this can be avoided if museums open-source their collections, and make it a priority to digitise their collections and get them online. Furthermore, this helps with the looting issues, as these models can be accessed by law-enforcement agencies to help identify looted antiquities on the market.
TC: Tell me about yourself and your team.Matthew Vincent: Project Mosul is a volunteer effort that has grown out of the Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage, a Marie Curie Actions programme funded by the European Commission. We are around 17 fellows who are working on this, although the instigators of Project Mosul are myself, Chance Coughenour (another fellow), and the project coordinator Marinos Ioannides.
TC: What does your group do?
MV: We work on digital cultural heritage. The ITN-DCH is all about dealing with cultural heritage as a single, cohesive unit. The digital part is the application of new technologies to traditional heritage, such as the digitisation and preservation of heritage through these new mediums.
TC: Why are you taking up this project?
MV: I am an archaeologist, I’ve been working in Jordan for 11 years now and seeing the destruction in Mosul is just too close to home. In a conversation following the video released the ISIS a couple weeks ago, one fellow suggested that we crowdsource the reconstruction of the Mosul Museum. that was when the project began. There was no reason not to do it, and so Project Mosul was launched.
TC: What do you hope to achieve?
MV: We hope to see a virtual museum come out of this, where as many of the artefacts as possible can be located within a virtual environment and visualised through the web or other environments. The limitations of photogrammetry mean we cannot guarantee the fidelity of the models to the originals, but the visual representations should be enough to give the public access to lost heritage. Furthermore, the 3D models could potentially help to restore any of the originals, even lacking the geometric fidelity.
TC: Has this been done before?
MV: We are not the first to do something like this. One of the more famous examples is the reconstruction of the Buddhas in Afghanistan which were originally destroyed by the Taliban. Crowd-sourcing photos for reconstructions dates back even further, with IBM being one of the first to work on a reconstruction, specifically the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden, which is the earliest photogrammetric reconstruction of a monument, to my knowledge.
TC: Have you spoken to anyone in Mosul?
MV: We are trying to reach out to those in Mosul, but communication isn’t easy and we want to respect the safety of the individuals in the area.
TC: What do you think of this sort of destruction?
MV: As an archaeologist, I am sickened by what I see. My first love was Mesopotamia and the ancient Akkadian and Sumerian languages. To see world heritage sites destroyed is a senseless act of violence. Their actions are those of extremists and do not represent Islam. What they destroy is all pre-Islamic, and represents a shared heritage that much of the world holds, and I would love to see actions taken to protect this heritage. That said, ISIS has done far worse in terms of human lives lost, and the heritage is just one more casualty in a long list of those destroyed by the extremists.
TC: What can museums do to make your job easier?
MV: Museums and public alike. Museums around the world should see this as a wake up call. No museum is safe from these sort of destructive acts, whether they are acts of man or natural disasters, heritage is a treasure to be preserved for generations to come. Museums can take preventative measures and digitise and publish their collections in open formats. One challenge we face with the Mosul Museum is that they’ve effectively been closed for over 10 years (since the 2003 invasion of Iraq). That means there aren’t a lot of pictures of the museum and its artefacts. Museums that do not allow photography could jeopardise the opportunities for future digital reconstructions by not allow the public to capture what they see in those institutions. Better yet, museums should open source 3D digitisations of the artefacts, giving the public direct access to the collections and democratising the data for all. However, this is something that must come from the museums, and it is not something we can simply usurp.
On the same lines, we need the public to support our museums, and make it clear that they will be maintained no matter what. Project Mosul is about showing the world that we don’t want to see a single museum lost in times of crisis, and that we are willing to be our time and energy into the preservation of these memory institutions, even with limited information and resources available. But, much of this can be avoided if museums open-source their collections, and make it a priority to digitise their collections and get them online. Furthermore, this helps with the looting issues, as these models can be accessed by law-enforcement agencies to help identify looted antiquities on the market.
Twitter Starts Breaking Meerkat Features By Limiting Social Graph Access
Talk about timing: Twitter confirms they’ve bought Meerkat-competitor Periscope, and but a few hours later Twitter makes a move that kills off a few Meerkat features.Meerkat is a fast-rising, Twitter-centric live video broadcasting platform that seems to be gaining quite the fanbase since launching just a few weeks back. Viewers of your livestream can tweet at you and have those tweets appear on your screen, allowing for quick, on-the-fly interaction and discussion.
Much of Meerkat’s success and draw lays in its tight integration with Twitter — something that many have noted could be an issue moving forward, be it that Twitter decides to get into live video themselves. Which, of course, they’ve just done.
And now Twitter has begun to cut off off Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph.
So what’s that mean? Until now, new Meerkat users could login to the service with their Twitter account, and bam — you’d automatically be following anyone on Meerkat who you already follow on Twitter, and they’d be following you back. It let Meerkat seem like a very, very natural extension of Twitter.
Buzzfeed spotted the change first, when follower counts seemed to be a bit off when creating new accounts.
