With every major event we now experience as a country, whether it’s the Super Bowl or the presidential inauguration, it becomes more evident that the conversation on social media is as tied to the event as is the process of physically tuning into the broadcast. There’s nothing new about this — the rise of social media and the second screen has been clear for years — but as soaring numbers for social media sharing are revealed after each event, we shake our heads at just how quickly things have changed.
Social media is playing a major part in every once life ..

Have a look

Facebook – Who I am
Facebook is the perfect social media network to build your brand’s personality.  However, cultivating a great Facebook page is more than just posting photos and status updates.
    You have to post interesting content often. While this seems obvious, a lot of brands only post on their Facebook page a few times a month. To keep your fans engaged, you must post multiple times a week. It’s also good to keep in mind that posts should be a mix of content from your site and content that your fans would be interested in.
    Ask questions. To get your fans talking, ask a few questions! By asking them for their opinion on anything from featured content to their local sports team, you’ll get more community interaction and remain top of mind in an often overflowing news feed.
    Promote via email. There are now over 1 billion people on Facebook, which means there’s a great chance your customers are active users. Xyron used PinMail by PinLeague to help promote their Facebook page and grow their organic and viral reach. After only running a month long campaign, Xyron’s organic reach grew by 87%, and viral reach grew by 202%.

Twitter – What I’m Doing
Twitter is a fast paced, time sensitive, hashtag driven social media platform that has proven to be a great way for brands to connect with current and potential fans.
    Keep track of tweets about your brand. Apps like HootSuite and TweetDeck allow you to track hashtags and brand mentions on Twitter. Being able to see what users are saying about your brand allows you to pleasantly surprise fans with retweets and replies to Tweets.
    Act quickly. Since Twitter is trend based, staying up to date with what’s “en vogue” is incredibly important.  If there’s a trending hashtag that relates to your brand, jump on it before it’s too late!
 Get acquainted with Twitter for business. Twitter created a great resource for businesses, simply called Twitter for Business. With detailed explanations on everything from getting started on Twitter, to API integration, it’s a virtual how-to on being successful on Twitter.

Pinterest – Who I Want to Be
Pinterest is an overwhelmingly positive social media platform that’s driven by eye-catching, aspirational images and content. Pinterest marketing is also what PinLeague specializes in!
  Follow our directions on how to make the perfect Pinterest profile. In a recent blog post, the top Pinterest blogger and top Pinterest brand helped prove that our guidelines really do work.
  Repin! While it is important to pin content from your website, it’s also equally as important to repin your fan’s pins as well. By maintaining a healthy mix of repins from the community and pins from your site, you can build meaningful relationships with followers and NOT just show them an advertisement.
   Use PinLeague’s Pinterest Analytics tool to track your success. Knowing what your followers respond to helps you keep them engaged. PinLeague’s Pinterest Analytics tool shows you your most repinned content, top products from your site, most popular boards, biggest fans and influencers, and so much more



                                                                                                                           Image source : Facebook

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Sink your teeth into 'Le Vamp' game

The latest craze in mobile games is the free runner, which many smartphone and tablet owners have likely played if they're fans of Temple Run or Jetpack Joyride.

The genre features a character who automatically zips through environments while players carefully tap or swipe their touchscreens to dodge obstacles and grab power-ups to "run" as far as possible.

Studio High Voltage Software -- known for the Nintendo Wii series The Conduit -- attempts its own charming twist with the Apple iOS title Le Vamp (3.5 stars out of 4), a fun adventure featuring a cute star and complex yet exciting action.

Le Vamp follows an innocent vampire boy who yearns to go outside and play. However, his appearance scares the local townspeople, who chase the young vampire through the forest.

While Le Vamp automatically sprints across the forest, it's up to players to make sure he keeps ahead of the mob, avoiding obstacles such as streams that might slow him down.

Unlike most free runners, where players are performing very simple tasks to keep moving, Le Vamp is more sophisticated. Players must fling Blood Pigs to Le Vamp to keep up his energy, or tap rays of sunlight to block them from his view. Players also swipe tree trunks to create runways over streams or quickly tap piles of pumpkins to clear the path.

