Now your Instagram photos will play a role in your Klout
score. Klout has allowed users to connect their Instagram account to
Klout for some time, however, those photos did not play a role in a
person’s overall score.
Now those photos will influence your score, and your most popular
pictures will appear in the Klout Moments section of your Klout profile.
In addition, Klout announced Thursday that it has made Bing a Klout partner.
Klout initially announced a partnership with Bing
last September, which brought Klout scores to Bing search results. Now
that relationship is going a step further, with the ability for users
to connect their Klout account to Bing.
Bing search data is going to start to be integrated into Klout’s
algorithm, and eventually search results will play a role in someone’s
Klout score.
Bing will also now display Klout scores for high-profile influencers
within search results. So, if you’re searching for a particular
individual you can see at a glance not only their score, but also what
they’re influential in right from the search results page.
Social sharing buttons — Facebook “Like” buttons and their ilk — are ubiquitous, but that doesn’t mean they’re a good idea.
Designers tend to hate them, calling them “Nascar” buttons since the
can make your site look at little bit like a Nascar racing car — every
available inch of car covered in advertising. Others think the buttons make you look desperate
— please, please like/pin/tweet me — but there’s a much more serious
problem with putting Facebook “Like” buttons or Pinterest “Pin It”
buttons on your site: your visitors’ privacy.
When you load up your site with a host of sharing buttons you’re —
unwittingly perhaps — enabling those companies to track your visitors,
whether they use the buttons and their accompanying social networks or
not.
There is, however, a slick solution available for those who’d like to
offer visitors sharing buttons without allowing their site to be a
vector for Facebook tracking. Security expert (and Wired contributor) Bruce Schneier recently switched his blog over to use Social Share Privacy,
a jQuery plugin that allows you to add social buttons to your site, but
keeps them disabled until visitors actively choose to share something.
With Social Share Privacy
buttons are disabled by default. A user needs to first click to enable
them, then click to use them. So there is a second (very small) step
compared to what the typical buttons offer. In exchange for the minor
inconvenience of a second click, your users won’t be tracked without
their knowledge and consent. There’s even an option in the preferences
to permanently enable the buttons for repeat visitors so they only need
to jump through the click-twice hoop once.
The original Social Share Privacy plugin was created by the German website Heise Online, though what Schneier installed is Mathias Panzenböck’s fork, available on GitHub. The fork adds support for quite a few more services and is extensible if there’s something else you’d like to add.
We have some good news for AT&T customers now, especially those
who are planning to pick up the highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S4
smartphone on day one at launch. The US carrier has now announced their
release plans for the device, confirming a release date for when
pre-orders will begin and the all-important price in which consumers
will have to pay to secure one.
It goes without saying that demand for the Galaxy S4 is going to go
through the roof as we progress through April. All of the major carriers
in the US will be offering the device, but consumers will be eager to
spot which carrier offers the best incentives to secure the purchase
ahead of their competitors.
AT&T are looking to start the bandwagon a little early, as they
have revealed in a press release that pre-orders for the Samsung Galaxy
S4 will start on April 16. That date falls on a Tuesday for your
information and AT&T has already revealed that the price will be $249.99 on a two-year contract with the carrier.
That may be slightly worrying for consumers who thought the device
may enter at the $199 price. AT&T hasn’t provided any details on
which storage model the $249.99 price relates to, so potential consumers
can only hope that this is the 32GB Galaxy S4 AT&T are referring
to, not the 16GB model.
The question is, would AT&T customers still pick up the Galaxy S4
with 16GB for $249.99, or will you switch to another carrier in hope of
a cheaper price? If AT&T are selling the 16GB for $249.99, then
other carriers could follow suit with similar prices.
AT&T’s information is very brief to say the least, but it does
give consumers the crucial date for when pre-orders will begin. Let us
know your thoughts on that dubious $249.99 price and whether you would
still be willing to pay at that price for the 16GB model.
Over the last couple of days, a group of iOS developers has been
targeted with a series of rapid-fire texts sent over Apple’s iMessage
system. The messages, likely transmitted via the OS X Messages app using
a simple AppleScript, rapidly fill up the Messages app on iOS or the
Mac with text, forcing a user to constantly clear both notifications and
messages.
In some instances, the messages can be so large that they completely
lock up the Messages app on iOS, constituting a ‘denial of service’
(DoS) attack of sorts, even though in this case they appear to be a
prank. Obviously, if the messages are repeated an annoyingly large
volume but don’t actually crash the app, they’re still limiting the use
you’ll get out of the service. But if a string that’s complex enough to
crash the app is sent through, that’s a more serious issue.
The attacks hit at least a half-dozen iOS developer and hacker
community members that we know of now, and appear to have originated
with a Twitter account involved in selling UDIDs, provisioning profiles
and more that facilitate in the installation of pirated App Store apps
which are re-signed and distributed. The information about the source of
the attacks was shared by one of the victims, iOS jailbreak tool and
app developer iH8sn0w.