We’ve reached out to Twitter, who confirmed the change. Here’s what a Twitter spokesperson would say on the matter:
“We are limiting their access to Twitter’s social graph, consistent with our internal policy. Their users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter and login with their Twitter credentials.”
Is it a devastating change? Maybe not — Meerkat already has a fair amount of momentum behind it. But it’s certainly not something the Meerkat team will be excited about… particularly with the now present threat of an in-house-Twitter competitor looming.
Update: Meerkat co-founder Ben Rubin responds, calling the move “a sad day for the Twitter developer community” but a “small bump for meerkat”:
Much of Meerkat’s success and draw lays in its tight integration with Twitter — something that many have noted could be an issue moving forward, be it that Twitter decides to get into live video themselves. Which, of course, they’ve just done.
And now Twitter has begun to cut off off Meerkat’s access to Twitter’s social graph.
So what’s that mean? Until now, new Meerkat users could login to the service with their Twitter account, and bam — you’d automatically be following anyone on Meerkat who you already follow on Twitter, and they’d be following you back. It let Meerkat seem like a very, very natural extension of Twitter.
Buzzfeed spotted the change first, when follower counts seemed to be a bit off when creating new accounts.
We’ve reached out to Twitter, who confirmed the change. Here’s what a Twitter spokesperson would say on the matter:
“We are limiting their access to Twitter’s social graph, consistent with our internal policy. Their users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter and login with their Twitter credentials.”
Is it a devastating change? Maybe not — Meerkat already has a fair amount of momentum behind it. But it’s certainly not something the Meerkat team will be excited about… particularly with the now present threat of an in-house-Twitter competitor looming.
Update: Meerkat co-founder Ben Rubin responds, calling the move “a sad day for the Twitter developer community” but a “small bump for meerkat”:
IKEA furniture introduced wireless device chargers
Wireless charging technology is still young, but slowly gain market share. There are two main "players" / standards here. Ones are Wireless Power Consortium, and other Power Matters Alliance. Both standards have a few big players like McDonalds, Starbucks, Xiaomi and so on.Now the Wireless Power Consortium joined announced that IKEA furniture that will have such (Qi) chargers integrated inside. Their idea is to ease congestion on the cables, while charging the devices to be neprimetlivo and viable on the table around which sit.The furniture that filled cell function in a manner that its surface has a section that sets the phone or tablet. If the device supports this charge then feel free to leave it as it would have left any other area and be a witness to wireless charging. According to IKEA, "Through research and visiting homes, we know that people hate the chaos of cables. They worry about how they can not find the charger and it will remain without power. Our innovative solutions that integrate wireless charging in domestic furniture will make life at home easier. "
IKEA still know that you are not just buying furniture from them, so they decided to start to sell these areas independent charging that you can integrate into other furniture. This technology will mostly be for charging devices that are regularly used as phones and tablets, but can be used for other things, such as rechargeable electric toothbrush or shaver.So far, there are not many devices that support wireless charging, and the struggle between two rival standards further complicates the work. However, this is really interesting solution for all those times when we ask friends charger to charge the phone because it spent in the middle of the day.
IKEA still know that you are not just buying furniture from them, so they decided to start to sell these areas independent charging that you can integrate into other furniture. This technology will mostly be for charging devices that are regularly used as phones and tablets, but can be used for other things, such as rechargeable electric toothbrush or shaver.So far, there are not many devices that support wireless charging, and the struggle between two rival standards further complicates the work. However, this is really interesting solution for all those times when we ask friends charger to charge the phone because it spent in the middle of the day.
MWC 2015: Sony Tablet Z4 and Xperia M4 Aqua hands-on
The Xperia M2 Aqua introduced IP68 certification to the budget-conscious crowd only a few months ago. The Xperia M4 Aqua, which Sony just unveiled, comes with markedly better hardware, including an HD display, 64-bit Snapdragon chipset and twice as much RAM.
Sony brought a bunch of accessories as well, most notably a Bluetooth keyboard dock for the Xperia Z4 Tablet, which turns it into an Android ultrabook. A quirky wireless speaker was revealed too alongside a new wireless headset. Fans of wearables weren't left out either, and two more strap options for the SmartWatch 3 were released.
Join us on the following pages where we share our first impressions with all of the above
We packed for Barcelona without expecting to lay our eyes on a next-gen Sony Xperia Z4 flagship, and yet that's exactly what happened. Only it was the Xperia Z4 Tablet, and not the smartphone.
No compromises have been made in terms of hardware and the slate is impressive in every respect. You get a 10.1-inch display of WQXGA resolution (2,560 x 1,600 pixels makes a lot more sense) for a sharp 300ppi density. We had a minor gripe with the previous-gen tablet and its only average 224ppi and we're happy this has been addressed.
It's an IPS panel too, and features Sony's proprietary TRILUMINOUS and X-Reality technologies. In practice this results in pleasant colors, good brightness and wide viewing angles. While the screen remains legible, a significant drop of brightness is observed at extreme angles, though.