The game requires players to perform several different gestures at faster speeds as Le Vamp ventures deeper into the forest. It's enjoyable, but some might be turned off by the complexity.

Le Vamp sports an experience and upgrade system similar to Jetpack Joyride, where players complete certain in-game tasks to earn stars and advance in rank. They can also unlock items such as special gear or abilities to give them an added advantage.

Between the colorful art style, adorable lead character and more challenging mechanics, Le Vamp is a delightful addition to any smartphone or tablet.

Source : usatoday

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In defense of the Apple iWatch

"For better or worse, Apple has painted itself into a corner."

It was nearly two years ago when I wrote those words in a piece for Minyanville called What Will Be Apple's Next Big Thing? In it, I described how the releases of the iPod, iPhone, and iPad -- as well as the MacBook line and, to a lesser extent, the Apple TV -- have limited Cupertino's avenues for innovation. Although a credit to the overwhelming versatility to Apple's line of products, it's difficult for the company to develop and release a brand new product with similar groundbreaking features and promise.
Unfortunately, we're starting to see the fruits of Apple's complacency since then.

As the company began to rest on the laurels of the admittedly leafy iPhone and iPad, other companies like Google and Samsung scrambled to out-innovate what was once the market leader in a bright, new future. Today, with a depleted stock and a mobile line that's looked stale for a while, Apple is no longer the go-to name for innovation. In the last two years, there have been a few updates and iterations of its existing products, but it really hasn't released anything earth-shattering.
Apple has left that to Google.

Between Google Now, Google Glass, rescuing iPhone users from Apple Maps, and countless whiz-bang features of the latest versions of Android, Google has critics and consumers looking six miles north of Cupertino for the next big thing.

BUZZ SHIFTING: Apple to Google: The other great rotation
GLOBAL TECH: Real tech action is in emerging nations
MARKETS: Apple gets Twitter-bombed -- again

But, ironically, it's the innovation that Google and Samsung have been championing that showcases the stuff Apple should and could be doing. After all, Apple is nothing if not open to "inspiration." And what Google Glass could mean for technology's future, the proposed Apple iWatch is a step in that direction.
The only thing is, for many, it's blatantly a baby step.
This week, Forbes contributor Haydn Shaughnessy lashed out at the Apple iWatch, dubbing it, "The Distraction That Will Drive Apple's Stock Down." Shaughnessy called it a "low-value, insignificant project" that a "start-up (like Pebble) could have thrown up onto a crowdfunding site."
He may be right about that, but Apple desperately needs to be innovating and an iWatch isn't the worst place to start.

Take a look at Google Glass, and given the mouth-watering promise the product has, you probably have. Already, it's the star of SXSW, the subject of many a glowing review, and the quintessential example of how wearable technology can change the game -- all months before it's in the hands of the public. Granted, we may be on the precipice of a Segway-level flop, but the world already had small, personal transports. We really don't have heads-up displays connected to the complete history of human knowledge. And honestly, folks are much more willing to look like Geordi La Forge than a dork on a giant scooter.

Even if neither of Google's add-ons for the head or feet (the company just announced a smart sneaker project) is a runaway success, that will certainly not impede the future of wearable technology. And who might be able to step up in that arena if Google is unable to lead? Perhaps one with a small project which tested the waters and paved the way for something much, much greater?

I'll give you a hint: It's only been two years since it was considered such a leader.
No, the Apple iWatch hasn't blown people away like Google Glass. Yes, Apple needs to debut something bigger for it to recapture its status as a leader in innovation. But it's something new. It's something different. And it's a product within a technology rife with promise and feature-rich development.

The Apple iWatch shouldn't be a discouragement for the company to branch out from middling updates to the iPhone, especially into a field where many, many others will enter soon. I just hope that it's not the only field Apple has in its immediate radar.
May I suggest home automation?   

This story was originally published on Minyanville

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Samsung Galaxy S4 announced: An Android phone you can control with a wave or tilt

Forget the touchscreen. Okay, maybe not entirely, but with the Galaxy S 4, Samsung is rethinking the way we interact with our phones. It has features that allow you to control the phone with waving and tilting motions.