“On Wednesday night my private iMessage handle got flooded with “Hi”
and “We are anonymous” bulls**t,” iH8sn0w tells us. He immediately
disabled that iMessage email and began tracking the sending email
domain’s current ownership. iH8sn0w shared a proof-of-concept
AppleScript with us that demonstrates just how easy it is to set up a
recurring message that could saturate a person’s iMessage queue with
items that would need to be cleared or read before any actions could be
taken.
Another iOS developer targeted, Grant Paul, shared some additional details about the attacks.
“What’s happening is a simple flood: Apple doesn’t seem to limit how
fast messages can be sent, so the attacker is able to send thousands of
messages very quickly,” Paul says.
The second part of that, he explains, is that if a user sends a
‘complex’ text message using unicode characters that force a browser to
render ‘Zalgo’ text,
or simply uses a message that is enormous in size, them the Messages
app will eventually crash as it fails to display it properly. This will
effectively ‘break’ the Messages app on iOS by forcing it to close and
stop it from re-opening because it can’t render that text.”
A small section of a ‘large’ unicode text block that could crash Messages
The ‘send a big message to crash the app’ method has been known for a
while, as we were able to locate a month-old public posting that
detailed an accidental triggering of this. The solutions involve playing
around with sending a regular message, then locking the phone and
activating the message notification until you’re able to time it right
to delete the message thread that’s causing the problem. This is the way
that Paul was able to finally delete the complex text that was causing
him problems.
Several of the developers we spoke to noted that multiple ‘throwaway’
emails were being used to send the spam, so while a simple ‘block’
option might work for a casual spammer, they wouldn’t work for a
determined harasser.
iH8sn0w notes that there is a possibility that Apple will notice these bursts of messages and block the repetitive spamming.
This appears to be the only real solution as Apple does not currently
allow you to block a specific iMessage sender. Once your iMessage ID is
out there, you’re unable to stop people from using it. And since the
latest version of iOS unifies your phone number and emails, there’s a
strong possibility that if a person can ferret out your email, they can
spam you with this annoying or disruptive technique.
The only recourse right now is to disable that iMessage handle
entirely. And if they get your phone number, it’s likely you’ll have to
turn off iMessage entirely, because you can’t just change your phone
number at the drop of a hat. Thankfully, this doesn’t seem to be a
widespread practice, but it’s not that hard to figure out, and the only
real solution will be the introduction of a block setting for Messages
and better spam detection by Apple.
We have informed Apple about the technique used in these cases but it
has not responded with more information. We will update the article if
it does so.
The Android development community continues to go from strength to
strength after it was announced that third-party Android replacement
firmware CyanogenMod has been installed on more than 1 million devices worldwide.
The announcement was made by CyanogenMod team member and ClockworkMod creator Koushik “Koush” Dutta, who linked to its official statistics page, highlighting that 1,000,112 users had installed a customised CyanogenMod ROM at the time of writing.
CyanogenMod was created Steve “cyanogen” Kondik, providing Android
handset owners with customised third-party Android software that is
designed to increase performance and reliability over official releases
by Google and mobile operators around the world.
The community has often helped Android smartphone owners install
newer updates on their phones when operators have been reluctant to
deliver updates, offering a barebones build of the software but
delivering more powerful tweaks. The software has made its way onto the
HP TouchPad following its firesale, bringing the Android experience to
the webOS-powered tablet.
The most popular CyanogenMod build is version 7.1.0, with 237,517
users having installed one of the most stable CyanogenMod releases. The
most popular handset running a form of CyanogenMod is the HTC Bravo
(Desire), a two-year old device that has not received official updates
for a number of months.
CyanogenMod isn’t the only third-party Android ROM but it is
certainly the most popular. It’s a real testament to the power of the
Android development community and its users, who want more control over
what they install on their devices.
The highly anticipated Samsung Galaxy S4
is scheduled to go on sale during April, but new information received
suggests that we won’t have long to wait at all for a Samsung Galaxy S4
Mini variant as well. Photos showing the bite size version have
surfaced, giving you an early teaser of the size differences compared to
its bigger brother.
To refresh your memory, the Galaxy S3 Mini arrived around five months
after the standard handset arrived. It appears that Samsung are
speeding up the process this year though, as the Galaxy S4 Mini is
thought to be available for shipping throughout June and July.
The Galaxy S4 comes with that lovely new 5-inch 1080p HD display screen, but the Mini version is reported
to be shipping with a 4.3-inch qHD Super AMOLED display in comparison,
so not full 1080p. Elsewhere and unsurprisingly, there won’t be a new
Octa core Exynos 5 processor, but rather a dual-core 1.6Ghz chip
instead.
There is one piece of good news in the fact that the Mini Galaxy S4
will reportedly ship with the same version of Android as its bigger
brother – Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, which is the newest version of
Google’s OS that is available at the moment. The image you see above is
the Galaxy S4 Mini side-by-side with the standard version, and you have
to say that it still looks very pretty indeed.
For those that believe that 5-inches is too big and are looking to
save a bit of money, the mini version could be perfect for you. We’re
guessing Samsung will make this official in the coming weeks. For now,
let us know whether you would be interested in picking up the smaller
version as a preference to the bigger model.