The whole thing quickly turns into a smudgy mess, but the engineers pointed out it's not the final version of the oleophobic coating and it will get a lot better by the time the tablet hits the stores. The Xperia Z4 Tablet actually works pretty well when wet - we had the opportunity to test it out and it's miles better than any other touchscreen in that regard.
Design is your typical Xperia affair, or as Sony likes to call it, OmniBalance. Not much has changed since the previous generation, with the notable exception of the 3.5mm jack, which has been relocated to the top.
Engineers managed to trim down the body marginally, compared to the predecessor and now the tablet measures 254 x 166 x 6.1mm. Sony is keen to point out that the Xperia Z4 Tablet is the lightest 10-inch tablet at 392g/396g for the Wi-Fi/LTE versions respectively. It packs the same 6000mAh battery as the Xperia Z2 Tablet, and sports an IP65/IP68 certification, as you surely couldn't have missed in the title photo.
Inside, the Xperia Z4 tablet continues to deliver. The almighty Snapdragon 810 is joined by 3GB of RAM for smooth multitasking, and if the 32GB of built-in storage isn't enough, you can always pop in a microSD card.
Beyond the basics, the Xperia Z4 Tablet isn't short on goodies. An 8.1MP Exmor RS main camera will help you raise eyebrows if used in public, while the 5.1MP wide angle front snapper should be instrumental in video calling. The slate also packs stereo speakers with a handful of quality-enhancing technologies.
Keyboard dock
Alongside the Xperia Z4 Tablet, Sony announced a dedicated keyboard dock for power users. The BKB50 connects via Bluetooth and transforms the Zperia Z4 into a full-fledged ultrabook. It offers 0-130° tilt angles, keys are comfortably pitched and a touchpad is present, in case you forget that you can simply tap on the screen.
The video below offers a quick glimpse of Sony's lightly-skinned Android interface as well as the keyboard dock in action.
Apple Is Pulling a Bunch of the Neatest iOS 8 Apps
Remember when Apple went after that handy note-taking widget, a popular app that’s one the first truly useful widgets for iOS 8? Turns out, Apple’s been pulling all kinds of apps that take advantage of new features in iOS 8—even after they’ve been approved to be in the App Store. And developers are starting to get pretty upset.
The Guardian just published a lengthy report on the trend. The paper names the following apps as victims of Apple’s newly unpredictable App Store:
Transmit, an FTP program that lets you save files iCloud Drive (a new ability in iOS 8)
PCalc, a calculator app and widget that looks a lot like the native iOS calculator
Drafts, a writing app that included buttons in an accompanying widget
Launcher, an app that makes it easier to launch apps from the Notification Center
Why Apple is doing this remains a bit of a mystery. At first glance it would appear that Apple is killing apps that challenge its owns, but upon closer examination, the trend seems to point to some confusion about the new App Store guidelines. Since widgets and extensions are new to iOS 8, there are all kinds of new rules that Apple’s written to make these work they way that they want. It just seems like maybe not all of these new rules are written down, or consistent. And it sucks for the developers who are making useful things, getting them approved, and then watching Apple pull the rug out from under them.
PCalc, a calculator app and widget that looks a lot like the native iOS calculator
Drafts, a writing app that included buttons in an accompanying widget
Launcher, an app that makes it easier to launch apps from the Notification Center
Why Apple is doing this remains a bit of a mystery. At first glance it would appear that Apple is killing apps that challenge its owns, but upon closer examination, the trend seems to point to some confusion about the new App Store guidelines. Since widgets and extensions are new to iOS 8, there are all kinds of new rules that Apple’s written to make these work they way that they want. It just seems like maybe not all of these new rules are written down, or consistent. And it sucks for the developers who are making useful things, getting them approved, and then watching Apple pull the rug out from under them.
We’ve reached out to Apple for more details on the specifics of what’s going on and will update this post if we hear back. [The Guardian]
Microsoft Lets US Shoppers Pay With Bitcoin
SAN FRANCISCO — Microsoft (IW 500/16) began Thursday letting US shoppers at its online Windows Store pay with digital currency Bitcoin.
Bitcoin, traded in at market value through a partnership with payment processor BitPay, could be used to add money to Microsoft accounts that provide funds for buying games, music, video or applications for Xbox consoles or computers powered by the US technology titan’s Windows operating systemsThe use of digital currencies such as Bitcoin, while not yet mainstream, is growing beyond the early enthusiasts,” Microsoft Universal Store corporate vice president Eric Lockard said in a blog post. “We expect this growth to continue and allowing people to use Bitcoin to purchase our products and services now allows us to be at the front edge of that trend.”
Virtual currency cannot be used to directly buy products at the Windows Store, but must first be converted to traditional funds in Microsoft accounts, according to the post.
No more than $1,000 worth of Bitcoin can be exchanged per day, and there is also a limit regarding the overall amount that could be exchanged in multiple accounts registered to a single person.
The virtual currency is a software-based system introduced in 2009 by an individual or group masked by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. It can buy goods or services from any person or company accepting it as payment, but is not a real currency managed by a central bank.