"We focused on fun, relationships, convenience and health with the Galaxy S 4," David Park, marketing manager of Samsung Electronics, told ABC News.
Unveiled at a large event at Radio City Music Hall in New York City, the phone includes a number of upgrades from the Galaxy S 3, which has surged to become the bestselling Android phone on the market and the leading competitor to Apple's iPhone.


Improved Hardware
The software and gestures you use to control the phone may be the biggest story about the Galaxy S4, but Samsung has also freshened up the hardware.
The 7.9mm Galaxy S 4 looks a lot like the Galaxy S 3, albeit with a slightly thinner body and a larger 5-inch screen. The screen is also much crisper, with a 1080p, Super AMOLED panel. Internally, the phone has a quad-core processor and 2GB of RAM. It has built-in temperature and humidity sensors, and a removable battery.

Focus on Camera
The standout hardware feature is the 13-megapixel camera (the S 3 had an 8-megapixel camera). The camera will take crisper and better low-light shots, Samsung says.
"We have brought the interface from the Galaxy Camera to the phone," Drew Blackard, director of product planning, told ABC News. "We have wanted to make it easier for people to know how the modes work with images."
In addition to the new interface, there are new features like dual shot and recording mode, which lets you combine photos and video from both the front-facing 2-megapixel camera and the rear camera into one shot or video.

Waving and Looking at the Phone
After you take those photos you don't just have the option to swipe your finger on the screen to look through them. Using Samsung's new Air Wave feature you can actually wave your hand over the screen to cycle through the photos. The software, which uses a sensor on the front of the phone, also works in the Web browser; wave to the left to go backward in the browser and wave right to go forward. You can also wave across the screen to accept a call.
And if waving isn't your thing, there's always tilting. While it had been rumored that the phone would use eye-tracking software, Samsung's Smart Scroll works a bit differently. Using a sensor and the camera on the front of the phone, the phone recognizes that someone is looking at the screen with facial recognition software. Then you can tilt it to scroll up or down. ABC News got to test both the tilting and waving features. Both worked as promised when we got the hang of it, but it really is an odd way of working with a small device.

S Health, S Translate and More S
Samsung has added a host of new features that might add to people's daily lives. S Health takes advantage of the accelerometer in the phone to track your steps and other fitness activity. Like the FitBit or Jawbone Up, Samsung is also getting into the fitness band or tracker market; its products will integrate with the app.
Other apps include S Translate, which can translate voice to text, and Samsung's remote app, which uses the IR blaster in the phone to become a remote control for your TV.
The Galaxy S 4 will be out in the second quarter of this year at all of the major U.S. cellular carriers, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. Samsung is not announcing pricing at the moment, but said it would be in line with what you would expect from a premium Samsung smartphone. The Galaxy S 3 costs $199 with a two-year contract

Source : news.yahoo.com

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Angry Birds get their own cartoon network

Video game publisher Rovio is starting its own cartoon network, right inside the Angry Birds game apps. The first episode arrives Sunday, March 15.

The first Angry Birds Toons can be viewed Sunday March 17 inside all current Angry Birds games – such as Angry Birds Space and Bad Piggies -- on iOS and Android devices. (Simply get an update now in the App Store or Google Play.) Each week, a new free cartoon starring the ever-battling birds and pigs will be available within a dedicated channel in all Rovio games.

"We are calling it, internally, a gamechanger because it really is changing our game into a game and a video proposition for us," said Andrew Stalbow, executive vice president for strategic partnerships.
 The Finnish game publisher announced its cartoon plans at a rooftop poolside party Monday night at South by Southwest in Austin. Attendees could watch cartoon video clips, snack on bird and pig-decorated cupcakes and get their picture taken in full-body bird character costumes.

A year's worth of cartoons (52) are planned; each is slightly less than three minutes long, Stalbow sayd, "designed for snack-sized viewing on smart phones and tablets."

However, there will be an Angry Birds Toons channel on all Comcast's Xfinity platforms, as well as Samsung Smart TVs and eventually Roku and other Internet TV platforms. "We're making sure all of our content is available no matter what screen you are on," Stalbow said.

