Friday, May 24, 2013

A Clever Plastic Brace Turns Long-Stemmed Flowers Into Their Own Vase

Source: http://gizmodo.com/a-clever-plastic-brace-turns-long-stemmed-flowers-into-509714046

Florists around the country, pay attention. If you're looking for a value-added reason for people to buy a dozen roses from your shop, then find a way to get this brilliant Crown Vase put into production and include one with every bouquet.

Designed by Lambert Rainville, a student at the Royal College of Art, the Crown Vase works as a support allowing flowers to stand via their own stems, like a simple shelter crafted by an experienced outdoors person. A shallow dish or bowl full of water is still needed to keep the flowers alive for more than a day, but when they eventually die everything can be composted and recycled, making cleanup an eco-friendly affair.

[Lambert Rainville via Notcot]

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Chrome OS updated with new panel window and launcher options, other minor improvements

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/24/chrome-os-update-stable-release/

It's fairly minor as far as operating system upgrades go, but Chrome OS users can expect to receive a new update in the stable release channel sometime in the next few days (if they haven't already). It brings with it some added panel windows for things like chat, along with a new positioning mode for the launcher, autocomplete in Drive search, a new three-finger gesture to move between tabs, and expanded support for wireless mice and touchpads, among other minor fixes and additions (including some promised memory management improvements). You can find the full rundown at the source link below.

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Source: Chrome Releases

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Gigabyte introduces BRIX, a customizable mini PC powered by Ivy Bridge CPUs

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/24/gigabyte-brix-mini-pc/

Gigabyte introduces BRIX, a customizable mini PC powered by Ivy Bridge CPUs

The mini PC market isn't exactly a crowded one, but it's never a bad thing to have options. Well, if you're into the idea of adding an ultra-compact to your setup, Gigabyte's just announced its highly customizable BRIX. The palm-sized PC appears to be the very same one we saw back at this year's CES, but it's now taken on a more polished, ready-to-hit-shelves look. Gigabyte's providing interested parties the ability to load this itty-bitty thing with a vast selection of Ivy Bridge chips (Core i3, i5 and i7), plus their own SSD / RAM combo and operating system of choice. Ports-wise, there are two USB 3.0 sockets, HDMI and a Mini DisplayPort -- Gigabyte notes it can power up to two displays simultaneously. Naturally, the cost depends on the specs you choose, and the company only goes as far as to say that the BRIX covers "a range" of price points.

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Via: Fareastgizmos

Source: Gigabyte

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CHART: Teens Are Sharing More Of Their Data On Social Media

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/teens-sharing-more-on-facebook-2013-5

This news note comes from BI IntelligenceBusiness Insider's research and and analysis service. The charts and data featured here are available for download in the BI Intelligence library. Please sign up up for a free trial here.

Teens are sharing more information on social media than ever before, according to a new survey from the Pew Internet And American Life Project

In 2012, 53% of teens said they shared their email address on social networks, compared to only 29% who did so in 2006. Further, ten times more teens shared their cell phone number on social networks in 2012 than in 2006. 

Other information, such as photos, school name, and locations are also being shared more frequently on social media by younger demographics, according to the survey of 802 U.S. teens.

In other words, despite all the attention on privacy issues surrounding social ! media, t eenagers appear comfortable with sharing more data. However, they also tend to calibrate that sharing.

According to Pew, 60% of teen users keep their Facebook profiles private (so that casual Web users and non-friends can't access their profiles). Among adult users, 58%, keep their Facebook profiles private.

It's a sign that teens are just as mindful of their privacy setting as adults, even as they share more data about themselves with friends within their network (and Facebook itself). 

BII_SocialMedia_TeensData

Facebook remains by far the most popular site among social networking teens, with 94% claiming to have an account on the site. However, some teens are also using other sites: 26% of social networking teens used Twitter in 2012, up from 12% in 2011.

In contrast to Facebook, where only 14% of teens have public profiles, 64% of those teen Twitter users say their account is public. 