Bitcoin value has been subject to wild crashes and the digital currency’s reputation has suffered due to a lack of transparency that has made it a tempting tool for criminal activity such as money laundering.
Bitcoin took a hard hit after Mt. Gox trading exchange declared bankruptcy early this year due to a fortune in digital currency vanishing or being stolen.
Motorola Moto E 4G Listed With Price and Specifications Ahead of Launch
best Buy, the popular retailer, has listed the Motorola Moto E 4G’s Sprint variant as ‘coming soon’ along with the price and specifications, potentially spilling the beans ahead of the official unveiling. Of course since this is a third-party retailer, one cannot be certain if these will be the official launch price and specifications whenever Motorola launches the smartphone.
Notably, the Moto E 4G listed by the retailer is being considered as the second-generation of the popular Moto E, with upgraded specifications. The Moto E 4G is priced at $99.99 (approximately Rs. 6,200) for the unlocked version.
The listing, first spotted by STJsgadgets, also includes an image of the unannounced Moto E 4G, which coincidentally is identical to the image that was leaked in January for the Moto E (Gen 2). The listing confirms that Moto E (Gen 2) aka Moto E 4G will be Motorola’s first non-Nexus smartphone to run Android 5.0 Lollipop out-of-the-box.
According to Best Buy listing, the Moto E 4G will feature a 4.5-inch qHD (540×960 pixels) display; 1.2GHz Qualcomm processor (possibly quad-core); 1GB of RAM; 8GB inbuilt storage; microSD card support; 5-megapixel rear camera; 3G, and 4G connectivity support. The listing doesn’t list the front camera and battery capacity of the Moto E 4G.
We remind readers however that nothing is official yet, and that all such leaks must be taken with a pinch of salt.
In other news, Motorola India on Monday announced a bevy of offers on Moto devices in India on completing a year in the Indian market (since the launch of the first-generation Moto G) with its exclusive online partner, Flipkart. The new offers are valid on the purchase of the Moto E, Moto G (Gen 2), Moto X (Gen 2), Google Nexus 6 and Moto 360 via Flipkart from February 9 to 15.
Dave McClure Will Join Us At TechCrunch Disrupt NY
McClure and his team have also become a global force, investing broadly around the world, and also supporting a diverse group of founders. 500 Startups has geographically focused “micro funds” in a number of regions around the world, including Mexico and Latin America, China, India, Korea, Thailand and other parts of Southeast Asia.
It’s also been extremely forward-thinking in its use of AngelList Syndicates to support founder diversity, most notably through its 500 Women Syndicate and 500 LGBT Syndicate.
That philosophy of supporting those who are underrepresented in the tech community extends even further into 500 Startups, where a third of its investment partners are female and half of the overall organization is made up of women.
In other words, in many ways Dave McClure is changing the way the VC game is played.
A conversation with Dave is always insightful, never boring, and frequently raises the question of why there aren’t more VCs like him — or why he’s not like more VCs. All of that is why we’re looking forward to talking to McClure at Disrupt NY 2015 in May and hearing from one of the most interesting and controversial figures in venture capital today.
The show runs May 4-6 at the historic Manhattan Center. Tickets are available at an early bird discount rate until April 11th.
Our sponsors help make Disrupt happen. If you are interested in learning more about sponsorship opportunities, please contact
Apple’s Latest Betrayal
“Seriously, fuck them,” wrote one tweeter called M.J. The person was speaking about Apple and the new MacBook the company recently announced. There are countless other tweets and comments with the same sentiment. Right now there’s visceral hate directed at the company. A swathe of consumers feel betrayed by the stark design of the new MacBook. Our original post on the topic was shared over 25,000 times. It’s a polarizing design.
The new MacBook thinks different. It has more in common with a tablet than most laptops. Think of it as an iPad that has a keyboard and runs OS X. And like the iPad, it only has one port, which is the cause of the outcry.
Most computers have several ports scattered around the frame. There’s usually one for charging, a couple USB ports for various tasks, and some sort of port to output video. The new MacBook combines all three into a single USB-C port. This means users will not be able to, say, charge the laptop and an iPhone at the same time or input data from a flash drive while outputting video to an external monitor. Sure you’re going to have some nice accessories to do all these things down the line but this barebones approach is a pretty hard sell in a world where some laptops still have a serial port.
This is Apple’s world and we just live in it.
To Apple’s credit, the company must see a market for such a computer. The low-power Intel chipset that powers the computer likely doesn’t provide enough oomph to play computer games but it should render GIFs just fine. This is a couch computer. It’s a Facebook and Twitter machine. It even looks like a great programming computer. Watch the Apple event yesterday. The company didn’t demonstrate any of its new software on the new MacBook including the Photos app. Simply put, the new MacBook isn’t for photo editing. It’s for Facebooking.
Expectations are high for Apple. Had a company like HP or Lenovo released a watered-down computer like the new MacBook, there likely wouldn’t have been an outcry, but rather a collective chuckle. For some reason, a swath of Apple fans expects the company to build every product to meet their needs. If it doesn’t, feelings of betrayal sneak in. This happened with the original MacBook Air.