Source :  usatoday.com

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Facebook 'Likes' reveal more about you than you think

Using a dataset of more than 58,000 U.S. Facebook users, University of Cambridge researchers predicted race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Likes alone.

If you "Like" lots of people, places and things on Facebook, you may get rewarded with discounts and special offers. But new research out today shows that these public Likes reveal more about you than you may think.
Using a dataset of more than 58,000 Facebook users in the USA collected between 2007 and 2012, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom were able to accurately predict certain qualities and traits, such as race, age, IQ, sexuality, personality, substance use and political views using Facebook Likes alone.
The Likes include photos, friends' status updates, Facebook pages of products, sports, musicians, books, restaurants or popular websites.
"Likes represent a very generic class of digital records, similar to Web search queries, Web browsing histories, and credit card purchases," says the study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The participants gave researchers access to their Facebook pages and they completed a variety of online tests, including personality and IQ. Their Likes were fed into algorithms and researchers created statistical models that were able to predict the personal details using Facebook Likes alone. Results were corroborated with information from the Facebook profiles and personality tests.
"Each person, on average, liked 170 things," says psychologist Michal Kosinski, the study's lead author. "Some liked only one thing and there were people who liked thousands of things. We removed those. We looked at people who liked between one and 700 different things."
Sam Gosling, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, calls it a "landmark study" because it illustrates "how things are no longer ephemeral." He has been studying Facebook behavior since 2006, and has seen this new study.
"You 'Like' something. You leave a comment on somebody's wall. They are now recorded in a way that machines can calibrate and measure them with great accuracy," he says. "Together, they add up to substantially more information from which you can make quite reasonably accurate predictions."
Fred Wolens, a Facebook spokesman at its headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., says the predictions are "hardly surprising."
"No matter the vehicle for information — a bumper sticker, yard sign, logos on clothing, or other data found online — it has already been proven that it is possible for social scientists to draw conclusions about personal attributes based on these characteristics," he says.Rebecca Lieb, a digital media analyst at the Altimeter Group, a consulting firm in New York City, agrees."Advertising and marketing focus on this, but it's important not to isolate this as only an online issue or a social network issue," she says. "Data is being collected at every stage of our lives. If you're using a credit card, you're opening yourself up to as much data collection as if you're using Facebook or searching online and getting cookies collected in your browser."
The study found the highest accuracy for ethnic origin and gender, with African Americans and Caucasians correctly classified in 95% of cases. Males and females were correctly classified in 93% of cases; Christians and Muslims in 82% of cases. Sexual orientation was easier to distinguish among males (88%) than females (75%).

The study also suggests that the findings may have "negative implications for personal privacy."
David Jacobs, consumer privacy counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a public interest research center in Washington, that focuses on civil liberties and privacy, says this study aligns with others involving predictions based on social networking information.
"This is not unique to Facebook and is not even unique to social networking in general," Jacobs says. "It's one of the implications of Big Data and in this case Big Data in a social networking context. Lots of information makes for certain inferences and sensitive predictions."

Source : http://www.usatoday.com/

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Learn & Teach Codes - Open for all

They need support for this website by all as a teacher or learner.

Show the Code.org film in your school
The film has been tested in many classrooms. It received rave reviews from students and has measurable impact.
For your convenience, we've made different versions. Please choose one, and play it for as many students as possible!

Start Learning Now

Any student of any age now can learn codes. So be prepair for became a coder now, try, earn and apply it.

Login to http://www.code.org.

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HP Revives Its Tablet Strategy With a New Slate

PC makers keep churning out tablet devices in the hopes of imitating Apple and Amazon's success, with HP being the latest thanks to Monday's announcement of the new Slate 7. HP, however, has a checkered past with tablet devices. What's different this time? An audio feature targeting music lovers, and a low price point that may be music to the ears of cost-conscious consumers.

The device will be available in April for US$169.
The company's previous tries at tablet devices -- and mobile operating systems -- have landed with loud thuds in the marketplace. The Slate 7 is an attempt at erasing those memories by gaining a lot of momentum in a hurry.

"They're chasing the low price point, so, if you want a 7-inch tablet, they'll have the cheapest in the market," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group, told TechNewsWorld. "It's a way to get volume and maybe to get a seat at the table, because right now none of the PC makers is doing well with tablets."
HP did not respond to our request to comment for this story.

