Avast and ahoy: Google’s student doodle contest winner named!
A 7-year-old Wisconsin boy's drawing of his dream visit to the time of pirates, ships and treasure has won him the annual Doodle 4 Google competition, which means he'll get quite a bounty for it: a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology grant for his school and the drawing itself featured on Google's U.S. home page Friday.
Second-grader Dylan Hoffman was among more than 114,000 kindergarten through senior high school students around the country who entered drawings tied to the theme of "If I could travel in time I'd visit ...."
In his submission, the Prairie School student wrote that he'd "sail a pirate ship looking for treasure, have a colorful pet parrot and enjoy beautiful sunsets from deserted islands.” His drawing shows all that and more: ingenuity incorporating the very non-pirate-era word, "Google." The annual challenge by the search giant asks students to create redesigned versions of its logo. Read more...
Apple no longer censoring the word ‘jailbreak’ in U.S. iTunes Store
Yesterday a bit of a hullabaloo was started when it was discovered that Apple was censoring the word ‘jailbreak’ in the U.S. App Store. Now, that censoring has been corrected, and the word is visible across all categories, including podcasts, songs, iTunes U, iBooks and more.
This censoring was likely the result of an error in the ratings for the U.S. App Store, as the word appeared just fine worldwide. As I conjectured yesterday, we have seen Apple fix the problem quietly, and the error has been rectified. Read more...
Wake up to the sound of tweets in the morning with The Listening Machine
If you fancy waking up to the sound of the world in 140 characters? Then you will be delighted to know that there’s a way to translate tweets into sound for your own dawn chorus.
Clo Willaerts at the brilliant bnox site notes that twitter in sound translates in weirdly wonderful new ways that could emulate morning activity by our feathered friends as well as our digital ones.
The Listening Machine is an automated system that creates a continuous soundscape based on the activity of 500 Twitter users around the UK. Their conversations, thoughts and feelings are translated into musical patters in real time and listeners can tune in through any web-connected device. Read more...
Cisco bundles target BYOD, mobile virtual desktop
Cisco announced yesterday three pre-tested bundles of products and services designed to cut through the confusing complexity of enterprise mobility.
The new Smart Solutions packages are by themselves not new at all: they're formed of existing Cisco hardware and software, third-party partnerships, and consulting services from Cisco or its partners. But Cisco says they represent a shift in the company's thinking about how to deploy mobile technology for businesses.
Instead of a grab bag of separate products, the new approach sees mobility, in effect, as a whole that's greater than the sum of its many parts, including devices, operating systems, apps, Wi-Fi access points, VPNs, authentication, and security. The overarching enterprise benefit, according to Cisco, is summed up in a new term, "Cisco Unified Workspace." Read more...
Why it’s unlikely we’ll see multiple Nexus devices this year
Since the early days of Android, the loyalists in the Google ecosystem have hoped that one day Andy Rubin would descend from the Googleplex with a series of devices that were stock Android with unlocked bootloaders. In other words, the simultaneous release of multiple “Nexus” type devices is the dream of a large part of the Android community.
The core problem with the current Nexus system, in a nutshell, is that it is designed to be a reference device. It is the first device on the latest version of Android, and as such the rest of the Android OEMs will deliver vastly superior hardware to that product a month or two later. Take the recent Samsung Galaxy Nexus, which was recently thoroughly trounced by the Snapdragon S4-powered HTC One X in every way but the pure Android experience. Read more...
Weotta Go: An iPhone App That Suggests Activities For Right Now
Here’s an iPhone app for those moments when you’re wondering, “Okay, I’ve got some free time right now — what should I do?”
Weotta Go is actually the latest product from Weotta, a startup that launched at TechCrunch Disrupt last year. At the time, the company had built a website that helped people make plans, such as figuring out where to eat dinner tonight. The iPhone app, on the other hand, is more focused on spontaneity — say you’re at work and want to find somewhere nearby to grab a sandwich, or you’ve just met up with some friends and don’t know where to head next. Read more...
TNW Pick of the Day: PowerSketch transforms your iPhone snaps and videos into artwork
I don’t know about you, but I’ve just about had my fill of so-called Instagram alternatives, though I do still occasionally bust out Instagram itself if I’m looking to taint some snaps with a pseudo 1960s feel.
But what about apps that transform snaps into sketches? Well, PowerSketch for iOS has you covered there.
As with retro photo apps, there are already a slew of photo-to-sketch apps out there, such as My Sketch and Sketch Me. But PowerSketch is a worthy addition to the family offering a simple, streamlined way to quickly turn your images into artwork. Oh, and PowerSketch also lets you create arty videos based on the exact same effects available for your photos. Read more...
Lenovo packs ‘thinnest’ ThinkPad ultrabook with 4G LTE
Lenovo on Tuesday announced a range of new ThinkPads with Intel's latest third-generation Core processors, including a ThinkPad ultrabook that the company claims is the "thinnest ultrabook in the world."