Apple released the first MacBook Air in 2008. It cost $1,799 and, like the new MacBook, was a svelte wonder of technology. But it lacked ports. The industry cried foul, pointing out that it only had a power port, a single USB port and a Micro-DVI port. It was missing a DVD-ROM and Ethernet port, a travesty in an era of burgeoning Wi-Fi and the slow decline of physical media. In 2008 this was a big deal. Software was still shipped on disks and Wi-Fi was hard to find. Apple fans felt betrayed. They felt forgotten. If a customer wanted Apple’s latest and greatest machine, they would have to buy into interacting with a computer without a CD drive or wired Internet.
Eventually, Apple dropped Ethernet from its entire MacBook line and the MacBook Air is now the least expensive laptop Apple offers.
The new MacBook joins the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. It’s not a replacement for either – at least not yet. But it bears a nameplate previously retired: MacBook. It’s not an Air, it’s not a Pro. It’s just a MacBook, which was long the company’s stalwart, low-cost machine against the rising tide of Microsoft Windows.
It’s highly likely that in a generation or two that Apple will drop the price of the MacBook to under a thousand. Will the MacBook Air survive? Maybe not. Apple is steadily making the MacBook Pro smaller. It’s easy to see a future where the MacBook will be the company’s only inexpensive laptop and a slightly slimmer MacBook Pro will be the other option if you want silly things like multiple USB ports, SD card slots and a MagSafe power adapter.
Until then, a 13-inch MacBook Air is a better buy than the new MacBook. The battery lasts nearly as long, the computer is more powerful and it has plenty of ports. Plus, nobody has ever said that they wished their MacBook Air was just a bit thinner. But maybe, soon, they will.
The new MacBook thinks different. It has more in common with a tablet than most laptops. Think of it as an iPad that has a keyboard and runs OS X. And like the iPad, it only has one port, which is the cause of the outcry.
Most computers have several ports scattered around the frame. There’s usually one for charging, a couple USB ports for various tasks, and some sort of port to output video. The new MacBook combines all three into a single USB-C port. This means users will not be able to, say, charge the laptop and an iPhone at the same time or input data from a flash drive while outputting video to an external monitor. Sure you’re going to have some nice accessories to do all these things down the line but this barebones approach is a pretty hard sell in a world where some laptops still have a serial port.
This is Apple’s world and we just live in it.
To Apple’s credit, the company must see a market for such a computer. The low-power Intel chipset that powers the computer likely doesn’t provide enough oomph to play computer games but it should render GIFs just fine. This is a couch computer. It’s a Facebook and Twitter machine. It even looks like a great programming computer. Watch the Apple event yesterday. The company didn’t demonstrate any of its new software on the new MacBook including the Photos app. Simply put, the new MacBook isn’t for photo editing. It’s for Facebooking.
Expectations are high for Apple. Had a company like HP or Lenovo released a watered-down computer like the new MacBook, there likely wouldn’t have been an outcry, but rather a collective chuckle. For some reason, a swath of Apple fans expects the company to build every product to meet their needs. If it doesn’t, feelings of betrayal sneak in. This happened with the original MacBook Air.
Apple released the first MacBook Air in 2008. It cost $1,799 and, like the new MacBook, was a svelte wonder of technology. But it lacked ports. The industry cried foul, pointing out that it only had a power port, a single USB port and a Micro-DVI port. It was missing a DVD-ROM and Ethernet port, a travesty in an era of burgeoning Wi-Fi and the slow decline of physical media. In 2008 this was a big deal. Software was still shipped on disks and Wi-Fi was hard to find. Apple fans felt betrayed. They felt forgotten. If a customer wanted Apple’s latest and greatest machine, they would have to buy into interacting with a computer without a CD drive or wired Internet.
Eventually, Apple dropped Ethernet from its entire MacBook line and the MacBook Air is now the least expensive laptop Apple offers.
The new MacBook joins the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro. It’s not a replacement for either – at least not yet. But it bears a nameplate previously retired: MacBook. It’s not an Air, it’s not a Pro. It’s just a MacBook, which was long the company’s stalwart, low-cost machine against the rising tide of Microsoft Windows.
It’s highly likely that in a generation or two that Apple will drop the price of the MacBook to under a thousand. Will the MacBook Air survive? Maybe not. Apple is steadily making the MacBook Pro smaller. It’s easy to see a future where the MacBook will be the company’s only inexpensive laptop and a slightly slimmer MacBook Pro will be the other option if you want silly things like multiple USB ports, SD card slots and a MagSafe power adapter.
Until then, a 13-inch MacBook Air is a better buy than the new MacBook. The battery lasts nearly as long, the computer is more powerful and it has plenty of ports. Plus, nobody has ever said that they wished their MacBook Air was just a bit thinner. But maybe, soon, they will.