The Slate 7's Specs

The Slate 7 weighs 13 ounces and has a stainless steel frame. It runs Android 4.1 Jelly Bean on a 1.6 GHz ARM Dual Core Cortex-A9 processor.
It has a 1024-by-600 pixel LCD screen. It also has what HP calls a "high-aperture-ratio" field fringe switching panel, which offers wide angles for better viewing of content on the device, indoors or outside.
The tablet has a 3 MP camera on the back and a VGA camera on the front. The device has a micro USB port and a microSD card slot.
The Slate 7 comes pre-loaded with the HP ePrint wireless printing application. It also has a native printing capability that HP claims will let owners print directly from most applications.
It supports 802.11n 2.4 GHz WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1. It will run any app on Google Play, and comes preloaded with the standard Google services -- Gmail, Google Search, Google Drive, YouTube -- that are found on any Android device. The Slate 7 will also carry a suite of applications from HP that range from exclusive games to productivity tools.
HP has included Beats Audio in the Slate 7 in a bid to target music lovers, making it the first tablet ever to have this capability. Beats Audio is "spectacular on the HTC phones," Enderle said.

Pros and Cons

The device is competing with the Kindle HD and Nexus 7, he added. However, at that price point, "they may get revenues, but profits will be hard to get."
Another potential problem is its name; HP already offers Windows-based tablets called the Slate 2 and Slate 500, and "confusion is a possibility, so HP will need to be careful in branding exercises," Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, told TechNewsWorld.
HP also offers a Windows 8 tablet for the enterprise called the HP ElitePad.
"I think HP's Slate and Chromebook simply demonstrate its recognition of the reality of the mobile market, where Microsoft's position is miniscule," King said. "If HP wants to play seriously here, Android, and to a lesser but still intriguing extent, Chrome, are the way to go."

Slate's Role in HP's Tablet Story

The Slate 7 "is just one piece of a larger strategy," King said. "It seems like a good first step but the road ahead is long."
If HP gets volume sales with the Slate 7 that "could give people the impression they're a player and with that belief they could get to create something else, so think of this as a process," Enderle said. "It could work."
Source : technewsworld.com
Related site : supportforhp.iyogi.com

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Now Tweet In limitation to 117 Characters

If you’re tweeting out a URL, your tweets just got a bit shorter.

If you’re tweeting out a URL, your tweets just got a bit shorter.
Starting Wednesday, any tweet sent with a URL will be reduced to 118 characters, or 117 for https links.
First announced in December, the reduction is due to a change in Twitter’s t.co link wrapper. It extends the maximum length of t.co wrapped links from 20 to 22 characters for non-https URLs and from 21 to 23 characters for https URLs.
In short, the condensed links now take up a bit more space, leaving you with a little less space to add commentary with them. In total, the update represents a two-character drop per tweet.
Applications that use t.co wrapped lengths are required to accommodate the new lengths starting Wednesday.
Will Twitter's new t.co length reduction change how you tweet? Let us know in the comments, below.

By : mashable.com

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Apple Attacked By Facebook (FB) Hacker

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL : 446.52, -2.02) has been reportedly been attacked by hackers who infected the Macintosh computer of certain employees with malicious software, similar to the one that hit Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ: FB : 27.34, -1.18) last week.

The malware had been designed to attack Mac computers by exploiting a flaw in a version of Oracle Corp.'s (NASDAQ: ORCL : 34.26, -0.76) Java software used as a plug-in on Web browsers, the company said in a statement provided to Reuters.

"We identified a small number of systems within Apple that were infected and isolated them from our network. There is no evidence that any data left Apple. We are working closely with law enforcement to find the source of the malware," Reuters reported quoting Apple's statement.

Apple intends to release a software on Tuesday, which it said customers can use to identify and repair Macs infected with the malware used in the attacks, the Reuters report quoted Apple as saying.

On Friday, Facebook disclosed that the social-networking site was also the victim of a malware attack last month many of which have been traced to China. It said the attack occured when its employees visited a mobile developer website that was infected.