BII_SocialMedia_USTeens

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Hisense Sero 7 Pro Hands On: A Promising Nexus 7 Clone

Source: http://gizmodo.com/hisense-sero-7-pro-hands-on-a-fantastic-nexus-7-clone-509516366

Contrary to some rumors, Google didn't announce a refreshed Nexus 7 at I/O a little while back, but up-and-comers Hisense just announced a pretty good alternative to the aging tab. Its new Sero 7 Pro—the companies first foray into the tablet space—is basically a Nexus 7, but at only $150.

The Sero 7 Pro has all the Nexus 7-y features you want. A 1200 x 800 resolution screen, a Tegra 3 quad-core processor, 1GB RAM, and stock Android 4.2.2. All for $150. The compromise is that storage is capped at a meager 8GB, but to ease the blow, the Sero 7 Pro comes with an MicroSD expansion slot. And, it even has the Nexus 7 beat by including a 5MP rear-facing camera, and HDMI output. HP's Slate 7 has been pushing in on the Nexus 7 a bit too, but it's a shade more expensive at $170, and doesn't pack in some of the perks that the Sero 7 Pro has.

We got a little hands on time and the Sero 7 Pro doesn't feel like a cheap tablet. It's got a solid build, remeniscient of the Nexus 7 it's trying so hard to app. The back is hard, textured plastic that feels less than premium, but not all out bad. The performance is smooth, thanks to Nvidia's Tegra 3, and running stock on pretty much the exact specs of a Nexus 7 delivers a pretty comparable experience. The OS does come with slight modifications via a customized launcher, with a few pack-in apps (like Walmart) but those are all easily removed. It's better than you'd expect for a $150 tablet.

We're due for a Nexus 7 refresh here sometime soon, and chances are it'll be a pretty nice overhaul of the existing model, but things like a MicroSD slot are very very unlikely to ever show up in a Nexus device. HiSense may not be the biggest name, but it's first tablet offering seems pretty damn good for the low end of the spectrum. It's rolling out to a Walmart (ugh) near you tomorrow.

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Google uses computer vision and machine learning to index your photos

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/23/google-plus-image-search/

Google uses computer vision and machine learning to index your photos

Tags are so 2008. Google doesn't want you to waste time tagging your photos, except for the people in them. The web giant wants to be able to recognize more abstract concepts like "sunset" or "beach" automatically and attach that metadata without further input. In yet another post-I/O update, Google+ photos now uses computer vision and machine learning to identify objects and settings in your uploaded snapshots. You can simply search for "my photos of trees" or "Tim's photos of bikes" and get surprisingly accurate results, with nary a manually added tag in sight. You can perform the searches in Google+, obviously, but you can also execute your query from the standard Google search page. It's pretty neat, but sadly Mountain View seems to have forgotten what cats look like.

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Source: Inside Search

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Acer C7 Chromebook getting 16GB SSD option, keeping $199 price tag

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/23/acer-c7-chromebook-getting-16gb-ssd-option/

Acer C7 Chromebook getting 16GB SSD option, keeping $199 price tag

Acer's C7 Chromebook is the cheapest way to get in on Google's cloud-OS party. But, it still ships a 320GB 5,400RPM drive. Truth be told, such a large amount of local storage is counter to the whole idea of Chrome OS -- not to mention that the slow spin introduces a certain amount of unwelcome lag. Thankfully the bargain-basement $199 laptop is about to get an SSD makeover, according to a listing at Best Buy. The official specs at the Google Play store still list the standard hard drive, but the big box shop has a model featuring 16GB of solid state storage. The updated C7 keeps the same affordable price point, though we have no idea when it might start shipping. Best Buy lists the Chromebook simply as "coming soon," with no estimated delivery date. From what we can see there are no other changes to the machine, so if you weren't a fan of the cheap construction before, don't expect that to change.

[Thanks, Cody]

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Source: Best Buy

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MOBILE INSIGHTS: Will Carriers Cash In On Consumer Data?