The new 27-inch iMac is getting a 5120×2800 Retina display, according to new leaks
New iMacWhile the 9to5Mac report is somewhat vague, March doesn’t shy away from listing specs. Apparently, this new model will have the exact same design and physical dimensions as the previous model — only the internals are getting refreshed. The Intel i7-4790K Haswell CPU (clocked at 4Ghz) will be included in this SKU, and it seems Apple is switching the iMac back to AMD-based GPUs. Little is known about which graphics processor Cupertino has in mind, but it’ll need to be quite beefy if there is any hope at running 3D games at the native resolution of the display. (This tidbit doesn’t quite ring true: Nvidia’s new Maxwell GPU, with its much lower TDP, would surely be a better fit than any of AMD’s offerings.)
Read: Nvidia Maxwell GTX 980 and GTX 970 reviewed: Crushing all challengers
Unfortunately, the 21.5-inch model doesn’t seem to be getting the same amount of love. We can expect the smaller iMac to stay right at 1920×1080 (102 PPI), but a small bump in CPU and GPU wouldn’t be much of a surprise. While it’s disappointing that only the biggest model is getting a Retina update, it’s not particularly surprising. High-res displays are still very expensive, so it doesn’t make sense for the cheaper low-end iMacs. For now, 5K displays are still a premium feature. It’ll take a while for those displays to work their way down market, but it’s bound to happen eventually.
Steve Jobs with iMac G3 (Bondi Blue)
The iMac has come a long way since the original iMac G3, which was released in 1998
We’re still waiting on new iPads and Macs for the holiday shopping season, and Apple is typically done making major releases by the time November rolls around. Whatever Apple actually plans to release, we’ll know sooner rather than later — at the moment, an event in October to announced refreshed iMacs and iPads seems most likely. I’ll be in the market for a new desktop after Christmas, but the idea of dropping thousands of dollars — probably upwards of $3,000 when all’s said and done — for a 27-inch Retina iMac doesn’t sit well with my pocket book. What about you? Is the Retina iMac exactly what you’re looking for, or will it be too much money for too little computer? Sound off in the comment section below.
Harvard University & Universidad Autonoma de Madrid
The University of Muhammadan., l. a. (UCLA), is additionally a public analysis university placed within the Westwood neighborhood of l. a. , California, u. s.. based in 1919, it’s the second-oldest field of the University of Muhammadan. system. UCLA is one all told the 2 flagship universities within the UC system (alongside UC Berkeley). It offers 337 student associated graduate degree programs in an extremely wide vary of disciplines. With degree approximate enrollment of twenty nine,000 student and thirteen,000 graduate students, UCLA is that the university with the foremost necessary enrollment within the state of Muhammadan. and to boot the foremost applied to Gymnasium within the world with over one zero five,000 applications for Fall 2014. In March 1881, once necessary lobbying by l. a. residents, the Calif. State general assembly commissioned the creation of a southern branch of the Muhammadan. State teachers college (which later became San Jose State University) in downtown l. a. to show lecturers for the growing population of Southern Muhammadan.. The State teachers college at l. a. opened on August twenty nine, 1882, on what is presently the placement of the Central Library of the l. a. library system. The new facility encircled degree linguistics school where teachers-in-training might follow their teaching technique on children. That linguistics school is imagined to this present day version, UCLA work faculty. In 1887, the varsity became explicit as a result of the l. a. State teachers college.In 1914, the varsity affected to a modern field on Green Mountain State Avenue (now the location of l. a. town College) in East Hollywood. In 1917, UC Regent Edward politician Dickson, the alone regent representing the South at the
time, and Ernest Charles Lutwidge writer Moore, Director of the normal faculty, began operative on to lobby the State general assembly to alter the varsity to become the second University of Muhammadan. field, once UC Berkeley. They met resistance from UC Berkeley alumni, Northern Moslem. members of the state general assembly, and Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of Muhammadan. from 1899 to 1919, administrative unit were all showing neatness vital the organize of a southern field. However, David city Barrows, the new President of the University of Muhammadan., did not share Wheeler’s objections. On May 23, 1919, the Southern Californians’ efforts were rewarded once Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, that integrated the l. a. teachers college with the University of Muhammadan. as a results of the Southern Branch of the University of Muhammadan.. constant legislation additional its general student program, the varsity of Letters and Science.For the primary thirty two years of its existence, UCLA was treated as degree off-site department of UC. As such, its leader was noted as a “provost,” and reportable to the foremost field in Berkeley. In 1951, UCLA was formally elevated to co-equal standing with UC Berkeley, and its leader was granted the title of chancellor. Raymond B. Allen was the primary chief government thereupon title. The appointment of Franklin David spud to the position of Chancellor in 1960 helped to spark degree era of tremendous growth of facilities and school honors. By the best of the last decade, UCLA had achieved distinction throughout a decent selection of subjects. This era as well secured UCLA’s position as associate correct university in its claim and not simply a branch of the UC system. this transformation is exemplified by a happening involving Chancellor vegetable, that was delineate by him later on: The Southern Branch field opened on Sept fifteen of that year, providing biennial student programs to 250 Letters and Science students and one,250 students within the standard school, beneath Moore’s continued direction.