Mozilla has partnered with Epic Games to bring the Unreal 3 gaming engine to the web. The result is a high-end gaming engine that could change the way you think of web-based games.
The Unreal 3 engine has previously been ported to Flash, but this is
the first time a plugin-free (and therefore mobile-friendly) version has
been built for the web.
Mozilla is hoping this project will help turn the web into a more
serious gaming platform capable of running top-tier console titles.
Combining WebGL, Emscripten, a tool for compiling C++ apps into JavaScript, and the brand new asm.js, Unreal 3 for the web can, according to Mozilla, “rival native performance.”
While the Unreal 3 port is incredibly cool, there are still some
stumbling blocks on the path to the web as a top-tier gaming platform,
not the least of which is that load times for most games would be
massive. Think hours, not minutes, to stream the complex graphics from a
server to your mobile device — probably not something anyone
particularly wants to sit through.
In other words, while Mozilla and Epic have made some impressive
progress bringing Unreal 3 to JavaScript, it’s still going to be a while
before you’re playing your favorite console games on the web.
However, Mozilla says it is “working with premium game publishers
such as Disney, EA and ZeptoLab who are using the same technology to
bring performance optimizations to their top-rated games.” The company
is also hoping other browsers will make it possible to run the Unreal
engine in their own JavaScript engines. The Chromium project is already discussing just how to do it.
For more on the project and to catch a glimpse of Unreal 3 running in the browser, check out the video below.
A cyberattack originally targeting a single company is now being
described by experts as one of the biggest Distributed Denial of Service
(DDoS) attacks in Internet history. The assault, which recently began
impacting elements of the Internet's physical infrastructure, has been
dragging down Internet speeds in Europe — but what makes this type of
attack different from all other attacks?
First, some background: The attacks originally targeted a European
anti-spam company called Spamhaus, which blacklists what it considers
sources of email spam and sells those blacklists to Internet Service
Providers. The attack began early last week as waves of large but
typical DDoS assaults
shortly after Spamhaus blacklisted Cyberbunker, a controversial web
hosting company. Cyberbunker has not directly taken responsibility for
the attacks against Spamhaus.
In a common DDoS attack, hackers use thousands of computers to send
bogus traffic at a particular server in the hopes of overloading it. The
computers involved in DDoS attacks have often been previously infected
with malware that gave a hacker control of the machine without the
legitimate owner's knowledge. Hackers use malware (often sent via email
spam) to amass large networks of infected computers, called "botnets,"
for DDoS operations and other purposes.
Spamhaus contracted with security firm CloudFlare to help mitigate
the attacks soon after they began. CloudFlare has been defending
Spamhaus by spreading the attacks across multiple data centers, a
technique that can keep a website online even if it's hit by the maximum
amount of traffic a typical DDoS can generate.
"Usually these DDoS attacks have kind of a natural cap in their size,
which is around 100 gigabits per second," CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince
told Mashable before explaining the limitation in typical DDoS attack size is due to routing hardware limitations.
These attacks, however, have evolved into a complex and ferocious
beast, pointing up to 300 gigabits per second at an expanding list of
targets. How?
After the hackers realized they couldn't knock Spamhaus offline while
it was protected by CloudFlare, they chose a different tactic:
targeting CloudFlare's own network providers by exploiting a known fault
in the Domain Name System (DNS), a key piece of Internet
infrastructure.
"The interesting thing is they stopped going after us directly and
they started going after all of the steps upstream from us," said
Prince.
"The interesting thing is they stopped
going after us directly and they started going after all of the steps
upstream from us," said Prince. "Going after our immediate transit providers, then going after their transit providers."
DNS essentially turns what humans type into an address bar
("www.mashable.com") to the desired website's IP address and helps to
deliver the desired Internet content to a user's computer. An essential
element of the DNS system are DNS resolvers — 21.7 million of which are
open and able to be found and manipulated by hackers.
"The attack works by the attacker spoofing the victim's IP address,
sending a request to an open resolver and that resolver reflecting back a
much larger response [to the victim], which then amplifies the attack,"
said Prince. A detailed technical explanation is available on CloudFlare's blog.
Because DNS resolvers are connected to large pipes with plenty of
bandwidth to point at a target, hackers can manipulate them to amplify
standard DDoS attacks from a maximum of about 100 gigabits per second to
the neighborhood of 300 gigabits per second.
Prince told Mashable these attacks have been "certainly the largest attacks we've seen."
Prince told Mashable these attacks have been "certainly the largest attacks we've seen."
"And we've seen what we thought were some big attacks," he added.
Kaspersky Labs, a leading security research group, called it "one of the
largest DDoS operations to date."
Internet speeds around the world can be impacted by such large-scale
DNS amplified DDoS attacks because the Internet relies on DNS to work —
major interference with DNS can have consequences for services not
necessarily being directly targeted by such an attack.
What can be done about preventing these specialized DDoS attacks?
First, said Prince, Internet Service Providers should implement
technologies that prevent hackers from spoofing victims' IP addresses.