"As soon as we discovered the presence of the malware, we remediated all infected machines, informed law enforcement, and began a significant investigation that continues to this day. We have no evidence that Facebook user data was compromised in this attack," Facebook said in its official blog.

AAPL closed 0.04% lower at $459.99 on Tuesday, while FB ended up 2.26% at $28.96.

By: Balaseshan
PNN46FN86AH7

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You’ve seen them everywhere, even on some state license plates.  But what does all those http’s and .com’s mean.  Here’s the website that I referenced for the following information: 

http://www.googleguide.com/web_address.html

Here is simplified explanation of what makes up a web address:

We take sample URL 1st :  http://www.crsd.org/buildings/nj/index.html

http:// stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and that basically tells the computer that we are looking to “Transfer” “Hyper Text” (a webpage) from the internet to your computer.  When typing a web address into Internet Explorer you usually don’t even have to type the “http://” because the computer assumes it.
www stands for World Wide Web which is the body of software rules and protocols that make up what we know of as the internet.  Just about every webpage you’ll ever view is a part of the world wide web.
crsd in this example stands for Council Rock School District and it is technically the “second level domain name”

.org is a an example of a “top level domain name”  “.org” is primarily used by Non-profits, “.edu” is commonly used by schools and universities, “.gov” is used by the government, and the now famous “.com” is primarily for commercial websites.  Togethercrsd.org could be described as the school district’s “domain name”

/buildings/nj/ if you remember the old old days of DOS (before we had mice and folders on the screen) you might remember switching folder levels using the “/”.  If you don’t remember its OK, but you should know that “/buildings/nj/” tells the computer to go to a folder labeled “nj” that is inside a folder labeled “buildings”.
index.html this is the actual file name of this webpage.  More specifically, “index” is the name of the file and “.html” is the file extension which tells the computer what kind of file it is.  “.html” stands for Hyper Text Markup Language which is the language most web pages are written in.

Now you know what the different parts of a web address are.

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Know Anatomy of a Web Address:

You’ve seen them everywhere, even on some state license plates.  But what does all those http’s and .com’s mean.  Here’s the website that I referenced for the following information: 
http://www.googleguide.com/web_address.html
 

Here is simplified explanation of what makes up a web address:

We take sample URL 1st :  http://www.crsd.org/buildings/nj/index.html

http:// stands for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol and that basically tells the computer that we are looking to “Transfer” “Hyper Text” (a webpage) from the internet to your computer.  When typing a web address into Internet Explorer you usually don’t even have to type the “http://” because the computer assumes it.
www stands for World Wide Web which is the body of software rules and protocols that make up what we know of as the internet.  Just about every webpage you’ll ever view is a part of the world wide web.
crsd in this example stands for Council Rock School District and it is technically the “second level domain name”
.org is a an example of a “top level domain name”  “.org” is primarily used by Non-profits, “.edu” is commonly used by schools and universities, “.gov” is used by the government, and the now famous “.com” is primarily for commercial websites.  Togethercrsd.org could be described as the school district’s “domain name”

/buildings/nj/ if you remember the old old days of DOS (before we had mice and folders on the screen) you might remember switching folder levels using the “/”.  If you don’t remember its OK, but you should know that “/buildings/nj/” tells the computer to go to a folder labeled “nj” that is inside a folder labeled “buildings”.
index.html this is the actual file name of this webpage.  More specifically, “index” is the name of the file and “.html” is the file extension which tells the computer what kind of file it is.  “.html” stands for Hyper Text Markup Language which is the language most web pages are written in.

Now you know what the different parts of a web address are.

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The iOS keyboard is overdue for an upgrade

Apple broke ground with the iPhone's virtual keyboard in 2007, but it appears to be stuck in time. It turns out iOS has lots of keyboard options but Apple and third-party developers have been slow to implement them.