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon ultrabook has a 14-in. screen, weighs under 1.8 kilograms (3.9 pounds) and is 18.8-mm (.74 inches) thick. It will have the latest Intel ultrabook processors, code-named Ivy Bridge, which are expected to be officially announced next month.
Lenovo also updated the popular ThinkPad T-series and X-series lineups, making them faster while adding more battery life to the models. The company also has new connectivity and multimedia capabilities that could be helpful for business users. The laptops will be available on June 5. Read more...
Etiquette expert: No phone calls in bathroom — and stop shouting!
Like her great-great-grandmother and etiquette expert Emily Post, Anna Post strives to make the world politer. She speaks with msnbc.com's Rosa Golijan about smartphone etiquette — and rude phone users.
Post explains that attempting to be a bit more courteous while using our smartphones (and other mobile devices) is quite important as many people list misuse of mobile technology among their top pet peeves. According to a survey sponsored by Intel, 73 percent of people complained about seeing someone use a cellphone while driving, 65 percent were annoyed by people shouting into phones, and 28 percent were irritated by those who use mobile devices while walking down streets. Read more...
Japan’s DoCoMo unveils cloud services, including a translator and 5GB of storage
Japan’s leading operator DoCoMo has announced a series of cloud based services that will soon launch under its new ‘docomo cloud’ initiative, that seeks to tap into the country’s growing smartphone market.
DoCoMo has been working on language translation technology for some time and, on June 1, it will introduce a Mail-Hon’yaku-Concier service that helps non-Japanese readers. The application will translate SMS, email and social network messages between Japanese and English, Chinese and Korea using cloud-based technology, the company says. Read more...
Minecraft Hunger Games exists, and it’s just as amazing as you’re imagining
What happens when you combine one of the hottest movies of the year with a giant virtual sandbox? You get perhaps the coolest custom Minecraft experience ever — not to mention plenty of chaos. Hunger Games-style Minecraft servers are popping up all over, and — short of an officially-licensed Hunger Games title — they are one of the best ways to live out your Mockingjay-fueled fantasies.
Most of the serious Hunger Games servers are called "Survival Games," but don't let that fool you: The experience will definitely feel like you're living in the fictional nation of Panem. Players — called "tributes" to add to the authenticity — start off each session by mimicking the opening action scene, with tributes standing a large circle around a cache of supplies. When the timer hits zero, all bets are off. Read more...
Facebook Takes A Cue From Instagram, Redesigns Mobile To Make News Feed Photos 3X Larger
If you’re sick of interrupting your news feed reading to open and load photos, you’ll like a new Facebook mobile site, iOS, and Android app redesign rolling out today that makes photos three times larger. Shares of single photos now look a lot like Instagrams, as they appear full width so there’s less need to stop and open them. Meanwhile the bigger previews of photo albums will help you instantly assess whether to dive in or breeze past.
As Facebook’s user base shifts to mobile where it can’t show as many ads as easily, it will need to keep mobile session length and return visit frequency high. Making the news feed less tiring to browse should keep us scrolling for longer as we ravenously peer into the lives of our friends our friends. Here’s the before and after photos…of photos. Read more...
Apple Said To Debut iCloud’s New Photo Sharing Features At WWDC
With Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference just weeks away, expect plenty of reports of new features to come crawling out of the woodwork. In fact, here’s one from the Wall Street Journal — they claim that Apple has been doing some major tinkering with their iCloud storage service, the fruits of which will be unveiled on June 11.
First up is the ability for users to share and comment on each other’s photos, a pretty dramatic shift away from iCloud’s current approach to photo storage. As it stands, each user has a single Photo Stream meant mostly to make sure images are on the devices they need to be on. This shift in sharing actually sounds a little reminiscent of Apple’s recently-killed MobileMe service, though how exactly the sharing process would play out within iCloud is still up in the air. Read more...
MacBook Pro refreshes may be imminent, say reports
Hints that Apple will soon refresh its iMac desktop and MacBook Pro laptop lines accumulated today as several Mac-centric blogs revealed new details gleaned from the Web and unnamed sources.
Analysts who cover Apple agreed, saying that the new notebook models could appear at any time.
"I don't see them waiting for WWDC," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "As soon as they have enough supply built up, they'll release them." Read more...
Opera 11.64 closes critical code execution hole
Version 11.64 of the Opera web browser has been released, closing a critical hole that could have been exploited by attackers to inject malicious code into a victim's system. According to the company, some undisclosed formulations of URLs caused the browser to allocate the incorrect amount of memory for storing the address. When the program attempted to store the address, unrelated memory could have been overwritten with an attacker's data, resulting in a crash and the execution of arbitrary code. Read more...