time, and Ernest Charles Lutwidge writer Moore, Director of the normal faculty, began operative on to lobby the State general assembly to alter the varsity to become the second University of Muhammadan. field, once UC Berkeley. They met resistance from UC Berkeley alumni, Northern Moslem. members of the state general assembly, and Benjamin Ide Wheeler, President of the University of Muhammadan. from 1899 to 1919, administrative unit were all showing neatness vital the organize of a southern field. However, David city Barrows, the new President of the University of Muhammadan., did not share Wheeler’s objections. On May 23, 1919, the Southern Californians’ efforts were rewarded once Governor William D. Stephens signed Assembly Bill 626 into law, that integrated the l. a. teachers college with the University of Muhammadan. as a results of the Southern Branch of the University of Muhammadan.. constant legislation additional its general student program, the varsity of Letters and Science.For the primary thirty two years of its existence, UCLA was treated as degree off-site department of UC. As such, its leader was noted as a “provost,” and reportable to the foremost field in Berkeley. In 1951, UCLA was formally elevated to co-equal standing with UC Berkeley, and its leader was granted the title of chancellor. Raymond B. Allen was the primary chief government thereupon title. The appointment of Franklin David spud to the position of Chancellor in 1960 helped to spark degree era of tremendous growth of facilities and school honors. By the best of the last decade, UCLA had achieved distinction throughout a decent selection of subjects. This era as well secured UCLA’s position as associate correct university in its claim and not simply a branch of the UC system. this transformation is exemplified by a happening involving Chancellor vegetable, that was delineate by him later on: The Southern Branch field opened on Sept fifteen of that year, providing biennial student programs to 250 Letters and Science students and one,250 students within the standard school, beneath Moore’s continued direction.
Adobe Launches Document Cloud, A Subscription Service For Acrobat, EchoSign And New Apps
At the center of this is Acrobat DC, a new version of Acrobat for the desktop, web and mobile that will include free e-signing tools based on Adobe EchoSign and quite a bit of smart image-handling and OCR technology.
The company is also launching a new mobile app called Fill and Sign as well as a new Acrobat enterprise solution with additional advanced features like fine-grained permission controls and third-party integrations.
All of these new tools will launch within the next 30 days and will be available to existing Acrobat Cloud users who are currently paying $14.99 per month. Adobe will also offer perpetual licenses for Acrobat DC.
Adobe claims that over 50 billion PDFs were opened in the last year alone. Its mobile version Acrobat reader is seeing 400,000 mobile installs per day and EchoSign has now processed over 100 million agreements. But the company also argues that too often its users still have to resort to printing documents because they need to get signatures.
adobe cloud
According to Adobe vice president of product marketing Mark Grilli, almost 80% of document-based processes are at least partly dependent on paper. To fix this “last mile” problem, Adobe decided to take what it learned from the Creative Cloud and apply it documents.
The idea here is to create a unified experiences across all platforms, with e-signing as one of the key features.Here is what this looked like in a demo Adobe senior product marketing manager Lisa Croft gave me. Say you get a paper form you need to sign. You can now use the new Sign and Fill app to take a picture of the document. Similar to mobile apps likeTurboScan, the new app will then automatically try to recognize the borders of the form, but it will also clean it up, fix the lighting, and perform a few more operations to make it look good in digital form. Then, you can fill out the form, e-sign it and email it back (maybe to a teacher, for example). Most of the time, you end up putting the same information on every form you get (name, address, date of birth, etc.) and Fill and Sign allows you to save this data and then quickly add it to paper forms.
The new Acrobat mobile app, too, offers these features, but it goes far beyond this. There, too, you can now scan forms, but then you can head over to the web and fill them out there. The really nifty trick here, though, is that Acrobat also runs its OCR software over the text and then recreates the paper document as an editable file that is easy to modify. The software tries to match the font of the paper document with those in Adobe’s library, so chances the document you edit will look the same as the paper version (most documents are printed in a limited number of fonts anyway).
For the most part, the mobile apps, which are available for iOS and Android, feature the same tools as the desktop app, with a few exceptions like redactions, which are only available on the desktop. In the long run, Adobe may consolidate Fill and Sign and Acrobat Mobile into a single app, Grilli said. To store documents, Acrobat DC current supports Adobe’s own storage solution and Microsoft Sharepoint.
Haystack’s New App Wants To Be Your Digital Business Card
Heimann says he was motivated to try his hand at creating an app to displace the business card after spending years working as a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he and his colleagues were heavy users of business cards.
While some of the apps that have launched in this space have tried to ignore the fact that paper business cards still exist, what’s interesting about the new Haystack app is that it allows you to transition from the world of paper-based cards to digital. That is, instead of ignoring the fact that you’re still going to have to deal with receiving physical business cards, it offers you a way to import them into your phone simply by snapping a photo.
emailImage
The app scanning functionality in Haystack isn’t comparable to competitors like CamCard from what I found, as in several cases it wasn’t able to identify the text on the card itself. That being said, it does have a few cool tricks up its sleeve. For starters, it has you verify the email address on the scanned card, and if the company is online, it finds its logo and uses that to create the digital version of the card to store in the app.