When the iPhone was announced in 2007, people loathed the on-screen keyboard. Blackberry users panned it and even I hated it at first. Then a week went by and I loved it. Many people can type faster on a virtual keyboard then they can on a tiny chiclet keyboard, and most would agree that more screen real estate is better value proposition that a physical keyboard that takes up half the surface of a device.
The problem is that the iOS keyboard hasn't changed much since the original iPhone debuted in 2007 -- and it drives me nuts. One of the advantages of virtual keyboards is that you can change them on-the-fly in software. Or so the theory goes.
As of iOS 6.1.2 Apple only slightly modifies the keyboard in its first-party apps:
•    In Mail, it replaces the spacebar with a smaller space bar and dedicated "@" and period keys when typing an email address.
•    In Safari, it replaces the spacebar with period, slash and ".com" keys when you're typing into the address bar field. But at the expense of the microphone/Siri button (I guess that Apple doesn't want us dictating URLs).

Lower-case
iOS provides zero feedback over which case I'm typing in. The iOS keys display upper-case characters whether I'm typing in upper-case or lower-case letters. It would be trivial for iOS to display lower-case characters when typing them, yet the iOS keyboard always shows upper-case characters. The Android keyboard has displayed the proper case for as long as I can remember. (Pictured above is a lower-case iOS keyboard -- only available on jailbroken devices running theShowcase app from Cydia.)

Dedicated Number Row
Apple should add a dedicated number row across the top of the iOS keyboard. The lack of a dedicated numbers row makes it difficult to enter strong passwords in iOS because you have to switch back and forth between the text and number keyboards. This could easily be a preference in the iOS keyboard settings. (Pictured above is 5-Row Keyboard, a jailbreak tweak only available in Cydia.)
But it's not just Apple that's been lazy in implementing extra iOS keyboards, developers have been slow to offer additional keyboard choices too. Luckily, some iOS developers use the UITextField, UITextView, and UIView objects in the iOS SDK to customize their keyboards.

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Facebook facing problems with its "like" button and other features

Today in international tech news: Facebook is sued by a company that says it owns the patents for Likes; broadband fans in the UK fret about what EU budget cuts will mean for rural Internet access; VLC might someday be able to stream BitTorrents; and a British tech company is under investigation for its financial reporting before it was acquired by HP.

Rembrandt Social Media is suing Facebook for its use of the Like button, according to the BBC.
Rembrandt claims that Facebook's success is owed, at least in part, to patents belonging to Dutch programmer Joannes Jozef Everardus van Der Meer, who died in 2004.

Facebook declined to comment, but a lawyer for Rembrandt, which owns the patents, said that the patents "represent an important foundation of social media."

A lawsuit has been filed in a federal court in Virginia by Rembrandt Social Media.
"We believe Rembrandt's patents represent an important foundation of social media as we know it, and we expect a judge and jury to reach the same conclusion based on the evidence," said lawyer Tom Melsheimerfrom legal firm Fish and Richardson, which represents the patent holder.

Rembrandt now owns patents for technologies Mr Van Der Meer used to build a fledgling social network, called Surfbook, before his death in 2004.

Mr Van Der Meer was granted the patents in 1998, five years before Facebook first appeared.
Surfbook was a social diary that let people share information with friends and family and approve some data using a "like" button, according to legal papers filed by Fish and Richardson.
The papers also say Facebook is aware of the patents as it has cited them in its own applications to patent some social networking technologies.
Also cited in the same legal claim was another social media company called Add This.



Image. Source : http://www.bbc.co.uk

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Google wins High Court appeal over sponsored links

The High Court of Australia has dismissed a misleading and deceptive conducts case brought against search engine giant Google, ruling that Google does not create sponsored links.

The case centred around sponsored links in Google search results through its AdWords program by online trading company Trading Post and STA Travel between 2005 and 2008. In April last year, the full bench of the Federal Court ruled, on appeal from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), that Google advertisements with the headline of "Harvey World Travel" or "Harvey World" that redirected to an STA Travel website were in breach of section 52 of the Trade Practices Act. Similarly, ads headlined with "Honda.com.au" that redirected to car-trading website Carsales, ads headlined "Alpha Dog Training" that linked to The Dog Trainer, and ads headlined "Just 4x4s Magazine" that redirected to the Trading Post website were also in breach of the Trade Practices Act.

Google appealed the decision to the High Court in September, and this morning the High Court ruled that Google did not create the sponsored links featured in search results.