Second, network administrators need to close any and all open DNS
resolvers running on their network.
"Anyone that's running a network needs to go to openresolverproject.org,
type in the IP addresses of their network and see if they're running an
open resolver on their network," said Prince. "Because if they are,
they're being used by criminals in order to launch attacks online. And
it's incumbent on anyone running a network to make sure they are not
wittingly aiding in the destruction of the Internet."
If there's a silver lining to these continued attacks, it's that they
have likely motivated the security industry, which has been talking
about, but taken apparently insufficient action on, the open DNS issue
for some time. Prince, however, warns DNS-amplified DDoS attacks won't
be going away any time soon.
"The good news about an attack like this is that it's really woken up
a lot of the networking industry and these things that have been talked
about for quite some time are now being implemented," said Prince.
"There was some progress on shutting down open resolvers before," he
added later. "I think that's going to be a constant process — this is a
problem that we're going to have to live with for the next several
years."
Apple is gearing up to send its much-anticipated “iTV” into mass
production during the second half of this year, according to sources in
the Cupertino company’s supply chain, who have been speaking to DigiTimes.
The set will reportedly boast a 4K “Ultra HD” display with a 3840×2160
resolution, and it’ll be controlled by voice and motion.
Apple
is already in talks with Foxconn and could launch the iTV by the end of
2013, the sources claim, but the company is currently facing
difficulties in obtaining 4K panels.
Most of the companies
currently manufacturing them are already at full capacity, meeting
demand from TV vendors based in China. Furthermore, the panel makers
already in Apple’s supply chain are “expected to allocate most of their
panel production to the company’s iPhone, iPad and iPad mini products
instead,” the report claims.
However, it’s believed Apple is
banking on LG Display to take on mass production of Ultra HD panels by
the second half of this year. If LG Display can provide an ample supply,
then we could see the iTV before the end of the year — but it’s more
likely it’ll arrive in early 2014, according to DigiTimes.
Given
Apple’s increased focus on high-resolution displays in recent years,
launching an iTV with a 4K resolution doesn’t sound out of the question.
Having said that, the 4K televisions we’ve seen from other
manufacturers so far all come with massive price tags, rarely dipping
below $20,000.
It’s also worth noting that DigiTimes
hasn’t exactly been a trusted source of information lately —
particularly when it comes to Apple rumors. So we always advise you to
take them with a healthy helping of salt.
The most recent report regarding Apple’s television came from The Wall Street Journal back in December,
which said that Apple was still in the “early stage” of testing the new
set, and that it wasn’t even a “formal project” yet. This suggested the
iTV could still be several years away from launch — if Apple decides
to pursue it; there’s still a chance it could be dropped.
It was just a couple of days ago when we heard that Evernote announced Evernote 5 for Android,
so where does that leave us folks who prefer to side with the Windows
Phone platform? Well, version 3.0 of Evernote for Windows Phone is now
available, and it certainly brings with it a slew of changes not to be
trifled with. After all, Evernote CTO Dave Engberg did mention in the
past that the average revenue, per user, from its Windows Phone users
was actually more than the larger Android user base.
One of the new features would be Shortcuts, letting users jump to any
frequently accessed note, notebook or log in a jiffy. Creating a
shortcut is as simple as making a long tap on any of those items, where
said shortcut will then appear on the Home Screen. These shortcuts can
sync across platforms, as they are available on Mac, Android and Windows
Phone, so that all shortcuts created on a certain platform too, will
appear on the other platforms – how neat is that? Other features include
a tag list, the creation and editing of checkboxes, Notebook Stacks,
and premium Evernote users have the advantage of accessing Document
Search in the Windows Phone app. Go on, give it a go and let us know how
your experience is like!
Yahoo has acquired Summly, a startup that has developed technology to automatically summarize news articles for mobile sites, the company announced this morning.
Terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed, and Yahoo notes that it’s
expected to close in the second quarter. The Summly team will be
joining Yahoo and the existing Summly iPhone app will be shut down.
Yahoo’s Adam Cahan, senior vice president of mobile and emerging
products, says Summly’s technology will “come to life throughout Yahoo’s
mobile experiences soon.”
“Our vision is to simplify how we get information and we are thrilled
to continue this mission with Yahoo!’s global scale and expertise,”
Summly founder Nick D’Aloisio wrote in a blog post.
“After spending some time on campus, I discovered that Yahoo! has an
inspirational goal to make people’s daily routines entertaining and
meaningful, and mobile will be a central part of that vision. For us,
it’s the perfect fit.”
D’Aloisio started programming at just 12 years old, and he founded Summly last fall at 15.
It’s not the only news summarization app out there, but Summly packs in
a surprising amount of elegant design on top of its news blurb tech.
It’s a shame the app is being killed off, but hopefully D’Aloisio and
his team can bring some design smarts to Yahoo’s other mobile products.
London-based Summly has raised more than $1.5 million from several
investors, including Horizons Ventures, Ashton Kutcher, Betaworks, Brian
Chesky, Hosain Rahman, and others.