Source: https://intelligence.businessinsider.com/welcome

Mobile Insights is a daily newsletter from BI Intelligence that collects and delivers the top mobile industry news. It is delivered first thing every morning exclusively to BI Intelligence subscribers.


AT&T chicago flagship storeBig Phone Companies Begin to Sell Consumer Data (Wall Street Journal)
Carriers are opening up their enormous troves of data, and that is expected to draw pushback from privacy advocates. The carriers counter that they are selling aggregated data about groups of users, not individual subscribers. Given their comprehensive data sets, especially with regards to location, it is sure to draw interest from marketers, advertisers, and other businesses interested in consumer behavior. Carriers, worried about becoming "dumb tubes," or providers of raw bandwidth, likely view data as a potentially huge new revenue source, especially as other revenue drivers like SMS dry up. Read >        

Sephora Chief Marketing Officer: Women And Tech Do Mix (Business Insider)
Julie Bornstein, Sephora's chief marketing officer, seeks to debunk the myth that women aren't technology adopters, and aren't Internet-savvy. To reach women via tech, she says, it's important to make experiences mobile and social. Read > 

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Millennials Prefer Webrooming to Showrooming (Urban Land Institute)
U.S. consumers aged 18 to 35 are much more likely to "do research online, but buy in a store" than "do research in stores, and then buy online," suggesting that showrooming isn't yet as widespread as some retailers fear. Read >

Screen Shot 2013 05 22 at 1.34.58 PM

Juniper Sees 120 Million 'Connected Cars' Globally By 2017 (Juniper Research)
The research firm also believes revenue from in-car apps will rise ten-fold by that year. The rise of cars with apps creates a new arena for the globe's hardware and software giants to battle in — with legacy car manufacturers meanwhile also seeking to keep tight control of what's on the dashboard of their vehicles. Read >  

BII_Juniper_CarApps

Tablets And Smartphones Leap To One-Fifth Of E-Commerce Traffi! c&nb sp;(Monetate)
First it was comScorewhich reported that U.S. mobile commerce grew 31% in the first quarter of 2013 compared to the same quarter in 2012. That's in contrast to desktop e-commerce that grew 13% year-over-year and traditional offline retail which only grew a paltry 1%. Total retail spend via mobile devices for the quarter was $5.9 billion. Now, Monetate is reporting that tablets and smartphones accounted for 21% of all e-commerce traffic in the U.S., compared to only 2% two years ago. Tablets actually had a slight edge over smartphones in generating e-commerce traffic (11% versus 10%), despite there being far fewer tablets in circulation than smartphones. Read > 

2013 Mobile Trends for Marketers (Forrester)
In a new report, Forrester thinks that smart apps connected to ! CRM syst ems will be a big trend for mobile marketers this year. It also cites indoor location, cross-channel attribution, responsive design, analytical solutions, and mobile "big data" as interesting technological innovations, but not yet "game-changers." Read >  

HTC Is in Disarray (The Verge)
After the disastrous launch of the Facebook-branded First, the faltering handset manufacturer has seen a talent drain as employees head for the exits. Although the HTC One handset was well-received, critics point to the absence of long-term strategy and Samsung's dominance of Android as contributing factors to its ills. Read >

HTC Smartphone Shipments

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This Is HP's Take on the Retina MacBook Pro

Source: http://gizmodo.com/this-is-hps-take-on-the-retina-macbook-pro-509466199

HP has just announced a big overhaul of its Envy and Pavilion ranges, and most of the updates are fairly uninspiring—apart from the company's take on Apple's Retina MacBook Pro.

The Verge has taken a peek at the new laptops, and the Envy 14 TouchSmart Ultrabook sure looks like it could be a winner. The new range features "recessed hinges, revamped touchpads, and slim wedge designs" that combine to make a slew of laptops which, well, look a little bit like Macs.