Additionally, Haystack will tap into crowdsourcing to build out its contacts database, so that the digital cards will update automatically if the card’s owner or a trusted contact updates that contact’s information on the service.
That means the more people using Haystack, the better it becomes at identifying contacts by email address and creating their digital business cards automatically. However, stresses Heimann, it won’t display this information to just anyone – information like a person’s phone number and email are kept private unless you have their physical card or have been sent their digital card via the app.
haystack
To transition users away from business cards, Haystack lets you build your own digital card just by entering in your email. The app then “auto-brands” your card for you using the logo it finds online and you can enter in the details you want to share, including also your accounts on various social networks.
You can share your digital card with others by sending it through email or text right from the app, and if the recipient is not using Haystack (as they’re likely not), they’ll be directed to a webpage instead where they can choose to download the card in the correct format for their device.
While Heimann is hopeful that Haystack will be the app that helps to put business cards to rest for good, I’m less optimistic. As he noted himself when detailing the problem, “these pieces of paper refuse to die.”
However, the app can serve as a simple way to snap photos of cards and send them to your contacts app on your smartphone, and can it works as an easy way to share your own contact details for those times when you either forgot or ran out of your own business cards. Whether or not that will motivate you to stop printing paper cards entirely is to be determined.
Haystack is a free download for both iOS and Android.
The company is backed by $500k in angel funding. It has plans to introduce its service to businesses where it could be used in conjunction with CRM systems.
Facebook Wants You to Know It Loves Free Speech (Except When It Doesn’t)
After a Turkish court ordered Facebook to take down pages due to blasphemy, it put the social network in a tough position: Either disobey the law and risk being banned outright, or it allow the censorship its founder just decried. Facebook complied.
Here’s Zuckerberg’s statement, in which he bristled against the idea of extremists dictating what people share:
Facebook has always been a place where people across the world share their views and ideas. We follow the laws in each country, but we never let one country or group of people dictate what people can share across the world.
Yet as I reflect on yesterday’s attack and my own experience with extremism, this is what we all need to reject — a group of extremists trying to silence the voices and opinions of everyone else around the world.
I won’t let that happen on Facebook. I’m committed to building a service where you can speak freely without fear of violence.
It looks awfully hollow reading it with the knowledge that Facebook kowtowed to extremism in the same month it was written. It does, however, fit with what Zuckerberg said in a recent Q&A about freedom of speech. Josh Constine paraphrased the remarks on why Facebook operates in countries that censor:
It looks awfully hollow reading it with the knowledge that Facebook kowtowed to extremism in the same month it was written. It does, however, fit with what Zuckerberg said in a recent Q&A about freedom of speech. Josh Constine paraphrased the remarks on why Facebook operates in countries that censor:
I can’t think of many examples in history when a company not shutting down in the face of a law and getting banned helped change that law. But continuing to operate can help the country in other ways, such as allowing people to connect with loved ones, learn, and find jobs. So I think overwhelmingly our responsibility is to continue operating.
Alright, fine. If Zuckerberg believes it’ll do more harm than good to allow censorship because people need his social network (and Facebook needs the ad money?), that’s shitty but his prerogative. This isn’t really about Turkey. It’s about China. Openly defying an international government’s censorship requests could seriously unravel Facebook’s attempts to get unblocked in China’s huge and potentially lucrative market.
Alright, fine. If Zuckerberg believes it’ll do more harm than good to allow censorship because people need his social network (and Facebook needs the ad money?), that’s shitty but his prerogative. This isn’t really about Turkey. It’s about China. Openly defying an international government’s censorship requests could seriously unravel Facebook’s attempts to get unblocked in China’s huge and potentially lucrative market.
But it’s dissembling to claim you’re staunchly committed to free speech despite extremists if you’re really mostly committed to continuing to operate despite censorship. Especially since people in countries that block Facebook are often still able to log on using VPNs and other workarounds. This is the case in Iran, where nearly 60% of Iranians use Facebook despite a ban.
The big issue isn’t that Turkish people won’t be able to access Facebook if Turkey blocks it. Very recent history indicates just how easy it is for people in Turkey to work around social media bans—Twitter traffic reportedly increased when Turkey last blocked it! So claiming Facebook has a responsibility to stay operating that is greater than its responsibility to free speech is particularly strange in this case, when Zuckerberg must know that most people in Turkey would not suddenly lose access in any meaningful way.
So what’s this about then?
Those Hebdo cartoons were infantile and racist. They punched down at a group of people consistently discriminated against and abused in France. But it doesn’t matter how offensive or inoffensive these images are. Censoring images at the request of a government notorious for punishing dissenting and offensive speech—a government led by a man who considers social media sites evil—is about keeping Facebook’s sense of responsibility to its shareholders, who want market growth and revenue, not about adopting an ameliorative censorship policy to help people in Turkey communicate.
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