This weekend brought a number of Windows Blue leaks
that confirmed much of what we already knew: Windows Blue is not
Windows 9, it is instead a bundle of feature improvements and general
corrections to the operating system that has suffered from quirkiness
its entire, short life.
Windows Blue will contain new Live Tiles, in smaller and larger
formats, improvements to current applications that ship with the
operating system, and deeper SkyDrive integration. Tom Warren over on the Verge has an excellent video run-through of the currently leaked changes if you want the full notes.
I quickly want to frame Windows Blue for you so that as we progress
towards its widely expected 2013 release, you’ll have a firm mental grip
on what it is. Sure, we have the facts from our first paragraph, but
what is the best way to view Windows Blue?
In the following way: As Windows Phone 8 was the moment in which
Windows Phone first felt feature complete, so will Windows Blue extend
and “complete” Windows 8.
It’s worth noting that we have been on a steady ramp in terms of
Windows 8 features since the very first BUILD event in 2011. At that
first public outing of Windows 8, Microsoft showed off a somewhat
complete – in feature terms – build of the operating system.
Then it distributed a developer preview that didn’t include email capabilities. It was quite the truncated release.
The consumer preview, release preview, and other shipped builds added
features, up until general availability. Following the general release
of Windows 8, the Appex apps and now communications applications have been updated and extended. Windows Blue continues that work.
I’ve argued before that Windows 8 is akin to Office 2007 in that it
brings large user interface changes that led to user annoyance. The
corollary to that point is that Office 2010 better adapted those
changes, and went on to become a breakout hit for Microsoft.
Thus, the first major revision to Windows 8 should lead, if the
analogy holds, to a fueling of sales of the software. Perhaps. However,
given what we now know, it’s simple to state that Blue is a welcome
update to Windows 8 that will file off a number of rough edges, and
boost its usability.
Windows Blue is not Windows 9, but it should make your daily Windows 8 experience better. It can’t come quickly enough.
Facebook has released a whole slew of new figures at the Game
Developers Conference in San Francisco today, showing significant growth
in the number of people playing social games and completing
microtranscations.
The company also revealed that it will be launching a new Timeline
section later this week, focused solely on video games. “The game
section will give people a way to express their favourite games on their
timeline and About page, and will serve as another re-engagement and
discovery channel for game developers,” a Facebook spokesperson said.
This sounds like a change to users’ profile pages, although it could
also be related to the curated News Feed section shown a few weeks ago:
Over 250 million people are now playing games on Facebook.com each month. That’s up from 235 million last August and 205 million twelve months prior, now representing 20 percent of all daily Facebook Web users.
It’s a notable increase and should give a little concern to Apple and
Google, who have both found success offering casual or social games
through their respective stores for iOS and Android devices.
What’s interesting, however, is that throughout the month of February
more than half of the top 400 iOS games were integrated with Facebook.
It highlights a cross-platform approach prevalent in the video game
industry at the moment, which encourages players to connect with their
favorite franchises on a multitude of devices and services.
As a result, Facebook drove 263 million clicks from the mobile News
Feed to Google Play and the Apple App Store. It’s unclear how many of
those visitors completed the transaction or decided to look elsewhere,
but regardless, that’s a high figure that should bolster the number of
app downloads for both mobile ecosystems.
Game installations on Facebook.com have also increased by 75 percent
compared to March 2012, showing an interest in more resource-heavy
releases on the social network.
Together there are now roughly 200 games on Facebook.com, with more
than 1 million monthly active users on each. As with many social games,
or at least those adopting the free-to-play model, in-app transactions
are vital for creating a steady flow of revenue.
It can feel a little cheap, but Facebook says over 100 developers
earned more than $1 million last year via games available on the social
network. We might detest it, but we’re still paying for those power-ups
and multi-colored hats, it would seem.
In fact, the total number of people paying for content on Facebook
has increased 24 percent compared with March last year. It means that in
total, $2 billion was paid out to game developers in 2012.
If you've complained about your boss or job on Twitter, watch out for a warning from a new app called FireMe!.
Ricardo Kawase and his team at the University of Hannover, Germany,
created the tool, which tracks certain negative phrases about bosses and
jobs and rates how likely they are to get the poster fired.
When FireMe! flags such a tweet, it automatically sends a tweet to
the user in question, reading something like, "Can you imagine if your
boss gets to know that you said: 'I hate my job so much'. You said that
on Twitter and the whole world can see it!" according to New Scientist. (I’d be surprised if that exact tweet was sent, since it clocks in at 138 characters with no space for a handle.)
The offending user is also sent a link to their FireMeter! score, a
percentage showing how likely they might be to get fired. It's based on
negativity toward their job and how often they'd cursed in the last 100
tweets. The score is just for fun, but weighs into the overall
philosophy of helping people watch what they tweet. For the record, I
have a 4% chance of being fired, according to the tool, probably because
I use bad words now and again.
Those sent a message were given the option to delete their tweet.
After 4,304 warning tweets over three weeks, 249 people deleted their
questionable message within two hours. Kawase's team, which will present
findings to the Web Science conference in Paris next month, found those
slamming their jobs tended to tweet more often than others and had
fewer followers than those who shared positive thoughts about their
work.