In its basic form, the Envy 14 TouchSmart Ultrabook seems pretty uninspiring—$700 gets you a basic laptop with a low-res 14-inch, 1366 x 768 screen. But while firm prices and specs for higher-end models are as yet unannounced, HP has let slip that the laptop will be available with a 3200 x 1800 resolution screen some time over the summer.

The computer will likely lack the polish of Apple's offering, but you can also expect it to be a damn sight cheaper. Of course, it remains to be seen if performance will stand up—but we'll have to wait and find out. [Verge]

Images by Verge

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First Haswell gaming laptop revealed: MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2 with GTX780M graphics

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/23/msi-gt70-with-next-gen-chips/

First Haswell gaming laptop revealed MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2 with GTX780M graphics

With Computex just around the corner, MSI has taken the wraps off what can truly be described as a next-gen gaming laptop. According to CNET, the 17.3-inch GT70 Dragon Edition 2 will pack a yet-to-be-announced Haswell chip alongside an equally mysterious NVIDIA GTX780M GPU that is claimed to deliver a 3DMark Vantage score of 36,000 -- in other words, roughly equivalent to the benchmark stat you'd get from a desktop rig containing an Ivy Bridge Core-i5 and a full-size GTX670, if the boast happens to be true. A SteelSeries-branded keyboard is in attendance, alongside multiple SSDs in Raid 0 config and three video outputs, all contained within a 21.8mm-thick package that weighs 2.9kg (6.4 pounds). Lesser variations will bring the weight down to 2kg (4.4 pounds) by reducing screen size to 14 inches and switching to a less frenetic GTX760M. Expect pricing and availability details once the big Taiwanese expo gets underway.

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Source: CNET

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HTC Desire 600 announced: quad-core processor, dual-SIM and BlinkFeed

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/23/htc-desire-600-snapdragon-200/

HTC Desire 600 announced quadcore processor, dualSIM and BlinkFeed

It didn't take long for HTC to go official with the Desire 600. Interestingly, it picks up on several of the new Sense 5 features revealed alongside the HTC One, including its fingertip-baiting BlinkFeed for social network and news updates. BoomSound and the ability to craft video highlights from your photos and clips also make the transition, although apparently not the burst-capture Zoe mode. Hardware-wise, there's a 1.2GHz Snapdragon 200 quad-core processor, with a 4.5-inch Super LCD2 display (at 960 x 540 resolution), an 8-megapixel primary camera capable of up to 720p video capture and a front-facing 1.6-megapixel shooter. The Desire 600 picks up the same dual front-facing speaker setup of the One, although rather than a global appearance, it's currently headed to Russia, Ukraine and the Middle-East for now, landing early this June in white and black options. However, we've already spotted a China-bound version for China Unicom's WCDMA network, the Desire 606w, and if we're honest, we'd probably be happier to see the rumored M4 make an official showing. Now, where's that Desire 200?

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Google Voice Users Can Answer Phone Calls in Hangouts

Source: http://lifehacker.com/google-voice-users-can-now-answer-phone-calls-in-hangou-509395930

Gmail users got a taste of Google's new Hangouts featurethis week, but it turns out it has a little bit of Gmail's voice calling baked in as well.

If someone calls your Google Voice number and you're signed into Hangouts, you'll be able to answer the call right then and there. It'll open up in its own window, just like a video hangout, and you'll be able to talk to them as if you were talking to them on the phone. It doesn't look like you can make outbound calls yet (typing in someone's phone number just opens up a text chat with them), but it seems like Google's trying to integrate the Voice features we had in the old chat. Head on over to Gmail to give it a try!

You Can Now Call Into Google+ From Regular Phones | Disruptive Technology

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These Brand New AMD Processors Could Be Your Next Laptop's Brain

Source: http://gizmodo.com/these-brand-new-amd-processors-could-be-your-next-lapto-509442127

Intel's new 4th-gen chips may be on the horizon, but AMD is taking the opportunity to strike first and get out their with its new family of third-generation A-series processors ahead of time. Enter the "Temash," "Kabini," and "Richland," processors that will make themselves at home in upcoming tablets, midrange notebooks, and powerhouse ultrathins soon.