"Google did not create the sponsored links that it published or displayed. Ordinary and reasonable users of the Google search engine would have understood that the representations conveyed by the sponsored links were those of the advertisers, and would not have concluded that Google adopted or endorsed the representations," the High Court said in the summary of its judgment (PDF).

"Accordingly, Google did not engage in conduct that was misleading or deceptive."

In the High Court hearing last year, Google's barrister Tony Bannon told the court that finding Google responsible for what it produces from an inquiry would have had wider implications.

"The ramifications for the Full Court's approach are not limited to online advertising, but would extend to any travel agent, for example, who, in response to an inquiry from somebody who wanders in saying, 'I want to travel somewhere' and says, 'Europe, is it — you might like these brochures' and hands out a string of brochures because they perceive it might be relevant to their area of interest — and because it is the travel agency's response, that makes them responsible for the content of everything in those advertisements," Bannon said.

"That is an untenable outcome, we respectfully submit."

Google praised the judgment in a short statement.

"We welcome the High Court's unanimous decision that Google cannot be held responsible for the ads that advertisers create for Google's search engine," the company said.

ACCC chairman Rod Sims said that the regulator took up the case to clarify the law around misleading or deceptive advertising online, and the court did not rule that the ads themselves were not misleading.

"The High Court’s decision focused only on Google’s conduct. In the facts and circumstances of this case the High Court has determined that Google did not itself engage in misleading or deceptive conduct," Sims said.

“It was not disputed in the High Court that the representations made in sponsored links by advertisers were misleading or deceptive. It remains the case that all businesses involved in placing advertisements on search engines must take care not to mislead or deceive consumers."

The ACCC has been ordered to pay Google's costs.


Source: zdnet.com

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Microsoft May Get Home Advantage

Microsoft has snatched R2 Studios out from under Apple's and Google's noses, rumor has it, and now the speculation is all about what it plans to do with the technology and patents it acquired. It could be looking to take its home automation efforts further. The technology "will help Microsoft extend the multimedia capabilities of Xbox to cover more than games," said tech analyst Billy Pidgeon.
Microsoft could be cutting new inroads into the world of home automation, based on rumors circulating Thursday that it has purchased id8 Group R2 Studios. This acquisition will reportedly bolster Microsoft's Xbox division, which is likely to introduce a next-generation game console later this year.

R2 Studios was launched in 2011 by entrepreneur Blake Krikorian, founder of Sling Media, maker of the Slingbox home TV streaming device.

Aside from an Android application that can control heating and lighting systems, R2 Studios currently does not have any products on the market. However, Microsoft reportedly also acquired a number of patents for technologies used to control electronic devices and device interfaces.

"While Microsoft could integrate R2 software into the next Xbox hardware, the tech could also be used for media control via PC, tablet and phone as part of the rebranding and replacement of Microsoft's Media Center," said Billy Pidgeon, senior analyst at Inside Network.

Microsoft did not respond to our request for further details.

Home Base

Since 2010, Microsoft has been working on a project known as "HomeOS," a suite that could control electronic devices. Microsoft Research has licensed the prototype technology to academic institutions, but so far it hasn't moved much further.

With R2's technology, Microsoft could now be looking to take its home automation efforts beyond just syncing electronic devices with one another.

"Microsoft is clearly serious about their TV efforts with the Xbox platform," said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.

"We are moving to a new TV model, and Microsoft has been talking about integrating this screen into the Microsoft suite of solutions since before Bill Gates left," he noted.

"This decade's war is over media and content, and R2 appears to be one of the minor battles Microsoft has won in an effort to win that war," Enderle told TechNewsWorld.

Microsoft's Touch
With this acquisition, Microsoft may have won a round -- but it remains to be seen how some of this newly acquired technology can be integrated with Windows 8. Although this new OS hasn't exactly been a smash with consumers -- so far, anyway -- the home automation offerings could open more possibilities going forward.

"This technology enables touch control with haptic and audio feedback via a smartphone or tablet using cellular and WiFi networks," said Pidgeon. "As the tech is software based, it should work on multiple platforms in a fashion similar to Xbox SmartGlass. The technology and the associated patents will help Microsoft extend the multimedia capabilities of Xbox to cover more than games."

Source :technewsworld.com

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