With that in mind, FireMe! also highlights those who have kind words for their jobs and employers:
A little love can go a lot further than some hate.
From Dropbox and Google Drive to SkyDrive, all of the major online
storage services have their own unique strengths, but we wanted to
answer one question: Who has the fastest cloud? After all, if you have
to wait around for those photos to upload or to download that important
presentation in a pinch, what’s the point? To find out which cloud
service offers the best transfer speeds, we put five popular options to
the test.
How We Tested
To conduct our tests, we zipped a 300MB folder filled with photos,
music and video files then uploaded it to and downloaded it from Google
Drive, SkyDrive, SugarSync, Dropbox and Kim Dotcom's new Mega service.
We performed each set of uploads and downloads three times and took the
average, conducting our testing over the course of five business days.
Each test was performed using the latest version of the Chrome
browser with our office Ethernet connection, which typically averages
12.9 Mbps down and 17.8 Mbps up on Speedtest.net.
Editors' Note: We did not evaluate Apple's iCloud because the service
is not designed to be used as a typical upload/download file storage
service like the other services in this story are.
Upload Results
Kim Dotcom’s recently-launched Mega service finished our upload test
in an average of 2 minutes and 34 seconds, besting its nearest rival,
SkyDrive (3:08), by 34 seconds. Google Drive came in third with an
average upload time of 3:39, which is just over a full minute faster
than Dropbox (4:42 per upload). Sugarsync lagged behind the rest by a
wide margin, taking an average of 10 minutes and 27 seconds to upload
our test file.
Download Results
Google Drive seized the download crown with an average time of 3
minutes and 28 seconds, edging out Dropbox (3:33) by just 5 ticks. Mega
(3:56) trailed Dropbox by 23 seconds, SkyDrive finished fourth with a
time of 4:36 and, once again, Sugarsync brought up the rear by taking 11
minutes and 2 seconds to pull our zip file from its servers to our
machine.
Verdict
If you add the upload and download times together, Mega takes the
overall crown with an average task completion mark of 6 minutes and 30
seconds. However, it’s important to remember that this relatively new
service has less users than other services. In addition, some potential
users may we hesitant to try Mega because of the controversy surrounding
Mega CEO Kim Dotcom’s previous service, Mega Upload. It was shut down
by the FBI in January 2012 for allegedly enabling piracy.
Among more established cloud storage services, Google Drive wins with
a total time of 7:07. The speed difference between the top four
services isn’t overwhelming, but if time is of the essence, we’d avoid
SugarSync. With a total task time of a whopping 21 minutes and 29
seconds, the service is as slow as molasses when it comes to uploading
and downloading.
Now Samsung has unveiled their Galaxy S4
all of those rumored features that were a no show kind of makes some of
those predictions a little worthless. However, all is not lost, as a
few of them could make it to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3, such as the
“unbreakable display”.
Those of you who expected to see a much stronger display on the S4
were left feeling a little disappointed, although that’s not the only
issues people had. We assumed Samsung would make several design changes,
along with bigger hardware improvements, but the S4 was more of a minor
refresh, just as the iPhone 5S will be later this year.
Now we are being told the Note 3 will have this type of display and
it will be one of its key features, but is this just another of those
rumors we have to take with a grain of salt? However, there’s also a
suggestion the display could be flexible, which is still possible with
OLED.
Because the size of the Note 3 is expected to be larger the new
plastic display will be a little lighter, which we have to say should be
very welcome when you think the phablet will also be tougher as well.
According to the report
the Galaxy Note 3 could come with a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and a
display size bordering 6 inches. Personally we believe the Note 3 will
be just a minor upgrade like its smaller sibling and a major design
change will not happen until next year with the Note 4, just as we
expect to see with the Galaxy S5 and iPhone 6 as well.
A few weeks ago we showed you some great concept videos of what the iPad 5 could look like
if fans had their way, so we felt as though you would want to see some
iPad mini 2 conceptions as well. However, because the current model is
relatively new and the design is not that old, we cannot see Apple
changing much.
It seems as though the fans agree because the iPad mini 2 conceptual
videos we have for you below don’t seem to push the boundaries as
Apple’s full-size tablet. Take the first video for instances, the design
looks very understated, but at least there are one or two subtle
changes, although you’ll have to look hard to see them.
Thankfully in the second video we get to see the design of the iPad
mini 2 concept more closely, and we like what we see. You can clearly
see that it looks a little smaller, while still keeping the same screen
size. Then there is more color options, much like the new iPod touch,
but what strikes us the most about this concept is how it looks
believable.
There are not really many other decent concept videos to show you –
see what we mean about the iPad 5 conceptions having far move to offer.
Like we said above, we do not expect many changes to the iPad mini 2,
although a Retina display and a slightly more powerful processor are
sure to be on the list. However, as always Apple will need to reign in
some of their ideas if they hope to keep the price of the iPad mini 2 price down.
Would you rather a completely new design, or minor hardware changes in order to keep the price competitive?