With the new trio of processor families, AMD is aiming to each the very middle of Intel's lunch. Temash is pointed reasonably high-performance, almost-a-computer tablets, Kabini mostly at convertibles, and Richland at 10 and 11-inch clamshell Ultrathins with a bit more power under the hood.

AMD's "Temash" APU's—which are gunning for the space between Intel's Atom chips and the bottom regions of Core i3-land—consist of a trio of 1GHz APUs: the dual-core A4-1200 and A4-1250, and the quad-core A6-1450. No exactly powerhouses in the grand scheme of things (nor are they intended to be), they offer hefty increases in performance power for high-functionality tablet devices while requiring less than half of the wattage of 2012 offerings, while pushing better battery life.


AMD's convertable-bound A-Series "Kabini" chips—the 1.5GHz A4-5000, and the 2GHz A6-5200 (both quad-core)—are boasting similar improvements: namely around 50 percent performance increases even with wattage requirements dropping by half. The second generation E-series chips—E1-2100 E1-2500 E2-3000—are seeing an even bigger jump in performance. And all of the "Kabini" class chips are picking up sweet battery life bonuses, offering lifetimes of about 10 hours on a charge.


And lastly there's AMD's top-shelf "Richland" family which encompasses the upper end A8 and A10 models. The leaps in performance-per-watt aren't quite as high over here, but the increases are still respectable. And once again, power-management features are enabling battery lives than can come up on 10 hours. With the A8 and A10 though, you're also looking at seriously good graphic performance for integrated graphics. Probably the best you'll see without bolting in a discrete card.

In total, the new class of chips promise nice performance increases, and paired with decreased wattage requirements and all-around power efficiency increases to boot. Features like smart sleep states (which, in fairness, isn't going to be functionality exclusive to AMD chips) are going to boost your battery life, and even with Intel's integrated graphics taking a big step forward, AMD is bound to keep the integrated graphics crown.

Of course, how AMD's chips stack up against Intel's 4th gen cores is mostly a guessing game at the moment. We know that Intel's new Iris graphics are a peak for the company, but integrated graphics are AMDs strong-suit. When it comes to everything else, the details are hazy. AMD's new chips come out on top of Baytrail and 3rd gen Intel cores handily, sure, but that's not really a fair matchup at all.

Head-to-head comparisons aside, AMD is gunning for the spaces in Intel's armor, the places where different flavors of Intel chips line up against each other. AMD could gain a lot by being just slightly better than the best Atom processor, if not quite as good as a Core i3.

For now AMD's got the jump on Intel, but the leap into the next generation looks good from both fronts. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop.

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eTrak GPS+ melds WiFi, cellular and GPS tracking, launches at CTIA 2013 (hands-on)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/22/etrak-gps-melds-wifi-cellular-and-gps-tracking-launches-at-ct/

eTrak GPS melds WiFi, cellular and GPS tracking, launches at CTIA 2013

We've come across a number of GPS-based tracking devices over the years but most are rather bulky and difficult to setup. eTrak's attempting to remedy this here at CTIA 2013 with GPS+, a fob-like product that combines WiFi, cellular and GPS tracking in a small, light and easy-to-use package. The device, which is about the size and weight of a box of licorice-flavored Tic Tacs, features a panic button, multicolor status LED and charging contacts,. It's meant to be attached to a keyring, and comes with a matching charging base which includes a standard micro-USB connector. Battery life is about 5 days per charge -- not too shabby for a product that packs WiFi, cellular and GPS radios. Speaking of which, eTrak's partnering with Verizon Wireless for CDMA-based network positioning. The company provides a web-based interface which supports geo-fencing with SMS and email notifications, along with iOS and Android-compatible apps. GPS+ will retail for $129 and be available soon (production's been under way since May 1st). Two plans will be available: $10 per month with a one-year subscription and $15 per month commitment-free. Don't miss our gallery below and follow the source link for more info.

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Source: eTrak

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