Google+ announced Monday that it is now letting members use animated GIFs for their profile photos.
The social network unveiled the update in a post on its Google+ page, alongside a link to a Google search for "How to create a gif."
Matt Steiner, a software engineer at Google, first made the announcement on his profile page. He said GIFs will animate on both desktop and mobile views "like newspapers in Harry Potter.
Steiner also changed his profile pic to a GIF of himself turning towards the camera and smiling.
Check it out, below.
The update comes just a week after Google added a search filter for GIFs and transparent images.
When users conduct an image search, they simply click on "Search tools"
below the search box, then select "Animated" under the "Any tupe"
dropdown menu to refine their results.
Earlier today, Google pushed out a new update to its iOS and Android apps, with photo editing and filters, as well as a new design that looks similar to its desktop layout.
Google+ users, what do you think of the update? Do you plan to change
your profile photo to a GIF? Tell us in the comments, below.
Lawmakers in the US have proposed a bill outlawing operating a vehicle with head-mounted displays like Google Glass, even before the networked specs are commercially available.
West Virginia Legislature Republican Gary G Howell last week proposed a bill
that would prohibit "using a wearable computer with head mounted
display", preemptively bringing Google's technology in line with
existing state bans on driving while texting or using a phone without a
handsfree kit.
Howell told ZDNet's sister site CNET
that he believes the government has a duty make sure citizens don't
injure or kill someone else when they cross the road because they're
reading a message.
"I actually like the idea of the product and I believe it is the
future, but last legislature we worked long and hard on a
no-texting-and-driving law," Howell told CNET.
"It is mostly the young that are the tech-savvy that try new things.
They are also our most vulnerable and underskilled drivers. We heard of
many crashes caused by texting and driving, most involving our youngest
drivers. I see the Google Glass as an extension."
Howell's proposed ban on networked specs while driving would make an
exception for law enforcement and other emergency services officers.
The lawmaker was not confident the bill will pass, however, but believes that other similar legislation will follow.
Earlier this month, the 5 Point Cafe in Seattle, Washington made headlines by also preemptively banning patrons from wearing Google Glass in the cafe to protect the privacy of other customers.
The bill comes as more US states pass laws permitting Google's Project X innovation on roads: Google's autonomous cars. California followed Nevada's lead by allowing Google to drive the cars — as long as a human is behind the wheel — on state roads.
Google's Android division is working to build a smart watch to create a new market, reports the Financial Times. The rumours of a Google watch come shortly after Samsung confirmed its plans to jump in the watch market earlier this week.
"We’ve been preparing the watch product for so long,” said Lee
Young Hee, executive vice-president of Samsung’s mobile
business. Google-competitor Apple has long been said to enter the market
as well and is rumoured to do so this year, though like Google hasn't
provided official word.
Details are scant on what the Google watch may entail. It is
interesting that Google has decided to put its Android team hard at work
on the project, rather than its experimental Google X team. This could
mean Google sees a real promise in the market.
Other than Sony's Smartwatch and Motorola's fitness watch, large
technology companies haven't entered the market in full-force as of yet.
Rather, it's being flooded with third-party solutions like the Pebble,
offering Bluetooth connection with iPhone and Android smartphones.
Google has hardware expertise thanks to its recently acquired
Motorola staff and a team of software geniuses that could be ready to
tackle putting pure-Android on a smaller screen. There's a good chance
Google will sell it on Google Play as well, along side its Nexus
handsets and tablets, if the rumour does come true.
No timeline has been discussed. We'll keep our eyes peeled.
Samsung loves it some AMOLED displays, but manufacturing quality
AMOLED components has always been a little trickier than their LCD
brethren, and the largest Samsung has managed to put on a tablet thus
far has been the 7.7-incher on the appropriately named Galaxy Tab 7.7
(above). Now a new rumors suggests that Samsung has its eyes on
something much larger, and could be delivering a full HD 1080p Android
tablet with an AMOLED screen as large as 11.6 inches.
Supposedly, this high-end tablet would arrive as the Galaxy Tab 3
Plus, and might be on Samsung’s agenda for the IFA this summer. The
source behind this rumor seems confident that it will be a
large-screened tablet with an AMOLED display, but isn’t sure about just
how big it might be – in addition to 11.6 inches, 10.1 might be a
possibility.
In either case, it’s supposed to have a 1080p resolution, and would
run an Exynos 5 SoC, but whether that’s the new octa-core component or a
dual-core like in the Nexus 10, we don’t yet know. If this turns out
being true, the Galaxy Tab 3 Plus could end up being the best-looking
tablet around later this year.
In an interview today BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins
revealed that the company will release four new smartphones this year,
including a new ‘exciting’ flagship phone around the holidays. He said
that he can’t say much about it at this point in time, but it is going
to be a flagship device and will take BlackBerry 10 to a whole new level
in terms of user experience. He did add that he wasn’t entirely sure if
this new flagship device will be out by the end of 2013.
Later this year the company will release a midtier device, that too
was confirmed by the BlackBerry CEO. He says that the company’s ultimate
goal is to expand its product portfolio to offer three tiers of
smartphones, presumably at varying price points. These three tiers will
include devices that have full touchscreens and full QWERTY keyboards.
They’ll have screen size similar to that of Z10 or the Q10 so that
developers can build apps that are supported easily by all future
devices. These statements come a day before the official launch of
BlackBerry Z10 in U.S., where reportedly the preorder volume is under expectations.
Google has announced that YouTube is now at 1 billion monthly users. Assuming Wolfram Alpha’s estimate of 6.79 billion people on Earth, that means roughly 14.7% of the world watches something on YouTube every month.
Take a moment to let that sink in.
Google says that the video site reaches almost one out of every two
people on the Internet. Its monthly viewership would make it the
planet’s third-largest country, behind China and India.
These feats are all the more interesting considering that Google was criticized for over-paying for the site when it bought YouTube for $1.65 billion
in 2006. It’s fair to say that the acquisition has proven to be a
shrewd one, with YouTube far and away the Web’s most popular video site.
Late last year, Google celebrated its first billion-view video: PSY’s Gangnam Style. The achievement came a bit out of nowhere, as prior to PSY’s dance craze, Justin Bieber was on track to set the record.
YouTube has already accomplished several notable achievements this year. This week, it is kicking off a new channel and talent search competition with Simon Cowell. Famous director Ridley Scott recently validated the platform by signing on to produce 12 short films for top YouTube channel Machinima. Google also revealed on Wednesday that all of Ad Age’s Top 100 brands are running campaigns on YouTube.
Google will need to continue to pursue a global strategy if it wants
to reach the next billion with its video service. The company is showing
interest in the Middle East, having recently expanded its Partner Program to
Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Asia is going to be a
key frontier for YouTube, as the service is currently blocked in
mainland China.
Internally, YouTube has also received some validation from Google. The company has just added YouTube searches to its Google Trends data.
The search history dates back to 2008, so now you can track how popular
specific types of videos have been over the years.
YouTube isn’t the recent arrival to the billionaire club. Facebook reached 1 billion monthly active users for the first time in October 2012. That number grew to 1.06 billion at the end of January this year; of which 680 million visit the social network from a mobile device at least once per month.
Facebook's
modus operandi is that it tests all kinds of things all the time just
to see what sticks. So, don't be too alarmed about this notification
feature which Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital, tweeted about this week:
A Facebook rep says that the feature is in a "small test we're running." As Sabet's reaction illustrates,
the feature has the potential to irk users. Facebook has attempted to
toe the line between prompting engagement and becoming too intrusive
before by asking users to check in with friends they haven't communicated with in a while. More recently, the company has drawn complaints for nagging Android users to download the latest update of its app.
What do you think of this feature? Let us know in the comments.
Rumor has it that the Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 and
the Galaxy Note III will be announced at IFA 2013, to be held on 6 to 11
September in Berlin. The source claims that no technical details about
both of these devices is available as of now. It was said that Samsung
will stop supporting software for the first generation Galaxy Tab,
whereas the Galaxy Tab 2 will receive Android 4.2.2 update. There will
be no more updates for the Galaxy Tab 2 after that.
Samsung has already made a high-end Galaxy product release this
month, that being its latest flagship Android smartphone the Galaxy S4.
The first generation Galaxy Tab was released two years back, whereas the
Galaxy Tab 2 is still on sale in major markets around the world. Galaxy
Note 2 has also performed well in the market and it will be interesting
to see what updates Samsung reveals.
This is just a rumor at this
point, we can not be entirely certain that Samsung will indeed announce
both of these devices at IFA 2013. Even if the announcement is not going
to be made at IFA, both the Galaxy Tab 3 and Galaxy Note III are
expected to be announced in the second half of 2013 anyway.
Out of nowhere, Sony has just issued a mandatory new firmware update
for the PS3. PS3 update 4.40 is now available to download and all users
will have to install it if they want to continue using online services
via PSN. The strange thing about this particular update, is that there
hasn’t been any information prior to be update landing, while Sony
hasn’t given any indication whatsoever on what firmware update 4.40
brings, since there are no official patch notes at the moment.
It clearly does do something though if it’s a mandatory update, so
we’re guessing there will be one or two hidden features that users will
uncover once the update is explored in greater detail. For now, we’re
assuming that the obligatory security improvements have been implemented
into the system and nothing else that’s clearcut.
There are already whispers emerging that the 4.40 update could fix up
a recent loophole that allows users to emulate any PS2 game on a PS3
system running a custom firmware. We wouldn’t be surprised if Sony has
strengthened the system up further to prevent any chance of a downgrade,
which consumers may be interested in upon hearing of the PS2 exploit.
We’re used to Sony giving out a single line of text stating that this
is just a security improvement update. However, we don’t even have that
this time, yet it’s a mandatory install. Very strange you have to say
on this occasion, so we’ll have to wait and see what other features are
found.
We’ll update this when that does happen, but in the meantime let us
know if you have spotted anything different on the new PS3 4.40 update.
12:00:00 PM
valgeo
